Letting suspense build for a whole bunk of talent

My niece Raegan spent a few hours on her fall break working a puzzle. A shale puzzle — as in the layered sedimentary type.

We gardeners like to turn our chores into a game, so when I asked my niece for help in collecting and laying out a cobblestone path of shale to serve as a dry creek, she commented it was just like doing a puzzle.

A few days later Raegan and her cousin Grace accompanied the hubby and I to watch the final 10 auditions of “Indiana’s Got Talent” for the Circle of Lights. (This will air at 7 p.m. Nov. 22, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, on WTHR.) The final five artists chosen will perform before an audience of 100,000 in addition to being televised live on Channel 13.

As part of the audience filmed at the Madame Walker Theatre, we watched and cheered the 10 talented acts which were culled from over 125 acts. Two of the final 10 had specific Johnson County ties. Sh’Boom is a five-member male vocal group comprised of Center Grove students Dawson Raymond, Noah Wright, Chris Buechter, Griffin Smith and Noah Smith.

Celebration Worship Band is composed of five Anderson University students, who also lead worship at Celebration Church in Anderson. The lead vocalist of Celebration Worship grew up in my house and goes by the name of Phoebe.

As luck would have it, Sh’Boom sat directly behind the parents of Celebration Worship Band, so we cheered especially loud for each other.

On our way home, I asked Grace Hommel Wood and Raegan Hommel what they enjoyed most about the evening, besides watching their cousin Phoebe perform.

Raegan, a sixth-grader at Center Grove Middle School North, answered succinctly: “the suspense” of finding out which five acts will perform live. The suspense took about three hours.

Both Grace and Raegan agreed that they enjoyed and were surprised how good all the acts were.

Grace, a freshman at Center Grove High School, added: “I liked how Andrea Morehead (WTHR news anchor and “Indiana’s Got Talent” host) was good at her job and was really nice and took photos with everyone.”

After some thought, Raegan noted: “What really stuck out was how supportive the friends and family of the artists were — some hoisted foam boards with the vocalists name and photo — others wore matching T-shirts.”

One fan group had three-foot, foam-board heads of their favorite performer. (Did I mention that I was especially pleased with myself just to get there in time?)

Grace was also intrigued by, “all the people behind the scenes, who make the production run smooth.”

I would like to tell you who made it into the top five — but I promised to keep the secret to let the suspense build until 7 p.m. Nov. 22. But I can tell you that you will see some great Indiana talent, including two acts with Johnson County neighbors.