Crank up the tragic country songs, line up the beer cans for shooting, and deep fry everything in sight, “Doublewide, Texas” is coming to town.

The trailer park comedy by the comedy writing team of Jones, Hope, and Wooten is being performed by Act 1 Scene 1 Theatre Company; and, the scene seems to be set for fun.

“More people like to come to comedy. They like to laugh,” Craig Bertrand, director and founding member of the local theatre company, said. “So many people can relate to [the humor]. They can escape reality for a couple of hours and come have a laugh.”

“Doublewide, Texas” is a comedy play act infused with what Bertrand deemed “straight-up Texas humor,” where any Southerner worth his salt will recognize the food references, pop culture callouts, and the age-old Texan honor of seceding bounding within the play’s well-timed punch lines. But this time, it would be the inhabitants of the trailer park outside Tugaloo who are trying to secede from Texas as their land is under threat of being annexed by the fictional town.

“If you’re going through the whole play trying to think about it, you’re thinking too much,” Bertrand said with a laugh.

Kerry Pedigo, the actress playing Joveeta Crumpler and a consummate professional with 30 years in the business, would agree.

“These people are absolutely funny and you could act silly with them,” Pedigo said about the exaggerated characters in the play, which seem to both capitalize off of and subvert some of the broader stereotypes of Southerners, Texans especially.

But Pedigo assured that the people in the audience “are going to see their friends and family in it,” when she spoke about the ease with which attendees would be able to connect with the characters on the stage.

“It’s southern humor with southern characters… and there will be a lot of gags that Northerners won’t get,” Bertrand said.

However, that doesn’t mean that the humor won’t connect—because it’s humor, and because people like to laugh.

“When you watch the crowd—when you watch them laugh, watch them cry—you know you’re touching them. That’s what theatre is about—touching someone,” Bertrand said about the power of theatre and the passion for it.

And for this all-volunteer theatre company—whose members hold day jobs as diverse as teachers, mailmen, refinery workers, and veterinarians—passion is something that drives them to come in night after night, rehearsal after rehearsal.

“You do it just because you have so much fun doing it,” Pedigo said.

And that kind of enthusiasm for one’s art can easily be contagious.

“It turns into an evening of laughter and forgetting their cares,” Pedigo said about actor and audience member alike.

Act 1 Scene 1 Theatre Company will be presenting “Doublewide, Texas” on the weekends of July 22-24 and July 29-31 at First Christian Church on 5856 9^th Ave in Port Arthur. A dinner will be included on the Friday and Saturday shows at 6:30 with the show following thereafter. Tickets are $25 per person. Sunday shows will start at 2:30 with dessert being served during intermission. Tickets for these days are $15. Ticket reservations can be made by calling 409-790-6782.