SBCT presents “Livin’ and Comin’ Back’’ June 5-14

SBCT presents “Livin’ and Comin’ Back’’ June 5-14

Local playwright Laura Pfizenmayer’s family “dramedy’’ set in small Southern milltown

South Baldwin Community Theater will present “Livin’ and Comin’ Back,’’ an original play written by Laura Pfizenmayer and directed by Joan Gasaway, June 5-14, with the Friday and Saturday shows starting at 7:30 p.m. and the Sunday matinee at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are available at sbct.biz ($15 for students and $23 for adults). South Baldwin Community Theater is located at 2022 West 2nd St. in Gulf Shores. For more info, call 251-968-6721.
“Livin’ and Comin’ Back” is a family ‘dramedy’ that is the first installment of Pfizenmayer’s Whitfield Family Saga. The other four plays in the saga are “2 Tornados Touching Down,” “Trapped In A Basement,’’ “Waiting Rooms,’’ and “Crystal and JT’s Wedding Shower & Fishfry.’’
The saga is definitely autobiographical and based on Pfizenmayer’s experiences growing up in a large family in Birmingham.
“If you already know me and come to the play, you will know what character I am,’’ she said.
Pfizenmayer has written over 100 plays and estimates around 10 of them have been produced at SBCT. She said “Livin’ and Comin’ Back” played in Gulf Shores about 10 years ago and it was more recently featured at the Last Frontier Theater Convention in Alaska and the Great Plains Theater Convention in Nebraska.
The play, set in a Southern mill town, is a Vietnam-era coming-of-age Southern family story. It all happens over the course of one day and includes great music from the era from The Monkees.
Set in 1969, it’s the first day of summer, and Montgomery has graduated high school, gotten drunk for the first time, and received his draft notice. His sister Savannah is only a freshman, but she has set her sights on King Arthur, the school quarterback and the lifeguard at the pool. Augusta is the middle child who has set her sights on bigger things, but right now, she has to clean up the messes her siblings make as well as a hair treatment gone bad.
Throw in some romance with Mary Lee, president of the Future Homemakers of America, and the annual summer luncheon of the Women’s Bible Study, and there is plenty of room for laughter and tears throughout the production.
“I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama in a family that is as Southern as it gets, and I love them all,’’ Pfizenmayer said. “I think it could be about a lot of families who lived through the 60’s, You can see the boy becoming a man in just one day. It is very touching. But there is also a lot of hilarity.
“Also, people will love the great music from that time,’’ she added.
The play will include seven actors – four of them teenagers, and Pfizenmayer said she is excited about meeting the actors, seeing the set and enjoying first time director Gasaway’s interpretation.
“This has to be her vision and not mine, and I am really looking forward to seeing that vision,’’ she said.
She said the name and the premise for her play is based on a family with nine boys who enlisted to fight for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Eight of the nine died in battle. The ninth avoided the same fate by hiding in the woods.
“There is no shame in coming back home,’’ Pfizenmayer said.
Pfizenmayer’s most recent production on the SBCT stage, “Cancer Can Kiss My A$$,’’ is also autobiographical and tells the story of one woman’s battle and triumph over anal cancer. That play was a featured zoom production at the International Center For Women’s Playwrights and was produced by The Merely Players Troupe in Atlanta.
“As a playwright, my plan was to take what happened to me and put it to good use. To make it matter,’’ she said. “It is not a downer play, it is hilarious. If I write it, it’s going to be funny. It is uplifting. It shows the reality of cancer and how hard it is and how hard you have to fight, but she comes through it and lives and is changed by her cancer and changed for the better.”
Pfizenmayer also founded the SBCT’s Annual 24 Hour Play Festival, which will be held on June 20 this year.
Billed as controlled chaos, the theatrical experiment challenges a playwright, director, and actors with the task of crafting a brand-new 10–20 minute play based on random props or themes assigned at the start. Actors and directors receive the finished scripts early Saturday morning, spend the day rehearsing and perform the world premieres of those plays that evening.
“I tell my friends watch out because anything you say might end up in a play,” she said.