Patricia Lewis MacFarlane

The Original Julian Melodramas Patricia Lewis MacFarlane

Patsy joined the Triangle Club in 1946. This club regularly held a fund raiser in the late 1940s through 1942. Patsy got tired of the making bake sale cookies. She proposed to the group that they instead put on a melodrama with local talent that she would write, direct, and act in. Thus The Dasterdly Deeds of Rodney Murgatroyd was created. The critical and financial success of this play in 1953 - with its outstanding local players - resulted in Patsy's writing several new plays. Over the years other authors contributed when the spirit or ambition moved them. These new and the three original plays have been recycled and performed almost every year in October. Patsy's three plays were the first written and performed in Julian. When she and Wally discussed each new work as it was being put together, we children could hear them laughing together in the evenings after we had gone to bed, as they tried out new names, jokes, situations, and plays on words. She typed them out, mimeographed them for the cast, and annotated them as they developed during rehearsals.