 |
|
| Arthur Melville Pearson has received several honors for his stage plays and screenplays. Most recently, his screenplay Michael's Menagerie was one of 10 finalists in the Illinois/Chicago Screenwriting Competition. In 1999, he was awarded an Illinois Arts Council fellowship in playwriting/screenwriting, and was a finalist for the prestigious Chesterfield Film Company Fellowship. His stage play Cairo was awarded first place in the first Midwestern Playwright's Festival and given its premiere in 1985 at Toledo Rep in Ohio. Mr. Pearson has published short fiction and creative non-fiction in a variety of literary magazines, including Snowy Egret and Alligator Juniper. He is a founder of the Midewin Writers Society, a group of writers devoted to the advancement of nature writing related to the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie and the Midwestern landscape, for the purpose of promoting a healing relationship between human beings and the natural environment. Among Mr. Pearson's current projects is the restoration of his home in the National Historic Landmark community of Pullman, located on the far southeast side of Chicago. |
|
|
| Cairo by Arthur Melville Pearson |
 
|
|
Drama
Full-length, 100-110 minutes
3 females, 2 males
$75.00 per performance; $5.99 per book
Special 33% book discount!
James Jennsen has informed his family that at midnight tonight, his deceased mother and grandparents are returning to pick him up in a blue '51 Chevy. Alarmed, his sisters and father gather for dinner at the soon-to-be-subdivided family farm in Cairo, Illinois. What begins as a humorous kitchen-sink drama unfolds into a poetic exploration of the spiritual and physical consequences of a family's disconnection, both from each other and the land they love.
| |
|
 |
| "What seems like a simple kitchen-sink drama, though, is thoroughly infused with magic and lifted throughout by Arthur Melville Pearson's lyrical musings on a family life deeply connected to the soil. Aided by generous helpings of the poetry of Edgar Lee Masters (among others), the script alone is a strikingly beautiful work of art." |
| --Kyle Moore, The Tolucan Times (California) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
