The senior players, getting ready to rehearse ‘Another Christmas story- who cares?’

NEWRY— The winter season is approaching, and with it is the Western Mountains Senior College Senior Players’ yearly collection of shows. This year, they are bringing something different into the rotation. Out of the four plays that will be shown, three of them were written by members of the players. The shows themselves will be performed at Gould Academy’s McLaughlin Theater, the weekend of Nov. 22.

The idea came from Lia Paliocha and Mary Hickey, who wrote two of the four plays. When searching through their collection of stored plays, they decided that the ones they had for this year were simply not good enough. “It seemed easier to write plays than to find them,” said Hickey.

The plays that they ended up choosing to use for this performance are plays that were begun in the spring, when they conducted a writing workshop. This included the plays by Hickey and Paliocha, as well as a play by John Reilly – another member of the group.

The inspiration for the Christmas play came from a show that they performed the previous year. “We liked the characters so much that we borrowed them,” said Paliocha. The characters in question come from ‘The Red Hat Ladies’, reimagined in a new environment.

Both Hickey and Paliocha agreed for their joint show that they wanted something funny. Both of their plays are comedies, with various wisecracks, misunderstandings, and the usual tricks of the genre. Reilly’s play is focused less on Christmas and more on Thanksgiving, showing what he calls “a dysfunctional family,” with an ultimately humorous depiction. He was assisted in the writing by Bridget Remington, one of the younger members of the group.

When it came to writing plays, the three writers worked with the specific context of the senior players in mind. “We know ourselves really well, so we can write stuff for ourselves,” said Paliocha. Reilly added, “We’re really good at playing old people.” When it comes to moving forwards into the future, both Paliocha and Hickey hope to continue having “home-written” plays for the Senior Players to perform. However, they will be waiting to see how the debut of their shows go.