Curtain Call: Waiting Tables

Friday, March 25 and Saturday, March 26, Three Graces Theatre Company will perform a staged reading of John A. Logan theater professor Steve Falcone's original production, Waiting Tables, at the Liberty Theater in Murphysboro.

Tickets are $5, and proceeds will benefit the Liberty.

"I should mention, it was called A Man, a Woman, a Café Table-- I'd actually done it once before," Falcone, who also directs Waiting Tables, told Nightlife. "It is an evening of short, sort of romantic-comic scenes. My wife said, 'How about Waiting Tables?' I wanted to give her all the credit."

The café and its pervasive role in American culture first sparked the idea for the play.

"My whole intention when I thought of the play-- it is a café ," Falcone said. "Choose a café , chic but generic. A man, a woman, and usually a woman is sitting there talking into the cell phone. Something ensues."

Some of the stories are romantic, some are familial, and some just humorous. "There is one [vignette] about a young woman who just got what she considers a horrendous haircut-- her head looks like a helmet, and in walks the boy of her dreams, you know?" Falcone said. "Another one is about a woman who comes from another galaxy, and she's here to breed. She is almost robotic in the sense that she transliterates English but doesn't always understand the idiom, so of course we have her run into this typical Friday-night hound dog and hopefully, humor ensues."

Of the twelve scenes performed in Waiting Tables, many have been inspired by stories that people have shared with Falcone through the years.

"I've also got a couple of father-daughter scenes. In one I've got a father who is angry about his daughter's very high I.Q., but [she's] smoking, skipping school. Then I have another father who is a professor whose daughter thinks that she is running away from home, but really she's been caught up in an internet thing with a guy who is not what she thinks he is. A lot of these are based on actual events, things people have told me. I'm an old man and people tell me everything."

Another scene shows the divide between a mother and her daughter.

"There is one about a woman who is in the sandbox, shall we say, and it's all in the form of a letter back to her mother, but we do a split-stage thing as the two of them talk back and forth. I think it is kind of touching, kind of sad," Falcone said.

The play is about an hour and a half long, and Falcone was excited by the talent of the actors who are performing in the production.

"The whole notion is just to keep [the Liberty] going, and it will be fun because a lot of the people in it [are] a lot of my favorite actors and actresses, actually, but they are all in so many other things as well, because, as you know, theater is alive and well here in Southern Illinois," Falcone said. "So I thought, 'Well, let's just do this'-- an evening where everybody can give me a few nights to stage this reading, and I think it will be very effective and a lot of fun. Hopefully, people will come out and let us entertain them."

For more information, search for the Three Graces Theatre Company on Facebook.

who: Three Graces Theatre Company

what: Steve Falcone's Waiting Tables (staged reading)

where: Liberty Theater

when: Friday, March 25 and Saturday, March 26