Drama Queen

Hispanic Fest celebrates Latino theater in the U.S.

The 27th annual International Hispanic Theatre Festival doesn't kick off until mid July, but producing artistic director Mario Ernesto Sánchez already has nearly all the pieces of an always-challenging puzzle assembled.

After paying tribute in past festivals to the theater of Mexico, Colombia and other countries, this year's festival will focus on Latino theater in the United States.  And its offerings -- some in English, others in Spanish, still others bilingual -- are casting a wide net in terms of audience inclusion.

The festival gets an early launch June 8 with an invitation-only cocktail reception to reveal artist Roberto Silva's poster.  A jazz concert from the Jaume Vilaseca Trio of Barcelona will keep the party going from 7 to 10 p.m. in Miami Dade College's Wolfson Campus Auditorium.

This year the festival will give its lifetime achievement in the performing arts award to Teresa María Rojas, founder of Prometeo Theatre and a prominent theater educator who was the first mentor to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz. She'll receive the honor immediately after the opening night performance July 12.

That show is a production of Miguel Piñero's incendiary Short Eyesby the Los Angeles-based Urban Theatre Movement.  It kicks off the festival at 8:30 p.m. July 12-13 in the Carnival Studio Theater at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. For mature audiences, the play features brief nudity and is performed in English.

At 8:30 p.m. July 13-14, Prometeo Theatre will perform Marco Antonio de la Parra's Infieles (Unfaithful), a play about being unfaithful personally and politically.  That show will be presented in the Wolfson Auditorium. 

The Los Angeles-based Latino Theater Company will perform Evelina Fernández's play Solitude, a work inspired by Octavio Paz's The Labyrinth of Solitude.  The play will be done at the Carnival Studio Theater in English at 8:30 p.m. July 14, 5 p.m. July 15.

Flor de un Día, a company from Buenos Aires, will present Santiago Loza's Nada del amor me produce envidia (Nothing About Love Produces Envy), a musical theater piece about a seamstress who gets orders for identical dresses -- one coming from Eva Perón.  That show goes on in Spanish at 8:30 p.m. July 18-19 in the Prometeo Theatre at Miami Dade's Wolfson Campus.

Mexico City's La Máquina de Teatro performs Juliana Faesler's Malinche/Malinches in Spanish at 8:30 p.m. July 19-20 at the Carnival Studio Theater.  New York's Teatro Zero will present Diana Chery-Ramírez's Aviones de papel (Paper Airplanes), a piece that considers lack of communication, isolation and domestic violence, in Spanish at 8:30 p.m. July 20-21 at Prometeo Theatre.

At 5:45 p.m. July 21 at the Key Biscayne Community Center, New York's Teatro Sea will present the free bilingual family play El encuentro de Juan Bobo y Pedro Animal (The Encounter of Juan Bobo and Pedro Animal) by Manuel Antonio Morán.

A production of Oscar Martinez's Ella en mi cabeza (She's On My Mind) by Arte & Friends from Bogota, Colombia, will be done in Spanish at the Carnival Studio Theater at 8:30 p.m. July 21, 5  p.m. July 22.

The festival's free annual International Children's Day runs from 2 to 7 p.m. July 22 at Miami Dade College's InterAmerican Campus.  The bilingual programming includes a 3 p.m. performance of Cristina Ferrari's Yo la llama Rusita Rojas (I Call Her Rusita Rojas) by Miami's Teatro Doble and a 6 p.m. performance of El Encuentro de Juan Bobo y Pedro Animal.

The festival winds up with performances from two companies.  Ecuador's Contra el Viento Teatro performs Patricio Vallejo Aristizábal's  La flor de la Chukirawa (The Flower of Chukirawa)at 8:30 p.m. July 27-28 in Spanish at Prometeo Theatre.  And artistic director Sánchez's company,
Teatro Avante, closes out the festival at 8:30 p.m. July 26-28, 5 p.m. July 29, with Virgilio Piñero's play El no (The No), adapted by Gilda Santana and presented in at the Carnival Studio Theater in Spanish with English supertitles.

Special events during the festival include a Spanish-language educational conference on trends in Latino and Latin American performing arts from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. July 13-14 at Miami Dade's Wolfson Campus, Room 2106.  Prometeo will also do a free staged reading at 8:30 p.m. July 16 of three short plays by Julio Matas (The Change,Tonos and The Ladies' Game) at its Wolfson Campus theater.  The company will do another free reading at 8:30 p.m. July 17 of Luis Enrique Gutiérrez Ortiz Monasterio's The Girls from the 3.5 Floppies, a play for mature audiences.  Both evenings are in Spanish.

Tickets to individual festival shows are $30 each, but they're discounted to $25 each for three or more shows, seniors, students or those with disabilities.  For tickets to events at the Arsht Center's Carnival Studio Theater, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami, call 305-949-6722 or visit the center's web site.  For tickets to events at Prometeo, 300 NE Second Ave., Miami, call 305-237-3262 or visit Prometo's site.  Miami Dade's InterAmerican Campus is at 627 SW 27th Ave., Miami; the Key Biscayne Community Center at 10 Village Green Way, Key Biscayne. Both of those venues have free parking.

For festival questions, call Teatro Avante at 305-445-8877.

 (Photo of Mario Ernesto Sánchezby Mitchell Zachs)

 

 

Arts Garage celebrates new plays

New play work was Louis Tyrrell's passion during the 24 years he served as artistic director of the late, lamented Florida Stage.  So it's no surprise that Tyrrell is launching his new venture, the Theatre at Arts Garage in Delray Beach, with a smaller-scale version of a new play festival, the kind of event that was a big draw at the debt-burdened Florida Stage before it suddenly shut down in June.

Though the artsy location in Delray Beach off bustling Atlantic Avenue is more intimate and modest, the names involved in the New Play Fest are big ones, including keynote speaker (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Marsha Norman.

The festival, which begins Thursday and runs through Sunday, offers six play readings over its four days.  Tickets to the readings and Norman's speech are $15-$20 for each event, or you can pay $112 and get into everything.

The fest begins with a reading of Lauren Gunderson's Exit, Pursued by a Bear at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.  Des Gallant directs Nancy Noto, Andrew Wind, Taylor Staniforth and Scott Douglas Wilson  in a play described as a contemporary Southern revenge comedy.

John Briggs directs the 7:30 p.m. Friday reading of William Mastrosimone's Oblivion.  Antonio Amadeo, Marckenson Charles, Cliff Burgess , Natasha Sherritt, Steven Chambers and Andrea Conte appear in the play about a composer who tries to rescue a drug-addicted young woman.

At 2 p.m. Saturday, Margaret Ledford directs the reading of Jessica Goldberg's Better, a play about a family dealing with a fatal illness.  In the cast are David Sirois, David Nail, Amy McKenna, Bruce Linser, Peter Haig, Barbara Bradshaw and Deborah Sherman. 

Norman delivers her keynote address, Writing the Third Act, at 7 p.m. Saturday.  At 8 p.m., Tyrrell directs a reading of her play Nightly News from the War on Women, about human trafficking and violence toward women.  In the cast are Alan Gerstel, Julie Rowe, Damian Robinson, Mayumi combs, Lou Tyrrell, Karen Stephens and Jessica Peterson.

On Sunday at 2 p.m., Clayton Phillips directs a reading of Bruce Graham's The Outgoing Tide, a play about a family and a man who decides to take charge of his life.  Actors Kelli Mohrbacher, Dan Leonard, Barbara Bradshaw and Peter Tedeschi are in the cast.

The festival's final reading  is at 7 p.m. Sunday.  Israel Horovitz directs his own Gloucester Blue, a play involving secrets, sexual tensions and much more.  David Nail, Amy McKenna, Robert Walsh and Wayne LeGette are featured in the cast.

The Theatre at Arts Garage is at 180 NE First St., Delray Beach, and it really is in a garage, so parking is no problem.

Need info?  Call 561-450-6357 or visit the organization's web site.

Manzelli, Tyrrell get new gigs

Actor-director John Manzelli, a Barry University theater faculty member, has been with City Theatre and its popular Summer Shorts program for four years, last season serving as the festival's artistic director.  As the company prepares for its 17th season of presenting a collection of short plays, Manzelli has a new title and greater responsibilities.  Stephanie Norman, one of City Theatre's founders, has left her active leadership role for a new job and is joining the company's board of directors.  So Manzelli, who will continue as an assistant professor of theater at Barry, is becoming City's newest producing artistic director.

"In this economy, we're trying to look at programming that makes sense," Manzelli said Tuesday.  "We're talking to the Arsht Center and the Broward Center about collaborative partnerships and co-presenting."

Playwright Susan Westfall, another City Theatre founder, returned as the troupe's literary director last year, and will continue leading the annual CityWrights playwrights' weekend, which just received a $75,000 grant from the Knight Arts Challenge.  Attorney Steve Eisenberg is joining the company as its general manager.  For info on City Theatre, call 305-755-9401 or visit its web site.

Also on the theater jobs front, Florida Stage founder and artistic director Louis Tyrrell has found a new home at Delray Beach's Arts Garage.  Tyrrell, who led the critically acclaimed theater for 24 years along with managing director Nancy Barnett, has been out of work since Florida Stage's board abruptly shut it down and filed for bankruptcy in June.  The company's debt had risen to $2.7 million in debt (some of that money paid by subscribers for a 2011-2012 season that didn't happen), and bankruptcy proceedings continue.

While Barnett has returned to acting (she recently appeared in After the Revolutionat the Caldwell Theatre Company), Tyrrell is again focusing on the new play work that helped make Florida Stage a nationally respected theater.  He is becoming artistic director of a new company dubbed The Theatre at Arts Garage.  The facility at 180 NE First St. in Delray's Pineapple Grove area presents multidisciplinary work, including dance, music visual arts and movies.

On a modest $150,000 budget for his first  season (Florida Stage's at one point hit $4.1 million), he will present a series of Tuesday evening play readings in February, with Israel Horovitz, John Guare and William Mastrosimone in attendance to hear the works and participate in post-play discussions. Tyrell says he's hoping that the fourth playwright will be Eve Ensler, but that isn't set yet.  From March 1 to March 4, the Theatre at Arts Garage will present The New Play Festival, an event inspired by Florida Stage's 1st Stage New Works Festival, with readings of six new works and Mastrosimone leading play-writing workshops.  Pulitzer Prize winner Marsha Norman will be the keynote speaker. The company's first full production, a play-with-music titled Woody Sez (about folk legend Woody Guthrie), will run March 16-April 8.

"I had a reflective summer, and when this opportunity came up, it felt right on so many levels," Tyrrell said.  "You have to ask, 'What is the new model? What do people want in an evening of going out to theater?'  The Arts Garage space is a raw, storefront space.  It's great fun...There are relationships that don't go away, that exist because of a shared love of new work.  But there will be new writers, new titles, new stories to tell."

For info on Arts Garage, call 561-450-6357 or visit its web site.

'24-Hour Theatre Project,' 91 hours later

So I went to the Naked Stage's fifth annual 24-Hour Theatre Project on Monday evening, and work has been kicking my behind ever since.  But I didn't want to let the work week end without sharing a few random observations, memories and special moments from what has become a welcome, creative bonding ritual for South Florida's theater community.

*  It never ceases to amaze me what so many talented professionals are able to pull off in such an incredibly short time.  How do you write a short play, let alone a good short play, in 12 hours?  How does an actor not only memorize and retain sometimes-complex dialogue, but do a convincing/funny/compelling job of creating a character in 10 hours or less?  How does a director get the new play staged, how does the sound designer find just the right music and effects, how does the behind-the-scenes team bring each little world to life? From the audience, even with the odd glitch, it looks like magic.

*  As always, the plays were a mixed bag, generally enjoyable and, this year, heavy on sexual themes and content.  Which is fine, except there were a few kids in the audience, which can make an otherwise perfectly acceptable adult play cringe-inducing.

*  My personal favorites among the plays were written by three of the four founders of Miami's Zoetic Stage.  Stuart Meltzer (who then did double duty as director of Christopher De Paola's Marvin Becomes a Man) spun the title Hubris and the Rain Cloud into the story of three witty, withering sisters confronting the hot young waitress who's been sleeping with one sister's husband.  Christopher Demos-Brown crafted a little gem titled A Martin Among Us, a riotous piece about a nerdy guy who can simply point his finger and give the gift of sexual ecstasy to just about anyone.  And Michael McKeever, the prolific playwright who became a plot point in Tony Finstrom's Imaginary Friends, wrote the riotous yet touching Love Machine, Rusted, about a sexually frustrated young couple and the swingers who come calling.

* In the um, well, OK category were Juan C. Sanchez's Love in Stereo (with an especially strange older couple),  De Paola's Marvin Becomes a Man (truly, creepily unsettling) and David Michael Sirois' Holy Mary, Mother of Todd (a relentlessly offensive play set at a meeting of Sex Addicts' Anonymous).  Yipes.

*  Performances in 24-Hour's fleeting plays that were especially memorable include Amy McKenna as a world-weary rabbit and Laura Hodos as a cute-as-a-button bunny in Andie Arthur's Ifigenia and the Inadequate Wand; a biting Melissa Minyard and Irene Adjan in Hubris and the Rain Cloud; Oscar Cheda as the Martian and Anne Chamberlain, Andrew Wind and Michaela Cronan as the recipients of his special gift, in A Martian Among Us; Adam Simpson and Betsy Graver as the young couple, Karen Stephens and John Felix as the bizzaro swingers in Love Machine, Rusted.

Five years after Naked Stage founders Katherine Amadeo, Antonio Amadeo and John Manzelli first tried The 24-Hour Theatre Project, the event has become a joyous, exhausting kickoff to each new season.  It showcases much of South Florida's theater talent and makes you eager to see what these gifted actors, directors and playwrights will do in longer form -- with much more rehearsal -- during the season. Please, bring it on.

(Bachi Frost photos, from top, show Avi Hoffman rehearsing with Sally Bondi and Amy Miller Brennan for Holy Mary, Mother of Todd; Melissa Minyard in Hubris and the Rain Cloud; Oscar Cheda and Andrew Wind in A Martian Among Us.)

 

 

'24-Hour' wordsmiths off and writing

Naked Stage's 24-Hour Theatre Project gets its one-time-only performance Monday night at 8 at the Caldwell Theatre Company -- and now we know what will be on the bill.  Playwrights, directors, stage managers and actors got matched Sunday evening in Boca Raton, and if you're reading this any time before 7 a.m., just know that at various spots around the Caldwell, eight playwrights are trying to achieve just the right balance of creativity and caffeine in theater's version of pulling an all-nighter.

So if you go to South Florida theater's most inspired fundraiser (and why wouldn't you?), here's what you'll see.

* David Michael Sirois is writing a play titled Holy Mary, Mother of Todd. Avi Hoffman will direct Amy Miller Brennan, Deborah Sherman, Matthew William Chizever, Cliff Burgess and Sally Bondi in the piece, which sounds like a comedy.

* Tony Finstrom is creating Imaginary Friends, with Dan Kelley directing. Margery Lowe, Barbara Sloan, Laura Turnbull and Tracey Barrow-Schoenblatt are in that cast.
*  Christopher De Paola is writing Marvin Becomes a Man. Gordon McConnell will direct Nicholas Richberg, Mcley Lafrance, Elizabeth Dimon and Dave Corey.

*  Christopher Demos-Brown's play is A Martian Among Us, directed by Barbara Bradshaw. Michaela Cronan, Oscar Cheda, Anne Chamberlain and Andrew Wind make up the cast.

*  Juan C Sanchez is writing Love in Stereo, directed by Leland Patton and featuring Nan Barnett, Jackie Rivera, Marckenson Charles and Clive Cholerton. 
*  Andie Arthur is writing Ifigenia and the Inadequate Wand. Amy London will direct Amy McKenna, Ken Clement, Jessica Peterson and Laura Hodos in the play.

*  Stuart Meltzer is writing Hubris and the Rain Cloud, with Todd Allen Durkin directing. Irene Adjan, Andrea Conte, Melissa Minyard and Mikaela Schipani are in the cast.

*  Michael McKeever is creating what sounds like another comedy, Love Machine, Rusted. Michael Leeds is staging it, with Betsy Graver, Adam Simpson, Karen Stephens and John Felix in the cast.

The Caldwell is at 7901 N. Federal Hwy., Boca Raton.  Your ticket price will help fund a coproduction by The Naked Stage and The Promethean Theatre in 2012.  And in just four years, 24-Hour Theatre has become a treasured part of the South Florida theater community's seasonal rituals. Tickets are $25 ($50 for big-deal VIP seating), and you can get them online at Ovationtix.  Come see eight fresh-from-the-laptop new plays.  And eight very exhausted playwrights.

24 Hour Theatre Project returns

The Naked Stage's 24 Hour Theatre Project, that most popular and creative of fundraisers, resurfaces at 8 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 3, at Boca Raton's Count de Hoernle Theatre (yes, that's the home of the Caldwell Theatre Company).

Artistic director Katherine Amadeo (who is simultaneously working on another project with her actor-husband Antonio -- the December birth of a baby boy) has announced the names of a number of South Florida actors, directors and playwrights who are planning to participate in the sleepless, intense creative experience of taking eight brand-new short plays from idea to performance in a day.

This year's lineup, in alphabetical order:  Irene Adjan, Steve Anthony, Andie Arthur, Nancy Barnett, Tracey Barrow-Schoenblatt, Sally Bondi, Barbara Bradshaw, Amy Miller Brennan, Cliff Burgess, Oscar Cheda,Clive Cholerton, Ken Clement, Andrea Conte, Dave Corey, Christopher Demos-Brown, Ryan Didato, Elizabeth Dimon, Todd Allen Durkin, Lela Elam, John Felix, Tony Finstrom, Betsy Graver, Laura Hodos, Avi Hoffman, Julie Kleiner, Michael Leeds, Amy London, Margery Lowe, Michael McKeever, Amy McKenna, John Manzelli, Stuart Meltzer, Leland Patton, Jackie Rivera, Juan C. Sanchez, Deborah Sherman, Adam Simpson, David Michael Sirois, Barbara Sloan, Karen Stephens, Shane Tanner, Barry Tarallo and Laura Turnbull.  And maybe more to come.

The theater is located at 7901 N. Federal Hwy., Boca Raton.  Tickets are $25 (VIP tickets are $50, and those buy you reserved seating an a souvenir poster).  Buy them via Ovationtix at 1-866-811-4111.  For Naked Stage info, visit the company's web site.

Alternative theater takes the spotlight

Conundrum Stages has an ambitious, four-night festival -- On the Boards: Our Alternative Theater Festival -- kicking off on Wednesday at the Tamarac Theatre of Performing Arts, 7143 Pine Island Rd. in Tamarac.  And this festival is affordable:  a suggested $10 donation gets you into any night's program.

Designed to promote South Florida theater companies, the festival also features preshow-concerts by several actor-singers.

On Wednesday, singer Lisa Kerstin Braun kicks things off, followed by a sample of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues directed by and featuring Lea Roy, who is staging the play for a fall fundraiser at the Center for Creative Growth.  The second part of Wednesday's theater bill is The Honesty Project, a theater-music-dance piece drawn from questions answered by Florida Atlantic University theater students.  FAU grad Bradford Sadler directs.

On Thursday, Palm Beach County's Immeasurable Theatre performs Paradise Lost: Wings of War, adapted and directed by Ouida Williams from the poem by John Milton.  After that, The Alliance Theatre Lab presents The Lab Project, previewing new works by resident playwright David Sirois.

Friday's program begins with a concert by john Lariviere, followed by scenes from Thinking Cap Theatre's productions of MilkMilk Lemonade by Joshua Conkel and Death for Sydney Black by Leah Nanako Winkler. Then, Vanessa Garcia's The Charms of the Gifted and Wendy White's 7 Generations get read.

Saturday's program begins with Jeanne Lynn Gray in concert.  Fort Lauderdale's Infinite Abyss Productions will perform Bare: A Trip on Songs, a collection of music featuring six singers.  After that, Three Lefts Productions performs Little Men by Gary and Edmund Entin.

All of the festival programs begin at 7 p.m.  For information, call 954-673-5124, email conundrumstages@ymail.com or visit the company's web site.

Promethean sets a summer show...and more

Continuing in the tradition of its summer hits Cannibal! The Musical and Evil Dead the Musical, Davie's Promethean Theatre is gearing up for another spoofy horror musical, this one Song of the Living Dead, a Zombie Musical.

Created at Atlanta's Dad's Garage Theatre Company, the show -- with music by Eric Frampton and Matt Horgan, and a cript by Horgan and Travis Sharp -- tells the story of a newly engaged couple stumbling into the midst of a zombie attack.  Margaret M. Ledford will direct, with Phil Hinton as musical director.  In the cast are Clay Cartland, Matthew William Chizever, Robert Coward, Mark Della Ventura, Lindsey Elizabeth Forgey, Mary Gundlach, Jaimie Kautzmann, Noah Levine, Joshua Olivares and Sharon Peoples.

Song of the Living Dead opens Aug. 12 and runs through Sept. 4 in the Black Box Theatre in the Don Taft University Center at Nova Southeastern University, 3301 College Ave., Davie.  Performances are 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 5 p.m. Sunday, and tickets are $30.  Call 1-866-811-4111 to order tickets, or get more info on Promethean's web site.

***

Things happen when you're bringing theater companies from all over the world to perform at the International Hispanic Theatre Festival, and due to travel troubles, the Friday and Saturday performances of the Argentine production El Trompo metálico in the Adrienne Arsht Center's Carnival Studio Theatre have been cancelled.

Instead, Prometeo Theatre will offer two more performances of its show Mujeres de Shakespeare, written and directed by Neher Jacqueline Briceño.  The play is performed in Spanish wit English supertitles.  Perormances are at 8:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday at Prometeo's theater on Miami Dade College's Wolfson Campus, 300 NE Second Ave., Miami.  Tickets are $25.  For information, call 305-237-3262 or visit Prometeo's web site.

***

Not much theater around on Mondays, but this coming Monday actor Chaz Mena will direct a staged reading of Rogelio Martinez's All Eyes and Ears at GableStage.

In his cast are Ken Clement, Alex Alvarez, Diane Garle, Laura Pons, John Manzelli and Deborah Sherman.  Martinez play is set in early '60s Havana, focusing on a family loyal to Fidel Castro's revolution, and the price the family pays for that loyalty.

The free reading is in GableStage's space at the Biltmore Hotel, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables.  For info, call 305-445-1119 or visit the GableStage web site.

 

Calling all playwrights

City Theatre's popular Summer Shorts festival serves grown-up theater lovers (through Shorts and headliner Jai Rodrigruez's late-night show Dirty Little Secrets) and family audiences (through the Lisa Loeb-Marco Ramirez musical Camp Kappawanna).  This year's festival is reaching out in another direction with an information- and entertainment-filled literary conference, CityWrights.

The gathering, which begins with registration and a welcome party Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m. at Miami's Epic Hotel, offers two days of panels, workshops and performances on Friday and Saturday, with a wrap-up Sunday brunch June 26 celebrating the playwrights and company of Summer Shorts, which winds up its run at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts that day, then moves for an additional week's run at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.

Playwright Susan "Susi" Westfall, City Theatre's literary manager and a co-founder of the company, dreamed up the literary conference and has filled it with impressive names, enticing (and useful) panels and an exciting bonus:  a free performance-lecture by Obie Award-winning playwright Lisa Kron (the author of 2.5 Minute Ride, Well and other works).

Kron, who is participating in CityWrights thanks in part to the Dramatist Guild Fund's Traveling Masters Program, will lead a workshop for 10 young South Florida playwrights.   She'll also give a free, open-to-all lecture and performance titled What Will Happen Next? at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in the Peacock Room at the Arsht, 1300 Biscayne Blvd.  City Theatre describes her performance this way:  "One life in the theater and the search for dramatic action.  In this entertaining and enlightening mix of conversation and performance, Lisa Kron shares stories spanning the journey from her start improvising funny anecdotes in scrappy East Village clubs in the '80s, through the thrill of debuting her play Well on Broadway.  Along the way she shares what she has learned about the nature of dramatic action -- why plays are so hard to do well -- and why we keep trying."  (Reservations, required for Kron's performance, can be made by calling 305-75509401, ext. 10.)

After Kron's performance on Saturday, City Theatre will honor four of this year's Shorts playwrights in attendance (Israel Horovitz, Bara Swain, Garth Wingfield and Jon Kern), then comes a special 10 p.m. performance of Summer Shorts (ticket purchase required).

Participants in CityWrights include playwrights Horovitz, Gary Garrison and Andie Arthur, intellectual property attorney David H. Faux, editor Larry Harbison and literary agent Susan Schulman.

Because City Theatre wants the gathering to enrich the work of both out-of-town participants and South Florida writers, the company is offering a special rate to locals for Friday and Saturday events:  $30 for one day, $50 for both.  For information on CityWrights, call 305-755-9401, ext. 10, or email citywrights@citytheatre.com.

 (Photos of Susi Westfall, top, and Lisa Kron)

 

 

 

'Girls' play and teach

The Women's Theatre Project is planning its third edition of 'Girl Play,' a three-day festival of staged readings of short plays with lesbian themes, for June 24-26.

But first the company, in collaboration with the Gay and Lesbian Community Center at the Pride Center at Equality Park, is presenting two free workshops this weekend featuring award-winning playwright Carolyn Gage.

Tonight at 7:30, Gage delivers a lecture and performance workshop on lesbian culture.  Winner of the 2009 Lambda Literary Award in drama, Gage will invite audience members of all abilities, genders and orientations to act out scenarios from lesbian history and culture.

On Sunday at 2 p.m., she will use 30 minutes of scenes from her play Ugly Ducklings to deliver an anti-bullying message, exploring harassment and homophobic policies at a girls' summer camp.  Gage and others will also have a panel discussion on the issue.

'Girl Play,' three different programs of short plays, happens at 6:30 p.m. June 24-25, 2 p.m. June 26.  Admission to those readings is $15 for each program.

All events take place at the Pride Center, 2040 N. Dixie Hwy., Wilton Manors.  For info, call 954-462-2334 or visit the Women's Theatre Project's web site.