Overview
Imagine Steel Magnolias with modern day issues, as six women gather for a much-needed girls’ night out. The plan is to eat, drink and create works of art at a local Paint and Sip night studio while celebrating a bride to be. But as the alcohol flows, so do their thoughts on motherhood and womanhood, and their carefully curated lives get hilariously and heartbreakingly real. Paint Night is about the powerful way women support each other in an unpredictable world and what happens when we put down our cellphones, truly connect, and paint outside the lines of our comfort zone.
Casting & Production
Casting
CHARACTERS (6F)
MIRIAM – Mid-fifties to early-sixties. Any ethnicity. A humanities professor with a grown son and daughter. A woman whose desire to see the bright side of life has been greatly tested. A raw nerve.
BREE – Mid-thirties to early-forties. White. Fern’s daughter. A working mom with a stay at home husband and a six-year-old son.
GWEN – Forties. Black. A business wunderkind who, after taking time off to raise her three kids, is finding it difficult to reenter a workforce that no longer values her.
FERN – Mid-fifties to early-sixties. White. Bree’s mother. A woman desperately trying to do the right thing in a world that’s changing too fast for her.
LOLLY – Late-twenties to early-thirties. Any ethnicity. Miriam’s daughter. A seeker. Grew up with a schizophrenic older brother who tended to suck all the air out of a room.
VERA – Fifties to sixties. Any ethnicity. Paint Night leader. A straight shooting free spirit.
Place:
An Art Studio. Where “Paint and Sip” parties are held.
Time:
Present Day
Reviews
“BRILLIANT… Playwright Carey Crim has crafter another wonderful play… [Crim] creates a canvas of characters that we all either know well or recognize in part in ourselves, and chooses a daring palette of issues that are some of the most human, and most often shared by women… The interactions between the feminine factions crackle with sarcasm, humorous cultural references, intellectual debate and personal disagreements”
— The Sun Journal
“[PAINT NIGHT} falls nicely within a genre of entertainment that blends broad, old-school naughty humor together with references to serious contemporary issues that personally trouble the strong women characters… All the issues are located in the many individual challenges they, as women, battle as they try to balance the ever-changing demands of parenthood and work while attempting to somehow keep a pretty picture of it all in their minds”
—Portland Press Herald