This new play (formerly titled LADY OF THE HOUSE) for one actor has been a challenge and adventure to create. The play unfolds in real-time, and the audience shifts between being a classroom, a mother, a support group, and even a squirrel. Music–particularly classical–figures in strongly along with atmospheric sounds for a soundscape that is truly a second character.

I workshopped it as both playwright and actor for a week at Actor’s Express in their 2019 Threshold New Play Festival. The performance was at the Atlanta Contemporary gallery. Nothing like exposing your soul in full light!

(directed by Rachel Parish, with stage directions by Tori Thompson)

SYNOPSIS:
Percy Wright has always had an active imagination. Maybe that’s why her real life never fully launched. Now she finds herself back in the tiny Missouri town where she lived out her miserable teenage years. Because her mother is dying. But not fast enough. For either one of them. While Percy struggles with her mother’s needs, not to mention teaching night classes in horticulture at the junior college extension for adult learners, she unexpectedly frees memories from her stressed, fertile brain. As the past comes into focus and truths she used to take for granted start to fall apart, Percy finds herself at a crossroads. A play about how wonder and empathy can help us transcend the unthinkable.