The Source Theatre Festival.

The Hampton Years at Theater J.

A LOOK INTO THE CITY'S NEW PLAY FESTIVALS

New plays have long found a home in Washington, DC.  In fact, the city can boast 40 years of world premieres, including the Pulitzer Prize winning drama The Great White Hope by Howard Sackler, first produced at Arena Stage in 1968.  

In the second decade of the 21st Century, Washington theatres of all sizes are experimenting with new plays, feeding into a national movement to promote up-and-coming playwrights and to celebrate work that experiments with form and that depicts a diversity of views and experiences.

In 2012, of the 201 productions eligible for Helen Hayes awards 49 (or nearly 25 percent) were of new plays.  What this figure doesn't show is the evolving community of theatre professionals who are deeply invested in the development of new plays and the infrastructure that's emerging to support collaborations with playwrights.

I'm proud to be asked by theatreWashington to write this new blog series — Let's Play — to introduce you to the variety of ways in which plays are made in our nation's capital.  Hopefully, you'll find it as exciting as I do that there's so much playmaking going on in this city.  I have a vested interest, you see.  I'm the Executive Director of The Inkwell, one theatre organization in the area with a focus on new play development.

I'm starting this series with two articles profiling new play festivals held each year in our fair city.  These first three — the Source Theatre Festival, The Hub PlayFest, and Theater J's Locally Grown — are all designed to introduce you to carefully selected plays that fit the theatrical sensibilities of the producers.  These festivals also introduce playwrights from here and beyond to our talented corps of directors, actors, designers, and dramaturgs, hopefully forging long-term collaborations.

Source Theatre Festival

For three weeks each June, the Source Theatre Festival gives DC audiences "a lovely sampler platter," as festival producer Jenny McConnell Frederick describes it, "showing audiences how new plays are made on our own turf."  The sampling includes premieres of three full-length plays, 18 ten-minute plays, and three Artistic Blind Dates — multidisciplinary collaborations leading to newly devised work combining all different art forms.

The three full-length plays anchor the festival.  The three teams of artists selected by producers for Blind Dates are each given a full-lengths script from which to build their piece.  In addition, ten-minute plays are organized under themes that arise from the full-length plays.

Plays showcased are selected by the festival producers supported by a team of "spotters," theatre artists from around town who recommend plays and writers, and then by a group of readers who spend six months pouring over several hundred scripts.  

As a new play development opportunity, Jenny and the team of directors, dramaturgs, designers, and actors she brings together strive "to provide a safe space for artists to develop their work while also giving them the opportunity for a production."  The level of support for each production varies.  

The artists creating the Blind Dates support the each other's devising process, meeting regularly to view pieces in progress.  The festival producers also observe Blind Dates as they evolve and provide feedback.  

The conversation with playwrights who have submitted full-length plays begins during the review process, when finalists are asked to provide a statement of what they hope to accomplish in collaboration with festival artists.  "We want to know each playwright's perspective without our intervention," says Jenny, so that the producing team can ensure a true meeting of the minds behind development and production. 

Then each full-length play is assigned a dramaturg, who engages each writer in an on-going conversation leading up to productions.  Writers of full-length plays also come to town for a three-day workshop weekend.  Writers of ten-minute plays connect remotely with directors and can participate in rehearsals via Skype.

Beyond a production, the Source Theatre Festival helps writers, most of whom are not from the DC area, establish relationships with our local theatre professionals that hopefully last far past the festival itself.  "We help playwrights put down roots in Washington," says Jenny.

The 2013 Source Theatre Festival opened June 7th and runs through June 30th.

The Hub PlayFest

"I never set out for The Hub to be a new play development organization," says The Hub's Artistic Director Helen Pafumi, "but I like the bards of the day."  Thus, in the five years since its founding, The Hub has committed more and more resources to new play development.  That investment has included new programming, including The Hub PlayFest, which launched this June. 
 
For the first weekend of the month, The Hub staged readings of four new plays and hosted two panel discussions, one on diversity in theatre and the other on new play development itself. (A note of disclosure:  I served on the second panel to talk about The Inkwell's new play development process.)  All events took place at the Reston Community Center.
 
"We are championing writers who haven't made it to the biggest theatres," says Helen, so one goal of The Hub PlayFest is to introduce her audience in Northern Virginia to up-and-coming writers.  "We can't produce every writer we come across," she adds, "but we can introduce many of them through the festival in a way that's intimate and fun."
 
The festival is also a vetting process to gauge The Hub community's reaction to plays under consideration for production.  "We do a lot of table reads of plays," says Helen, "but a staged reading is the best barometer for a new play.  It can be so helpful to feel the play with the audience" before making the decision to produce it.

The four plays featured at this year's The Hub's Playfest are far along in the development process with most first viewed here at The Kennedy Center's Page to Stage Festival (which I will describe in more detail in the next Let's Play article). After the festival, The Hub's company of theatre professionals provide additional development support, and in some cases, continue to work with playwrights to produce the play.  While The Hub may not produce each play showcased at PlayFest, Helen tries to forge collaborations with playwrights that might result in a production of another play by the writer in the future.
 
The first question Helen asks of any playwright is seemingly simple:  What's this play about?  But it's a key question in determining if there is a longer conversation to be had.  "We may have completely different ideas of what a play is," says Helen. "and I don't force a relationship that can't be there."  Helen looks for plays that have a strong sense of language, a magical theatricality, and explore themes of hope, connection, and redemption.
 
There are other relationships that The Hub hopes to build through the festival, and that's with directors and actors from across the DC area.  "I make an effort to bring in directors and actors who we haven't worked with before, says Helen, "and we can see what the collaboration looks like when we all get in the room together to read the play."  Helen would like there to be more opportunities to bring teams of theatre artists together, "gathering moments" as she calls them.  "Festivals are particularly fun for emerging collaborations," she says.

Theater J's Locally Grown:  Community Supported Art Festival

"We don't want this festival to be unique," says Theater J's Artistic Director Ari Roth, speaking about the Locally Grown: Community Supported Art Festival.  But it is unique as the only theatre festival exclusively devoted to development and world premiere productions of new plays by local writers.  Through the second Locally Grown Festival, Theater J is presenting readings of seven plays in progress and two productions, all penned by playwrights living here.

"We want to see first-class productions of plays from local writers and rich undergrowth of new work," says Ari in reflecting on the impetus and goal of the festival.  Just a few years ago he and Associate Artistic Director Shirley Serotsky saw "a hole in the fabric" in DC theatre, noting that local writers did not receive development support in their hometown.  They then gave commissions for new plays to a handful of writers they knew and had worked with in other capacities.

All are playwrights who share the sensibility of the Theater J artistic staff, which is an exploration of "our history" both collectively and as individuals.  Ari describes the plays developed through and produced at the festival as "extraordinarily personal about what they reveal about the self, the spirit, and the family."

Ari and Shirley support chosen playwrights from the very beginning of the writing process.  "We don't just send them off for eight month to come back with a play," says Shirley.  With each new draft of a play, Theater J arranges a "cold reading" with a team of actors and with Shirley and Ari.  Both believe that it's almost impossible for a play to evolve without hearing it aloud.

Leading up to the festival, plays receiving staged readings are rehearsed for 20 hours with a carefully chosen cast, as well as a director and dramaturg.  In the months following the festival, Shirley and Ari often continue working with writers with an eye towards another reading, helping plays evolve to be production-ready.

For plays going into production, Theater J enlists the best directors, actors, and designers from the area, ensuring that the play gets "the finest production they could have anywhere," say Ari.

"We're really impressed with how many great writers there are in DC," says Ari, "and it's going to be hard to choose who we work with in the future."  Shirley adds: "We really hope that other theatres make an investment in locally grown." 

Theater J's Locally Grown:  Community Supported Arts Festival runs through June 30th.  Right now, the festival features the world premiere production of The Hampton Years by Jacqueline E. Lawton.  

Also, local playwrights are invited to a Local Playwrights Town Hall, inviting our community of writers to discuss "Where are we now?"  The open forum will be held at Theater J on June 25th at 7:30 p.m.

You can read more about the festival in two Washington Post articles:
Two D.C. Theaters test new models for putting new plays onstage by Nelson Pressley
In segregated wartime America, making arts against the odds by Peter Marks 

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