The Sedona International Film Festival will present the two-person play ”Love Letters” by A.R. Gurney at the Mary D. Fisher Theatre at 4 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 8, 7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 14 , and 2 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 15.
Featuring Leslie Brott as Melissa and Chris Mixon as Andrew and directed by Richie Call, “Love Letters” is being produced by SIFF’s new Sedona Professional Theatre Company, which, in partnership with the Utah Shakespeare Festival, plans to bring Actors’ Equity Association repertory performers to Sedona.
“Both born to wealth and position, Melissa and Andrew are childhood friends whose lifelong correspondence begins with birthday party thank-you notes and summer camp postcards,” a SIFF press release stated. “Romantically attached, they continue to exchange letters through the boarding school and college years. While Andy is off at war Melissa marries, but her attachment to Andy remains strong and she continues to keep in touch as he marries, becomes a successful attorney, gets involved in politics and, eventually, is elected to the U.S. Senate.”
The actors recreate these scenes by reading the titular love letters on stage. Since its debut in 1988 “Love Letters” has emerged as a favorite production for A-list actors, as it allows them to take on a theatrical role without the need to memorize lines. Previous productions have included Mia Farrow, Brian Dennehy, Barry Bostwick, Barbara Eden, Christopher Reeve, Treat Williams, Stockard Channing and Elizabeth Montgomery.
The play was also made into a 1999 TV movie starring Steven Weber and Laura Linney.
“If anybody’s basing their experience of the play off the film, I’m hoping to reorient them to the fact that people that are over 50 can still have passionate and fulfilled and anxious and important lives,” Brott said. “What I want people to take away is that it takes work for a relationship to work, and it takes forgiveness and patience and compassion, and that message never gets old.”
Brott described her character as rebellious and Mixon’s as structured.
“What keeps resonating with me is just how many levels there are to love and what a commitment love is,” Mixon said. “Recently somebody said to me, ‘Love is, not just an emotion, it’s a choice.’ It’s not something that magically happens; there is that magical moment when you meet somebody. But continuing to love them deeply and accept them for everything that they are, that’s a choice, and so you have to be able to give that unconditionally.”
“I grew up in the tail end of what Andy goes through in his life, but my parents were of his generation, and so ‘Love Letters’ brings up a lot of memories of growing up with kind of the same standards and expectations that Andrew goes through in his life,” Mixon said. “Whether it’s his loyalty to his family, his patriotism and his love for America. A lot of those things resonate with me. And then his desire to make changes in our world. That was part of growing up in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, this hope that you can make the world a better place. And Andrew has that belief in the magic of what it means to be America.”
“You’ll get to participate with us and experience love, friendship, frustration, the joy of losing your temper a little and then being forgiven,” Brott said. “That’s why we go to the theatre, to have people feel great things for us in a safe way. We get to experience those emotions through the actors because it’s about striving to maintain what makes being human valuable.”
Tickets for this production are $30 in advance or $35 at the door. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit www.SedonaFilmFestival.org or call (928) 282-1177.
