A Lovesong for Miss Lydia

Posted in Events, Past Events

A play in two acts by the acclaimed late playwright Don Evans

Tune in for a special streamed table reading on Facebook Live

Saturday, December 19
4:30 pm


The performers:

Todd Evans, Cherylanne Jones, Rachel Marianno, Lukata Mjumbe, Marion Parrish

The play:

Lydia Frazier, a widow in her seventies and a pillar of her church, is living out her life with quiet dignity in her modest Philadelphia home. Things change when, for reasons of loneliness (and a little extra income), she decides to take in a boarder. Her roomer turns out to be the charming and apparently unscrupulous Mahlon, who loses no time in working his wiles on his trusting, vulnerable landlady, despite the cautious warnings of her well-meaning friends. Will the sage and good-hearted Lydia prove to be a match for the duplicity of the scheming Mahlon?


From the New York Times: A member of the Black Arts movement of the 1960’s and 70’s, Mr. Evans had his plays performed on campuses, where he often directed, and in repertory theaters in the United States and Europe. Several were originally produced at the Crossroads Theater Company in New Brunswick, N.J., and were staged at the New Federal Theater in Manhattan.

His best-known works include ”It’s Showdown Time,” a ribald contemporary version of Shakespeare’s ”Taming of the Shrew,” now playing at the eta Creative Arts Foundation in Chicago; ”One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show,” a comedic spoof of a middle-class black family, with a serious undercurrent; ”A Lovesong for Miss Lydia,” a Pinteresque encounter of two elderly people; and a pair of one-act plays, ”Orrin” and ”Sugar-Mouth Sam Don’t Dance No More.”

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