Lunchtime Holiday Program—

Cultural Arts Commission Invites Everyone To ‘Play With Your Food’

“Play With Your Food,” Fairfield County’s popular lunchtime theater series, will offer a special holiday program on Thursday, December 17, sponsored by Newtown Cultural Arts Commission. From noon until 1:30 pm in The Alexandria Room of Edmond Town Hall, treat yourself to a gourmet lunch and a staged reading of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory, performed by some of the area’s finest professional actors.

Capote’s autobiographical short story recalls the author as an orphaned youth in the rural South during the 1930s. Living with a slightly dotty but loving “cousin” when he was ten, Capote lovingly and nostalgically relates their Christmas-time rituals.

A television version of A Christmas Memory, starring Geraldine Page, won an Emmy Award when it aired in 1966.

A stellar cast will bring the characters to life in this stage adaptation by Russell Vandenbroucke. Directed by Mark Graham of Trumbull, the ensemble includes Sean Hannon of Weston, Kate Katcher of Sandy Hook, Kathryn Marchand of Stratford, Florence Phillips of Greenwich, and Don Striano of Sandy Hook.

The program will begins with a catered buffet lunch by Katherine’s Kitchen of Sandy Hook. The performance will begin at 12:30, and a brief discussion with the actors will follow, with everything wrapping at 1:30 pm.

Play With Your Food has brought quality theatrical writing and acting to Fairfield county communities since 2003. Its signature daytime program combines gourmet lunches with professional staged readings of one-act plays, written by both emerging and award-winning playwrights.

The program runs weekdays, 12 noon to 1:30 pm, from January through April in Westport, Fairfield and Greenwich. This is Play With Your Food’s first program in Newtown.

Tickets for A Christmas Memory, underwritten by NCAC, are $30 and must be purchased in advance, online at NewtownArtsCommission.org or by phone at 203-364-9844.  MasterCard and Visa are accepted.

Edmond Town Hall is at 45 Main Street. Doors will open at 11:50.

For information about other Play With Your Food programs, visit PlayWithYourFood.org.