Coming this September: The Year of Magical Thinking
by Joan Didion
In The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion talks about something nobody wants to talk about: the prospect of losing someone you love. With dry wit and deep empathy Didion explores her own experiences and articulates what she has found.
Joan McBride returns to Mount Tabor Playhouse this September to share this powerful one-woman show. Actor and Director for this production, she is ably supported by Assistant Director Melissa Paulson.
Tickets are on sale now at Books & Company, and can be purchased online using the button below. A discounted rate is available (online only) for groups of 10 or more.
Joan Didion was a journalist, novelist, essayist, and screenwriter who wrote some of the sharpest and most evocative analyses of culture, politics, literature, family, and loss. In 2003, Didion's daughter Quintana Roo Dunne developed pneumonia that progressed to septic shock and she was comatose in an intensive-care unit when Didion's husband suddenly died of a heart attack on December 30th, 2003.
On October 4th, 2004, Didion began writing The Year of Magical Thinking, a narrative of her response to the death of her husband and the severe illness of their daughter. She finished the manuscript 88 days later on New Year's Eve. Written at the age of 70, this was her first nonfiction book that was not a collection of magazine assignments. She said that she found the subsequent book-tour process very therapeutic during her period of mourning. Documenting the grief she experienced after the sudden death of her husband, the book was called a “masterpiece of two genres: memoir and investigative journalism“ and won several awards, including the National Book Award in 2005.
Visiting Los Angeles after her father's funeral, Quintana fell at the airport, hit her head on the pavement and required brain surgery for hematoma. After progressing toward recovery in 2004, Quintana died of acute pancreatitis on August 26, 2005, aged 39. Didion wrote about Quintana's death in the 2011 book Blue Nights.
Didion began working with English playwright and director David Hare on a one-woman stage adaptation of The Year of Magical Thinking in 2007. Produced by Scott Rudin, the Broadway play featured Vanessa Redgrave. Although Didion was hesitant to write for the theatre, she eventually found the genre, which was new to her, exciting.
Didion said of her writing: “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” Joan Didion died in December 2021.
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County Roads Theatre Company is a small group of mostly Prince Edward County Residents with a passion for telling important stories through small, independent, professional theatre productions.
In 2017 we presented The Belle of Amherst, a one-woman show by William Luce about the life of poet Emily Dickinson. The show, featuring Joan McBride as Emily and directed by Fred Robinson, ran for two weeks at the lovely Mount Tabor Playhouse.
Audiences loved the play, which prompted us to offer On A First Name Basis by Norm Foster in 2019. Joan McBride played the role of Lucy Hopperstaad, housekeeper to the very successful, but cantankerous, novelist David Kilbride, played by John Koensgen. This play was directed by Fred Robinson and entertained mostly full houses for the two week run.
In 2022 we presented Collected Stories by Donald Margulies. Directed by Fred Robinson, Joan McBride played the role of Ruth Steiner, a feisty professor and published author, and Melissa Paulson played the role of Lisa Morrison, a graduate student and aspiring author. Audiences loved this complex and clever play, and raved about the performances of the actors.
