Set in a beauty parlor in Chinquapin, Louisiana, Steel Magnolias illustrates how the lives of six distinctly different women interweave via the small town gossip that shadows the unending cycle of birth, marriage and death. Filled with hilarious Southern repartee and humorously revealing verbal collisions, the play draws on the town’s underlying strength—and love—which gives the play, and its characters, the special quality to make them truly touching, funny and marvelously amiable company in good times and in bad.