You can easily tell when Janet Royko is in town by the creative theatrical productions that pop up.
Just last Thursday she put on an impromptu reading of a play she wrote 20 years ago with her then-husband, Mick.
The original venue was going to be the bakery on Broadway but since that is unfortunately closing down, Royko had to move it at the last minute. Thankfully, Rosemary Hughes offered the Old Firehall, a suitable location for all sorts of this town’s creative endeavours. This proved a challenge to the play’s roster, despite the fact that Royko tried to let people know of the change in venue as soon as she found out herself.
”Misbehavin’ is an old-fashioned melodrama, a readers’ theatre, with everyone taking a role. One of the parts is for someone to give the audience cues for their participation. We had more roles than people attending, sadly, so everyone had to change hats. It was really funny,” Royko said. “My son Michael was the hero, the villain, and the minister,” she added.
Royko seems pleased with how this first attempt went and is hoping to give it another try in the future, perhaps with more notice and at a better time of the year. “Everyone had lots of fun,” she said.