Dix Tableaux

By: Mark Dunn

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Synopsis: Comedy / 3f and m/f ensemble or flexible number / Interior / The story of friendship between two women in their sixties is played out over the course of ten years, each year representing another reunion for Beverly Duggins and Addie Spools, two participants in a series of annual "tableaux" sponsored by the Museum of Dix, in a small city in the South. Within human diorama settings as simple as a frontier cabin porch or the cow stall of a local dairy barn, and as elaborate as the "Spit and Curl" beauty salon (circa 1930) and the front seat of Thelma and Louise's plummeting convertible, Beverly, the lonely urban professional, and Addie, the down-home pharmacist's assistant, chart the course of each other's lives, while fending off incursions from the officiously bothersome fellow-poser Maureen. Through the ten scenes which comprise the play, the two women are forced to endure the constant in terruptions of the museum "promenaders" who "ooh" and "ah" at the lifelike presentations, offering up their comical comments, both kind and cruel. Though they see one another only one weekend a year, and in spite of their very different backgrounds, Beverly and Addie nurture a growing and abiding friendship. In the end, it becomes the strongest and most sustaining friendship of their lives.