What could be more suitable for Mothers Day than the tale of two mothers sharing tea and sympathy over Blue Willow china: helping each other deal with life’s unexpected twists and turns, bartering favors tit for tat — life for death? Over the past three years, Annapolis stages have featured four plays by the prolific Pulitzer- and Tony-nominated playwright Lee Blessing: Chesapeake, Two Rooms, Fortinbras and now Going to St. Ives, showing through May 19 at Colonial Players. His work...

“How was the play?” my son-in-law, the family sports, poker and comics buff, asked.     “Good,” I said, “but two hours of Emily Dickinson wouldn’t be your style.”     “Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell,” he said. Poem 96 of her 1800 published posthumously. He knew it by heart. You could have knocked me over with a fountain pen, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. Dickinson’s...

You have a story to tell. It’s the image that stays with you, whether you want it to or not. It’s that anecdote you tell at parties that makes people say, you ought to write that down.     Your story could be a winner in more ways than one. Maryland is fertile ground for budding authors, and writing contests abound.       Annapolis creative writing teacher Laura Oliver, whose new book, The Story Within: New Insights and Inspiration for Writers,...

Love Letters is a simple show about a complex relationship chronicled through 50 years of letters. It needs, playwright A.R. Gurney says, “no theater, no lengthy rehearsal, no special set, no memorization of lines and no commitment from its two actors beyond the night of performance.”     If those actors happen to be a couple? All the better.     Bay Theatre’s Nigel Reed and Valerie Leonard, married five years and costarring in their fifth...