GAY PEOPLE'S Chronicle

JANUARY 14, 1994

ENTERTAINMENT

New Play Fest presents strong show of women's voices

by Barry Daniels

"Wanted: Passionate voices, powerful stage images; outrageous, poetic fearless artists intent on showing truth, whatever the consequences. No commercial fare or anything that you'd ever see on TV." Over three weekends starting on January 14, you'll be able to see staged readings of a dozen plays by eleven of the hundreds of playwrights who responded to this call for scripts for the 12th Festival of New Plays at the Cleveland Public Theatre.

Festival Director Linda Eisenstein explains that, "When we say we're looking for experimentation in form and content that is challenging, that's a rubric for saying, don't send us Samuel French comedies. We're interested in artists that are exploring things that aren't specifically traditional. The plays that we're interested in tend to be those that are finding their own form."

Talking about content in the plays, Eisenstein touches on something that is central to the experience of the Festival. "What is always challenging for any audience is someone who is absolutely telling the truth. When we're reading things there is that moment of authenticity that we're looking for. We seek work in which raw issues are still bubbling and someone is really trying to get down to the question of how do you tell the truth."

Women's voices are especially strong in this year's Festival. What the Bones Say by Toledo writer Jane Bradley, is a feminist look at the German graphic designer Kaethe Kollwitz, who was both a sexual outlaw (lesbian) and political outlaw (socialist) during the Nazi period. Toledo resident Christine Child deals directly with women's friendships in Aubergine, a poetic piece in which two women tell each other their

dreams. Family Secrets by Cleveland playwright Barbara LeBel is a powerful and chilling drama about incest that won the author an Ohio Arts Council Fellowship. Rosalyn Rosen, an Ohio writer now based in Seattle, deals with a "riotously dysfunctional" Texas family in Why is the Dog Howlin' Momma? Boston playwright Barbara Blatner's Shadow Play is a comic exploration of male-female communication. In The Sun and Moon Live in the Sky New York writer Ellen Lewis takes a hip urban black professional woman on an Afrocentric myth-journey that incorporates ritual, music and dance. Hysterical Women by Ohioan Pam Simones suggests the commonality of women's history using Lizzie Borden, Martha Mitchell, Victoria Woodhull, Eve, Susan B. Anthony, and Aphra Behn.

Two writers from Cleveland complete the roster of Ohio authors. Eric Coble's Isolated Incidents is described as a "satirical dystopian comedy from the shards of our media-soaked future." Craig Strasshofer's The Angel of Anarchy is “a surrealist fantasia for anyone who ever really hated their day job."

Native American author, Simon Levy, from Los Angeles, explores a controversial theme from Native American history in She-Who-is-Made-of-Clay. The play is about a particular type of shaman found in some Plains and West Coast tribes. These shamans, called Berdaches, were gay men who were the only people allowed to bury the dead. This one person drama will be performed and directed by Jairo Cuesta.

Gay audiences will be especially pleased by the return to the festival of Los Angeles playwright Guillermo Reyes, whose September 11 from last year's Festival was recently performed off Broadway in New York. The Chilean-born gay writer will be

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represented by two plays this year. The Silence of a Kiss is described by Eisenstein as "a triangle set in a coffee shop" in which a gay actor and a waitress vie for the attentions of a handsome South American emigre who speaks no English. The West Hollywood Affair is about a one-night stand between "the typical blond Aryan who has one-night stands all the time and a Latino man who is trying to have it not be a onenight stand." In both plays personal and political issues blend as the characters struggle to communicate.

Audience discussions of the plays are an important feature of the Festival. Playwrights, who are in residence for a week, benefit from hearing audience response to their work. Eisenstein says that "One of the reasons the playwrights have continued to come back to the Festival is they have found the CPT audience to be the most intelligent audience they've ever met. That may be

"she adds," partly because it is a vocal audience and partly because it is not afraid to talk about issues."

The Festival of New Plays is an essential component in the profile of the Cleveland Public Theatre. As Eisenstein emphasizes CPT "has been a magnet for artists who want to meet each other, for people who are bursting apart either with the story they have to tell or something they have to show." Of CPT and the Festival she affirms, "It has to do with making a long-term commitment to being a place where people create."

During the Festival two bills of two plays each are performed twice each weekend from January 14-30. Performances are at 8 pm on Friday and Saturday, and 2:30 pm and 7 pm on Sunday. Tickets are $6 and $4 (students and seniors). Festival passes good for all twelve plays are $22 and $15. For info and reservations telephone 631-2727.

THEATRE SPOTS

Dobama Theatre is starting the new year with a production of Sight Unseen by Donald Margulies. The play is about a famous American painter who, while in England for his first international show, visits his original muse and lover. They confront their unreconciled passions in a dialogue that also engages issues in the contemporary art world. Joel Hammer, one of Cleveland's most gifted directors, is staging the play with Morgan Lund in the leading role. Sight Unseen was premiered at the South Coast Repertory Theatre in 1991, and enjoyed an eight month Off Broadway run in New York in 1992, winning the Obie Award for Best New Play of 1992. Performances are January 14-February 6, Thursday-Saturday at 8 pm, Sunday the 16th and 23rd at 7:30 pm, Sunday the 30th and the 6th at 2:30 pm. Tickets are $7-$10. For reservations telephone 932-6838.

The Karamu Performing Arts Theatre is presenting Kathleen McGheeAnderson's Oak and Ivy, a dramatization of the lives and marriage of African-American

poets Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore. Set in Dayton and Washington at the turn of the century, the play chronicles Dunbar's disintegration as he confronts a world that will only accept him for his Negro dialect work, keeping him safely in his place. Moore grapples with establishing her identity as a writer and as an independent woman in a world that tends to categorize her as a wife and helpmate to her more famous husband. The playwright incorporates passages from Dunbar and Moore's poetry into this passionate drama that provides insight into the history of AfricanAmerican writers in our country. McGheeAnderson, whose TV scripts have won numerous awards, developed Oak and Ivy at the Eugene O'Neil. Center in Waterford, Connecticut, and premiered the drama at the Crossroads Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1992. Performances are in the Arena Theatre, January 14-February 6, Thursday-Saturday at 8 pm, Sunday at 3 pm. Tickets are $10 with discounts available. For reservations telephone 795-7077. ♡

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1926-1962

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MARILYN MON 1926-1962

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