The GVSU Shakespeare Festival's New Plays in Process program is well underway this Fall with the development of two new contemporary scripts scheduled for production October 24 ¿ 27. Aimed at helping practicing playwrights develop their new scripts, the program involves a national competition, writers-in-residence at GVSU, and staged reading performances on the Allendale campus and at the Grand Rapids Civic Theatre.
Project director Max Bush regards the Festival's New Plays in Process as an appropriate activity for the university's annual Shakespeare Festival, which is underway on the Allendale Campus. Bush is a well-known dramatist, and an alumnus both of GVSU and Michigan State University. Specializing in plays for young audiences, Bush's own work has been widely published and produced at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, the Provincetown Playhouse in New York, The Kennedy Center and other venues.
Grand Valley's program is modeled on similar play development projects conducted by regional professional theatres across the nation. Customarily such programs take one of two forms: projects that showcase new works by commissioning a scripts and giving them full stagings, as part of the theatre's production season; or projects that provide only limited staging in order for the playwright and the ensemble to concentrate on the writing or dramaturgy of the new work. Grand Valley's program is an example of the latter, and is one of only two new play development programs in the state's four-year schools.
In January the Shakespeare Festival announced a national competition for scripts that writers would like to see developed. Then a team of seven readers from the United States and Canada screened 45 submissions, recommending five for consideration by local stage directors. The directors then chose two scripts to work on, and began the casting process.
Playwrights will be brought to the GVSU campus during the Shakespeare Festival rehearsal period, October 15 - 23, in order to work with the casts on dialog problems, scene rewrites, vocal interpretation and other matters. Prior to October 15, authors and directors will correspond to discuss matters of theme, structure and characterization. The scripts will then premiere in the University's Louis Armstrong Theatre on October 24 and 25, with audiences invited to remain and discuss each new play following the performance. Post-play receptions are also planned for each playwright. The shows will then be performed again for different audiences in Grand Rapids at the Civic Theatre, on October 26 and 27.
Grand Valley's production will take the form of staged reading performances, which traditionally means that actors do not have sets and costumes to work with, nor will the lines be memorized; although some stage business and movement will be included and rehearsed. Directors will focus their efforts on the dialog and actors' interpretations in order to give the script, in theatre terms, a good read. Audiences, too, will be asked to concentrate on the words and interpretation rather than the design and spectacle elements of the plays; and they will be encouraged to respond to the plays in discussions with the actors, directors, and writers.
This aspect of audience participation is always a big hit with spectators, project director Max Bush points out. At staged readings people really get the feel that they have a hand in creating new work. Their reaction to the performance is exciting and often enthusiastic. Unlike TV or motion pictures where viewers have no creative input whatsoever and are simply consumers of canned entertainment products, a staged reading of a new play allows interaction with the creative process. It transforms spectators into arts producers where they become a working part of the whole experience of bringing a new play to life.
Grand Valley's Shakespeare Festival will produce two scripts with widely different characteristics. From Bed to Worse by San Diego author Peggy Dougherty, is an uproarious farce in which psychology, suspicion and seduction all commingle in hilarious proportions. In the play, the central character, a psychologist, suspects that her new client is having an affair with her husband. In reality, however, the new client is making a play for another one of the psychologist's patients. And the central character herself becomes enmeshed in a compromising situation when she persuades her best fried to test her spouse by attempting to seduce him. In the playwright's words, the six characters reveal and discover themselves as they pursue and seduce each other.
A practicing psychologist herself, in addition to being a playwright, Peggy Dougherty's plays have been produced at the Carlsbad Village and Fritz Theatres in California, and her work has won finalist awards in the National Writers Workshop and Laurel National Humor Writing competitions. Her short fiction has also been published in Laf and Satire magazines. Her other recent plays include News and Love Takes Turns .
The New Plays in Process second production is entitled The Emancipation of Mattie, by local playwright Norbert Hruby. The Emancipation of Mattie is a tense racial drama set in 1965 Alabama, in which a dedicated liberal sociologist urges his students to march in the civil rights protests while he remains home to look after his pregnant wife. In reality, however, the central character hires an African-American woman to care for his wife, and treats her as an indentured servant¿who then runs off and exposes the hollowness of his liberal sentiments.
Hruby's work is well known to local audiences. His one-woman play, Peggy: the Life and Times of Mrs. Benedict Arnold, was recently performed at the Gerald R. Ford Museum as part of Women's History Month, and is now being performed around Michigan under a grant from the Michigan Council for the Arts and Humanities. A second one-act play, Briggs , received a staged reading at the Actors Theatre, and has been produced by Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. Some of his other titles include Dearest D., The Kriz Boys, and The Bean Counter. These have been produced by such groups as Chicago's Primus Company, Parkland Community College, and elsewhere.
Stage directors for the productions will be Steve Taber and Max Bush, both of whom have worked extensively with local community groups such as the Actors Theatre, Heritage Theatre, and Circle in the Park. Auditions for six women and five men, all between the ages of 18 ¿ 36 years old, are scheduled for 7 ¿ 9 p.m. October 13 at Grand Valley State University's Performing Arts Center on the Allendale campus; and from 10:30 a.m. ¿ 1:00 p.m. October 14 at the Grand Rapids Civic Theatre.
Performances are scheduled at 7:30 p.m., both for the Allendale and Grand Rapids shows. FROM BED TO WORSE will be presented October 24 at GVSU, and October 26 at the Grand Rapids Civic Theatre, 30 North Division St. The Emancipation of Mattie is scheduled for an October 25 opening on the GVSU Allendale campus, and October 27 at the Civic Theatre. The playwrights will be available for both performances.
Advance reservations can be made by phoning the GVSU Shakespeare Festival box office at 895.2300, beginning September 11. Tickets for the G.R. Civic performances are available only at the door., and the Allendale performances feature a free catered reception for the audience, the playwright and the acting ensemble following the performance.
