Mad Horse Theatre Continues Successful BY LOCAL Series, Now thru 12/15

Mad Horse's December BY LOCAL series will take place this weekend, December 12-15th, Thursday - Saturday at 7:30 and on Sunday at 2:00. All performances will be at the Hutchins School, 24 Mosher St. in South Portland. ALLIGATOR ROAD by Callie Kimball, December 12&14. PAPERMAKER by Monica Wood, December 13&15.

ALLIGATOR ROAD, directed by Mad Horse artistic director Christine Marshall, concerns central Florida resident Kathy, who has yarn-bombed knit cozies over all the hammers, saws, and paint cans at Alligator Road. It's her whimsical farewell to the store she's always hated before she hands the keys over to Chantay, a complete stranger. But Kathy's daughter has other ideas.

Callie Kimball's plays have been produced and developed at the Kennedy Center, Lark Play Development Center, Washington Shakespeare Company, and elsewhere. She's received a MacDowell Fellowship, a Ludwig Vogelstein grant, the Rita & Burton Goldberg Award (twice), and was a Core Apprentice at The Playwrights' Center. She lives in Springvale, Maine.

PAPERMAKER, directed by local director and Portland Stage literary manager Dan Burson, is based on Monica Wood's own novel Ernie's Ark. In the play, Ernie is on strike. Henry owns the mill. When their lives unexpectedly collide in the boiling-over town of Abbott Falls, Maine, the labor-management conflict takes a personal turn, exposing the combatants' frailty in the face of fatherhood, family, and the notion of a worthwhile life.

Monica Wood is a Portland writer whose most recent book, When We Were the Kennedys, won the 2012 May Sarton Award for best memoir by a U.S. or Canadian woman. Her novel Any Bitter Thing spent 21 weeks on the ABA bestseller list, and her book Ernie's Ark, on which the play Papermaker is based, has been a "one community" read in towns and cities throughout Maine. Her widely anthologized short stories have won a Pushcart Prize and been read on the NPR program "Selected Shorts," and her essays have appeared most recently in The New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Parade, and Oprah Magazine.

Admission for BY LOCAL performances is pay what you can at the door, with a suggested donation of $10.00. Please log onto www.madhorse.com or check out the Mad Horse Facebook page for more information.