A “Festival of One-Act Plays: Celebrating Women Play-wrights” will feature six award-winning plays presented by the ETSU Division of Theatre and Women’s Studies Program.
These plays, directed by students in ETSU’s “Advanced Directing” class, will take place in Memorial Theatre, Building 35 on the campus of the James H. Quillen Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
Admission is $6 for the general public and $3 for students with valid I.D.
Graceland, Asleep on the Wind and Final Placement are scheduled for Thursday and Saturday, April 24 and 26, at 7:30 p.m.
Ballerinas Choose Your Weapons, The Kentucky Marriage Proposal and The Individuality of Street-lamps will be presented Friday, April 25, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, April 27, at 2 p.m.
Graceland, an “endearingly funny story” by Ellen Byron, depicts two women vying to be the first to enter Elvis Presley’s Memphis mansion when the estate is opened to the public.
Another play by Byron, Asleep on the Wind, tells of the bond between a young Cajun man, Beau, and his timid little sister, Rootie.
Final Placement was written by Ara Watson and originally presented by the Actors Theatre of Louisville in December 1980.
The drama is set in a child welfare office in Tulsa, Okla. Luellen James, a woman guilty of child abuse, is intent on regaining custody of her son, even though he has been put up for adoption by the courts.
Ballerinas Choose Your Weapons, a play by Georgianna Hatcher of Texas Wesleyan University, won a 1996 Playwriting Award at the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival .
This fast-paced comedy is the story of Sasha, a supermodel at the end of her career, whose personal demon pushes her to suicide by overdose.
She wakes up to find herself in purgatory, where she meets three very unlikely ballerinas who have exactly 24 hours to get Sasha to heaven, or she will be sent to hell and they will be “recycled into tooth fairies.”
Anna K. Gorisch’s The Individuality of Streetlamps was a national winner of the KC/ACTF in 2000.
This 10-minute play is about a young girl, Melissa, who learns to deal with her emotion after her boyfriend, Andy, marries someone else.
The show demonstrates how easy it is for someone to fall into the same routine time after time, before they realize something in their life needs to change.
The Kentucky Marriage Proposal, written by Alice H. Houstle in 1974, is an adaptation of a 19th century play by Anton Chekov.
Houstle moves the action from rural Russia to rural Kentucky, changes the characters accordingly and places the action around the year 1900.
In the play, John comes to the Chambers farmhouse to ask the widowed Ma for her daughter Natalie’s hand in marriage.
In his nervousness, John creates a misunderstanding about some pastureland.
After much “discussion” among the three, with a hint that they might even “live happily ever after,” additional differences of opinion arise over the physical attributes of their respective hound dogs.
For reservations, more information, or special assistance for those with disabilities, call the ETSU Division of Theatre Box Office at 439-7576.

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