Terri Corigliano is one busy lady. Take a big breathe and meditate on her career. From kindergarten on, theater has been a central focus of her life. In high school she met Cosmo, her husband, and raised three children and entered the legal profession. Her love of the law led her to teach at Sacred Heart’s Legal Assistant Program where she discovered another love: teaching. A new future goal became her desire to get public speaking into the curriculum of every high school and college in the country. Most recently, until COVID interfered, was at Quinnipiac University teaching Public Speaking and Media Law. Along the way, she and her husband Cosmo moved to Old Saybrook and became involved in a project honoring Katharine Hepburn’s hometown with a theater and museum in her name.
Terri’s dedication to the arts led her, and Cosmo as a non-acting business partner, to create the Saybrook Stage Company. To date, their troupe has performed 25 shows at the Kate in 14 seasons, starting with “Our Town” in 2011. She expresses her gratitude to Executive Director of the Kate Brett Elliott for all his support and guidance over the years. Now Terri Corigiiano is excited to add “playwright” to her list of accomplishments with “Lost Lodge” premiering at the Kate the weekend of July 18-21.
A long time fan of the work of A.R. Gurney and his skill in creating vignettes for the stage, she has penned more than a baker’s dozen of stories about family, friends, lovers and strangers who find themselves as guests at a deep in the woods house in a fictional town in the northern parts of New England. In her new literary world, one must write a letter to the owner of Lost Lodge and convince its owner that you need to stay there. The only thing that is soon apparent is that that stay will change your life forever. Ready to make your own reservation?
Maybe you are a wife who has been struggling for years to throw a surprise party for your husband and never succeeded. What might happen if all your friends worked together to find a fool-proof plan to finally make it happen? Get ready to jump out from behind the couch and yell “SURPRISE.” In addition to this fast paced farce, there are stories about a family that is searching for more meaningful ways to celebrate the Christmas holiday, a son and daughter trying to plan a family reunion, a pizza delivery man who has more to deliver than a pepperoni pie, and a grandmother and granddaughter trying to bridge a generation gap as large as the Grand Canyon of missed communication, and many more. The casting includes actors from New York and Massachusetts, including their daughter Mary who has been involved in the company for years, as well as wonderful local talent.
Two of Terri’s goals for the piece are to create a play everyone can relate to, with happiness and a few tears who will be “touched by the script no matter their age,” as well as theater that could be performed by a high school or college or by older actors as each performer has 5-6 roles to play. This is a long way from the Saybrook Stage Company’s first production “Our Town” where all they had were two ladders and two kitchen tables as their total props on stage.
Call the Kate for tickets ($19-29 ), 300 Main Street, Old Saybrook at 860- 510-0453 or online at thekate.org/event/lost-lodge-2/ Performances are Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.
Surely the mysterious owner of Lost Lodge, the playwright A. R. Gurney and the actress Katharine Hepburn would be equally proud.
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