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Jim Appleby of Ewing, Va., has had one of his plays selected by the LMU theater department to be featured at the LMU Players’ New WorX24 fall production in Duke Hall on Nov. 21 and 22.

New WorX24 showcases five-minute plays by students and will conclude with a realized production of Appleby’s play “Ladies Afternoon Tea Party” along with Glaspells’ “Trifles.” The performances will take place in Duke Hall’s Sam and Sue Mars Performing Arts Center starting at 7 p.m.

Appleby was informed his play had been selected by LMU’s Assistant Professor of Theater Joseph Gill.

Appleby has performed and directed plays with the Middlesboro Little Theater. He first got involved with the theater back when he was in high school and a teacher who thought he talked too much in class volunteered him to act in a play.

“They sent a letter to my mother that said: ‘Jim has a lot of potential, he just doesn;t apply himself.’ She got the paddle out and I thought this play thing seems like a lot of fun,” he said.

Appleby portrayed a doctor in that play and says the rest of the 11th and 12th grade starting calling him Pitowsky.

Later, he went to a comedy theater and thought “that looks like even more fun than doing a play.” So he started doing stand-up inspired by Foster Brooks.

He became interested in writing plays after attending another play at a different theater.

“It caught my curiosity, so  I sat down at my typewriter and started trying to write plays,” Appleby said. “I went back to the theater and asked to talk to someone who knew about plays. Fortunately the director happened to be in the theater at that time. He said for your first script you didn’t do bad and gave me a book to read.”

From then on Appleby continued to write plays in his spare time and gave them to small theaters to perform and allowed them to make any changes they wanted to.

He met Gill at a Middlesboro Little Theater production and they became friends.

Appleby took a course on playwriting at LMU that was taught by Lisa Salon.

“She gave me some tips on some things to take out or how to do them on stage so the audience will enjoy it,” he said.

Getting the theater to put on a production of his play is the first step toward getting it published and that’s Appleby’s goal for “Ladies Afternoon Tea Party.”

The play centers around four couples from various states who have purchased homes at a well-to-do Florida retirement community.

“The ladies enjoy doing things that ladies do like going shopping, attending parties and sitting around talking. The men are jacks off all trades but masters of none,” he said.

One of the couples needs to have their bedroom wallpapered so the men decide to wallpaper the bedroom and the four ladies have a tea party while the men have their misadventures with the wallpaper.

Appleby sent his play to GIll last year and learned it had been selected for a performance out of the blue.

“Theater has been in me for a long time so now that I have the time, I’m spending my time writing plays,” he said.

He is currently working on a play called “Getting Old Ain’t For Sissies.”