As Live Arts Theatre prepares to open the show Stealing Home, we thought we’d have some fun with the subject of Funeral Homes. If you don’t already know, the show is set in the lobby of a funeral home, owned by the family of characters in the show. As the theme of our current season is “Death and Taxes”, a show set in a Funeral Home is a fitting and fun option for our season’s comedic offering.
Did you know:
An award winning Broadway Musical, also set in a funeral home recently closed on Broadway and is now on tour. Its title, Fun Home is quite deceiving.
Toward the end of their Happy Days run, Ron Howard and Henry Winkler joined forces with the movie Night Shift. Ron directed, and Henry starred alongside Micheal Keaton, Shelly Long, and a young Kevin Costner.
Before becoming a comedian, Whoopie Goldberg worked in a Funeral Home as a makeup artist. At the start of her job, her boss played a prank on her where he got into one of the drawers (for dead bodies) and scared her. When she woke up, after running into the door and knocking herself out, he assured her that the worst thing that could ever happened had just happened. She kept the job. (Video) Apparently, this is not an uncommon way of breaking in a new funeral home worker.
Real Housewives of Atlanta star Phaedra Parks, who is full time lawyer, is also a funeral director who does embalming. Personal tragedy caused her to become more interested in the funeral business.
The author of Stealing Home, Pat Cook has written over 150 plays. He wrote his first 1 act play in college in 1968. Popular offerings include Can Somebody Stop this Coffin, Mother Goose has Flown the Coop, The Canterfield Ghost, Luau for King Lear, and Barbequing Hamlet. Apparently, Mr. Cook has a thing for funeral homes as the last two are set in the The Peaceful Glen Memorial Theater, a former funeral home converted into a theatre.
By the way, you may want to come see the Stealing Home more than once as we have a couple of understudies/role swapping variations, each unique and different in their own way. Tonight, Thursday March 23rd, is preview night for the show, Contact us for more information.
Also, stay tuned as we prepare for our Summer Musical, Fiorello. “With crooked double-crossers and manipulators working the political puppets, “Tammany Hall” is in desperate need of an honest man to snip the strings. With guts and perseverance, Fiorello is just the man to put a bright, new shine on the Big Apple. His rise to power is a strained journey as LaGuardia does his best to retain his continuously positive outlook on life while navigating the ups & downs of his life in civil service.” This will be an interestingly timely subject.