First Tastes is a new play reading series paired with culinary test kitchen samplings, occurring most third Thursdays in 2026. Each evening of theatre places newly devised works into the hands of our local community actors, and invites the public to read along, take “tasting notes”, and engage in direct discussion with the playwrights and culinary artists.
Eat, drink, and tell stories.
For more information about the series: CLICK HERE
Thursday
October 15
5:30pm
Russel Fox’s – The Cardiff Giant, A Problem Comedy
Homer native David Hannum, the legendary huckster and folksy horse trader, was a principal player in what is still widely regarded as America’s Greatest Hoax – the excavation of a giant stone man buried on a hardscrabble farm twenty miles north of Homer. Dave Hannum, in partnership with Dr. Amos Westcott of Syracuse, bought the The Cardiff Giant and exhibited it throughout the northeast, with Hannum seeing the venture as a money-making proposition while Dr. Westcott, a man of science, devoutly believed he was educating the public by presenting the authentic petrification of an ancient man. Their traveling show would end when the stone giant was debunked as a hoax and Hannum came face-to-face with its creator, an embittered miscreant bent on revenge against society.
Based closely on archival sources, and featuring P.T. Barnum’s role in the humbug, THE CARDIFF GIANT is about living in a time of confounding hoaxes – like now.
Russell Fox
is a trial lawyer and an adjunct professor of law at the University of Buffalo. He is the author of two collections of plays, four novels, and a history of the Salt City Playhouse, the Syracuse theatre where he worked as a stagehand and lighting designer. His several books are available through Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, and AbeBooks.com.