Secrets of the Luuce Talk Tavern
by Anne-Marie Oomen
for Old Town Playhouse
director: Jeanette Mason
Auditions: February 13 & 14, 2012 at 7 pm
Tickets on Sale: February 27, 2012 at 10 am
Performances:
April 13-28, 2012
Performance
Dates |
April 13 - 8 pm
April 14 - 8 pm
April 15 - 3 pm
April 19 - 8 pm
April 20 - 8 pm
April 21 - 8 pm
April 22 - 3 pm
April 26 - 8 pm
April 27 - 8 pm
April 28 - 8 pm |
It’s a bad day for the Luuce Talk Tavern when proprietor Helen Luuce wakes to a leaking roof, bus driving Burt shows up—shotgun and chain saw in hand, an Iraq vet arrives with a lively case of Tourette’s, daughter Lizzie tries to burn herself up, neighbor Minnie plants petunias on a storm-laden beach, and a banker who may or may not know Lizzie’s mysterious paternity wants to buy the bar.
Mix into the chaos a wounded swan, a group of stranded seasonal workers, a raptor rehabilitator, and an explosive family secret—and you have the day that rocked the world for these bedraggled but endearing villagers-on-the-lake.
Laced with generous splashes of pain and brightness, this is Oomen’s first “dark” comedy, and the pilot play for the Playwrights Process Project, the first of its kind here at OTP.
More About Secrets of the Luuce Talk Tavern
Setting
The Secrets of Luuce Talk Tavern takes place in LUUCE COUNTY’S run down village cafe and bar, The Luuce Talk Tavern, in a rural community on one of the Great Lakes, Michigan or Superior. Definitely the Upper Peninsula. The bar is open from 7:00 in the morning to midnight every day, and Helen, the owner, is the center of activity for the regulars. The beach is within view of the Bar from a large front window. Though the village lives in the perpetual cycle of tourist boom-bust economy, in recent years things have gone even more badly than usual. It is NOVEMBER.
Characters
Helen Luuce: Late thirties/early 40s. A brassy maternal woman with torn heart. Sass covers insecurity. Does what needs to be done. Loves her daughter.
Lizzie Luuce: 13, going on 30. Helen’s daughter. A very green, very smart girl. Never knew her father.
Van: 40s An itinerant worker with mental illness, probably a highly functioning schizophrenic.
Burt: 50’s-60’s Local bus driver. No-nonsense, bull in a China cabinet type.
Minnie: 50’s-60’s Burt’s wife, a mouse with a voice, but tender-hearted and sweet, ill.
Susan: 40’s-50’s A ecology instructor at the local junior college. Rehabilitates the raptors. Likes whiskey. Practical.
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