Mentions/Awards/Kudos/Photos:

 

4th NPF acquires three new sponsors:

The Whitaker Foundation will be donating $5,000 for the support of GreenHouse Series programming.

The Water Tower Inn at SLU is donating the lodging for all of the attending playwrights in the festival.

Schlafly Brewery is donating beverages for the free patron reception taking place after the last performance.

"The Sinker," one of five script read to over 275 people at the 4th Annual GreenHouse New Play Festival, chosen to be produced in the 2010 mainstage season.

Press Release for the Festival (.doc format)

Press Release for the "The Sinker," chosen script of the New Play Festival (.doc format)

 

Critics' Reviews

 

Reported by Sarah Boslaugh - KDHX.org

The hottest ticket in town this past weekend was the 4th annual GreenHouse New Play Festival at the Centene Center. Or perhaps I should say the hottest non-ticket, since thanks to generous sponsorship the weekend's performances were entirely free. Five staged readings of new plays by some of the best actors in St. Louis, with four of the playwrights in attendance and participating in talkback sessions after the readings, in a comfortably air-conditioned building with functioning bathrooms: you can't beat it with a stick.

If you've never been to a staged reading, this festival would be a good place to give it a try. The format was chosen partly out of necessity-director and cast have only 11 hours to spend on their play due to union regulations-but it also has the effect of focusing attention squarely on the playwright's words while leaving audience members free to complete the interpretation in their mind. I've only attended the New Play Festival for the past two years, but in both cases there was a nice variety among the finalist scripts and all were well worth hearing. And the audience has been steadily increasing, from 124 in 2006 to 275 this year (yielding a respectable average of 55 per reading: I've attended plenty of fully-staged performances with far fewer audience members).

The five plays performed were finalists chosen from about 250 submissions by readers affiliated with HotCity Theatre. The selection process involves several rounds: first authors sent a ten-page excerpt and plot summary, from which about 20 semi-finalists were chosen. Authors of those plays were invited to submit full scripts and five finalists were selected from among them. The ultimate winner was chosen based on a number of factors, including audience response at the readings, a factor HotCity believes is unique to this contest.

The winner was The Sinker by Jami Brandli, a Los Angeles-based playwright, screenwriter and novelist. It uses the "closed room" formula-three characters waiting out a blizzard in a house on the outskirts of Boston-to explore relationships among those characters and fourth who is never appears but constantly present in their conversations: Josh, a charismatic writer who has just signed a contract for his first novel. George (Rusty Gunther), is a childhood friend of Josh, Liz (Julie Layton) is his agent, and Candi (Lindsey Trout) is his writing student. Tension escalates as the storm worsens and a gun is discovered in a coffee tin: will Chekhov's Law be obeyed, and if so by whom? Directed by Sarah Armstrong.

The Sinker will be workshopped by HotCity in the fall and given a full production next spring. After that, who knows? It's worth noting that last year's winner, Cockeyed by William Missouri Downs, will be published by Samuel French, putting it in the exalted company of recent Broadway hits such as Alan Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests and Patrick Barlow's adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps.

Green Whales by Lia Romeo was not eligible for the competition for the competitions because it was recently selected to be workshopped and presented off-Broadway. It uses a traditional dramatic structure to explore the boundaries of sexual ethics and desire, as well as the question of when we should settle for what's currently available in our personal lives and when we should hold out for more. Karen Wilson (Julie Layton) is a 38-year-old woman with a chromosomal condition which makes her look like a 12-year-old girl. Her sister Joanna (Bess Moynihan) decides that Karen should seek romance among pedophiles, since normal adult men are not attracted to her, and uses information from her policeman boyfriend Ray (Travis Estes) to engineer a meeting between Karen and Ian (Chuck Harper). And why Ian? Because he was recently taken in for police questioning after someone observing him observing a girls' soccer practice a little too intently. Directed by Chuck Harper.

Spake by David L. Williams explores an idea dear to the heart of everyone involved with the theater, that words can be magic, in a play which juxtaposes the mundane aspects of academic politics and young adult romances with philosophical questions about cultural memory and identity. As the play opens, a snowstorm in the Ukraine kills the last speakers of a rare language called Ujide: this sets off a series of events involving a supposedly untranslatable manuscript which go beyond the boundaries of what we normally believe to be possible. The production was directed by John Pierson and the actors, some of whom played multiple roles, were Brooke Edwards, Peter Mayer, Jane Paradise, Tyler Vickers, Megan Vickers, Ali King, Alexander Boehm and Paul Cooper.

Mother Bear by Jayme McGhan takes place in a truckstop in rural Utah, where union organizer Freely (Jeff Wright) is trying to reach an agreement with Mother (Greg Johnston), the scripture-quoting head of an outlaw gang of truckers known as The Disciples. The action takes place at Vera's (Kim Furlow) café, which is also visited by would-be Disciple Delia (Julie Venegoni) and recent initiate Bones (Tyler Vickers). Based in part on the author's experiences when a rented truck broke down in the Moab desert, leaving him trapped him at a truckstop in Green River Utah for 12 hours, Mother Bear takes the audience on a journey in which no one is quite as they present themselves. Directed by Jerry Russo.

Dreams of the Washer King by Christopher Wall plays with audience expectations regarding space and time as it moves fluidly between present and past actions. Although initially it appears that the setting and characters could not be more ordinary-two high school students and their single parents leading difficult lives in an impoverished landscape-gradually information is revealed which calls into question most of the assumptions we have made about these people and their lives. Directed by Annamaria Pileggi with actors Lavonne Byers (Claire), Larry Dell (Wade), Antonio Rodriguez (Ryan), Catherine Moreton (Elsie), Sam King (Boy 1) and Steven Hollander (Boy 2).