Roses Take Practice
A drama about a young, working class woman seeking to escape the confines of her troubled family and small town, who, through some unexpected relationships and surprising talent, just might succeed.

Description: Wylie Steele, a high school senior, has dreams of escaping her alcoholic family and dying New England Mill town, but no apparent means of making the dream a reality. She gets a job at Ida’s bakery where Sofie Schmidt, a seventy-year-old German immigrant, has worked for twenty years. Sofie’s fifty-year-old, gay son, Martin, escaped Rivertown and his demanding mother years ago and rarely comes back to visit. Wylie and Sofie’s relationship is full of tension and misunderstandings. Wylie, hopeful that the money she earns could be her ticket out of town, struggles to fit the job into a life already full of family responsibilities, her boyfriend, Danny, and school. Sofie teaches Wylie cake decorating which the girl uses to make strange and wonderful cakes. It becomes a form of self-expression. Their relationship grows as Sofie, cranky as she is, becomes attached to Wylie. Wylie, for the first time in her life, has someone giving her something. Martin is summoned home when Sofie breaks her hip. Wylie and he struggle over what role each of them is meant to play in her healing process and form their own tension filled relationship. Wylie’s home life deteriorates until her mother, Lucy, is threatened with losing the kids at which point Lucy finally tries to quit drinking. After Sofie reinjures her hip, gives up hope and lets herself die, Wylie is left with Sofie’s VW Beetle, her own developed cake decorating talents and the inspiration of Martin’s life away from Rivertown. But what if her family can’t function without her?

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