LEWISBURG, W.Va. (WVDN) – Carnegie Hall’s Smooth Ambler Second Stage Series presents “The Fabulous Baker Sisters” on Thursday, March 30, at 7:30 p.m. in the Old Stone Room. The pair will share stories, memories and monologues that reflect their distinctly silly view of the world.
Guests are invited to come early for a preshow reception from 6:30-7:15 p.m. The Second Stage Series is sponsored by Smooth Ambler.
Although sisters Margaret Baker and Barbara Baker Elliott have lived in the Greenbrier Valley for more than 30 years, they grew up in Smithfield, North Carolina, as undertaker’s kids, which, they say, explains a lot.
With a master’s degree in theater, Margaret Baker wrote for children’s television in North Carolina before joining an alternative theater company, the Road Company, based in Johnson City, Tennessee. She produced original plays based on improvisation while traveling in a van “held together by duct tape,” she says.
Upon drifting to Philadelphia, Margaret Baker began a career writing and performing one-woman comedy. After moving to Pocahontas County, she spent 18 years directing the Pocahontas County Drama Workshop.
Barbara Baker Elliott worked as a writer in higher education, public television, and banking before she, too, moved to West Virginia, where her first job was working in public relations and as the education director at Carnegie Hall. Since then, she says she has worked almost everywhere in the Greenbrier Valley.
Barbara Baker Elliot writes a regular humor column for The Greenbrier Valley Quarterly. In 2018 she compiled a decade’s worth of columns into a book, “The Accidental Mountaineer,” published by Havenbrook Media, with illustrations by Sally Cooper.
For the Carnegie Hall performance, Margaret Baker will bring back some of her favorite characters from her one-woman shows, including a Kmart employee touting questionable specials and a wronged woman who shares some artsy, crafty therapy tips.
Margaret Baker’s monologues will cover topics including a funeral business that has gone green, a disaster involving slime, an ode to poisonous gases for the young at heart and help for those who are vulnerable to man spam scams.
Barbara Baker Elliot will share some favorite essays from her book and column, including an exposé of insanity in the beverage industry, a defense of pimento cheese purity, an adolescent quest for perfect hair, angst at being a baby boomer in a millennial world and the risky business of competitive chili cooking.
