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TORCH
Drama
shines light
on its own
adaptation
of Dickens
By Susan Anspach
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
Despite his staunchest claims of being an actor at heart, it’s in one of his unscripted, even off-guard, moments that 15-year-old Joe Duca bears a bit of soul: “Almost everything I am now I owe to this group,” he said, seated outside a recent dress rehearsal. “I owe everything to it.”
The lead in St. John’s TORCH Drama Players’ presentation of their own “Great Expectations” adaptation, Duca of Marshall has been an active TORCH member for the past five years. Dickens’ “Expectations” will be his fourth production with the home schoolers troupe, initially co-founded in 2002 by moms Ruth Van Dyke and Chris Galvin. Past productions have included “A Legend of King Author,” dinner-theater show “Stone Soup," “The Last Battle” and last year’s westernized Shakespearean adaptation, “How The Shrew Was Won.”
“It just grows every year,” noted Duca (protagonist Pip) of the acting ensemble. “And the very next year you can’t remember (the new members) not being here. It’s a family that just keeps growing.”
The group is open to all home schoolers ranging in age from IQ to 19; current members include kids who commute from Front Royal, Culpeper, Rappahannock, Prince William County, and
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