The Story
Contrary to popular belief, the 1980s didn't last for the entire decade. They didn't run from 1980 to 1990, but from 1979 with the release of Gary Numan's "Cars" through 1986 with the breakup of Madness.
 Spoon Millionaires is set near the end of this era: autumn 1986. The
play is about a young woman's journey to self acceptance. We meet our
heroine, Penelope Ann, as a young girl living in Appalachia, and
marvel in her growth as she learns the lessons of what define us all—lessons in love and loss—and, in finding her own feminine path,
Penelope Ann makes us all a little more human....
...and she and her
friends all wear the same pair of magic pants or some shit like that.
That's actually entirely untrue. In Spoon Millionaires, the once
mighty Spoon Records is also nearing its end, and the founder/president, the Archduke Witherspoon, is well aware of this. The company hasn't produced a chart topping record since the rise of the music video (and the subsequent fall of yacht rock, which was unwittingly popularized by camera unfriendly white guys), and the Archduke is about to lose his position with the record company he built on his family's fortune.
With a wife who loathes him but loves his money, an estranged son who dies mysteriously in a car accident, a family friend who only comes around to set up drug deals and screw his wife, a possible daughter-in-law who doesn't know the ingredients of cinnamon, a family doctor who's more concerned with Russian spies than his patients, and a minister who sometimes confuses the teachings of Jesus with the movies of Charles Bronson, the Archduke has resigned himself to his fate. But then, a familiar stranger with a British accent shows up at his door...
The History
 Spoon Millionaires was originally conceived as Congruent Love Triangles, a novel by John Kriens and Kirk Hiner. It was abandoned about three or four chapters in, leaving only a good idea and a few funny jokes. Five years later, the week of Freddie Mercury's death, Kirk took that idea and those funny jokes and stretched them into a two act play to be peformed by the comedy troupe "...just because," which was co-founded by him and Jim Jividen two years earlier. The play was met with good reviews, but was abandoned soon after its debut when the troupe returned to its standard sketch comedy format.
Fifteen years later, former troupe member and current radio D.J. Jon Hodges (who originated the role of the Archduke) suggested to Kirk that he shop the play around. Always happy to make money off something that doesn't require writing 300 pages of new material, Kirk agreed, but not without help. He somehow convinced Jim Jividen, now living six states to the south, to assist with the rewrite. A few months, a ton of e-mails, many new jokes and a title change later, Spoon Millionaires was accepted for production and will see its premier at Playfair 2006 in Lima, Ohio...a mere twenty miles away from where it was originally performed fifteen years earlier.
People say you can never go home again. To this, Kirk and Jim say, "Would that that were true."
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