Rapunzel and Lady Godiva

SANDY STRIBLING is a senior at DePaul University, where she majors in theater arts. Her sister CANDY attends the University of Illinois at Chicago...and she’s a junior looking for a degree in the curriculum known as gender and women’s studies.

Candy’s as fearless and fun-loving as Sandy is intense and restless. And thanks to a heavy workload that culminates in her school’s Spring Showcase, Sandy’s got less time on her hands than her sis.

Little Sis wants the reduced time she and Big Sis can spend together to count.

Candy’s solution: Form a duo-piano lounge act with Sandy.

RAVEN DICKERSON, Sandy’s philosophical roommate and infotech major at DePaul, considers it a head-scratching solution. After all, Sandy’s swapping time with her now ex-boyfriend TREVER TAYLOR for time jamming with Candy...whose own roommate, UIC marketing major CHARO VELAZQUEZ, sees the dueling pianos act as just plain uncool, so not Twenty-First Century.

But nondrinkers Candy and Sandy roam Chicagoland for a bar where they can unleash their two-piano act...and the two Floyds Knobs, Indiana natives land a spot at a dueling pianos venue on Chicago’s Near North Side, the high-energy Get Down on It. Lounge manager JUDY AKIYOSHI loves the act and the sisters’ banter...yet wants Sandy and Candy to come back with “a song written here in the Twenty-First Century.”

The Two Striblings work more recent tunes into their run-the-gamut repertoire...and gain the attention of the flamboyant, egotistical, bossy Trever...a local rock singer who’s lost jobs in every band he’s been in.

This time, he seeks to be their Svengali: “I’VE GOT TWO WORDS: ‘PIANO MAN!’”

When witty Judy takes Trever’s side, Candy and Sandy add Billy Joel’s anthem. And when image-conscious Charo realizes the lounge act has some cool to it after all, she seeks to join it...on drums, an instrument she took up five months ago.

It takes a while...but Candy, Sandy, and Charo show they can cook together. The confirmation comes when soon-to-be-wed couple KEEGAN MORGAN and HUNTER MCPHERSON invite the trio to play at the couple’s January wedding...providing buddy Trever sing with the threesome at the reception.

Sandy’s reaction: “I’d rather hang by my hair!”

Trever’s first rehearsal with his ex-lover, her sister, and her sister’s roomie ends up, in Candy’s words, a day that “will live in infamy” due to his bossiness and sexist ways. Eventually, Sandy, Charo, and Candy find unexpected help...in the persons of closet guitarist Raven and bassist KATELYN KETELSEN, a member of Get Down on It’s house band.

With Katelyn’s motherliness the final ingredient, the five-woman, one-man wedding band rocks Hunter’s and Keegan’s reception...and goes on to turn Get Down on It out Saturday after Saturday.

A hot, hot session where Candy, Sandy, and Co. do “Peggy Sue,” with Trever turning it into “Sandra Sue,” leads to the freeze between Trever and Sandy warming up...and the couple rediscovering what initially brought them together.

In fact, Sandy and Trever go back out on a date...and Raven teams up with Sandy’s fellow theater arts major COLTON ALSTON to make the evening a double date.

With Trever learning to step back and trying to think “band first” and not “me first,” the six-member act naming itself Two Plus Four, and Sandy and Trever an item again, things look sky-high: At Get Down on It, Two Plus Four’s scalding version of “Dancing in the Street” leads to an offer to cut a record...and a chance to make a video.

The video opportunity blows up when filmmakers BUTCH ORTEGA and MIGUEL JIMENEZ and record executive B.J. KNIFFIN tell Candy, Charo, Katelyn, Raven, and Sandy to go topless...but let Trever keep his clothes on.

Matter of fact, Trever sides with B.J., Butch, and Miguel.

While Katelyn returns to Get Down on It, Sandy, Raven, Charo, and Candy go AWOL from there and muse about the music industry’s blatant sexism...and find sympathetic ears in two professors: DePaul’s VICTORIA BARRETT and Illinois Chicago’s MARIA HODGES. Victoria’s encouragement helps Sandy turn her attention to the latter’s Spring Showcase.

Under Candy’s encouragement, the Stribling sisters don’t turn their backs on music: They take their act to a South Side nursing home...despite Sandy’s contention that care centers are some of “the toughest places to play on Earth.” The sisters find their old groove...and an invitation from Judy to come back to Get Down on It.

Sandy’s Spring Showcase production, a one-woman show, proves to be a barnburner...and at the ensuing reception, the star of the show tells Trever that their two-ply relationship is finished: “It’s supposed to be all about us. Together.”

Candy and Sandy return to Get Down on It the night after the latter graduates from DePaul; after Sandy announces she’s staying put in Chicago to keep jamming with her sister, Charo, Raven, and Katelyn rejoin the sisters onstage...to rock in triumph.