We can’t yet gather in person for any theatre, so we are turning our postponed salon reading of Leah Kornfield Friedman’s Cowboys Are Waiting For Me In Montana (originally scheduled for3/20) into a virtual gathering happening Wednesday, June 24th! We hope you will join us online for an informal reading and some friendly conversation on ZOOM!
It’s the 4th of July. It is also the 45th wedding anniversary of Bride and Groom. When Groom comes home to reveal that he has been fired, Bride panics. But the couple decides to uphold their annual tradition anyway and journey through “The Notebook.” This detailed record of milestones and the wild range of emotions that has accompanied their decades long marriage, reveals Bride’s frustrations with her role as a wife and mother and her unquenchable thirst for change, adventure, and escape. Witness the “flotsam and jetsam” of Bride and Groom’s lives in Leah Kornfeld Friedman’s Beckett-esque one act, Cowboys Are Waiting For Me in Montana.
*** The Nora Salon: Cowboys Are Waiting For Me in Montana Wednesday, June 24th at 7pm (EDT)on ZOOM
Please email reservations@norasplayhouse.org to add your name to the guest list and receive the Zoom link for this online reading.
Since Nora’s Playhouse’s founding in 2009, we have been committed to lifting up women theatre artists in a collaborative storytelling process that focuses on human rights. We must do better in living up to that mission in a way that combats racism and amplifies the voices of BIPOC theatre artists.
We stand in solidarity with the Black community and recommit ourselves to providing a space for women of color to tell their stories. We also pledge to make sure our board looks more like the communities we serve. If we are to listen and learn and do better, we must make sure all voices are represented in our leadership. We are working on other concrete steps to take going forward in our efforts to end racial injustice.
AMERICAN HAPPINESS
BY JACQUELINE ALLEN TRIMBLE
It used to be in Mayberry folks were never colored –not even black and white– but beige, khaki, a little gray. In Mayberry Deputy Barney had one bullet and no need for rope. The only burning he did was for his Thelma Lou. The sheriff had no gun, just an Aunt Bea baking pies and an Opie full of freckles heading off to fish or sing or court. Whatever Opies do. In Mayberry, no doors were barred or locked. The jail was mostly empty. The only water hose we ever saw lay peacefully curled on Sheriff Andy’s lawn.
Mayberry was a Southern town. Technicolor must have killed it. Made Andy a cranky lawyer. Sent Opie running all the way to Hollywood. But we remember. Black and white, from Chicago to Watts to Selma, we tuned in to connect the dots of Opie’s face while we dined on mashed potatoes and buttered corn right before our TV sets, mesmerized, that in this Southern town, the sheriff used his hose to water Aunt Bea’s roses. We were so happy and relieved we laughed until we could not think until we fell off our sofas and wing-backs and can-bottoms; we laughed until we could not see or hear until we could forget that outside our windows other sheriffs with loaded guns, snarling dogs, and ready hoses made quick work of a world on fire.
Jacqueline Allen Trimble lives and writes in Montgomery, Alabama, where she is an associate professor of English and chairperson of Languages and Literatures at Alabama State University. Her work has appeared in various online and print publications including The Griot, The Offing, and The Blue Lake Review. She is currently a Cave Canem fellow and the recipient of a 2017 literary arts fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. She is also an Artistic Associate of Nora’s Playhouse.
Warm greetings to all of our Nora’s Playhouse supporters in NYC and Montgomery! I hope that you all have remained healthy during this strange and scary time.
In the midst of so many challenges for performing arts organizations, we are very pleased to be able to offer you a “stage reading” online of the fascinating new play by Marianne M. Weber about Montgomery, Alabama’s own, Zelda Sayer Fitzgerald! Many thanks to Kristy Meanor and the Wetumpka Depot Players for their collaboration on this project. We hope you enjoy the reading. Let us hear from you!
– Caroline Reddick Lawson, Artistic Director and Founder, Nora’s Playhouse
We hope you’ll join us on Facebook Live on Wednesday, May 13th at 7pm for the 2nd informal reading of Zelda! Zelda! by Prattville, Alabama’s own Marianne M. Weber. The play had its first reading on February 24 and the playwright has reworked the script based on the feedback she received. This is a unique opportunity to see a script in development come to life and provide constructive feedback for the playwright.
The boys stood outside Zelda’s bedroom window calling, “Zelda! Come out, Zelda!” Lured by the promise of romance and fun, she crawled out her bedroom window to join them. Thus began Zelda Sayre’s waltz into the world of dazzling parties and the generation’s greatest artists. She became the ultimate flapper and an exciting artist in her own right.This beautiful, talented young woman hitched her rising star to the famous F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the two lived for years in a bubble of glitz, glamour, wealth and excitement. Later, while Scott struggled to maintain his status as a successful author, Zelda struggled to maintain her sanity. Zelda! Zelda! dramatizes the life of this vivacious, talented, troubled woman who is recognized today as the face of the Jazz Age.
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Nora’s Salon South Online: Zelda! Zelda! Wednesday, May 13th at 7pm on Facebook Live hosted by Kristy Meanor on the Wetumpka Players Depot Facebook page
