2011 Season of Plays

*Each episode of the "Lost Wife Creek" is a complete play in itself.

All performances at Magdalena's Historic WPA Theatre, Main at Fourth St.
For further information,  updates/added shows, & reservations, please contact us at
(575) 854-2519 or londonfrontier@gilanet.com

Our Last Performance was...

July 30, 31 & August 1
and
August 6, 7 & 8

HARD TIMES & HOPE
"The Lost Wife Creek Years"

Created from LFTC's popular "Lost Wife Creek" series (reviewed as, "historic, hilarious, nostalgic... thoroughly enjoyable"), this saga takes the Aragones and the Trotters from 1933 to 1941, the years of the Great Depression. Roosevelt's New Deal is "turning the country around", but life is still hard in rural New Mexico: dreams of lost gold, Spanish landgrants and stardom in "talkies" vie with reality of drought, a ne'er-do-well son, and a decrepit old flivver. Live music - dulcimer, guitar, fiddle & song - carries us along, from the (too-familiar) "Hard Times" to "Frankie & Johnnie" and other favorites, both "old-timey" and of the era.

Local, national, and international events - politics and duststorms, the inauguration of the New Deal; Prohibition's end and Mr. Gibbers' progress from bootlegger to politician; a truly American transition; the Homestead Act (the Trotters are homesteaders from Arkansas); the WPA Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the "documenting America" program; the building of Boulder Dam in Nevada and the rise of the "Mobs" in Chicago, the shadow of Hitler over Europe, and the American divorcee who captured an English king - are all interwoven with the daily lives, struggles, and misadventures of Manny and Ruby Aragone, Cass & Gardy Trotter. From the Nest-Egg Caper, initiated by the women (with courage drawn from their heroine Eleanor Roosevelt), to Manny and Cass's bumbled attempt to emulate Dillinger, from sister Ivy's "creative" way of dealing with an abusive spouse, to the strange discovery of the origin of Lost Wife Creek, HARD TIMES & HOPE is a rollicking, touching, fondly-wry look at the gritty & personal side of a difficult, formative era of American history, & extremely relevant today.

Actors in HARD TIMES & HOPE were Diane Allen, Janice Brunacini, Josi Holt, Frank Howard, Fernando Montano, Ruth Ryan, Terry Stone and Donna Todd; musicians were Randall and Emily Johnson, with Nicola Maynard. Tech direction Ronald Thornton handled set, lighting, and sound.

This project funded in part by the McCune Foundation, the Kerr Foundation, Socorro Electric Cooperative, & LFTC's "Friends of the Theatre."

View the trailer from the Ballad of Babe & Beau

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presented in this website.

Our thanks to:
Major funding by the Kerr Foundation, the McCune Foundation, USDA "community facilities", Socorro Electric Coop., & LFTC's "Friends of the Theatre."

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