“Georgia McBride” Comes Home

Matthew Lopez’s plays are about home.

“They’re all about home, creating home and family—either blood family or manufactured family,” Lopez told the LA Times.

And it makes sense that Lopez’s plays would harken back to his own home away from home: the theatre.

Originally from Panama City, Florida—where The Legend of Georgia McBride takes place—Lopez decided that he was going to be an actor as a child, after seeing his aunt, Priscilla Lopez, in A Day in Hollywood / A Night in the Ukraine, for which she won a Tony Award. And although he stopped acting in his mid-20s after moving from Florida to New York, Lopez is now one of the top playwrights in the country, and has even won a Tony Award of his own. The Legend of Georgia McBride was Lopez’s first true hit—the play has been produced around 23 times since 2014.

“It’s about a group of people who don’t really fit in anywhere else. I call them my ‘misfit toys,’ and they build a home together at the bar,” says Lopez.

Although he didn’t know many drag queens growing up, by the time he was in his teens, Lopez had a friend who started performing drag in the only gay bar in town.

“I would hang out in the dressing room before the show and watch the queens get dressed. So my introduction to drag was largely from the inside out.”

Just as Lopez came home, in a way, with The Legend of Georgia McBride, Florida Studio Theatre is delighted to bring this Florida play back to its Florida roots.