Stories from Langford: Every town has its secrets.
Six characters from Langford tell stories from their lives: stories about, jealousy, revenge, love, and forgiveness.
Scene 1: Back Roads
Scene 2: Smile for the Camera
Scene 3: Ain’t Nothing Better Than Fried Chicken
Scene 4: Bad Habits
Scene 5: Dandelions for Becky
Scene 6: Twelve Years
Two Act Drama – 1M, 1W, single set, 120 minutes
NOTE: Language Warning & Adult Themes
STORY OF THE PLAY
Scene 1 – BACK ROADS: Mitch just wants to get drunk with his friends, roast marshmallows, and burn every copy of, The Story of Langford: A Century of Progress, the book he was commissioned to write by the Mayor.
Scene 2 – SMILE FOR THE CAMERA: Simone is busy getting things ready for her parent’s 50th wedding anniversary while she talks about Debbie Fisher and how much the two of them hated each other and how she caught her father cheating at the Green Gables Motel when she was sixteen and how that forever changed the relationship between her and her father.
Scene 3 – AIN’T NOTHING BETTER THAN FRIED CHICKEN: Earl is eating fried chicken and potato salad, on a hot summer day, in the park, while remembering, how twenty years ago, all that trouble started and people ended up getting killed.
Scene 4 – BAD HABITS: On a hot summer day during the Harvest Festival Carol is packing a picnic basket and talking about wanting to leave Langford when she was growing up and having to come back years later to look after her sick mother.
Scene 5 – DANDELIONS FOR BECKY: Trent Bowers is painting his fence and talking about the first summer he and his wife Tammy moved into the old neighborhood and how every Sunday morning they’d wake up and find a dandelion bouquet wrapped in a white ribbon on the bottom step of their front porch.
Scene 6 – TWELVE YEARS: Nora is celebrating her twelfth wedding anniversary alone, drinking wine, and talking about how cities and buildings and mountains and trees and animals and people all have souls and that sometimes you can capture that soul in a photograph.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Scene 1: Mitch a writer
Scene 2: Simone a middle-aged woman
Scene 3: Earl a handyman
Scene 4: Carol a daughter
Scene 5: Trent a younger man
Joshua an older man
Scene 6: Nora a photographer
All the male characters are played by a single actor.
All the female characters are played by a single actress.
SETTING – LANGFORD
Scene 1: a backyard with a fire pit
Scene 2: a community hall
Scene 3: a small city park down by the river
Scene 4: a kitchen
Scene 5: front porch of an old house
Scene 6: a living room
An intermission can be scheduled between scene 3&4 if desired.
Settings should be hinted at with sound and light and a prop or two rather than full sets.
TIME
SUMMER
Readers Theatre
The play can be presented as a staged reading. This would lend itself to an event where there is a limited amount of rehearsal time or only a single evening’s presentation.
