Roxanne Fay to Star in HOME FIRES BURNING at Chenango River Theatre

What is Home? Is it physical or emotional? Is it memory? In Home Fires Burning, award-winning actor/writer Roxanne Fay inhabits two unique characters - one a child, the other ancient and disfigured. Funny, horrifying and heartbreaking, their compelling stories speak of the need for, and willingness to give all for, that place called Home.

In its review of this production, first seen last year in NY at the Bridge Street Theatre (Catskill, NY), The Times Union (Albany), called it "A story so perfectly told you don't want it to end." Comprised of two original one-act plays, each telling a compelling story, Home Fires Burning plays without an intermission as the actor becomes each character on stage. Roxanne Fay was previously seen as the mother in Chenango River Theatre's lauded production of Other Desert Cities (2015).?

The first piece, Everlasting Moon, is about a young girl who has been taken from her home in the backwoods after being discovered living alone after the death of her grandmother. We meet her on her journey to try and find her home after escaping a government institution. She speaks to the audience from the safety of a tree, because, as she says "It ain't safe on the ground no more, no sir."

The second piece, Paradise Whiskey, is about an ancient, scarred woman sitting on her porch, sipping whiskey and snapping beans, addressing the young man who has come to coax her to an assisted living government establishment. She has met these folks before and each year when they appear, she has told them her story and just why she isn't ready to get off that porch just yet. She has fought a fierce battle for this place that is hers alone and she tells her history with great humor and grit.

Home Fires Burning was featured at the 2014 United Solo, the world's largest theatre festival for solo performers.

As a Florida based actor, Roxanne has spent the last eight years portraying LaBefana in Disney World's EPCOT Center's Holidays Around The World. She was named Best Actress/Best Of Tampa Bay in 2013 and 2014, Best Supporting Actress for Dr. Emma Brookner in The Normal Heart (Broadway World, Theatre Tampa Bay), Fraulein Schneider in Cabaret (Theatre Tampa Bay), Best Actress for Side Man and The Year Of Magical Thinking by Creative Loafing and was acclaimed for her work in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. As a writer, Roxanne was named a 2016 Hawthornden Writing Fellow, spending month in residence at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland, working on two new plays closely tied to the myth and legend of that country. She was awarded a 2016 Puffin Foundation grant for her new play cycle, The Human Kind.

Roxanne was the first recipient of the Jeff Norton Dream Grant, awarded 2013 by Theatre Tampa Bay, to fund the creation and production of her novel and play, Upon This Rock: The Magdalene Speaks (available on Amazon.com). Her play, ?Dream Child: The Trial Of Alice In Wonderland, premiered at the Dali Museum (FL).

Tickets for the One Night Stand series of 3 solo shows are on sale at www.chenangorivertheatre.org. Season tickets for the four main stage shows are also still on sale, as low as $70 to see all four shows.

Chenango River Theatre's intimate, air-conditioned 99 seat theatre is just 15 minutes north of Binghamton at 991 State Highway 12, Greene, NY.

Chenango River Theatre's 2017 season is made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

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