Good luck to Starcatchers theater group

To all the members of Jackson's Starcatchers Community Theatre: On Nov. 23 and 24, break a leg.

Those are the days the infant group tests its mettle by performing "A Christmas Box."

When the theater group's board members discovered the best-selling book and Hallmark Hall of Fame movie didn't exist as a stage play, they weren't satisfied merely to purchase a more common script and work through familiar lines and movements. They wrote the script themselves and submitted it to the author for approval.

He gave it.

Starcatchers -- an offshoot of the River City Players in Cape Girardeau -- began with admirable motives. They wanted to perform plays in a venue accessible to all, including persons in wheelchairs, and at a venue that would permit proper staging.

And they wanted to perform more family-friendly plays for a conservative Jackson audience.

Certainly, they accomplish all three goals by staging such an uplifting play at roomy Route 25 Hall in Jackson.