A Midsummer Night's Dream opens July 30 at TheatreWorks

The new theatre season opens next week as TheatreWorks presents a brand new interpretation of that most magical of Shakespeare's plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream. This version promises to be especially magical, with hip-hopping fairies and the enchanting atmosphere of the Rock Ledge Ranch.

Showtimes are 7:30pm Tuesdays through Sundays through August 22. To get to the venue, head into Garden of the Gods park and turn left at the first driveway, which leads to the parking lot for Rock Ledge Ranch. Signs will direct you to the tent where the performance is taking place.

Oh, and this month we get not one but two Prologue Lectures. Nationally renowned artistic directors Tina Packer and Jon Jory are back once more, this time to discuss the state of the American theatre and women in Shakespeare's plays. This starts at 6:00pm on Monday, August 3 in the Dusty Loo Bon Vivant Theatre.

That same night, at Rock Ledge Ranch, TheatreWorks artistic director Murray Ross will give a short talk about A Midsummer Night's Dream and Shakespeare in the Tent. This starts at 6:30pm.

See you there!

Springs Ensemble Theatre launches one-act play festival

Colorado playwrights have a brand new opportunity as Springs Ensemble Theatre has announced that they are now accepting submissions for their New Short Works Playwriting Festival.

SET is seeking 20- to 60-minute scripts on the theme NEW BEGINNINGS (whatever that may mean to you). Scriptss cannot have have received a full professional production, although previous readings or workshops are fine. Selected plays will receive a staged reading at SET on November 13-14, 2015. The deadline for submission is September 22.

I know that some of you responded to their earlier call for works by submitting a script. The word from SET is that they've read all of those submissions and will not be performing any of them. However, if your script meets the requirements of this new opportunity, you're free to resubmit. Note that some of the works that were previously submitted are ineligible for this festival.

For complete submission info, visit SET's web site.

A long night

Our attendance this summer hasn't been as big as last summer, when we were bursting at the seams, but it has held steady, with 14 people showing up for last night's meeting.

We got through six scripts in 2 hours and 45 minutes. The discussion went a little long on a couple of the plays and people seemed really tired by the end of the meeting. I'll try to rein things in a little better next time. 9:30 seems to be the point at which people (including me) stop functioning.

We opened with the beginning of my old-time radio farce The Last Radio Show. This section had a lot of setup as the various characters were introduced, but the audience loved the humor and breakneck pacing. The play should be a breeze to produce (the set and lighting requirements are minimal), so I'm planning to produce it and direct it myself at Black Box Theatre in January. Look for more info on this as we get closer to the performance date.

That was followed by the second half of August Mergelman's morality play, A Merry Interlude at Camelot, part of a series of youth plays exploring different theatrical traditions. Here Pierre is tricked by two of his customers and the clothier gets his revenge by playing a trick of his own. Everyone agreed that the play was a lot of fun.

After that we read the beginning of Deirdre Gilbert's Disciples of the Book, a funny look at a (mostly) woman's book club. The audience loved the richness of the characters and thought that the dialogue did a great job capturing the cattiness these groups often display. Deirdre originally wanted to include 12 characters as a metaphor for the Last Supper, but she now thinks she'll limit it to 8 in order to make it less unwieldy (more wieldy?).

We followed that with the conclusion of Chuck Cabell's dark comedy Hemlock. Here we see brothers Bryce and Neville hatch a scheme to get out from under the thumb of Fredo, the mobster who's calling the shots in their assisted suicide business, but the scheme falls apart when another mobster bumps off Fredo. For the most part, people felt unsatisfied that the brothers weren't victorious at the end and there were several suggestions for endings, but the audience got a kick out of discovering that Neville's airhead girlfriend Bunny turned is not such an airhead after all.

Next we read a rewrite of the end of Sue Bachman's family drama Torn. This included a moving scene in which a teenage alcoholic faces the mother of the boy he killed in a car accident. Sue did a great job depicting the raw-edged emotions of the characters, although some thought the mother should react more violently at first and others thought that a slight reordering of the actions (including a hug and a slap) would heighten the emotions further.

We wrapped everything up with three rewritten scenes from Tim Phillips' Prohibition-era romance Abigail Finds Love. In one scene, we see Clara confront Abigail about her scandalous liaisons with piano-playing Paul, with Clara claiming that Abigail could lose her ex-husband's fortune taken from her because of it. There was some discussion about whether this could happen, but people felt that the scenes keep getting better each time they're rewritten.

Our next meeting is Monday, August 10. See you then!

June is bustin' out all over

We just completed our wettest month ever in Colorado Springs, so it's been nice to enjoy some warm summer weather and see the trees bustin' out with leaves at last.

And our meeting was bustin' out with energy and enthusiasm. We had 13 attendees last night, with the welcome return of many of the actors we'd been missing in recent months. I got to tell you, this made casting a dream, and I was thrilled with the dynamic performance of my own play last night.

We opened with a new comedy from August Mergelman's burgeoning collection of short plays exploring different theatrical traditions. This one was A Merry Interlude at Camelot, a medieval cautionary tale about the travails of a henpecked husband. Going into the reading, August was especially concerned about the pacing and although some thought it was a little long, others pointed out that the farce-like dialogue would go a lot quicker when rehearsed.

Next up was the beginning of Grant Swenson's high school fable Four Seasonal Quests. In it, four heroes pursue four quests, each with a different type of ending: comic, tragic, heroic and ironic. The sassy interplay between hero Julian and the feisty heroine Ember, who demands the right to pursue her own quest, was particularly well-done. As for the character descriptions at the beginning, one commenter suggested that the emphasis should be on the different personalities of the characters, rather than their ages,

After that we read the end of Sue Bachman's one-act family drama, Having Faith. Here we learn that the elderly Evelyn's difficulties are due to the onset of Alzheimer's. The audience really liked how the story wrapped up, with an upbeat yet realistic resolution, and felt that the emotions, as always in Sue's writing, are admirably true-to-life.

Next we read several new scenes from Chuck Cabell's dark comedy, Hemlock. In these scenes, we saw the financial noose tightening around the neck of hapless heroes, Bryce and Neville, as they're forced to borrow money from a loan shark to keep their death-oriented business going. Everybody loved the humor, and more than one person commented on the delicious irony in the fact that while the brothers are helping kill off others, they refuse to honor their own mother's request for a physician-assisted suicide.

We finished up with the ending of my cocktail party farce Butterfly Effect. All of the plot threads led to a final, shocking twist as one of the characters died a violent death and another character turned out to have plotted the whole thing. Before the reading, I was afraid that the ending might be too dark or that people would hate it because they're left with no one to root for. The consensus was that yes, it was dark, but the farcical elements were so over-the-top and the characters so nasty that it worked.

One side note. Longtime member Jeff Schmoyer brought one of the print-on-demand books he designed for local novelist Bob Spiller. It looked very professional, and I'll be talking to Jeff to see what he can do for my own novels, which I recently made available through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. If you've got a manuscript that's been sitting around, I strongly recommend that you talk to Jeff to see what he can do for you.

For more info, check out Jeff's website at www.jmarsink.com.

See you all next month! Have a great Fourth of July!

Spring is in the air

We've had an unusually wet May, with a surprise hailstorm and one last (let's hope!) snowstorm on Saturday, but there's no mistaking the generally warmer temperatures and the budding leaves on the trees. Springtime is here!

We had a great meeting last night, with 13 people attending, including two new actors: Danine Schell, who is well-known for her performances in numerous local plays as well as the Colorado Renaissance Faire, and Scott Loring, who was the drama teacher at Widefield High School for 20 years. Scott is also a writer, and I encouraged him to bring some of his stuff to the next meeting. Greetings and a big Drama Lab welcome to both of you!

We moved along at a good clip, reading six plays in two and a half hours. We opened with the first scene of Hemlock, a hilariously dark comedy by Chuck Cabell. In it, a pair of brothers find a solution for their struggling funeral home business when they realize they can make more money if they control the "raw materials". The hook is a great one and the characters were very well-drawn.

Next up was Penny from Heaven, the latest in August Mergelman's series of short plays exploring world theatrical traditions. This one was a vaudeville version of Pinocchio. People loved the rapid pace and the continuous flow of gags.

After that we read the next scene from cocktail party farce, Butterfly Effect. Here we saw the pompous boss Henry down an entire pork roast after a misfired rescue flare cut off the cottage's power. There was one question whether the pork would be that raw if it had been in the oven for an hour. Others commented that the play continues to move along well but that this section seemed less British than previous sections.

We next read Sue Bachman's short family drama, What A Mother Knows. This play started out as several loosely related scenes about a Depression-era girl named Missy, but after receiving some helpful feedback from Jess Weaver, Sue decided to use them as flashbacks, tying them together through the framing device of a grown Missy facing an unwanted pregnancy. Everyone agreed that the scenes worked much better this way, with the framing device lending them a deeper significance.

This was followed by a couple of new scenes from Tim Phillips' Prohibition-era drama, Abigail Finds Love. Here we're introduced to Iva, the former fiancee of piano player Paul, who has now joined the Salvation Army and wants to make sure Paul is staying free from worldly temptations. The audience liked the addition of this character and suggested additional directions that she could be taken.

We wrapped up the evening with a rewrite of Deirdre Gilbert's short comedy Capsaicin. This time, she relocated the play to Indiana, which allowed for some fun wordplay centered around that state's unusual use of the word "mangoes". Commenters liked the mother's struggle to accept her granddaughter's unusual name, Tasman, as it seemed to symbolize her struggle to accept the many difficult changes in her life, something with which many people could relate.

Our next meeting is Monday, June 8. See you then!

Drama Lab members win two local contests

The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center has announced the winning plays for their Georgia O'Keeffe-themed Rough Writers New Play Festival. Eight plays were selected, including four from national playwrights, but it was a Drama Lab sweep for the local slots with all four going to longtime members of our cozy little group.

The winners are:

Sue Bachman, Georgia On His Mind

Jess Weaver, The Last Rabbit

Grant Swenson, Mary and Georgia

Todd Wallinger, The Real Meaning of Things

You can catch all four at the same time as the FAC will be reading them together as part of a single program. The reading is at 8pm on Saturday, June 7 and Saturday, June 13 in the upstairs Music Room. To learn more, visit the FAC website.

Just as exciting, Black Box Theatre announced that Lulu's Box by Drama Lab member Tim Phillips was selected to be performed at the Fives New Play Festival on June 25-27. We're all very happy for him!

Black Box's Nancy Holaday sent word that she could really use more guys to audition. Auditions are May 11-14. For more info, visit the Black Box Theatre website.

I highly encourage you to attend to one or both of these festivals. Not only will you be supporting these local playwrights, but just as importantly, you'll be supporting theatre companies that support local playwrights.

See you at the theatre!

The Liar opens next week at TheatreWorks

A reminder that The Liar opens April 23 (the Bard's birthday!) at TheatreWorks. This is a wonderful adaptation by David Ives of Pierre Corneille's 1644 masterpiece. The Liar is a hilarious farce about a charming young rogue with an unmatched gift for stretching the truth--and the troubles he gets into when he meets the woman of his dreams.

The play runs through May 10. Showtimes are 7:30pm Wednesdays through Fridays, 2pm and 7:30 pm Saturdays (no matinee on April 25) and 4pm Sundays.

Also the associated Prologue Lecture promises to be a fun one. Bill Lepp, fine-time winner of the West Virginia Lying Contest leads a workshop on how to tell whoppers. That's at 2;30pm on Sunday, April 26 in the Dusty Loo.

See you there!