Tony Baughman 
Director And Cast Navigate Emotional Journey To Diversify Theater Fare
Most patrons who arrive at the front door of the Joanne T. Rainsford Discovery Center & Theatre for a Main Street Players production know they will leave having enjoyed an evening of belly laughs. Audiences for this month’s 2025-26 season opener might want to bring a handkerchief or two.
Beginning Friday, September 26 and continuing across two weekends, the Main Street Players will present “Terms Of Endearment.” The tragicomedy is a stage adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s poignant 1976 novel and James L. Brooks’ 1983 screenplay that became an Academy Award-winning film starring Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger and Jack Nicholson.
Even though the script is peppered with humor, the play is a rare mostly-dramatic offering for the Main Street Players, who tend to specialize in delivering lighthearted fare to Edgefield County audiences.
“I’d kind of like to push the edge a little bit more and see where we can end up,” said director Jessica Rachael Wood, who is helming her first production for the Main Street Players. “I figure if we’re going to grow the theater, we kind of need to change with the times a little bit, and we need to do that in a way that we’re promoting new ideas in this area along with some of the favorites that we’re going to offer too.”
The remainder of the Main Street Players’ season features “A Tuna Christmas,” a tried-and-true holiday romp; “The Wild Women Of Winedale,” a Southern-fried comedy by perennial-community-theater go-to playwrights Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten; and “Four Old Broads On The High Seas,” a nautical-themed sequel to a comedy staged last season at Edgefield.
The Double-Edged Sword Of Staging ‘Terms’
The film version of “Terms Of Endearment” garnered Academy Awards for Best Picture, MacLaine as Best Actress. Nicholson as Best Supporting Actor, and Best Writing and Best Directing for Brooks. The film centers on the complicated relationship between mother Aurora Greenway and her daughter Emma Greenway Horton.
The stage version, adapted by playwright Dan Gordon, was first mounted in the United Kingdom in 2007 and made its Off-Broadway debut in 2016 with Molly Ringwald in the lead role. According to the official synopsis provided by its publisher, “Terms of Endearment” explores “the delicate, sometimes fractured bonds between mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, and lovers both old and new.”
The Main Street Players’ production is one of only 63 stagings of “Terms Of Endearment” that have been licensed since the play’s release. Presenting a relatively new stage adaptation of an iconic film in a setting that is more accustomed to seeing “safe” productions of familiar comedies is a double-edged sword for the cast and crew. It is a risk worth taking for the art, the director believes.
“There’s a lot of plays that go on in theaters that are so regionally close here that’s the same show. I’d like to see us sort of step away from that a little bit,” Wood said. “There are so many plays out there that we could be doing. I’m not saying that they all have to be brand new plays that nobody’s heard of before, but it would be nice for us to sort of vary the offerings a little bit. That gives the actors a chance to do brand new roles that they haven’t acted in before.”
Tragicomedy Offers A Chance To Stretch
To bring a familiar/unfamiliar “Terms Of Endearment” to the local stage, Wood assembled a veteran cast of performers who are likely well-known to audiences of the Main Street Players. Betsy Wilson Mahoney of Aiken has a long relationship with the Discovery Center stage dating back to the earliest productions of the current troupe’s artistic ancestor, the Edgefield County Theatre Company.
Mahoney was eager to embrace the challenge of playing the lonely, at times selfish and often manipulative Aurora. The role gave her a chance to stretch her acting craft.
“I think I’ve only done two shows – out of well over 100 – that are dramas. This is by far a more nuanced character maybe than anything I’ve ever played,” Mahoney said. “She has a lot of tricky, unusual feelings for her daughter; she’s the most important person in her life.”
Populating a role with whom moviegoers might be so well-acquainted posed an added layer of challenge for Mahoney.
“I’m not Shirley MacLaine, and she was so incredible in it,” she said. “But after the first couple of weeks, I realized I had to let go of pretending like I was her and I had to act like I was Aurora. That probably happens with every role that you study, that you’ve seen somebody else has done at first – until you get it up and start to feel it somewhere inside of you.”
Lauren Duckworth is performing in her second consecutive production for the Main Street Players. Audiences might remember her as one of the wacky Pigeon sisters in “The Odd Couple” staged earlier this summer.
Because she had never seen the film version of Emma, so masterfully executed by Debra Winger, Duckworth was not inhibited by preconceived notions of the character. She was able to tap into the deep emotional well needed for the role in her own way as an artist.
“I’m used to being a comedic actress,” she said. “I’ve never died onstage, so I really am looking forward to this because it’s not often that you get the opportunity to have such a raw role…It’s been a challenge. It has, because I’m really not at all like Emma.”
Art Imitates Life For One Cast Member
At least one of the cast members has had very little difficulty finding emotional resonance with the script. Scott Urban of Aiken portrays astronaut Garrett Breedlove, Aurora’s love interest, who was played by Jack Nicholson in the film.
Like the daughter in the film and play, Urban has faced the real-life emotional challenges of a battle with cancer.
“I can relate to this. I mean, I was crying here thinking about it,” said Urban, who began his acting career in his native New York. “You know what they’re going through…We’re not alone. There’s probably three or four – or maybe a dozen – people in the audience who are dealing with the same thing. It’s very emotional for me right now.”
Returning to the stage after an absence of more than three decades was been therapeutic and cathartic for Urban. “It’s going to help me,” he said. “It helps put me in a frame of mind that kind of takes me away from where I was. I was real depressed.”
Urban credits his next-door neighbor and fellow cast member Tricia Perea for “getting me off my butt,” he said, and urging him to audition for the role of Garrett.
“Thank God I listened to her and came out and tried,” Urban said
As a character offering a touch of much-needed comic relief in such an emotionally-charged play, Perea is enjoying working with Urban and other fellow actors with whom she has such a comfortable rapport. This is not her first production in Edgefield either, and she believes this sense of family is what continues to bring thespians from all over to perform on the theater’s tiny stage.
“The great thing of this Edgefield stage is that it has been a place that has attracted actors from Aiken and Edgefield and even Newberry and Augusta,” Perea said. “I’m amazed at how many people are willing to drive over to meet here and put on a really great show. It’s been a wonderful place for us all to meet because we’ve all become friends, almost a family.”
Alex Duckworth, Drayton Callison and Sarah McCaskill round out the Main Street Players’ cast for “Terms Of Endearment.” Opening night is Friday, September 26 with performances Friday, Saturday and Sunday, then again Oct. 3-5. Tickets are available by calling (404) 490-1355 or online at edgefieldtheatre.com.
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