If our best regional theatres do not produce new plays,
who will? Certainly not Broadway which
has gravitated toward revivals or spectaculars, taking a “chance” on new plays
only after they have proven themselves elsewhere. And if it’s a straight drama, Broadway seeks
out Hollywood star power to attract audiences.
South Florida now has a relatively new proving ground for
new play development, Palm Beach Dramaworks’ The Dramaworkshop, an incubation laboratory for submission, review,
selection and then development of new plays, including readings by professional
actors, first in a roundtable setting and then, ultimately, in front of a live
audience.
Already three plays have emerged from this effort, Edgar and Emily, (March 2018), House on Fire (December,
2018), and this season’s enormously successful Ordinary Americans (now at the
GableStage in Coral Gables). Edgar and Emily
has been performed on Florida’s west coast and House on Fire was just published by Samuel French – the “official”
publisher of established plays.
The Dramaworkshop
and the soon to be inaugurated “Drama (in the) works” is managed by Dramaworks’
Bruce Linser who is not only passionately dedicated to their mission to develop
new plays but is also a fine actor, director, singer and even pianist in his
own right. His outstanding performance
in last season’s House of Blue Leaves
is testament to his talent.
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| Bruce Linser, Manager The Dramaworkshop |
In addition, the New Plays Festival has top-drawer South
Florida actors to read the parts, all members of Actors Equity, most of whom we’ve
seen many times at previous Dramaworks productions. Their versatility and talent know no
bounds. The success of these readings is
as much their doing as the plays themselves.
Imagine having only 16 hours of rehearsal to perform these works, albeit
as readings, and still be able to reach down and find the emotion and the
meaning meant by the playwright. I list
these luminaries in their order of their appearance in the five plays: Margery Lowe, Bruce Linser, Tom Wahl, Dennis
Creaghan, Michael McKeever, Matthew Korinko, Nicholas Richberg, Rob Donohoe,
Laura Turnbull, James Danford, Elizabeth Dimon, Bruce Linser (yes, again!), Irene
Adjan, Kim Cozort Kay, Angie Radosh, Kenneth Kay, and Patti Gardner. It’s like a who’s who of leading South
Florida performers.
So it was with great anticipation that Dramaworks kicked
off their New Year/New Plays Festival
last Friday. Two plays were read on that
day, the first, one that is probably the furthest along in development as it
has already been scheduled for the main stage next season, was The People Downstairs by Michael
McKeever, a play that was commissioned by Dramaworks. The play’s premise is a simple but profound
one. While Anne Frank and seven others
were hidden in four small rooms concealed behind a bookcase in the factory building
where her father worked, who were the brave people who kept Frank and others
alive in that small space for such a long time?
How did they feel, did they fear for their own lives, all while
providing solace and supplies to the occupants?
Their moral stance and the consequences of their actions are explored.
After a dinner break, the evening’s performance was Padraic
Lillis’ Remember Me When You Come Into
Your Kingdom, a play that is to me reminiscent (but totally original) of
two other plays Red by John Logan and
Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, in that Red deals with a famous painter and his
assistant and Amadeus’ Salieri suffers from knowing that his work pales
compared to his contemporary, Mozart. Similar issues arise in Remember Me as Giovanni Montorfano, a third-generation artist, has
been commissioned to paint the Crucifixion, a fresco which will face another
commission, Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” Montorfano is proud of his
own “reliability” compared to da Vinci’s tendency to study issues such as light
and perspective and therefore thinking he’s “all talk and no art.” But, like Salieri, it is an exploration of “mediocrity.”
And the fear that immortality will
allude him.
Saturday’s festivities were kicked off by a roundtable
discussion during the Playwrights Forum:
a Discussion with the Festival’s Five Dramatists. Here the audience could hear first-hand how
these dramatists work, their own individual writing processes, and what they
had hoped to achieve in their plays.
Also, macro issues such as the growth, or even the survival, of live
theatre in today’s media obsessed, Internet world were discussed. It was also an opportunity to put a face to
each of the plays being performed. As in
the case of the plays, there was an audience talk back afterwards, an easy give
and take with warm feelings.
After a brief break, John W. Lowell’s The Standby Lear, another two hander but
set in contemporary times was performed.
Here an actor and his wife (a recently retired actor) show the well
trodden paths of their decades of marriage in clever, funny but poignant repartee. The husband, who is an understudy for one of
the greatest parts in the theatre, King Lear, suddenly finds himself, after
three months of not having to perform, tormenting himself with thinking he
might actually have to step into Lear’s costume that night. Mortified by fear, he flees but soon returns
to the support of his wife, Anna. And so
in essence, does he play the role and why does he have all the angst he feels?
Saturday night’s reading was As I See It by Jenny Connell Davis.
This is grounded in a real life experience, with deep dive research on
the part of the playwright to capture the stories of the painter Alice Neel and
poet Frank O'Hara, who was also curator for MoMA in the 1960s. It too is a classic two hander of the testing
of wills between these creative individuals. From an amusing beginning it develops into an imagined
confrontation. Are her portraits “a
collection of souls?” Weighty philosophical issues such as immortality through
Art are examined and the crux of the play lies in Alice painting with the perception
“I paint what I see.”
Sunday began with a pleasurable “Lunch with the Artists”
hosted at Leila’s in West Palm Beach where we all had the opportunity to lunch
and talk with the individual playwrights.
They and the actors who bring their work to life are among the brightest
and most engaging people I’ve ever met and in my career as a publisher I met
thousands of authors, but they were all writing nonfiction scholarly or
reference works. The Drama World brings
out passionate imagination with the knowledge of human nature.
The final play was a reading of The Hat Box by Eric Coble. This
has the earmarks of a Simonesque comedy, with the requisite dramatic moments
and character development. Family
stories frequently involve secrets and Coble drills down to them through comic
interaction. Two sisters are clearing
out a closet in their childhood home after their father’s death, finding a hat
box the contents of which sets them on a sleuthing challenge, bringing in
another family member and a friend of her father’s only to learn that there was
more to dear old dad than they imagined!
And in trying to unravel a mystery in his past, the estranged sisters find
a new path to each other. “With
surprising twists and hilarious turns, this comedy of family lore revels in the
bizarre and beautiful mysteries that make up a life.”
After a talk back on that play, everyone gathered in the
lobby where a champagne toast was made by Bruce Linser to the playwrights, the
cast, and the audience and, there, William Hayes, the Producing Artistic
Director, announced that it was Dramaworks’ intention to produce at least one
new play each season on the main stage. The People Downstairs has already been
scheduled for next season, but which of the other four will follow from this
enormously successful Festival is
anyone’s guess. Each had merit in its own way.
Kudos to Dramaworks for developing new plays to think about.
