Children’s Theater 2018
We solicited playwrights worldwide for two fractured fairy tales to perform for our workshop this year. The winners are Jennifer Heale with Pia the Piper and Matt Bruehler with BB Wolfe and The Sly Stone Soup. The program is filled for this year, but tickets will be available for performances on July 27 & 28, 2018. $5 adults/$3 children.
Exit Laughing by Paul Elliott, A Winner of the AACTNewPlayFest
Sept. 14, 15, 21 at 7:30 PM and Sept. 22, 2018 at 2 PM & 7:30 PM
When the biggest highlight in your life for the past 30 years has been your weekly bridge night out with the “girls,” what do you do when one of your foursome inconveniently dies? If you’re Connie, Leona and Millie, three southern ladies from Birmingham, you do the most daring thing you’ve ever done. You “borrow” the ashes from the funeral home for one last card game, and the wildest, most exciting night of your lives involves a police raid, a stripper and a whole new way of looking at all the fun you can have when you’re truly living. Exit Laughing broke all records for a nonmusical in Springfield Little Theatre’s 50-year history at its premiere.
A Nice Family Gathering by Phil Olson, Winner of the 2000 Rochester Playwright Festival
December 7, 8, 14 at 7:30 PM and December 15, 2018 at 2 PM & 7:30 PM
A Nice Family Gathering is a story about a man who loved his wife so much, he almost told her. It’s Thanksgiving Day and the first family gathering at the Lundeen household since the Patriarch died. At the gathering, Dad comes back as a ghost with a mission; to tell his wife he loved her, something he neglected to tell her while he was alive. After all, they were only married for 41 years. The problem is, she can’t hear or see him. The trouble begins when Mom invites a date for dinner.
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane by Laird Koenig
April 5, 6, 12 at 7:30 PM and April 13, 2019 at 2 PM and 7:30 PM
She was only a little girl. She lived in a great big house…all alone. Where is her mother? Where is her father? Where are all the people who went to visit her? What is her unspeakable secret? Everyone who knows is dead.
There is something peculiar about Rynn Jacobs, the thirteen-year-old little English girl who lives down that lonely lane, with a father no one ever sees. Busybody Mrs. Hallett senses a mystery. Her son Frank senses a prey. Miglioriti, the local policeman, is powerless to help. Mario Podesta, a lame, self-styled magician, scarcely more than a child himself, falls under Rynn’s spell, and their poignant love story is the heartbeat of the play. In the end, Rynn must stand alone against the chilling terror of Frank Hallett who has discovered her secret and uses it to control her. Her options narrow down as the play builds up to an almost unbearable climax.
Laughter on the 23rd Floor by Neil Simon
June 21, 22, 28 at 7:30 PM and June 29, 2019 at 2 PM and 7:30 PM
Inspired by the playwright’s youthful experience as a staff writer on Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, with all the attendant comic drama, as the harried writing staff frantically scrambles to top each other with gags while competing for the attention of star madman “Max Prince”. The play is notable not only for its insider’s look at the personalities and processes of television comedy writing, but also for its reflection of the political and social undercurrents of its time, in particular the rise of Joseph McCarthy, relationships between various (European) American ethnicities, and attitudes toward women.