Painting Churches Brings a Heartfelt Portrait of Family, Aging, and Memory to Empire Stage in Fort Lauderdale.

April 11th, 2025

Pigs Do Fly Productions presents Painting Churches, at Empire Stage in Fort Lauderdale from April 11^th through May 4^th.  “Tina Howe’s moving and hilarious portrait of a family of artists falling apart and coming together Painting Churches was a finalist for the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.  When Tina Howe’s Painting Churches first premiered, it invited audiences into the intimate, poignant, and often humorously complex world of family dynamics,” says the play’s director, Deborah Kondelik.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gardner Church (William Mahone) and his flamboyant aesthete wife Fanny (Laura Turnbull) are aging Bostonian bluebloods in the process of moving out of their Beacon Hill home into their summer cottage on Cape Cod. They have invited their somewhat estranged daughter Mags (Ana Marie Calise), who is an emerging artistic celebrity, to come and help them with the move. Mags decides that she wants to paint a portrait of her parents to capture their essence in the home that holds many vivid memories for all of them.

Set against this backdrop the play explores the shifting tides of relationships between parents and their adult children, all while subtly examining the process of memory and the inevitable changes of the aging process. In the play Painting Churches Howe examines how we struggle with the meaning of our past while grappling with the responsibilities of our present.

Laura Turnbull, William Mahone, Ana Marie Calise. Photo by Carol Kassie

William Mahone is charming as the aging intellectual Gardner Church– faded, forgetful, befuddled and yet somehow still eloquent. His lapses of poetic recitation are professorial breaths of fresh air. More importantly they are glimpses of who he still is beneath his brief departures from reality.

William Mahone. Photo by Carol Kassie

Ana Marie Calise has a sense of detachment as Mags that serves the role initially, but distances her from her fellow actors as the play goes on. Her monologue about her childhood is well delivered, but she struggles as an actress to connect to the other two actors on stage.

Laura Turnbull. Photo by Carol Kassie

Laura Turnbull feels a bit heavy-handed as his wife Fanny and overacts in the beginning of the play. She seems to miss out in enjoying the outrageousness of her own character. After all Fanny parades around the house in a slip and a fancy, antique, French hat! The role calls for a self-deprecating sense of humor, and tenderness toward her husband that is missing in her performance.

Lengthy scene changes are handled cleverly by using the Assistant Stage Manager, Om Jae, dressed as a moving man. He conducts the changes in character and with a sense of humor.

Favorite moments of the play are when Gardner and Fanny giddily mock the concept of Mags painting their portrait by getting into poses iconically identified with famous works of art like Michelangelo’s Pieta, Grant Wood’s American Gothic, and Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. It shows the playfulness that surely bonded the couple through their many years together. Their relationship and the play as a whole provide us moments of levity that let us know that even in the face of loss or impending change, there is room for wit and tenderness.

“We are now entering our ninth year of operations,” says Pigs Do Fly Productions’ Founder and Executive Producer Ellen Wacher. “I am so proud of what we have accomplished during these past nine years; we are continuing to grow and to explore the many facets of life over 50.  I love the fact that unlike in the past, the actor – and the character over ‘a certain age’ is no longer considered ‘old’.  We are totally involved in life – we love, we lose, we work, we play, and we enjoy life.” For more information about Pigs Do Fly Productions, please visit www.pigsdoflyproductions.com. For more information about Ellen Wacher, please visit www.ellenwacher.com.

Performances of Painting Churches are on Fridays at 8 pm and Saturdays and Sundays at 5 pm. All performances will take place at Empire Stage, 1140 N. Flagler Drive, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33304. Tickets for Painting Churches are $45 and are available online at www.pigsdoflyproductions.com or by calling 954-678-1496