Vermont Pride Theater at Chandler presents:
Perfect Arrangement by Topher Payne
Saturday January 28, 7:30 pm
Join Vermont Pride Theater in Chandler Music Hall for the New England premier of Topher Payne's prize-winning new play Perfect Arrangement, in a benefit staged reading. Proceeds will go to the civil rights work of GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (www.glad.org). Adults $17 in advance, $20 at door; students $12 in advance, $15 at door
Perfect Arrangement is set in the 1950s, when popular TV sitcoms diverted attention from Senator Joseph McCathy's Red Scare purges of civil society and the US government. State Department employees Bob and Norma, who helped with the purges, are now asked to weed out degenerates and deviants, including the promiscuous and homosexuals. But they are homosexuals themselves. Until now they have been living with their partners in adjoining apartments, successfully masquerading as two straight couples. A concealed closet between the apartments helps them maintain appearances in the first act but begins to divide them in the second, as the Pink Scare threatens to disrupt their "perfect arrangement". The play ends by planting an early seed for the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
The play will be directed by Jeanne Beckwith, whose well-received summer 2015 production of Last Summer at Bluefish Cove at Chandler was re-presented in Burlington that fall. Of Perfect Arrangement, Ms. Beckwith says: "This play tells a compelling story about the not-long-ago past that is still relevant today. Whenever individual freedom is at risk, human beings must take action even when it isn’t comfortable, even when it isn’t safe." She is excited to be working with a talented regional cast: Doug Bergstein (Warren), Brett Cox (Roxbury), Gene Heinrich (St. Albans), Andra Krushenick Kisler (Northfield), Susan Loynd (Fayston), Cynthia Seckler (Fayston), and Noni Stuart (Grande Isle).
A talkback after the reading will give audience and performers a chance to ask questions and share their comments. It will be followed by a reception, so the audience can meet and greet the performers.
This production is sponsored by the Gay and Lesbian Fund of Vermont, the Samara Fund of the Vermont Community Foundation, and the Vermont Conference of the United Churches of Christ. The media sponsors are Vermont Public Radio and Great Eastern Radio.
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