Written & Performed by Frank Blocker
Directed by Cheryl King
Murray Scott Changar, Dramaturge
PLACE: Aberdeen, Mississippi
- The Charles B. Evans Memorial Library
- Big Otis’ Saloon
- Mrs. Wong’s Chinese Restaurant
- The City of Aberdeen Water Tower
- U.S. Highway 45
- The Natchez Trace Mobile Home Park
- The Monroe County Courthouse
- Commerce Street
- The Huckleberry Inn Bed & Breakfast
- Hickory Street
- The Tennessee-Tombigbee Riverfront
- The Shine Shack
- The Aberdeen-Monroe County Hospital
TIME: Tuesday, 10:59pm — Friday, 11:44am
Cast List in order of appearance
The Narrator is the omniscient, third-person voice of reason, suspense, and vague confusion. In addition to telling the tale, he peppers the yarn with impersonations of chiming clocks, church steeples, water towers and the rest of the environment of the play.
Viola Haygood is the Assistant Librarian of the Charles B. Evans Memorial Library. The somewhat addled, illegitimate daughter of Donna Hazzler, Viola is a hopeless romantic with dreams of a beautiful home, a comfortable life, and a loving future family. She actively pursues any available modern-day knight who would be willing to sweep her literally, or figuratively, off her feet.
Mark Julius is Viola’s most recent object of desire: Tall, dark, handsome. All other information: Classified.
Odessa “Big Otis” Cole is a newcomer to Aberdeen as the owner of Big Otis’ Saloon. Otis has a dark and shady past.
The Junebug is an insect, not a metaphor. And neither is the turtle from The Grapes of Wrath.
Donna Hazzler feels her future was written the day she met no-account Lonnie Haygood, by whom she bore her sole daughter, Viola. No stranger to heartache, Donna is a survivor…sometimes, even a graceful one. Her new part-time job with the Mississippi State Bureau of Investigation is a chance at a new future…pulling her from the Natchez Trace Mobile Home Park (maybe) once and for all.
Carlos Vazquez enjoys swimming, fishing, lookin’ at girls, more fishing, and driving around lookin’ at girls. Fortunately for the cars and the girls—not so much for the fish—Carlos doesn’t drink.
Jimmy Townsend is the dimwitted black sheep of the Townsend clan. Jimmy holds only one secret…the secret of his true heart. He wants to be good, but bad things follow him like cockroaches to week-old egg salad.
Pete “Little Pete” Egley is a Washington and Lee graduate, by way of Auburn University where “Little Pete” was following in “Big Pete’s” cloven hoof prints. Pete hopes to build a strong enough reputation as a caged, pit-bull lawyer…a reputation that will allow him to do anything he wants and finally be accepted. He’s not out of the closet yet, and probably won’t be until…well, he probably won’t be.
Judge Robert Percy graduated Magna Cum Laude from Mississippi State University where he played basketball rather unsuccessfully. He was the reluctant roommate of “Big Pete” Egley while studying Law at Washington and Lee University, eventually bringing justice back to his ninth-generation home on the Tennessee-Tombigbee River.
Mrs. Wong is the owner of Mrs. Wong’s Chinese Restaurant, Aberdeen’s best (and only) Asian culinary establishment. It is rumored that her husband is a violent man…though no one’s ever seen him. There is concern at the Baptist Church she attends that her lack of a visible wedding ring speaks volumes of the marriage. No one speaks directly to her but all refer to her as “real sweet.”
Fran Bedwell, never seen without best friend Waleeta, is the secretary for Sheriff Billy Pingleton. He didn’t hire her. She came with the linoleum. Though no longer legal in the office, Fran frequently breaks the smoking rule.
Jeffery Stone is just some poor schlock that landed a job in a big city in a small state and has convinced himself that he’s just a step away from the big-time.
Murray Pruitt has spent much of his life as a guest of the Mississippi Penal System, and has yet to learn the value of rehabilitation. An addictive personality, he doesn’t have time to get hooked on everything, but manages his fair share. Murray moved from Ohio, where his kind weren’t quite welcome. Which doesn’t really explain why he moved to Mississippi, now does it.
Jerry Townsend, the criminally-inclined brother of Jimmy and ambiguously-termed friend of Murray, has been spared by luck many times. Now a bad egg, Jerry once had a voice that took him to the Vocal Choir Ensemble National Association Eastern Division Finals in Cleveland, Ohio. His indiscretion with a local student who was volunteering was what made him miss the championship performance. Nothing was the same after that.
The Conner Sisters of Tupelo are carrying on a third-generation tradition of singing the call letters for country music’s WTPO.
Radio DJ Waylon Moby has been in radio so long he has a picture of himself with Michael Jackson when he still looked like a boy. His most recent scandal was playing “Wide Open Spaces” instead of “These Colors Don’t Run” when he was introducing the governor during a ribbon-cutting for the new Homeland Security Warehouse and Outlet Mall, as the Governor shook hands with a former president.
History of the Play
Southern Gothic Novel first appeared on the internet as a web series, long before the word “blog” was in the vernacular. It made its first stage appearance at the New York International Fringe Festival in the famed Red Room across the street from La Mama, and went on to several dates around the country. Eventually, it ran for 18 months at New York’s Stage Left Studio and garnered a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Solo Performance and the play was published. The play received an Ovation Award recommendation when it premiered in Los Angeles and ran for three months at The Underground Theatre. It made an appearance at the inaugural Fringe Fort Myers (Florida) where it won Best of Venue.
Biographies
Frank Blocker (Playwright/Performer) has been a professional actor and a writer for a few decades. Ottawa Fringe marks his third solo play and performance in the last three weeks. He premiered new drama Good Jew at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan last week. The week prior, he won Best of Venue at Fort Myers Fringe (Florida) with NY-centric comedy Stabilized Not Controlled. Off-Broadway playwriting credits include Eula Mae’s Beauty, Bait and Tackle (Quintero Theatre); Suite Atlanta (78th Street Studio); Stabilized… and Southern Gothic Novel (Drama Desk Award nomination), the latter two running a combined four years at Manhattan’s Stage Left Studio. Other plays include the adaptation HP Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu (The Visceral Company, Los Angeles), Air Marshals, The Wisconsinners, and book writer for the musical Alice with composer William Wade (York Theatre Development Series, Emerging Artists Theatre). He has edited ten volumes of short plays (Stage THIS! and Stage It! 10-Minute Plays), honoring the works of other playwrights. He is a member of The Dramatists Guild as well as Actors’ Equity Association and SAG/AFTRA. New York stage credits include Roderick Usher in Steven Berkoff’s Fall of the House of Usher, Mr. Peachum in The Beggar’s Opera (Dixon Place), Edward II (The Paradox-West Village), The Don Quixote Project, Obie-winning West Village/East Village Fragments, and the infamous The Deep Throat Sex Scandal at Bleecker Street Theatre. Regional credits include The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Me and My Girl and Amadeus. An ordained minister and working pastor, he lives in Naples with his partner, artist/thinker Ted de Clercq, and their retired greyhound racer, Razmus, in their tropical paradise of a yard. He will be appearing at Vancouver Fringe in September.
Cheryl King (Director) is the creator and producing director of Stage Left Studio, in NYC and Sanoma, was resident acting coach at All My Children from 2007-2010, and is a playwright, director and actor. A director since 1999, she has directed more than 50 productions, including Frank Blocker’s Drama Desk-nominated Southern Gothic Novel, 180 Days, Taren Sterry’s solo show about hospice care, and Theresa Gambacorta’s The Vegas Project and ran her second solo show, Grapefruit, by Sally Lambert, for a few years at Stage Left Studio/Manhattan. She currently works at The Californian Theatre on the other-other coast and continues producing the very long-running show Forbidden Kiss LIVE!
www.cherylkingproductions.com
Murray Scott Changar (Dramaturge) is the author of four plays: The Gates of Helen (Whole World Theatre-Atlanta), The Old Man and the Whore (Poets’ Cafe-NYC), The Noble Sons of Popeye (Circus Theatricals-Los Angeles) and White Picket Fence (Atlantis Playmakers-Boston), and is co-author of Good Jew (Theatre Row-Manhattan). He served as an editor and wordsmith for numerous writers. He is also the author of sci-fi novel The Slaves of Votarus.
Frank Blocker 