(May 1, 2013) A Southern Exposure, a multi-award winning comedy-drama by native Texan Kelley Kingston-Strayer, makes its Lone Star state debut at 8 p.m. Saturday, May 11, at the First Baptist Church in historic downtown Wylie.
First developed and produced by the Tony Award winning Barter Theatre for the 2011-2012 season, A Southern Exposure went on to productions from L.A. to Louisville with upcoming shows slated throughout the South. However, playwright Kelley Kingston-Strayer has restricted all theatrical productions in the Lone Star state until now.
“Texas is my home,” she explained. “You want (creative) control of your own back forty. Know what I mean?”
Acclaimed director and founding member of the Rockwall Community Playhouse, Darlene Singleton, was hand-picked by Kingston-Strayer to direct the all-female, four member cast for the one night only performance at the First Baptist Church.
Singleton, with well over 100 theatrical productions to her credit, is excited about the show.
“I read a lot of scripts. It’s rare to find a new play that’s this good,” she said. The Wylie’s Honorable Mayor Eric Hogue will introduce the play. And the cast: Johnna Leigh, Deb Caperton Ballard, Abby Archibald McKinney and Stacy Kluttz , all veteran actors of the DFW area, will be on hand at 96◦ West winery to sign autographs after the show.
When: Saturday, May 11, 2013 8 pm ONE NIGHT ONLY!
Where: First Baptist Church, historic downtown Wylie
Directed by: Darlene Singleton
Abby Sue McKinney plays Callie Belle
Johnna Leigh plays Hattie (Callie’s grandmother)
Deb Caperton Ballard plays Aunt Ida Mae
Stacey Kluttz plays Aunt Mattie
For tickets: damselflypublishers.com.
A note from playwright Kelley Kingston Strayer: ‘YOU KNOW THESE WOMEN’Inspired by my family, A Southern Exposure is a story about love, forgiveness and letting go. It does not reveal great truths about the human condition, but only little truths about extraordinary women leading ordinary lives.It is the story of my aunt, Ida, who, as a young woman buried a son and carried his memory like broken glass. She was a woman that raised coupon clipping to an art form, believed not sharpening the blades of your lawn mower after every use was a sin, and theorized that the Elizabeth Taylor/Eddie Fisher/ Debbie Reynolds love triangle played a hand in the breakdown of the American family.
It is the story of my aunt, Mattie, a woman of hope and faith, who, two weeks after she married her Navy pilot, he shipped out to fight the Japanese and it wasn’t until the Eisenhower Administration when she finally slipped off her wedding band and tucked it away in a drawer. She faithfully rooted for the New York Mets, she believed every story ever written in The Enquirer, and she believed me when I swore my parents allowed me to drive (I was 12 at the time), and then handed over the car keys and let me chauffer us to the Dairy Queen for the soft serve ice cream with hard chocolate shell.
It is the story of my grandmother, Hattie; the most exasperating, pushy Southern woman ever to wear a girdle. She was the only woman I ever knew who actually liked jury duty, fruit cake and Richard Nixon or who would fake a dizzy spell just to get her way. She was a woman who never quite forgave a neighbor for not returning her ‘good’ Tupperware’, but who corresponded for decades with the son of a friend, long dead, imprisoned far away for an unspeakable crime.
Mostly, A Southern Exposure is the story of the hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking truth about love which is rarely neat and tidy, but wild and woolly and full of fleas.
* A percentage of the box office sales will benefit Wylie Christian Center and Equest, Wylie’s therapeutic horsemanship center for children with physical, cognitive and emotional disabilities.
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