It's Work Day Again!! Saturday, May 10th, 10am-2pm, Eclipse Grange Theater Rake, join us for our annual scrape-and sort party. Kind of like shake, rattle and roll, only with tools and work gloves, other garments optional. Questions? Call (802)785-2016 or e-mail Neal.meglathery@valley.net Reservations not required!

Opening May 24 . . . 7 Short Plays from the Thetford Academy Thetford Academy Drama is bringing its Spring production, entitled Imperfect Pairs, to The Eclipse Grange Theatre. There will be an evening performance on Saturday, May 24th at 7:30 p.m., followed by a 4:00 matinee on Sunday, May 25th. The show will feature seven short plays evoking the theme that the title suggests. There will be two pieces written by Christopher Durang, “One Minute Play” (it really is) and “DMV Tyrant,” along with “Sure Thing,” written by David Ives, and four other short pieces written by student playwrights. One of the ten-minute plays, “Talk Show,” written by former TA student Derrika Downing, is a wacky parody of the popular TV series “The Jerry Springer Show.” In this scene there are a range of conflicts, interviews, and taboos with some of the most peculiar couples in Classical literature. TA Drama invites you to stop by for a show full of laughs, lessons, and awkward pauses that you may find hard to forget.

Opening June 5 . . . Join us for an evening of two one-act plays, Daisy Freund's Perigean, to be directed by Nora Jacobson, and Mark Ruffalo's Mothers and Daughters, to be directed by Alan Gelfant. We're very excited to have this new material made available to Parish Players by such promising playwrights: Freund's first full-length play has just won the 2008 Dodd playwriting contest at Dartmouth College, slated to have a staged reading with professional cast this year. Mark Ruffalo, primarily known for his work in films such as You Can Count on Me, shows a love of theatre and a turn for comic and dramatic pacing with Mothers and Daughters.

Dartmouth student Daisy Freund's subtle, polished Perigean so impressed Edward Albee when he visited the college in 2006 that he recommended it be given a staged reading in the Moore Theatre. Freund's play is a mature work, an intricate, sharply-observed examination of the mother-daughter relationship, and the role of the parent beyond biological constructs. The play comprises a single conversation between mother and daughter, a simple device so artfully crafted that the viewer is gently lead through turns and twists and kept in suspense until its final, moving conclusion. Mothers and Daughters by Mark Ruffalo, is a sweet, sad, funny snapshot of two sisters as they ride a train to visit their dying mother. These two wildly differing siblings, one slinging back the baby vodka, the other sneaking a clandestine cigarette along Amtrak's byways, each carry their own baggage of family history, and are handled with deft irony in Ruffalo's script. Though their mother's fate remains unknown at the final curtain, we know that the two sisters will live to love, and slug it out, again...and again. Eclipse Grange Theatre, Thetford Hill Thursday - Sunday June 5, 6, 7, 8 Thursday - Sunday June 12, 13, 14, 15 Reservations and more info: 802-785-4344

The Parish Players, PO Box 136, Thetford, VT 05074 Email us at: pancho-AT-parishplayers.org 802-785-4344 calendar Pancho's place site by Deneenstreet Web