NEWS

Join Gloucester Arts on Main this Friday, August 8th for dinner and a show! RATTLESNAKE is a unique theatrical event. Unlike anything you have ever seen and, at the same time, easily understood, appreciated and thoroughly. Tickets are $30 per person for dinner & show/$15 per person for the show only.

Dinner: Seating 5:30pm, Dinner 6pm
Show : Doors 6:30 [Cash Bar] Show 7pm

Purchase tickets online at www.gloucesterarts.org

ABOUT RATTLESNAKE:

One actor plays sixteen characters, but unlike most one-actor plays, these characters interact with each other. Believe it or not, they exchange banter; they battle back and forth; they engage in conversations. The typical one-actor play is either a series of monologues or a story being told by one character. RATTLESNAKE goes far beyond those traditional boundaries of theatrical protocol. These characters engage each other; they compel each other. The result is a story of epic reach. Each and every character yearns for something. They reach out, grasping for something they know exists, but they don’t know what it is or how to get it.

Sherman Trent, the main character at the center of the story, journeys forward as this world of characters swirls around him.

A man of West Texas longs for fatherhood which is his only ambition. His attempts to realize this ambition are stifled in his romantic life, and his application for the adoption of a child is rejected by the local adoption agency. He retreats to a small patch of prairie left to him by his long gone mother and father. Here, he meets the rattlesnake, and immerses himself in its world finding a comfort and belonging that eludes him in the outside world. He immerses himself in the world of the rattlesnake and uses their skins for crafting hatbands, belt buckles and other items for sale. Recalling the lessons of a boyhood acquaintance, an old black woman, he learns to cook the meat of the rattlesnake and becomes a noted chef. His newfound celebrity takes him as far as Paris where he meets a Parisian woman who opens her heart to him. He gives over to her but cannot release himself from his bond with the rattlesnake. The story ends soon after, but not before one more surprise.

The play encompasses thirty years in flashback and takes place in various locations in West Texas and later, Paris, France.