Southern Gothic Novel is a 17-character, one-hour, solo comedy play that feels like a movie, based on a book that doesn’t exist. And it’s a lot of fun.

A Drama Desk Award nominee for Outstanding Solo Performance in a Play, Frank Blocker portrays heroines and heroes, villains and insects. He weaves a tale of gothic proportions set in a sleepy Mississippi town using nothing but a box, his voice and his lightning quick, often hilarious, character changes.

Southern Gothic Novel ran for two years at Manhattan’s Stage Left Studio where it garnered the Drama Desk nomination. It has been performed more than 200 time across the U.S. and Canada, as it easily fits into any space, large or small. The story grows with the audience’s imagination.

Synopsis

There are 5,218 people in Aberdeen. This is the tale of the women scorned and the men who caused all the trouble.

The whole thing started when Viola Haygood, the Assistant Librarian at the Charles B. Evans Memorial Library, fell in love for the umpteenth time. This one was new in town.
He was tall. 
He was dark. 
He was handsome.
And he smelled really good. 

It was the dark coincidence of his arrival that caused the locals to comment. Someone was kidnapping Aberdeen’s young women. They were at Big Otis’s Saloon one night and gone the next. Not so much as a by-your-leave.

The town was getting nervous. 

They were locking the stately front entries of their antebellum homes and the aluminum screen doors of their double-wide trailers. 

They would have called in the FBI but they didn’t have to, as that particular organization was proud to boast a national office on Aberdeen’s Main Street that runs along the scenic banks of the Tombigbee River.

This was a town in an uproar. 
Dirty deeds being done dirt cheap. 
Women being snapped up and carted off to who knows where. 
FBI and reporters descending like locusts. Lawyers locking and loading.

And one actor plays them all.