Clarksville’s Aging Thespians

          

 

I was blown away at my first meeting last year of the Double Nickel   Players in Clarksville.

         The over-55 club members weren’t talking about selling  tickets to their murder mystery dinner. No, they were trying to keep each other from buying too many. They didn’t want to disappoint others who wanted to come.

         What? In 10 years of working with choruses and theaters in Washington and South Boston, I had never heard of such a thing. I can’t ever remember having a full house. Sometimes we would give tickets away to fill seats. 

The Double Nickel mystery shows, Oct. 20, 21 and 22 this year, are so popular that a third one was added last year. There was a race for tickets as soon as the live box office opened a few weeks before showtime. What is this? A Taylor Swift concert?

I had performed in a reader’s theater show with the group in 2012, when it first started, but I hadn’t returned until 2022. For its annual Sunday Funnies show last month, the group had gone big time with mics for actors, costumes and even a TV monitor of the show in the dressing room. I chose to play and sing music because I had realized by 2019 I could no longer remember the lines.

I guess I wasn’t the only one, but these actors drilled hard to put on an impressive show at the Clarksville Fine Arts Center on May 21. There was a modern version of the Three Little Pigs and a couples therapy  session where the husband seems to be growing rabbit ears. The show, directed by Leslie Pipan, also featured a traffic cop trying to arrest a woman who had been drinking. Noteworthy was the skit, “It’s Hell to Grow Old” in which three men with canes couldn’t hear or remember anything, including their wives. I wonder if they were playing themselves (Just kidding, guys!). And jokes about passing gas? I thought we left those behind in the third grade.

If you are interested in Double Nickel, send a message  to nancyedbarden@gmail.com.

         I have already written a song to perform next year. (Billy Joel, please don’t steal it!)

 

Song: Get Rid of Those Cliches

 

As an editor and writer, 

This is something I must say

Just pull out all the stops

And don’t write another cliché

 

You’re pushing the envelope.

I’m not pulling your leg

These dreadful, overworked  phrases

Should be avoided like the plague.

 

You say it’s raining cats and dogs

Or don’t cry over spilled milk.

It makes me scream bloody murder

I can’t hang around with your ilk.

 

So grab the bull by the horns,

Start thinking outside the box.

Remove these wicked words

Or I’ll call the cliché cops!

 

-0-

 

What? Grandparents’ Day at school? I had been to a lot of back to school days, but grandparents’ day?

 

I didn’t know what to expect at Choate boarding school  in Wallingford, Conn., which a grandchild was attending. Walking into first-period English, I planned on being bored. Are they going to analyze Shakespeare or Chaucer? Or maybe teach writing? I should be teaching the class!

 

Then the teacher, who looked about the same age as the students, explained  the “hero’s journey” method of writing.  This is the template for so many action stories ranging from Homer to Star Wars to Harry Potter to Spiderman.

 

I had never heard of this before. I was so revved by this revelation. So if you have seen one hero story you have seen them all?

 

Excited, I brought this up with my literary friends. I got reactions like “Where have you been?” “This has been well known for decades.” Oops. I don’t care. I have always written nonfiction. I learned something new. New to me, anyway.