"Fools" cast members rehearse curtain call this week. The Town & Gown Players show opens tonight. AJC photo by Jamie Gumbrecht.

Town & Gown Players rehearsal this week might’ve been all the usual opening week stress, giggles and butterflies, if not for the Thing.

That Thing that happened, a “that,” an “it,” an “event,” a “day,” that nobody wants to talk about and nobody can forget. It was enough to shake any group. Nobody would have blamed them for taking a break. But they didn’t.

Three longtime volunteers died that day in April: Marie Bruce, Tom Tanner and Ben Teague. University of Georgia professor George Zinkhan, Bruce’s husband, shot and killed all three during a gathering at the little theater off Prince Avenue in Athens. He then disappeared for two weeks before his body was discovered in a shallow grave near his home in Bogart.

“Loss is always difficult, but you’re never prepared to lose so many people at one time,” volunteer Marisa Castengera said this week. “And nothing prepares you to be there for it.”

She doesn’t want to talk about it. Nobody much does. All the details were in the news not so long ago, and anyway, there was a show to rehearse.

A different show that on the weekend of the shootings was canceled. “Fools,” the troupe’s first show since, opens tonight. It had been cast just days before the shootings. The director was Fran Teague, Ben’s wife. In the weeks that followed, it was like everyone took a deep breath and held. The exhale came quickly: Drew Doss, another Town & Gown volunteer and drama teacher at North Oconee High School, stepped in to direct the Neil Simon farce. He rallied friends, volunteers and contacts to handle duties like set design — expertise that used to be Tom and Ben’s domain. They stretched out the schedule to allow more rehearsal time.

New and different volunteers helped build the set; Teague and Tanner usually had it covered. AJC photo by Jamie Gumbrecht.

“Once we got here and got started, things just kept moving forward,” Doss said. “We’re continuing on with what we have been doing. It’s the only thing to do.”

“Fools” is the kind of fast-moving, knee-slapping, belly-laughing story that’s popular among community theaters. It takes place in the late 1800s in the village of Kulyenchikov, where everyone has been cursed, literally, with stupidity. A young schoolteacher moves to town, only to fall for his lovely (and, alas, stupid) pupil. The teacher waffles — “To educate is one thing, to break curses another!” — but of course, attempts to win his student’s heart and to end the curse so they can live happily ever after with curiosity, opinions and knowledge. (See photos from the final run-through.)

It’s exactly the kind of show Town & Gown needed to fill a space so recently emptied of its energy. Their missing volunteers had theater expertise, but served more as the “emotional center” of the troupe. The place where their friends were shot is still the troupe’s home.

“I didn’t know, going into it, how that would feel. I thought it might be different,” Castengera hesitantly explained in the minutes before “Fools” final run-through without an audience this week. “It feels good to me. I feel closer to the people that I lost when I’m here.”

If there is any good from the theater’s worst moments, it’s what happened after. Local theater folks filled in for the expertise Town & Gown lost. Community theaters across the country reached out. One sent a photo of its marquee, spelling out a message of support. Volunteers who’d fallen away from Town & Gown over the years returned in droves. Creating theater to share is powerful catharsis.

Small print on the “Fools” poster dedicates the show to Bruce, Tanner and Teague. They’ll hold receptions after every show this weekend, so audiences and actors can spend some time together in their space. It’s not such a dramatic “show must go on” moment; it’s just important for everyone there to know that it does.

Want to go? Town & Gown Players‘ “Fools” runs July 10-12 and 16-19 at Athens Community Theatre, 115 Grady Ave. in Athens. Shows begin at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, and at 2:30 p.m. on Sundays. Tickets are $18 or $15 for seniors and students, except July 16, when tickets are half off. Tickets are available by calling (706) 208-8696. Receptions will be held after every performance this weekend.