On Saturday night Julie and I went to see the St. Francisville Transitory Theater’s production of the musical “The Last Five Years.” It was really amazing, and by no means in an “aww, what a great effort by some local folks.” This small young troupe are all college students or postgraduates, and they’re serious theater people. I had no idea what to expect, and to say I was seriously impressed by what I saw on stage tonight would be to dramatically understate things. There’s a Sunday afternoon performance of this show (2pm, Market Hall on Royal Street), and if you live in or around St. Francisville, I can’t urge you strongly enough to go. It’s terrific to have the opportunity to see live performances as good as this, and to know it’s being done by young adults who have the chops and the passion to execute theater at a high level of professionalism. They’re doing a summer season at Market Hall. The new play festival that closes it out is called the Myrna Minkoff New Play Festival, because I bought naming rights to the thing, and am honoring a great heroine of Louisiana literature, and a great personal heroine of mine who posts blogs under the moniker “mm,” for you-know-who.

After tonight’s show, I was reminded of the passage from Walker Percy’s “Lost in the Cosmos,” in which he asked where would you rather be as a writer today: stumbling around Greenwich Village, boozed to the gills, or sitting on your front porch in Nashville?

Really, y’all come to Sunday’s show!