IF YOU GOWhat: "The Dixie Swim Club."When: 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday; 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 30 and Oct. 1.Where: The Arts Center, 320 N. White St., Athens, Tenn.Admission: Tonight, $25 (includes dinner; call for availability); other weekend shows, $12 adults, $8 students; Thursday's BFF Night, $10 each for best friends who purchase at least two tickets.Phone: 423-745-8781.Website: www.athensartscouncil.org.SPECIAL PRICES* Tonight: Opening night is a dinner-theater production, with all seats priced at $25; reservations required. Doors open at 6 p.m. with cash bar, dinner at 6:30, and show time at 7:30 p.m.* Thursday: BFF Night offers $10 tickets for "best friends forever"; requires purchase of at least two tickets.
Athens Community Theater's fall play, "The Dixie Swim Club," opens tonight in the Sue E. Trotter Theater at The Arts Center in Athens, Tenn.
The story by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten follows five Southern women whose friendship began many years ago on their college swim team. Each August, they set aside a long weekend at the same beach cottage on North Carolina's Outer Banks to catch up with each other.
The play focuses on four of those weekends spanning 33 years, with the characters aging from mid-40s to mid-70s. As their lives unfold, these women increasingly rely on one another, through advice and raucous repartee, to get through the challenges (men, sex, marriage, parenting, divorce, aging) that life flings at them. And when fate throws a wrench into one of their lives in the second act, these friends rally around their own with a strength and love that takes the comedy in a poignant and surprising direction.
Art Kimball is directing the cast, which features Pam Thigpen, Sarah Maynard, Karen Siklosi, Kay Simmons and Melonie Carideo.