Peace Mountain Theatre Company presents a weekend of performances of To the New Girl by Samantha Macher, the company’s first foray into film. The play features a series of monologues from eight “spurned” women who are giving advice to the “new girls” on the proper care and feeding of their former partners. Emotions run the gamut from angry, bitter, and painful through wryly amused and pragmatic.
Directed by Artistic Director Laurie T. Freed, this entertaining evening consists of eight monologues from various women scorned who directly address their exes’ new wives and lovers with biting advice:
ZOE (Late Twenties): A young lady in a kinky relationship finds out that there’s more than one woman in her town willing to diaper a grown man.
MIRIAM (Over Fifty): A Jewish grandmother finds out at Passover that her husband has fallen in love and is getting married to a Catholic girl he met on a business trip.
BETHANY (Thirties): A “good Christian girl” discovers her pastor husband’s love for a man could threaten his televangelism career.
SHEILA (Forties): A woman who is unable to conceive her husband’s child finds out that his mistress is pregnant with twins.
ALEXIS (Forties): A woman with a waning sense of self tells her daughter’s nanny that her husband’s advances are all a part of her household responsibilities.
KAREN (Thirties): A teacher tells the student who is sleeping with her husband how (and why) she should make his favorite pork chops.
MELANIE (Thirties): Wielding a meat cleaver, Melanie warns her abusive husband’s mistress to stay far, far away from her.
HARRIET (Over Sixty): Recounts the story of her marriage to a woman in a nursing home who is in love with her severely ailing husband.
To the New Girl will stream May 21 and 22, 2021, at 8 pm and May 23, 2021, at 2 pm. For information on registration to view the show (which is free), go to Peace Mountain Theatre Company’s website.
THE CAST
Yvonne Paretzky, a member of Actors’ Equity Association and an alumna of The Studio Theatre Acting Conservatory, has appeared in plays, films, and TV productions ranging from Amadeus at the Folger Theatre, to CW’s Black Lightning, to Coronaville, a dark comedy mini-series currently in post-production, for which she wrote the screenplay for her character’s episodes. In September 2020, she appeared in PMTC’s Zoom production of Spices: Black Joy & Black Pain. Monologues and Poems by Black Artists. In addition, she was the Assistant Director for the 2019 Silver Spring Stage production of Intimate Apparel. Her play Funny, You Don’t Look Jewish, which premiered at the Women’s Voices Theater Festival in 2018, and her monologues deal with the kaleidoscope that is a woman’s life.
Susan Holliday appeared as Silda in the Peace Mountain Theatre Company’s 2019 production of Other Desert Cities. Other notable performances include Silver Spring Stage (The Importance of Being Earnest – 2019 WATCH Award nomination; Humble Boy; Last of the Red Hot Lovers): 1st Stage (The Cripple of Inishmaan; By the Bog of Cats; The Suicide); Quotidian Theatre Company (Monday Evening 1942; September 11 Was a Tuesday); Adventure Theatre (as Clara in Clara Barton, The Courage Within, directed by Laurie Freed). Sue toured a one-woman show, Anna Shulman: Queen of H Street, to area schools for several years for the D.C. Jewish Historical Society. She dedicates her performance to her late father, Harold Naidoff, who would’ve enjoyed the playwright’s choice of names.
Emily H. Gilson is delighted to return to Peace Mountain after previously appearing as Brooke in Other Desert Cities in 2019. An actor and teaching artist, Emily has most recently been seen as Polixenes in the Walking Shadow Shakespeare Project’s zoom production of The Winter’s Tale; as Lizzy Bennet Darcy in Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley with the Strand Theatre Company; as Northumberland in the UK-based The Show Must Go Online YouTube production of Richard II; in Tabletop Broadway, New York City’s virtual cabaret series; and on Adventure, Inc.’s Protest Too Much podcasts. Ms. Gilson has a BA in Drama Studies from SUNY Purchase and has studied at the Studio Theatre Acting Conservatory, Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA, and The Shaw Festival in Ontario.
Liz Weber is making her first appearance with the Peace Mountain Theatre Company. Recent roles in the DC area include: Narrator in Façade by William Walton (Rose Hill Barns), Eulalie Shinn in a concert version of The Music Man (Kennedy Center), Helen in Helen on Wheels (Best Medicine Rep), Mrs. Clackett/Dotty in Noises Off (The British Players), Ouiser in Steel Magnolias (Kensington Arts Theatre), and Marge in Bridges of Madison County (Damascus Theatre Company). Liz has received numerous WATCH Awards as well as a Helen Hayes nomination. For many years, Liz and her husband toured nationally in musical theatre productions. Recently retired from NASA, she is happy to be back full time on stage.
