Oh, yes, sincerely, cause I love you.

The immediacy of theater is just like going to hear live music rather than a recording or sitting home watching television rather than going out and experiencing it live.

If they haven't experienced very much live theater before, this is really the place to do it, because it's an incredibly beautiful theater.

Players Theater Columbus occupies five floors in the Verne Rife Center for Government and the Arts Building in downtown Columbus.

Playstater started as a small club in 1923.

We're about to begin our 69th season.

And in the late 60s, it was opened up into a community theater.

And then in 1986, we became a professional equity theater company.

There are three performing spaces.

All of our scene shops, painting shops, costume shops, offices, everything are housed within those first five floors.

We made about three or four costumes, complete garments for the show.

It's a tailored suit kit for a production of Come Back to the Five and Nine, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Deen.

The theater's 1991-92 season offers 10 Broadway and off-Broadway productions, including Comeback to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Deen, which premiered in Columbus and was written by artistic director, Ed Gracek.

And you're jarred back into the scene where they're here.

Five and Dimes, to me, are a very romantic part of our past as train stations and a lot of that kind of architecture and that kind way of life of the past.

And I think it was stuck in my head as I was wanting to write a new play.

And that combined with the fact that I was in Midland, Texas for five years before I came here.

And a very good friend of mine in Midlands had Born and raised there and had been living there at the time that the giant company went through Midland on their way to Marford, a film giant, and all of the excitement that was created within that small town with these movie people coming through.

So it was a kind of a thing I think that everything sort of fell into place.

I've often thought, you know, years later, how did I do that?

So it's a wonderful opportunity.

Being the author, he's not possessive of the play.

And he really sort of, at this point, it's the 15th year anniversary production.

And he is very generous with his play.

He sits back and he can really appreciate the new things that we can bring to it.

That's what starts it, right?

The Lord turn his back on me in a very crucial time in my early life, cause I'm scarred that we'll never heal.

You can't blame the Lord.

I can and I do.

Maria!

The blame belongs to that, that face on the wall.

It was him, not the Lord, put all those foolhardy notions into your young head.

Barita!

I'm playing Juanita, the owner of the Crescent Five and Diamond.

She is earthy and keeps track of all of these ladies who have been in her store over the years and they are her.

And I love it.

I love that audience more than anything.

I really do.

And my job is to show them Juanita, and possibly a side of themselves.

And some audiences are tough, and you walk off stage and you say, boy, they're not with me tonight.

Then I always look to myself and say, are you giving 100%?

The main thing about theater that people aren't aware of is that the audience is a very creative function, you know, individually and as a whole, that they really, really affect the performances moment to moment.

If you're on the stage, you can feel, and it keeps, it gives you energy and it feeds you, it's like the electric current.

But when you're on stage, it doesn't look as if that audience member is that far away, which is good.

It's a wonderful space.

We're here, and the reason we're here is to produce live theater for this area.

I wish that Columbus and all of central Ohio would take us into their bosom and support us and attend and be enthusiastic about what we're trying to do.

Cause I love you so dearly Please say