“Moonlight Serenade,” a new play by Tyler Junior College theater professor Dr. David W. Crawford, earned the PlayFest Award at the Texas Educational Theatre Association’s annual convention last month in Dallas.The play had its world premiere at TJC on Nov. 18, 2009, and for the TETA convention the original cast members reprised their roles.Crawford has described “Moonlight Serenade” as “familial warfare.”Written over the span of three years, the play centers on the homecomings after World War II.”So many of the young men and women left for war as teenagers but came home battle-worn veterans,” Crawford said.The play shows how they left as children but came home adults to parents anxious to forget the war years and pick up and carry on with their children’s lives.”People who weren’t children anymore. Thus the stories conflict,” Crawford said.
