CansvilleAlan Flurry, 2012 Playwright Toby Alameda begins a stint as creative director of the Cansville Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky, and sets about to reconstruct the story of his boyhood home and the extended family that had lived there. The structure itself had been expanded from a modest farmhouse where his family took in relatives during the Great Depression. By the time the young Toby was practicing archery in his upstairs bedroom two generations later, the great emptied house had so grown into his being that he hardly gave it any thought. The folly of melding imagination and memory wends through the characters and local actors as the house comes to life upon the stage: the transvestite, Grey Calhoun, who will star as his beloved cousin, Virginia; Darling Forrest Nixon, wife of the theatre owner and aspiring muse to Toby; the old, empty LBJ Hotel where he rents a room on the top floor; and Charlotte Brown, maid in the hotel whose piano playing moves the play toward music and Toby toward the play's completion. The plot of the novel is Toby's attempt to make up a story he already knows; it builds with the writing of the play and culminates in the day before the premiere of "The Big House." |
Contents
In which the Train leaves the Station | |
In which Toby meets the Cansville Theatre and hears a voice from above | |
A Life | |
Wingside of the page inside the office of the Cansville | |
Toby gets a letter | |
Birth of a process agnostic | |
The soul of Charlotte Brown Chapter 8 How to stage a return the actual world through | |
imaginary one or The Cansville Marquee gets its V | |
Strange new guests at the Johnson Hotel | |
OPEN AUDITIONS July 19 10 am in the theatre Chapter 12 The Penfield Inn Outside Darling Forrest | |
Dean Fellows Hamlet and other tragedies | |
In which Toby gets reeled in flops around the boat | |
Naïveté in all its ramparts or some of them | |
Preparations for the War and its Aftermath | |
Day Before Dead | |
Cleanliness as performance art | |
Common terms and phrases
actors actually Alameda already apartment audience Biff Loman big house Birch can’t Cansville chair Charlotte Charlotte Brown clavicle closed Darling Forrest didn’t know didn’t want doesn’t Donovan door empty everything eyes feel floor front going Grey Virginia hadn’t hand happened heard Hello I’ve idea imagined Johnson Hotel kind late light listened living loud mean minute moleskin moved never Okay piano play Pres pulled quiet rehearsals remembered reminded scene seemed shook his head shrugged smiled sorry sound space stage stopped story sure talk tell theatre there’s they’re things Toby asked Toby felt Toby knew Toby looked Toby nodded Toby realized Toby sat Toby shook Toby thought Toby turned Toby’s Transfer Prize trying Uncle voice waited walked wasn’t we’re what’s window woman won’t words writing Yeah You’ll You’ve