HUNTINGTON — “The Memory House,” a two-person play by Kathleen Tolan, will be performed at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday nights at Marshall's Francis Booth Experimental Theatre inside the Joan C. Edwards Performing Arts Center. Directed by Marshall University Department of Theatre student, Mary Poindexter Williams, the play is free and open to the public. Set in a Manhattan apartment on a New Year’s Eve, the play follows a recently-divorced mother baking a pie as her daughter tires of finishing a college essay exploring her childhood memories. As the essay deadline looms, unexamined issues of the girl’s adoption from Russia, questions of her loyalty to one’s culture and country, her parents divorce and the fear of leaving home, surface as her mom works through her own loss and sadness. The mom, Maggie, is played by veteran Huntington area actress, Linda Reynolds, and the daughter is a Marshall student, Rachel Kenaston, who is a senior theater and French major and also a Yeager Scholar. Williams said she was intrigued with the play that was first performed in 2005 as it spoke to her as a mother, and a non-traditional student at Marshall. “I'm a "mature" student who returned to Marshall to get a theatre degree and while looking for material for monologues for a middle age actress I came across this play a couple of years ago and loved it,” Williams said. “It is funny and touching. I kept talking to Faculty at Marshall about doing this play (I could see myself in the role of the mother) and finally, Dr. Julie Jackson told me that if I wanted to do a show not included on the season that I should take it upon myself to ‘do It.’ So, she gave me permission to direct the show and she gave me two nights for performance in the Francis Booth Experimental Theatre. It's been a real learning experience.” One of the interesting things about the play is that from the time Maggie walks on stage carrying a bag of groceries until the end of the show, she is baking a pie for real on the set at the same time as she is trying how best to negotiate the best way to communicate her love and support to her daughter, Williams said. For more theater events, go online at www.marshall.edu/cofa and click onto Theatre

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