First Sunday matinee pays tribute to Rockwall’s ‘Real Magnolias’
UPDATE (March 19, 2014): Tickets are 90% sold, so Rockwall Community Playhouse just added a Thursday night show on April 3!
ROCKWALL, TX (March 15, 2014) Rockwall Community Playhouse will open their presentation of Steel Magnolias at 8 p.m. Friday, March 21. This will be the third run of this beloved story on the RCP stage, and the third time for Darlene Singleton to direct the show.
“Turns out we do this show every seven years,” said Singleton. “We didn’t plan that; it just happened that way.” The seven year intervals are not the only serendipitous coincidence between Darlene and this show. Far from it.
Steel Magnolias is the story of a group of women who are lifetime friends. The entire show takes place on one set – The Beauty Shop. It’s about the relationships of six very different women and their support of one another through joys and sorrows. One of the characters experiences the loss of a child. Another is a widow who still grieves for her husband of almost 50 years. One runs the beauty shop while her husband struggles with finding work. There is a frightened young girl with “a past,” a young newlywed, and a grouchy-on-the-outside but mush-on-the-inside character who has “been in a bad mood for 40 years.” Six women, each one unique – yet joined together with an unbreakable bond of love and loyalty through life, birth, illness, loss and every sort of mood (good and bad) you can imagine.
When Singleton was growing up in the little town of Rockwall, she had a girlfriend, Nancy, whose mother “did hair” for a select group of close friends in a little beauty shop attached to her home. Darlene spent many hours atNancy’s house, in that beauty shop, drinking Coca Colas and listening to the conversation and laughter of the ladies who would become her own cast of characters – what she calls her “Real Magnolias.” She says, “What I didn’t learn from my own mother and my grandmothers, I learned from those women in that beauty shop. They were strong women who loved to laugh and who loved one another with a fierce loyalty and a bond that would never be broken. That bond extended to their respective families and close friends and I was so fortunate to be inside that circle of steel when I might not have survived without it.”
Singleton lost her five-year-old son, Wesley, to leukemia in 1982. She has lived the scene in the show where the mother sits at her child’s hospital bed until the silence comes. She has lived the scene in the show where the mother rails at the heavens in angry tears, desperately struggling to understand “why.” And she has lived the scene in the show where the grieving mother is surrounded, held, loved, lifted up and even made to laugh through her tears by the dear ladies of the beauty shop, her Real Rockwall Magnolias.
When RCP produced Steel Magnolias for the second time in 2007, those Real Magnolias (Mattie Mays, Jane Bounds, Sammie Vaught, Mary Ellen Hall) were honored at the first Sunday matinee. All were in attendance on the front row except Mary Ellen Hall who was represented by Rosemary Hall, Mary Ellen Hall’s sister-in-law. Mary Ellen was very ill at the time and couldn’t make it to the theater, but she knew about the show and the tribute.
After that matinee, the cast, crew, audience and everyone that heard about it would say how wonderful it was, what a great idea to say thank you and to honor these ladies while they’re here to accept it. Too many times we wait until a memorial service to pay tribute to those who have meant so much to us in life. The Real Magnolias were honored and appreciated while still living and vibrant, but there was not a dry eye in the house that day.
Seven years later, each of the wonderful ladies has been laid to rest. The first Sunday matinee of the 2014 production of Steel Magnolias will be again dedicated to the memory of Mattie Mays, who served as Justice of the Peace of Rockwall County; Jane Bounds, former owner, editor and publisher of the Rockwall Texas Success newspaper; Mary Ellen Hall, Congressman Ralph Hall’s wife and active volunteer; and Sammie Vaught, who worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas for 46 years.
The 2014 cast includes Stacey Kluttz as Truvy; Stephanie Cearley as Annelle; Terry McBay as Clairee; Abby Sue Mckinney (granddaughter of Mattie Mays) asShelby; Kathy Fisher as M’Lynn; and Deb Caperton Ballard as Ouiser. Assistant Director is Steve Griffin. Gary Freedman is the Producer.
Steel Magnolias runs for three weekends, March 21-April 6 at RCP, 609 E. Rusk St. Showtimes are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. For tickets and more information, visit rockwallcommunityplayhouse.org.
By Deb Caperton Ballard, RCP Board member.
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