Registered nurse Colleen Crossley has been involved in the Studio Theatre for many years now, but never before this year has she directed a play.
“It was on my bucket list,” says Crossley who is directing Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart, a dark comedy that starts its two-week run next week and will also be the Studio Theatre’s entry in the Central Interior Zone Drama Festival taking place in the lakecity later in May.
Set in the early 1970s in an old Mississippi family home, the play brings three sisters, with three very different lives, together as their grandfather is dying.
“With some good old fashioned family dynamics, the sisters laugh and cry together as they rediscover each other and their true strength as a family,” Crossley says.
“The underlying themes of domestic violence and abuse are balanced with the naturally funny things that occur in the relationships they share.
“The play opens with the youngest sister Babe (Kalysta Szauer) having just shot her husband because she ‘didn’t like his looks.’”
Middle sister Meg (Kathy MacDonald) comes home to find everything the same and everything different.
The oldest and long-suffering sister Lenny (Juli Harland) is coaxed into doing things she’s never done and Chick (Stacey Poirier), their critical cousin, just keeps stirring the pot.
Adding to the intrigue, Oren Barter plays the lawyer Barnette Lloyd, and Shane Tollefson plays Doc Porter.
“The question is what are the real crimes revealed to the audience,” Crossley says.
Crossley says she has given Cheryl Lynn Lewis the title of play manager and theatre guru for her help in keeping rehearsals going while she was away working. Crossley says she has given Cheryl Lynn Lewis the title of play manager and theatre guru for all her extra help keeping rehearsals going while she was away working and with producing the play.
The technical team includes father/son team Curt and Conlan Sprickerhoff on lights and sound; stage manager Mackenzie Moore; set design Sheryl Lynn Lewis; costume design Sharon Hoffman, crew Keenan and Jerry Crossley, along with many other helpers from the theatre club.
Crimes of the Heart is on stage at the Studio Theatre, May 2 to 5 and May 9 to 12 and May 17 for the festival.
Tickets are available at About Face Photography.
Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and the shows start at 8 p.m. at the Williams Lake Studio Theatre at Glendale Elementary School.