As a pastry chef, Hannah Mitchell could be providing any of the sweet treats that accompany the ceremonies that take place in the “Happy Endings Wedding Chapel,” which has its premiere Aug. 12 at the Sarasota Players.
But she’s also the playwright who came up with the idea for a comedic play that she says is a “like a diary of what I was going through at the time I was writing it.”
It’s about love and divorce and marriage, and Mitchell said there are a lot of similarities between her and the main character, Kathy, who runs a wedding chapel with her mother and other extended family members.
The play was the selected as the winner of the 2024 Sarasota Players New Play Festival, which featured readings of five new works. The prize is a full production the following summer.
Following last year’s reading, Michell said she realized that the play touches people of different generations.
“I had people coming up to me who were 20 or 30 years older, and told me how much they related to this. They felt for the characters,” she said. “We all feel stuck. We all feel like we failed. Those thoughts don’t really go away and I don’t have the answers in the play.”
While not strictly autobiographical, the play parallels aspects of her own life.
Kacy Jones plays the main character of Kathy Gordon, with Nancy Huffaker as her mother, Marie. Sammy Calderone plays a British lawyer named Andreas Anderson who is trying facilitate a divorce for a couple who were married at the chapel. Dennis Parker plays Marie’s boyfriend and is kind of a father figure for Kathy, while Kevin Maroney plays Kathy’s ex-husband, Paolo.
Mitchell, who bakes for Morton’s Gourmet Market in Sarasota, has been working closely on the play with her partner, David Stein, who was featured in last year’s reading and is directing the premiere.
The couple moved to Sarasota after Stein got a job in the education department Florida Studio Theatre. He and Mithcell collaborated on an earlier play together, “Not Today,” which was just about to open when the COVID pandemic hit in 2020, though they managed to get a few performances on.
They met in acting school at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and started bonding over shared experiences and interests.
“She would write when I was at work and I would write when she was at work, but this one is all Hannah,“ Stein said. “It’s been nice to read the scenes, put different voices on the characters and see them from both of our perspectives.”
The production will be staged at the Sarasota Players Studio space on Boulevard of the Arts.
“Once you get in the space, you’ll feel like you’re in a wedding chapel,” Stein said. Unlike last year’s reading, this will be fully produced with “lights, sound and a minimal set. It doesn’t call for much, just a front desk, a place to sit in the lobby and the basement in the wedding chapel which is full of knicknacks and funny stuff this family has accumulated over the years. It gives you a sense of what their perspective of love is as a family.”
Mitchell has been attending most of the rehearsals, which Stein welcomed. “I want Hannah in the room as much possible to explain sometimes that this is where my head was at writing this scene. We never got a chance to work together in college and that’s always been a goal to produce something together.”
Mitchell will be attending all the performances, as well, listening to audience reactions to fuel further development of the play.
“I’ll get a lot of feedback just from that,” she said. “I think of this as the first step. At least it’s the hope that I can then isend it somewhere else and get another production. I would love for the world to see the play.”
‘Happy Endings Wedding Chapel’
By Hannah Mitchell. Directed by David Stein. Runs 7:30 p.m. Aug. 12-16, 2 p.m. Aug. 17, Sarasota Players Studio, 1400 Boulevard of the Arts, Sarasota. Tickets are $25, $15 for students. 941-365-2494; theplayers.org
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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Playwright looking for ‘Happy Endings’ with Sarasota Players premiere
Reporting by Jay Handelman, Sarasota Herald-Tribune / Sarasota Herald-Tribune
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