Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled director Nathan Markiewicz’s name. 

“You ever heard of a hoecake?” asked Criston Kopka, as local grandmother Elaine Johnson. “You know how you cut out your biscuits? Well, it’s all the scraps around the biscuits. You put it together, and that’s a hoecake.”

That’s the question that opens and closes a new play, “A Bite of Memphis: The Tastes and Tales That Tie Us Together,” now showing at TheatreWorks at the Evergreen. Like a hoecake, the play’s dialogue is an amalgamation. But in this case, it comes from eight real members of Memphis’ culinary scene. 

New Theatre Memphis season includes ‘Grease,’ ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’'

Julia Hinson, founder and producer of LoneTree Live, and Nathan Markiewicz, the director of “A Bite of Memphis,” spent two months interviewing people such as Derravia and Bobby Rich of Uptown’s Black Seeds Urban Farm; Branon Mason, head chef of Ciao Bella; Dan Kopera, chef at The Second Line; Project Green Fork’s Leann Edwards; and the Rev. Paul McLain and April Vincent from Calvary Episcopal Church.

In the show, each of those real people are played by an actor who recites and performs what the chefs and farmers said in their interviews. The result is a very Memphis conversation about all things food — from the idiosyncrasies of catfish and spaghetti to solutions to food insecurity around the city.

Johnson is the only person/character who doesn’t represent an organization or business but, rather, is the common Memphian with a family tradition deeply rooted in food.

“Elaine Johnson’s a home chef, a grandma,” Hinson said. “I call her a story keeper, a storyteller.”

“Our goal is to reveal the heart and soul of our city through our shared love of food. Audiences will have the opportunity to savor the rich flavors, traditions and stories that define Memphis through its culinary heritage.” 

Calkins: Pat Halloran believed in a better Memphis. Then he made it come true.

“A Bite of Memphis” is done in a style of documentary theater called verbatim theater, in which quotes from real individuals are parsed together into a conversation with one another.

Each person interviewed was asked the same set of questions and, to Hinson’s surprise, many of their answers and reactions to the questions were similar, if not the same.

“Often, what we were looking for is patterns: Where are people saying the same thing, or similar things or maybe contradictory things? And that makes for an interesting conversation that we can have on stage,” she said. “Nathan (Markiewicz) was like, ‘We can’t talk about food without also talking about people who don’t have food, or food sustainability, or how we grow our food.’”

View Gallery

Hinson, who teaches theater at Southwest Tennessee Community College and acting at Playhouse on the Square, said she teaches her students to ask, “Why this play, now?”

“I just feel like, in our city dialogue, in national dialogue, Memphis gets such a bad rap. And I really want to shine a light on the positivity in Memphis and the wonderful culture we have here,” Hinson said. “And so (answering), ‘Why this play, now?’ is like, ‘Let’s shine a light on our delicious food that we get to eat.’”

“A Bite of Memphis: The Tastes and Tales That Tie Us Together” is produced by theater company LoneTree Live and is showing at TheatreWorks at the Evergreen. Performances are every Friday (7:30 p.m.), Saturday (7:30 p.m.) and Sunday (2:00 p.m.) from Feb. 23 through March 3. A special industry night performance is open to those in the hospitality and theater industries on Monday, Feb. 26, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 each and can be purchased here or at the door.