On Mitch’s Crossroads Café

This month I am embarking on my first community theatre effort in four years. The cast is nearly in place, and rehearsals begin in earnest tonight.

We perform November 6th – 8^th.  I would like to do dinner theatre on Friday and Saturday night and then have our usual Sunday matinee with home-made pies.  

 I started writing this play about a year and a half ago, and it has undergone many changes. My daughters told me the first version was far too dark for an audience expecting light entertainment after consuming a heavy meal – and they were right, as usual. I have lightened this version up a great deal.

This comedy-drama explores a number of themes: friendship, forgiveness, change. Past and future are juxtaposed, as are inertia and movement, youth and age, strength and weakness.

Jeanie is the owner of Mitch’s Crossroads Café, an establishment which rides the rollercoaster of boom and bust on the prairies. Jeanie is tied to her past with Mitch, whose influence is still seen in the café’s interior design and menu. Mitch’s ghost inhabits the fridge, which is found at center stage, and he rattles the beer bottles inside whenever he’s ticked about something.

Alma is Jeanie’s cook, waitress, and friend. Alma has ghosts of her own – thanks to her battles with alcoholism and spousal abuse. Alma has emerged through all of this with her wry sense of humour intact, but she has lost her children along the way.

Zoe, at nineteen, still hasn’t found herself, but she comes looking. When Jeanie hires her, Zoe has already had numerous jobs and proven to be a disaster at all of them. She naively endures Alma’s harsh criticism, and emerges stronger for it.

Check in later to hear about more characters . . .

This entry was posted on September 9, 2009 at 8:25 pm and is filed under On Community Theatre, On Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.