WAITING TABLES - A one-act play by Joseph M. Paprzycki

Waiting Tables is a quietly devastating one-act play set over the course of a single evening at a regional diner. On his very first night on the job, a young waiter named Michael is introduced to the cafe's colorful cast of regulars — and soon finds himself drawn into something far more profound than he bargained for.

Among the evening's guests are Dot and Harry, an elderly couple who arrive in formal attire for dinner, just as they have for decades. They are waiting, as always, for their son — also named Michael — to join them for the dinner he promised before shipping off to Vietnam. He went missing in action on August 10, 1969, and has never come home. And yet Dot and George keep the table set, keep coming back, and keep waiting.

When the young waiter reveals his name is Michael, something shifts. In a bittersweet and deeply human final moment, he sits down at the empty chair — not as a replacement for what was lost, but as a fleeting reminder that the world still holds kindness, and that some promises echo long after the people who made them are gone.

Cast & Creative Team

Written by Joseph M. Paprzycki, Directed by Christopher "Jumbo" Shimpf, Filmed by HEARTist Films

Role

Actor

Michael (the waiter) - Matt Byer

Bunny - Aimee Theresa

Dot - Ruth K. Brown

Harry - Dave Farrar

About the Production

Waiting Tables was performed live on February 25, 2018, at The Bellefonte Cafe, 804 Brandywine Blvd., Wilmington, DE. Staging the work in an actual working cafe gave the production an intimate, immersive quality, blurring the line between fiction and the everyday world the play so tenderly examines.

Themes

Waiting Tables explores grief, memory, and the quiet rituals people use to hold onto hope. At its heart, it is a play about waiting — not just for a person, but for a world that makes good on its promises. The Vietnam War hangs over the story not as history lesson but as an open wound, still present in Dot's favorite dress, George's careful patience, and a table that is always set for one more.