THE LADIES GUILD ANNUAL PRE-CHRISTMAS PLANNING SESSION – COMEDY ABOUT WOMEN’S GROUPS
Without each other, they’re just reminded of how lonely they really are. Together, they’re exposed to how annoying they can be. In, The Ladies Guild Annual Pre-Christmas Planning Session, the ladies take pride in meeting up every year, to serve the charities of the world. Making actual money (in the form of donations) is the goal, of course but it’s also a great opportunity to come to terms with their losses. In one act, the dramedy also introduces us to Linda, who is new to the life of a widow but well-versed in the language of sisterhood because that’s what the Ladies Guild… really is in this comedy about women’s groups.
This play points a seasonal finger at the typical busybodies one always finds in places such as church groups, parents associations and other such societies. ‘Tis the season to be jolly! Or at least, to try.
PRODUCTION HISTORY
The School at AIPA, New South Wales, Australia – 2019
THIRDS – SUBURBAN SATIRE PLAY ABOUT INHERITING A HOUSE
Muriel Tuck, a quirky widow who succumbs to a burst aneurysm, has left her estate to be divided equally among her three adult daughters. The oldest, Delilah, is the executor of the will and the mother of three young children. She intends to sell the sisters’ girlhood home and to divide the proceeds between them. This plan is amenable to the middle daughter, neurotic librarian Olivia, whose primary concern is family harmony. But the youngest daughter, Maya, still lives rent-free in her late mother’s house, and refuses to leave. Instead, she begins constructing a brick wall across the living room—separating her one-third from the two-thirds belonging to her sisters. Maya acknowledges that her sisters may sell their parts of the house—“like a lopsided duplex”—but she refuses to give up her portion, and its “lifetimes of memories,” under any circumstances in this suburban satire play about inheriting a house.
Enter Phyllis Hofmeyer. Phyllis, a former schoolmate of the Tuck sisters, wishes to purchase the house because she wants her own daughters to have “as wonderful a childhood” as she imagines the Tuck girls enjoyed as children. She is so determined to purchase the property that even Maya’s fabrications regarding the calamitous condition of the house—infestations of fire ants and bedbugs and termites, the tale of a fourth sister murdered by an escaped baboon, etc.—prove unable to dissuade her. But as Phyllis’s motivations become clearer, and increasingly more disturbing, Maya is not the only Tuck daughter who begins to have second thoughts.
Thirds offers a satiric romp through suburbia, and a heartfelt, if zany, account of one family’s efforts to make the best of life’s plenteous surprises. It is intended to be off-beat, provocative and fun.
PRODUCTION HISTORY
First Avenue Playhouse, NJ, USA – 2018
Dudley College, United Kingdom – 2022
National Chung Cheng University, TAIWAN – 2022
Ages of the actors: Late twenties to early thirties
Suitable for: Adults to perform, all ages to watch
Length: 90-110 minutes
Set: The entire play takes place in the combination living room / dining room of the Tuck residence in an upscale suburb of New York City. One door exits to the garage stairs, the other to the kitchen and beyond. Neither the garage nor the kitchen are visible. Those who favor realism might furnish the stage with a damask sofa stacked high with pillows, an assortment of armchairs, a rocking chair, cluttered bookshelves, armoires filled with knickknacks, a dining room service beneath a chandelier, and a crescent-shaped glass coffee-table of the variety that was fashionable during the 1970s. A tablecloth should cover the dining room table; a bouquet of flowers sits in a vase on the tabletop. High budget productions might include a piano—although no one in the Tuck household has played a piano in many years, nor ever played one well. Above all, the room should appear “lived-in”: pizza boxes open on the coffee table, old board games piled high on the sofa. Also gardening supplies, an easel, maybe works of sculpture in progress. In short, this is what happens when a free-spirited twenty-seven year old takes over a house from a middle-aged matron.
Level of difficulty: 7/10 – satire is an art – to play the comic elements off with a straight face
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