Peggy’s Place: Foster Care, First Love & Fly Girls

At 15, Missy finds family in a girls’ group home. A shocking, hilarious and heartfelt interactive staged reading with live sound meditation. Peggy’s Place is a memory play, set in 1993 against the backdrop of the Rodney King civil rights trial, that explores the shocking, hilarious and heartfelt coming-of-age story of teens in foster care. When fifteen-year-old Missy arrives at Peggy’s Place, a residential facility for teen girls, she’s warned to “get with the program” or risk being sent to juvie. Her crime? Seeking emancipation from her single mother whose battle with mental illness has made this new place, with its invasive rules, lack of privacy and explosive personalities, a better place to call home. Despite navigating challenges no child should face, Missy and her new “sisters” are consumed by the intense drama of being teenagers: friendship, first love and dreams of becoming Fly Girls. What to expect An interactive staged reading in which you help tell the story, with a live sound meditation woven into the performance. A community conversation on healing, resilience and transformation follows, facilitated by cast member Channie Waites. What you experience and share will shape the next draft as the play develops toward a full production. Doors open at 2:45 PM. The reading runs about 1 hour 45 minutes, and the conversation about 30 minutes. $8 suggested donation. Free for the Bronx community. Written by Bronx-based Emmy-winning writer/performer Mel House and inspired by her story of survival, resilience and the families we choose. Directed by Aimee Todoroff. Dramaturgy by Alexander Lambie. Featuring Nancy Lemenager (Broadway’s Chicago and McNeal), Samaria Nixon-Fleming (Broadway’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), Kathy McCafferty (Broadway Tour of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), LaTonya Borsay (Eric, The Gilded Age), Lorraine Rodríguez-Reyes (Beatriz Barrera in Netflix’s Sweet Magnolias), Sophia Radix (Black Latina The Play), Terra Chaney (Much Ado About Nothing), Channie Waites (If Beale Street Could Talk), and sound meditation teacher and actress Sylvie Preston (Long Goodbye). This project is made possible with regrant funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and administered by the Bronx Council on the Arts.