The Fly Community Theatre to Perform Award Winning Drama Clocks Are Like Angels in October
- sevenmeloy
- Sep 27
- 3 min read
Updated: Sep 29
Written by Shelbyville playwright Kyle R. Thomas, Clocks Are Like Angels is a true Tennessee tragedy with a story that centers around the impossible choices one family must make in the name of progress.
The Fly Community Theatre will be presenting six immersive performances of Kyle R. Thomas’s Clocks Are Light Angels on October 10, 11, 12, 17, 18 and 19.
Clocks Are Like Angels is a stirring and incredibly moving new play by Kyle R. Thomas that pulls at every heart string and leaves you aching for each character and the deeply personal choices they’re forced to make. The play begins as an East Tennessee family in the 1930s faces life shattering displacement when the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) needs their land. The story that unfolds will haunt audiences long after they've left the theatre with it's layered characters and thought-provoking themes.
Clocks Are Like Angels, was a featured finalist in the 2023 Appalachian Playwriting Festival, selected for the 2024 Rogue Theatre Festival, and won the 2024 Best New Play Award presented by Playwrights First in New York City.
Co-directors Jennifer Dawn Smith and Jody Barnes-Turner bring this haunting story to life, along with the help of set designer Rick Clanton and costume designer Jamie Janine.
Tickets are available at FlyArtsCenter.com. Audience members will have a special opportunity to meet the play's author, Kyle R. Thomas at each performance.
PRAISE FOR CLOCKS ARE LIKE ANGELS
"Stirring and incredibly moving." — Rogue Theatre Festival, New York City
"Touching and beautifully written." — Playwrights First, New York City
"This play dives into multiple intense subjects with grace, ease and the exploration that they deserve. Engaging, thought provoking, and full of truthful characters and dialogue, Clocks Are Like Angels is a new work that will leave an audience moved and questioning their own past, present and future.” — Allison Hohman, Founder and Producing Artistic Director of Rogue Theater Festival
THE CAST
Jonathan Rodriguez as Collins
Cory Flippo as Raymond
Rayanna Lemons as Laura
Nicole Rodriguez as Mamie
MORE ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Kyle R. Thomas is an award-winning playwright from Shelbyville, TN. His passion for theatre began at a young age when he first discovered his father’s cast album of "The Phantom of the Opera." He fed that passion as a performer in high school and community theatre productions.
Thomas' love of history inspired his first screenplay, The First Debate, about the first televised presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. He wrote several more screenplays – being dubbed a “writer to watch” by The Black List — before returning his writing energy to his first love: the stage.
He adapted his screenplay Portrait of a Young Man into a monologue, which was selected for the 2022 Rogue Theatre Festival in New York City. After performing the monologue himself at The Players Theatre, it was also produced at The Walnut House in Murfreesboro, TN.
Thomas' play, This House Is Not a Home, received its premiere by Murfreesboro Little Theatre in 2023, and was nominated for Best New Play by Broadway World Nashville. His latest play, There Inherent, received its world premiere in January 2025 at Gallery Players Theatre in Brooklyn, NY, and was a finalist in the 2025 Broadway Bound Theatre Festival.
