by Steve Russo

"Memories in Blue Chiffon is a touching comedy . . .   The playwright uses downhome humor and gentle understatement to celebrate the vagaries and caprices of life and love." -- South Bend Tribune, IN

    Showcase Two of Your Best Seasoned Actors!.

A winner in the New England Play Competition

How Can the Timely Topic
of Assisted Suicide
Be Funny and Touching?

Norma is preparing Sunday dinner for her son.  Is dinner ready? Is he coming? Is this the day? Seriously, she wonders, Do I have a son? . . . Did I cook a meal?

This is the day for which Carl has long been planning.  His only problem is that he hopes his increasingly forgetful wife Norma remembers, too. He sets up the lighting, and loads the video camera.  Norma is to talk into the camera, and then he will. That way whoever finds them, right there by the camera, will know they hadn’t forgotten to leave messages for their son and daughter. He wants to leave word so they’ll know why they did it -- because they were getting old and Norma couldn't remember things and he was ill..

But to Carl's annoyance, Norma doesn’t remember the pact. Instead, she keeps remembering funny and painful events from their past together as if they were happening in the present.  As they relive these events, time and time again Norma's patient, forgiving acceptance of life as it happens conquers Carl's recurrent self-doubt.

Recognizing the lights and the camera, she exits to dress for the movies, and reappears in her blue chiffon, the gown she wore to the prom. He remembers, so very, very clearly, and sweeps her into a waltz. "We make a good team, don’t we?" she remembers. Abandoning his plan, he responds, "Right to the very end, Norma ... Right to the very end."

(1 m., 1 f., suggested set)

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