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T-Bone N Weasel

                                    at Theatre Charlotte

                                                                    Summer, 2000

starring          

James Yost      Sidney Horton

Directed by April Jones

A highly original and high-spirited picaresque comedy first produced with great success by the Actors Theatre of Louisville as part of the 11th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays. The play follows the antic peregrinations of two ex-convicts, one white, one black, as they make their erratic way across South Carolina in search of a hot meal or an easy mark.

THE STORY: Hoping to bring themselves up to at least the poverty level, two young ex-convicts, T Bone (who is black) and Weasel (who is white) have stolen a rather decrepit Buick and have set off across South Carolina with minor mayhem in mind. Moving swiftly from one adventure to another (with all the people whom they encounter played by the same actor) they botch an attempted robbery (because the drawer of the cash register is stuck); are swindled out of the Buick by a fast-talking used car dealer; run afoul of a sexually voracious lady farmer (who is "ugly enough to turn a train down a dirt road"); fall into the clutches of a larcenous country preacher; and try to make off with the automobile of a politically ambitious small town doctor who wants to exhibit them as examples of what poverty can do to people. Eventually Weasel is hired on by a construction company (and actually buys a car), but when they refuse to take on T Bone as well, because of his color, it is back on the road again, pausing only to make out their last wills and testaments disposing of all their "worldly goods" which, for T Bone is nothing at all, and, for Weasel, consists primarily of his used Chevette -- with thirty-two payments still to go.

T bone N Weasel is a study in motivation, an exploration of the meaning of success, a hard and gentle examination of the loyalty of true friendship. The play has numerous characters, but only three actors. T Bone and Weasel and one actor who plays everyone else. The title characters are both ex-cons who set out for a joyful escapade through the highways and backroads of South Carolina. On their journey they encounter all the characters played by this one actor and through these encounters they come face-to-face with poverty, prejudice, and the ways human beings use each other coldly and selfishly for personal advancement. T Bone is a black man, somewhat educated and more astute. Weasel, who is white, cannot read or write but is of course afforded the greater respect.