Angela Rathman in Altar CallWhile the story would benefit from more attention to how and when plot points should unfold, and some of the dialogue would benefit from a greater awareness of how people actually speak, I quite liked the themes that author Melissa McBain explores in Altar Call.

Arlene MalinowskiNearly everyone who was of TV-viewing age in 1963, it seems, remembers where they were on the day President John F. Kennedy was shot. For writer/performer/instructor Arlene Malinowski, that day is especially memorable, because as she recalls, it was one of the first times that this hearing child of Deaf parents had to act as her parents' translator.

"I'm six, I'm in the first grade," says the Chicago-based Malinowski, "and I remember coming home from school, and they're in a dark living room watching the television, and they're crying. And my father says, 'Tell me what's on the TV,' and my mother says to my father, 'No, no, no, leave her alone - she's a kid.' But I'm like, 'No, I can do this!'

"So I'm listening," she continues, "and the man on TV is using a lot of big words. Words I don't understand, like 'assassinate' and 'motorcade' and 'depository.' I figured out that 'assassinate' was 'killed,' but I couldn't figure out what 'depository' meant. And then I remembered that Daddy deposits money into the bank, so it must mean 'the bank.' So I told my father, 'The president man has been shot, he's dead in his car, and a bank robber killed him.'

"And here's the coda to it: They never [definitively] figured out who shot the president. So I am not necessarily wrong."

Maggie Woolley and Tracy Pelzer-Timm in Dream a Little Dream of MeIn the loveliest segment of the one-act monologue Going Back Naked - the first half of New Ground Theatre's Going Back Naked: Two Plays by Local Playwrights - author Melissa McBain, portraying herself, reads from her late mother's 70-year-old love letters, and lands on a passage wherein her Mom refers to the children she hopes to one day have with her young paramour. Marveling that she was being thought of a full decade before she was actually born, McBain takes a beat and smiles, and addresses her absent mother in tones of longing and wonder: "You imagined me."

Melissa McBainAfter local productions of Altar Call in 2005 and Yard Sale in 2007, area playwright Melissa McBain's latest endeavor - opening April 30 at the Village of East Davenport's Village Theatre - is the solo presentation Going Back Naked. And if you think that's a strange title for a play, its author says she originally considered one that was even more unusual.

Melissa McBain

(The following is the sidebar to the feature story "Love Letters: Melissa McBain Pays Tribute to Her Mother in New Ground Theatre's Going Back Naked.")

In addition to playwriting and performing, Melissa McBain also teaches in Augustana College's theatre department, and currently serves as coordinator and producer for the Quad City Playwrights' Festival, an annual evening of short plays by local writers, directed and acted by Augustana students. (This year's festival will take place at Augustana's Wallenberg Hall on Sunday, May 10.)

Jessica Stratton, Melissa McBain, and Jeremy Mahr in DoubtThere's a special thrill you get from a stage work that seems not just beautifully, but perfectly cast, and following the curtain call for the Green Room's Friday-evening presentation of Doubt: A Parable - currently playing at the Harrison Hilltop Theatre - that thrill stuck with me for the rest of the night, and into the next day.