Love Lost Diaries
Love Lost Diaries opens Guilford Center Stage’s 2024 season with the bittersweet comedy by Vermont playwright Marc Considine, showing at the Broad Brook Community Center on Friday and Saturday, May 3 and 4, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, May 5, at 2:00 p.m.
Marc Considine is a Hazen Union High School teacher in the Northeast Kingdom town of Hardwick. He coaches the after-school drama club and has written several scripts. Love Lost Diaries was written for his students to perform at the regional high school drama festival in St. Johnsbury in March 2013. This production, a southern Vermont premiere, is the play’s first staging by a community theater group and continues Guilford Center Stage’s mission to present work by Vermont playwrights.
In this short play, three high school students have an interesting after-school pastime: They watch the obituaries and sneak into unoccupied houses looking for spare cash. In this story, they are pulled into the lives of the deceased couple.
Julie Holland directs a cast of eight actors including Valentine Chute, Julie Holland, Brandy Reynolds, Dyana Lee, Rich Cianflone, Nina Bond, Archer Holland, and Bob Brown. Nina Bond is the stage manager, and Ada Brown designed the scenic design. Don McLean is the producer of Guilford Center Stage’s 12th production.
Julie Holland, who is also playing the role of one of the teenagers, describes what makes this such a relatable performance for all ages, “There’s so much to enjoy about this play. The audience will enjoy the spunk of the high school characters as they read the stories written about in the diary and reflect upon their own relationships.” She adds, “The audience will also enjoy the story of the main characters living their lives as their story unfolds through the years. Their life events are very relatable. We get some reflections about the way things were in our history- around WW2, but also modern times.”
Audience members of all ages will be sure to enjoy the musical additions that Julie has incorporated into the performance- during set changes and in the house music before the show and during intermission. The curated music comes from the 1940’s, 60’s, 80’s and 2000’s- as this play spans these years through the lives of its characters.
Both plays in this 2024 season are by Vermont playwrights, with the October production reviving Guilford poet Verandah Porche’s Broad Brook Anthology.
Guilford Center Stage is a project of Broad Brook Grange, which celebrates its 150th birthday this year, and whose 1896 building is now Broad Brook Community Center, a Vermont Historic Site. The Grange organization continues to be a partner of the BBCC.
Broad Brook Community Center is located at 3940 Guilford Center Road and is fully ADA-accessible, with an elevator to the second-floor theater space. Tickets for Love Lost Diaries are $14 at the door, or you may visit Brown Paper Tickets at bpt.me/6247266.
Director Julie Holland stated, “I’m so excited to bring this play to the public- young and old! And I feel very lucky to have the talented cast that came forward during my open auditions. We have mostly new faces at Guilford Center Stage this Spring!”