Have you met Kim Carney, yet ?
In the Butler household, there is one thing that stands the test of time: Family Comes First. And, in a show about the triumphs and sorrows of sisterhood, June, May, April, & Dottie Baxter from Kim Carney’s The Baxter Sisters are prime examples of this.
Sisterhood is a complicated bond between women & girls, related by blood or by sorority, and whether you support their decisions, give them hell over a snide comment, or need a confidant for your secrets, the dynamics of sisterhood are as complicated as the meaning of life. The sole constant is that a love between sisters is unbreakable.
“They were each other’s best friends and worst enemies,” was how Carney describes the relationships portrayed in the play.
The character of June is roughly based on Carney’s own mother of the same name, but that’s the only similarity you’ll find between them. Carney’s aunts were actually named Janice and Elaine, and there were five sisters plus a brother in the Butler household.
Tap dance was always a pivotal backbone of the family, with the sisters traveling around Michigan for tap competitions, meeting Betty Hutton (best known for her 1950s role in Annie Get Your Gun), and eventually opening up their own dance studio (also mentioned in Carney’s writing). It was such a fundamental part of the Butler sisters’ lives that Carney didn’t realize all other kids weren’t raised knowing how to tap, something she only discovered as she grew older.
Something that was NOT a new discovery was finding Carney in the playwriting sphere, as she has been writing for decades. Her most produced play, Moonglow, also pays tribute to her mother and has been performed at theatres across the globe. Prior to playwriting, she worked as an actress in New York and found she would rather be the one behind the words on the page rather than on stage saying them. Carney eventually decided to come back home to Michigan to start a new chapter of her life with her new family. Over the years, she has worked with multiple theaters in the Metro Detroit area. The Baxter Sisters is her first piece produced here at Tipping Point, and this will be the World Premiere for this particular piece of Carney’s.
Today, The Baxter Sisters started off as some scribbles on paper that were tucked away for years before the completion we see today. After meeting TPT’s artistic director, James Kuhl, at a Women’s Conference at Oakland University -- where he openly invited local playwrights to submit their works to Tipping Point Theatre and have a staged reading, potentially having their works produced -- she decided to pick the pen back up and finish what would become The Baxter Sisters. In 2019, Carney experienced “the best reading she had ever had” at Tipping Point. Feeling great about the readthrough, Kuhl called her later that same night to ask if the theatre could produce her play.
Starting March 31st, some of the original cast members from the staged reading will be returning to the Tipping Point stage to tell a beautiful tale inspired by the Butler Family. These days they have moved beyond tap dancing, but the family remains close united by love despite being spread out across the country. And Kim has started a tap-dancing legacy of her own, with two sisters and a daughter.
If there was one thing that you want the audience to leave with, like something that you would want to put on an epitaph. What would it be?
“I want my plays to feel real. Real life has a lot of comedy and sadness. I want people to see themselves in my characters.”
