By TUTT STRAPP-HARRIS

By TUTT STRAPP-HARRIS

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On Friday, Aug. 17 at the Gay Street Theater, the Rappahannock Players will present “An Evening of One Acts,” a grouping of three original P^ys: “Beachheads” by Randy Moomaw, a dialogue between an unlikely couple as they picnic on a moonlit beach; “Unfinished Business” by Cathy Kiley, a play based on the oral histories of country women, from the author of the much acclaimed “Voices of Rappahannock;” and “Crows” by Elizabeth Palmer, in the words of the director “a painting with just enough brush strokes to convey its message”—a subtle “trialogue” between a waitress in a two-bit diner and a couple that has come in to tie up the loose ends of their day over a cup of tea.

Randy Moomaw and Elizabeth Palmer both attended Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg as Dramatics Arts majors, he a native of that town and she a resident of Alexandria. They both continued to pursue playwrighting on the graduate level. Randy traveled to UCLA, where his plays have been featured as mainstage productions and where he continues to act and direct.

The outstanding feature of his work is his unique sense of humor, and the way in which it is used not only as comedy but to reveal the most deeply hidden aspects of his characters. He allows humor and powerful drama to coexist with in the same play, sometimes within the same moment on stage, and treats with sensitive wit themes which could easily have been relegated to the realm of more solemn drama.

“Beacheads” was Randy’s first script, written as an in-class project for his first playwrighting class at Mary Washington—he was as amazed as everyone else at its strength and dramatic quality.

It has since been produced on mainstage at Mary Washington and at

UCLA, and by actors from the Source Theatre in Washington, D.C. in con