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Thursday, 18 March 2010 |
When she was transferred to Mississippi neither of them knew they would pick up their long-forgotten love of theater there.
Diane had grown up in Jamestown, N.Y., where Lucille Ball had spent her childhood, and when Lucy and Dezi Arnaz debuted their first movie, the now legendary comedy The Long, Long Trailer, the famous couple had their premiere in Jamestown. “It was a really, really big deal back then,” Diane said.
 But watching the theater crews get out their gear for the famous couple wasn’t Diane’s first experience with theater. At around 10 she began attending Children’s Little Theater to gain some acting skills, and ended her high school years by being voted both Best Actress and Best Debater in her yearbook. But she put her acting away when she “grew up,” got a job and had three children.
Fortunately for South County, both Bill and Diane started acting again later in life; after Bill had retired and Diane was transferred to her last assignment for Social Security in Natchez.
“The Community Theater group there was just wonderful,” Diane said.
When they moved to Northport after she retired they threw themselves into a theater company in Port Charlotte. Bill was even active on its board.
But when one of their three daughters moved to Tampa, the prospect of interacting regularly with children and grandchildren brought them to Valrico, and after three years there, to Sun City Center.
That was about five years ago.
Since moving to South County, both Bill and Diane have become involved with several theater groups. Both have acted in plays and done dinner theater.
“We did 28 performances of The Odd Couple from Nov. 20 to Dec. 17 at the Palace Dinner Theater in Sun City Center,” Bill said. “And we do mystery dinner theaters year round.”
Mystery dinner theaters are different because they’re not usually scripted, he explained. Many are not open to the public because they’re done for specific groups, clubs and organizations.
Diane recently wrote her first mystery for dinner theater combining the characters from the board game Clue and the elements from Dial M for Murder. She calls it Dial C for Clue.
Meanwhile, Bill is back to using his organizational and business skills as newly-elected president of the board of the Pelican Players and as a board member of the South Shore Arts Council.
“Our goals are to bring the arts community together in new ways,” he said of both organizations. “A reorganization of the board to meet the theater environment of 2010 is our top priority. Things are changing. There’s a real emerging interest in dinner theaters and one-act plays. The board was not constituted in the same environment we have now and we realize it’s time to bring things up to date.”
As of March 11 when they were interviewed, both Diane and Bill were working on the play, Love, Sex, and the IRS, which will be shown in the Borini Theater in the main Kings Point clubhouse in Sun City Center April 6 at 7 p.m. and April 7 at both 1:30 and 7 p.m. Tickets for those performances may be bought by the public in advance for $10 by calling Mary McClafferty at (813) 634-4430.
I guess the only proper way to end this story is by saying I hope Diane and Bill both continue to “break a leg.” |
