MIDDLETOWN LYRIC THEATRE
1530 Central Avenue, Middletown, Ohio
513-425-7140 Middletownlyric.org
AUDITIONS for PAINTING CHURCHES by Tine Howe
Directed by: Charley Shafor
BY APPOINTMENT
Contact Charley at cshafor@middletownlyric.org
Performances: May 30 & 31 & June 6 & 7
CHARACTERS
- Gardner Church: an aging Pulitzer Prize-winning poet slowly losing his mental abilities, and in the sometimes sharply toned conversations between mother and daughter. (Age 60’s to 70’s)
- Fanny: is a slightly eccentric, tart-tongued Boston Brahmin who loves her doddering husband but fears and resents the loss of their cultured life. (Age 60’s to 70’s)
- Margaret (Mags): fled to New York and a career as a painter. An infrequent visitor home, she wants to paint a definitive portrait of her parents while she has the chance; the work also allows her an opportunity to get a good look at them, to use the artist’s objectivity with her subjects to see them as people and not just her parents. (Age 30’s)
SYNOPSIS
Gardner and Fanny Church are preparing to move out of their Beacon Hill house to their summer cottage on Cape Cod. Gardner, once a famous poet, now is retired. He slips in and out of senility as his wife Fanny valiantly tries to keep them both afloat. They have asked their daughter, Mags, to come home and help them move. Mags agrees, for she hopes as well to finally paint their portrait. She is now on the verge of artistic celebrity herself and hopes, by painting her parents, to come to terms with them and they with her. Mags triumphs in the end as Fanny and Gardner actually step through the frame and become a work of art ineffable and timeless.
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