\u201cIt\u2019s a moving story about love and its power to cross time and impossibility to heal even the deepest wounds,\u201d Bowersox said. \u201cThere is a twist ending that you will never see coming.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGrowing Flowers\u201d opens Thursday, Nov. 6, and runs through Nov. 15, at the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion<\/a> in Germantown.<\/p>\n Bowersox said \u201cGrowing Flowers,\u201d his seventh world premiere, has been in the making for 30 years, inspired by his Aunt Helen, whose husband Robert died when they were both young. Devastated, she never remarried. Wealthy and elegant, she lived in a lovely building in an apartment decorated with the finest Asian antiques.<\/p>\n \u201cHer apartment was like walking back in time,\u201d Bowersox said.<\/p>\n During one visit, as she sat in her chair, a cigarette in her fingers and a glass of sherry nearby, she mused, \u201cI wonder what I would do if Robert walked through that door right now,\u201d Bowersox recalled her saying.<\/p>\n And just like that, Bowersox began thinking about her question, letting it noodle around in his head until about seven years ago, when he began to write and workshop the play.<\/p>\n A fantastical premise<\/p>\n In \u201cGrowing Flowers,\u201d Helen is a white woman in her 70s when the stranger appears. He\u2019s in his mid-20s and Black and insists that he is her long-lost fianc\u00e9, David Cargill, a white man in his 20s when he died.<\/p>\n So, what does the stranger really want?<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s looking around like he\u2019s casing the joint,\u201d Bowersox said. Yet, \u201che knows all kinds of things that only the real David Cargill would know. There\u2019s a little paranormal flavor coming in. I\u2019m throwing a lot of red herrings out to distract the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n Bowersox, founder and artistic director of TheatreXP, often stages shows at the Plays & Players Theatre<\/a> near Rittenhouse Square. But a friend who had read \u201cGrowing Flowers\u201d urged him to look at the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion, built in 1859 by Maxwell, a wealthy cloth merchant.<\/p>\n Although \u201cGrowing Flowers\u201d is set in a southern mansion, the Germantown mansion\u2019s \u201cparlor room looked exactly like the room I wrote the play in my imagination,\u201d Bowersox said. \u201cIt was amazing. I walked into the place and I said, `Jeez, it looks like someone walked into my head and reproduced it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Bowersox has had a long and varied career, including 23 years hosting a cooking show on QVC, the West Chester-based home-shopping television network. For years, his show, \u201cIn the Kitchen With Bob\u201d was the network\u2019s most-viewed show.<\/p>\n FYI<\/p>\n \u201cGrowing Flowers On The Moon,\u201d<\/a> Nov 6-15, TheatreXP,<\/a> at the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion<\/a>,\u00a0 200 W. Tulpehocken St., Phila. Tickets are available on TheatreXP\u2019s website<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Think about someone you\u2019ve loved and lost \u2013 a parent, a lover, a friend. Years go by, maybe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4877,14780,69,71,70,16274,1483,16275],"class_list":["post-24578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-arts","tag-germantown","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-r-t-bowersox","tag-theater","tag-theatrexp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/theatrexp__growing-flowers-on-the-moon__04.jpg\")
The full cast of \u201cGrowing Flowers on the Moon\u201d (from top left): Susan Giddings, Cathy Simpson, Travoye Joyner, Kathryn Wylde, Brian Scott Campbell. (TheatreXP)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/theatrexp__growing-flowers-on-the-moon__05.jpg\")
The Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion in Germantown. (Maxwell Mansion)<\/p>\n