Phoenix Theatre for Children's MRS. PIGGLE-WIGGLE Ends Run 3/14

Phoenix Artistic Director Steven C. Anderson has adapted the much beloved character for the stage, and Blacklick resident Jackie Bates will undertake the role of the unconventional and adored Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. The rest of the cast will be rounded out by Chris Storer of Columbus, Ian Short of Gahanna, Liz Wheeler of Grove City, and Michelle Schroeder of Bexley. With the exception of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, the all-adult cast will play multiple characters, including the roles of the badly behaved children and their beleaguered parents. The show will close on March 14.

Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for children and can be purchased at the Ohio Theatre Ticket Office (39 E. State St.), all Ticketmaster outlets, and www.ticketmaster.com. To purchase tickets by phone, please call (614) 469-0939 or (800) 745-3000. The Riffe Center Ticket Office will open two hours prior to each performance. This production is recommended for children four years and older and has a running time of 50 minutes. For more information visit  www.phoenix4kids.org. 

Author Betty MacDonald was born in Boulder, Colorado, in 1908, and graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1924. MacDonald married Robert Eugene Heskett in 1927, and they moved to a chicken farm in the Olympic Peninsula's Chimacum Valley.

MacDonald left the marriage in 1931 and returned to Seattle where she worked at a variety of jobs to support her daughterS. MacDonald also spent nine months at Firlands Sanitarium outside of Seattle in 1937-38 for treatment of tuberculosis.

In 1942, she married Donald MacDonald and moved to Vashon Island, where she wrote most of her bookS. MacDonald rocketed to fame when her first book, The Egg and I, was published in 1945. It was a huge bestseller and translated into 20 languages. Loosely based on her life on the chicken farm, it introduced the characters Ma and Pa Kettle who were also featured in the movie version of The Egg and I. The characters were so popular, a series of nine more films were later made featuring them.

MacDonald also published three other semi-autobiographical books-Anybody Can Do Anything which recounts her life trying to find work during the Depression, The Plague and I about her stay in at the sanitarium for treatment of tuberculosis, and Onions in the Stew about her life on Vashon Island with her second husband and daughters during the War years. She also wrote the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series of children's books that are still popular today, and another children's book entitled Nancy and Plum.

MacDonald died of cancer in Seattle, on February 7, 1958, aged 49.

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is the first in a series of children's books written by Betty MacDonald which center around a small, eccentric lady who lives in an upside-down house in a neighborhood inhabited by children with bad habits. Parents come to her for advice, and she gives them such unusual treatments as The Fighter-Quarreler Cure, The Radish Cure, The Cry Baby Cure, and The Answer Backer Cure.

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books include Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle (1947), Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Magic (1949), Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Farm (1954), and Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle (1957). The final book in the series, Happy Birthday, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle (2007), was published by MacDonald's daughter Anne MacDonald Canham who shares the publishing credit with her mother. The first story in the book is an unpublished MacDonald story, while Canham states the remaining stories are based on "notes for other stories among her mother's possessions."

In the 1990s, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle was made into a TV series, starring Jean Stapleton of "All in the Family" fame.

The Phoenix Theatre for Children is a collective of artists who work collaboratively to create original productions for young audiences. The Phoenix Theatre for Children is committed to providing young people and their families with theatrical experiences that encourage and enhance an awareness of self and the world in which we live. Frequent themes of the plays are self-reliance, an awareness of the importance of community, the personal empowerment of young people, and our responsibilities as citizens of the world.

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