Writers Among Us

Nancy Hasty’s solo play Florida Girls is a journey through her childhood. She plays more than a dozen characters, all based on real people. The play is part of the Passage Theatre’s 2nd Annual Solo Flights Festival.

By: Susan Van Dongen

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Florida Girls, by Nancy Hasty (above), is a two-hour, multi-character trek through the playwright’s childhood.


   Big, loud, extroverted families filled with talkative type-A personalities, beware. There may be a future writer lurking among you silently, just taking it all in, perfectly recording every facial expression, word and embarrassing action, thinking "someday this dysfunction is going to make great material."
   Growing up in the Florida panhandle in the 1950s, writer and actress Nancy Hasty was surrounded by five lively siblings, idiotic and intrusive neighbors, washed-up beauty queens, fire-and-brimstone preachers and a half-crazed grandma — which made it a challenge to be heard. Naturally reserved but also unusually perceptive, she observed and absorbed the ranting and raving, using the input to create a series of characters.
   Mama and Daddy were sure surprised when their shy little cabbage with the big ears got up on stage in high school and let it rip.
   The result was Florida Girls: A Virtuoso Performance, with Ms. Hasty starring in more than a dozen roles — her parents, her grandmother, each of her four sisters and sundry supporting characters. And we do mean "characters."
   First performed in the ’80s with an off-Broadway run in the early ’90s, Florida Girls
is a two-hour trek through Ms. Hasty’s childhood as a military brat in North Florida. The play comes to the
Mill Hill Playhouse in Trenton Feb. 9 as part of the Passage Theatre’s 2nd Annual Solo Flights Festival, running
through March 2.
   The festival also features Manchild in the Promised Land, adapted and performed by Joseph Edwards, TranceZenDance by John Woo Taak Kwon and Notes of a Negro Neurotic, written and performed by Nancy Giles.
   Ms. Hasty’s portrayal of her hometown of Crestview, Fla., depicts a surreal relationship between the iconic presence of the military — Eglin Air Force Base and Pensacola Naval Air Station are nearby — the Bible Belt and a plethora of local beauty contests.
   For contemporary women, beauty contests might seem howlingly anachronistic, but Ms. Hasty says they’re still big business in the South. They loomed especially large in the 1950s and ’60s, when a Miss Okaloosa County would symbolize Southern femininity but also an odd kind of womanly achievement.
   "I remember the Miss America Pageant, when one year the winner and all the runners-up were from Mississippi, Texas and Georgia. For a while, it seemed like certain states bred (women) that way," she jokes. "I’m fascinated with the whole beauty contest world.

"Ms.
Ms. Hasty says the most ambitious women became beauty queens, which brought them recognition and provided a way to get out of their small towns.


   "One of the subtexts in my play is about how the contests were the only outlets for girls, that or doing something supportive (of the men), like cooking or cheerleading," she says.
   Ms. Hasty says the most ambitious women became beauty queens, which brought them recognition and provided a way to get out of their small towns.
   "That’s why the contests were so important," she says. "Like sports for inner-city kids, it was one way to achieve something. Otherwise, you just sat around and ‘listened to the boys.’ "
   The only other outspoken woman Ms. Hasty knew was her grandmother, who was mentally ill.
   "She would tell anybody, anytime, anywhere exactly what she thought — but of course it was always couched in (biblical) scripture," Ms. Hasty says. "You have to imagine my view as a 12-year-old, with all these prim-and-proper Southern women around, and then my grandmother would suddenly come out with ‘and you’ll all go to hell!’ I just thought, ‘Hmmm. This is interesting.’ "
   It wasn’t until a high school teacher suggested she try writing that Ms. Hasty knew what she had to do with her material.
   "I really didn’t have an outlet until I was in my teens," she says. "What I experienced was so intense my first five plays and several short stories were about childhood memories."
   After graduating from the University of West Florida, Ms. Hasty moved to New York and continued writing and studying drama, sharpening her skills with roles like Lady Macbeth and Jocasta in Oedipus Rex.
   In addition to her theatrical work, Ms. Hasty is a rostered artist for the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts. She works with special-needs and abused children, doing drama and improvisational-theater therapy.
   "The arts are the most incredible thing for them," she says. "I try to tell them how therapeutic it is to express their pain through writing or acting. It gives them a great feeling of communication. Instead of getting in trouble, they get applause.
   "Working with these kids is really one of the best things I do with my life," she says. "They may not be able to spell or read very well, but boy, do they have stories to tell.
   "I’m always telling them how important it is to keep your eyes open, as painful as it may be. If you can find a means of expression, it will transform the experience in some way."
Florida Girls: A Virtuoso Performance, written and performed by Nancy Hasty, is part of the Passage
Theatre’s 2nd Annual Solo Flights Festival at the Mill Hill Playhouse, Front and Montgomery streets,
Trenton, Feb. 9, 8 p.m., Feb. 17, 5 p.m., Feb. 20, 6 p.m. and Feb. 22, 8 p.m. Manchild in the Promised
Land, Feb. 8, 8 p.m., Feb. 10, 5 p.m., Feb. 16, 8 p.m., Feb. 24, 5 p.m. TranceZenDance, Feb. 13-14,
6 p.m., Feb. 15, 8 p.m., Feb. 21, 6 p.m., Feb. 23, 8 p.m. Notes of a Negro Neurotic, March 1-2, 8 p.m.
Tickets cost $15 and $20. For information, call (609) 392-0766. On the Web: www.passagetheatre.org