Everyone you meet has a story to tell, and on Dec. 7, a group of locals hopes to hear some of those stories that could be used for a folk life play.

Kevin Goodson and Wanda Walker are currently leading efforts to find and share local stories through a play called “Catfish & Kin Gospel Radio Hour.” The play will be organized like a 1940s style radio show with a team of singers and musicians performing between the stories.

“We are trying to create a folk life play for Troup County based upon the stories of folks in Troup County,” Goodson said. “The idea is that we want to bring our community together in ways that haven’t been done before and different sections that might otherwise not work together.”

Goodson said that the first step to creating the show will be to collect stories from throughout the community. 

“We are having our first story gathering event on Dec. 7 from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at LaGrange Memorial Library,” Goodson said. “We’ve got some local authors who are on the storytelling committee.”

The storytelling committee hopes to collect 300 stories. Walker said that stories that are not used in the first performance may be used in performances in the future, and she said the group hopes to see stories from a wide variety of people.

“We’ve got a very diverse group of people working together on this,” Goodson said. “This all started with Troup Transformation and Kingdom Community, and we were talking about how our town sometimes is divided.”

Goodson said that he felt like theater would be a great way to pull together people from different backgrounds. 

The actual performance is expected to take place in fall of 2020, and according to Goodson and Walker, anyone who auditions will be able to take part in the show. The location of the show has not been announced at this time.