Carla Belver stars as Alice Ainsley in ‘Auctioning the Ainsleys,’ on stage at People’s Light in Malvern.
Auctioneer Alice Ainsley made a career of putting a price tag on possessions, but when her own memory begins to fade, the objects of her home become indispensable to her family.
The dark comedy ‘Auctioning the Ainsleys,’ on stage now at People’s Light in Malvern, Pa., stars Carla Belver in the regional premiere of the play by Laura Schellhardt.
‘Auctioning the Ainsleys’ takes place in a small Midwest town, where the family has owned and operated an auction house. Alice, the matriarch, hires someone to catalogue her keepsakes before she puts all of her possessions up for sale. Before she can do that, however, she must convince her children to place memories over trinkets.
“I knew I wanted to write a play that included small town auctions and a female auctioneer. But I still wasn’t sure what the story should revolve around,” Schellhardt said. “Then right around the time I was considering all this, a couple of my family members began suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s.
“That brought up the idea of memory, and how our memories can be locked in objects. We all have keepsakes that have no value to anyone but us, and we value them for the memories they hold. What happens when those memories go? What happens when the object remains but the memory locked in it disappears. So the second piece of the play fell into place when I decided to write about a woman in the later stages of her life who was struggling with memory issues.”
Tickets for ‘Auctioning the Ainsleys’ are available at www.peopleslight.org. The show’s last performance will be Nov. 8.