Jan. 5 - Jan. 21, 2006
Directed by George Mulford
Email: playboy@pcstheater.org

The conflict between an established artist and an adulatory fan is examined in this drama as the fan becomes a protégé, disciple, colleague, friend and eventually a rival. "An affecting character study and a well-drawn portrait of fiction writers…sharply written and incisive dialogue" - Hollywood Reporter.

January 5, 6, 7, 8*M
January 12, 13, 14, 15*M
January 19, 20, 21, 2006

*M Sunday Matinee. 2 PM curtain. No evening performance.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday performances: 8:00 PM

The Players Club Theater presented Donald Margulies' play, Collected Stories, in January 2006. The play was nominated for the Pulitzer prize in 1997 (Margulies was to win the Pulitzer for Dinner with Friends three years later) and also won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award. Actresses who have undertaken the bravura leading roles (there are only two) include Debra Messing, Uta Hagen, Helen Mirren, and Lynn Redgrave, who won last year's Barrymore Award for her performance at the Baby Grand in Wilmington. Margulies' probing, witty drama concerns an ambitious writing student, Lisa (Jennifer Summerfield of Philadelphia), who seeks out a successful story writer, Ruth (Ruth Brown of Elkton, MD) as a mentor and role model. Starting as Ruth's fan, Lisa charms the dour old lady with her energy and humor; as years pass, she becomes more and more like the daughter Ruth never had. But Lisa's emergence as a capable adult and as a writer of growing ambition strains the relationship in ways that many mothers and daughters know only too well. Gil Cates, who made Collected Stories into a TV movie for PBS starring Linda Lavin, called it "a battlefield of individuals; a war between people and ideas." George Mulford of Swarthmore, who directs the show at the Players Club, says it is a study in character and the difficulty of understanding between people of different generations, cultures, and temperament, even when mutual love and admiration weigh in the scales.