Barter Theatre's A FACILITY FOR LIVING Begins Tonight

It's the funniest play set in a nursing home you'll ever see. Barter Theatre presents "A Facility for Living," beginning tonight, June 18 at Barter Stage II. This very funny and thought provoking play is like "The Golden Girls" meets "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

An all-star cast featuring Mary Lucy Bivins, Tricia Matthews, Michael Poisson and Eugene Wolf make up the residents of Nursing Home #273. Little do the residents know, but they're going to show the world that their time isn't up just yet!

Set in the not-so-distant future, this twisted comedy takes a serious subject and gives it a hilarious biting edge. These nursing home residents are housed in a government-run, repurposed penitentiary (because the prisons have been outsourced to China, naturally!) and the Head Nurse is being a real pill. Suffice it to say that resident morale is a little down.

The middle aged Nurse Claudia (Holly Williams) has adopted the tyrannical Nurse-Ratched-style of caregiving. She's hellbent on cutting costs despite the "irresponsible" elderly residents' demands for such frivolous items like food, medicine, and health services. She is the enforcer of the rules that make Doritos contraband and catheters merely toiletry items.

The residents walk the line because they are fearful she will send them to the first floor, and no one ever comes back from the 1st floor.

All is doom and gloom until Joe Taylor (Eugene Wolf), a new resident and former actor arrives. Fresh new life is about to be breathed into Nursing Home #273 whether Nurse Claudia and her orderlies (Sean Michael Flattery and Terrance Jackson) approve or not!

With each repressive rule and outrageous cost saving measure, and with Joe's help, these feisty boomers plot a coup d'état to show everyone that they aren't ready to give up on life just yet!

"A Facility for Living" pulls out all the stops when it comes to addressing all the vices, follies, abuses and shortcomings of the "system"-in this case government's response to the issue of aging in America. Sometimes it's funny because it's just so wrong," said Director Nicholas Piper.

Because of the language and content, viewer discretion is advised.

"A Facility for Living" is made possible by corporate sponsor Reynolds American Inc. and media sponsors News Channel 11 and National Outdoors. Barter Theatre is funded in part by the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

For more information on all of Barter Theatre's summer shows call (276) 628-3991 or visit bartertheatre.com.

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