Life Without Lesson Plans

Brooke Hills Playhouse GETTING ORGANIZED So, how did the Playhouse incorporators (perhaps more accurately “dreamers”), Bill Harper, John Hennen, and Shari Murphy, go about starting a theatre production company AND turning a barn into a theatre simultaneously?  We started making lists! The first important decision was deciding what plays to do, which play would run… Continue reading BROOKE HILLS PLAYHOUSE: A COLLECTIVE MEMOIR, PARTS 3 & 4 →

A BREAK IN THE ACTION I’m taking a break from the Memoir posts relating to the history of the Playhouse today in order to write a little bit about the wonderful celebration for the Brooke Hills Playhouse’s 50th Season on Friday, July 9, and Saturday, July 10, 2021. On Friday evening, an appreciative audience of… Continue reading BROOKE HILLS PLAYHOUSE: A COLLECTIVE MEMOIR, PART 2-A →

Shari Murphy, Bill Harper, John Hennen (photo taken in 1972, but this post takes place in 1971) PART TWO: NOW OR NEVER In the summer of 1971, during an impromptu get together at Ye Olde Alpha in Wheeling, W. Va., Bill Harper, John Hennen, and I once again talked about those great summers at the… Continue reading BROOKE HILLS PLAYHOUSE: A COLLECTIVE MEMOIR, PART 2 →

Brooke Hills Playhouse A LITTLE ANCIENT HISTORY, OUR FOREBEARS The story of Brooke Hills Playhouse begins long before that first opening night on July 5, 1972. Albert (Al) Martin was a wonderful English and drama teacher at Kirk Junior High School in Cleveland, Ohio for years. Eventually, he became a traveling elementary drama teacher, and… Continue reading BROOKE HILLS PLAYHOUSE: A COLLECTIVE MEMOIR, PART 1 →

Brooke Hills Playhouse It’s 2021, and the Brooke Hills Playhouse is celebrating the opening of its 50th season. As one of the initial investors, it seemed appropriate for me  to look back over the decades of plays and musicals produced on the Playhouse stage. This then is the story of how a pre-Civil War apple… Continue reading BROOKE HILLS PLAYHOUSE: A COLLECTIVE MEMOIR, PROLOGUE →

My husband Richard Coote first met John McDowell when they were students at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. Before graduating, both left college during the Viet Nam War and joined the military. Richard and John both made it back to college after completing their military service, and they are friends to this day. John eventually wrote… Continue reading No Guns on Sunday →

PART 1 In 1972, my husband Bill and I and our friend John Hennen pooled our meager resources, and with the help of numerous friends and family members, we opened the Brooke Hills Playhouse as a summer stock theater in a pre-Civil War apple barn in Brooke Hills Park just outside of Wellsburg, West Virginia.… Continue reading Close Encounters of the Nice Kind →

I have this little part-time job which keeps me off the streets and out of pool halls. I write for Life in Chenal, a local magazine with a circulation of 6,000 in our large subdivision. Each month I have a column called “Snapshot” which tells a local resident’s story. I interview the person, take some… Continue reading Outsmarting the Smarties →

On a trip to Florida in 2017, my husband Richard and I were invited to sit at a table with two strangers at a crowded Denny’s in St. Augustine.  One of the women, a C.P.A., a U.S. veteran, AND a commercial pilot, had recently received her U.S. citizenship after 18 years of patiently waiting out… Continue reading TAKE A FORM, FILL IT OUT, GET IN LINE, REPEAT →

My dad, who was always athletic and even was named “The Wellest Man in Wellsburg over the Age of Seventy” back in the 1990s, tried to get me to go golfing with him for years.  He hadn’t started to golf until he was about to retire from the electric company, and he regretted not taking… Continue reading GOLF: Supposedly NOT a Contact Sport →