TORRINGTON – Take 12 shows, eight directors, a big, empty stage and 15 years of theater memories and mix well.

What emerges is the latest production from the Goshen Community Theater – GCT In Revue – opening Friday on the Fine Arts Stage at Eastern Wyoming College.

“This isn’t a show, show,” said Bess Carnahan, board member and publicity chair for GCT. “This is a review based on all the shows we’ve put on over the past 15 years.”

The show list is something of a who’s who of Broadway hits – Fiddler on the Roof, The Music Man, Annie and The Sound of Music, to name just a few. Revue also brings young Thespians from the GCT Children’s Theater program to the stage, as well as local musical performers, all for a night of varied entertainment.

The idea for the show came from the GCT membership and board, said Callie Allred, secretary for GCT and Revue producer. As the local theater group prepares to move in a new direction, the board decided a look into its past was in order.

“We’ve had enough theater,” Allred said. “We thought it was time we took a look back and celebrate, to put the past away and move forward.”

The first order of business, then, was polling the membership of GCT, asking for their favorite personal memories from 15 years on the stage. The board then took all those memories and put them together into an evening of entertainment.

But it wasn’t just a matter of throwing a script and a bunch of bodies on the stage, said Aaron Bahmer, perennial performer and director of one of the vignettes in Review. Maintaining the continuity and the story-line of an individual show became a particular challenge when taking just a snippet from the whole, he said.

“Hopefully, the pieces can carry themselves,” Bahmer said. “For my piece, I wrote an intro to hopefully provide more context for the scene. It’s been different.”

Carnahan agreed: “I think pulling this off is harder than producing a regular show. There’s so many people involved, so many acts they have to organize.”

One of those people was Steve Heilbrun of Torrington. A veteran of exactly one show – The Music Man, 11 years ago – Heilbrun returns in Revue with Bahmer, Tim Walter and Ryan Wunibald to perform the song Lida Rose in Barbershop Quarter style.

“I only did it (11 years ago) because I’d play the same part in high school,” Heilbrun said. “I enjoy the barbershop harmonies. Those chords – sometimes they’re a train wreck, but they always sound really good.”

In addition to scenes and music from past shows, Revue will feature a handful of original skits and selections, created by GCT’s players. And it’s more than just a march down memory lane. Revue will give both performers and audience a hopefully fond look back at the past 15 years of entertainment.

“It’s the nostalgia, the memories,” producer Allred said. “Looking back and finding those moments, the fun time you get to look back on and remember why we started doing this in the first place.”