Drama Queen

Girl Play 2013 is a varied look at life from a lesbian perspective

The Women's Theatre Project, based for its main stage productions at the Willow Theatre at Boca Raton's Sugar Sand Park, has long included plays with lesbian themes and points of view in the work that it does.  Girl Play, a festival of short-play readings, is part of that mission, and this year's fourth edition happens June 21-23.

Sixteen short plays are included in the lineup, with eight read on Friday starting at 7:30 p.m. and eight on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.  Audiences will pick their favorites, and those plays will get a second reading on Sunday at 2 p.m.

This year's plays, chosen from more than 100 submissions, are Joan Lipkin's Are You Married?, Sharon Goldner's Based on True Events, Donna Hoke's Cake Top This, Rahti Gorfien's Diaphanous, Dian "MJ" Perrin's Dyke Tracy, Detective, Karen L. Lewis' Gallery Postmortem, Jan O'Connor's Gayby's Playdate, Ruth Dyck Fehderau's Hildie and Hilda Go for a Walk, Tabia Lau's In the Water, Penny Jackson's Palpitations, Barbara Lhota's Personal Penchants, Eileen Tull's Semi-Circles, Kathleen Warnock's Sharing the Pie, Patricia Milton's Stonehenge, Michelle F. Solomon's Taste of Thai and Carol Mullen's Zero Mile Mark. 

Directing the readings are Genie Croft, Marj O'Neill-Butler and Kim Ehly.  Ehly isn't just directing four shows -- she's also playing the lead in Dyke Tracy, Detective.  The other actors in Girl Play 2013 are Sally Bondi, Casey Dressler, Lela Elam, Noah Levine, Ann Marie Olson, Barbara Sloan, Karen Stephens, Carol Sussman, Pilar Uribe and Elayne Wilks.

The festival takes place at Art Gallery 21 at the Woman's Club of Wilton Manors, 600 NE 21st Ct., Wilton Manors.  Admission is $15 for one program, $25 for two and $35 for three.  Patrons on Saturday and Sunday will be given a parking pass because of the Stonewall Festival taking place those days (otherwise, parking would be $10).

For more info or tickets, call 1-866-811-4111 or visit the Women's Theatre Project web site.

Also note:  This festival is intended to be festive, so show up at least a half-hour early for drinks, music and an art exhibit.

Durang's Tony winner, McCraney play top GableStage season

A little earlier than is his custom, GableStage's Carbonell Award-winning artistic director Joseph Adler has put all the pieces of his new season puzzle together -- and the lineup for 2013-2014 is full of enticing titles.

Hot from its Tony Award as Broadway's best play last Sunday, Christopher Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike will be produced at GableStage next spring.  Durang's smart satire of Anton Chekhov's characters and themes will run May 17-June 15, 2014.

The new season begins Nov. 23-Dec. 22 with Aaron Posner's still-running Off-Broadway hit My Name Is Asher Lev.  Based on a novel by Chaim Potok, the play focuses on a talented Jewish painter torn between his Hasidic upbringing and his dreams of artistic success.

Next is Miamian Tarell Alvin McCraney's set-in-Haiti adaptation of William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.  A collaborative effort of the Royal Shakespeare Company, New York's Public Theater and GableStage, the play will be presented by GableStage at Miami Beach's Colony Theatre Jan. 11-Feb. 9.

Katori Hall's The Mountaintop, a play set at Memphis' Lorraine Motel on the night before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, runs March 15-April 13.

After the Durang play, Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale takes audiences into the world of a 600-pound recluse and his angry teenager daughter.  That one runs July 19-Aug. 17, 2014.  The next season wraps up Sept. 20-Oct. 19, 2014, with David West Read's The Performers, a play about high school friends reconnecting at the Adult Film Awards in Las Vegas.

(And a side note: GableStage's current season isn't over yet.  David Lindsay-Abaire's Good People runs July 20-Aug. 18, with Stephen Karam's Sons of the Prophet closing out the 2012-2013 season Sept. 21-Oct. 20.)

GableStage is offering its new lineup to current subscribers for $225 and to new subscribers for $260, and with each subscription, theatergoers get an additional complimentary ticket to one show.  Single ticket prices will be going up for the new season, and a subscription provides a savings of nearly 40 percent.

The theater is located in Coral Gables' historic Biltmore Hotel at 1200 Anastasia Ave.  For information, call the box office at 305-445-1119 or visit the company's web site.

(Photo of the Broadway production of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Carol Rosegg; photo of Tarell Alvin McCraney by George Schiavone)

New Theatre's Martinez debuts 'Road Through Heaven'

Ricky J. Martinez, the artistic director at New Theatre, has been working on a trilogy of plays for a long time -- over 10 years, actually, starting before his graduation from Miami's New World School of the Arts.

The first play, Sin Full Heaven, debuted at New Theatre in 2007.  Now another one, Road Through Heaven, is getting its world premiere at New Theatre this weekend (the third, Heavenly Hand, is still to be produced).

Like the others, Road Through Heaven is part of what Martinez calls In God's Land: An Island Trilogy.  It is set on "a forgotten island" in the Caribbean, focusing on three people whose lives become entwined:  Jesus (Javier Cabrera), a 21-year-old who was orphaned at the age of 12;  Dolores (Evelyn Perez), a tough woman in her late 30s; and Victor (Martinez), a hard worker devoted to his woman and, increasingly, to the younger man.

"I wrote the plays because, as a first generation Cuban-American, I was trying to figure out who I was," says Martinez.  "I was influenced in this one by images of mules, men, the sky, the occult, unconditional love, balance and the suspension of time."

Martinez hadn't intended to play Victor, but when the production was moved to May and the actor who was originally cast became unavailable, director Margaret M. Ledford convinced the playwright to take on the role.

"I told him, 'I think you're perfect,'" she says.  "This is a very haunting script.  The magical realism takes everyday relationships and has them [ascend] onto an ethereal plane."

Martinez calls Ledford "an amazing visionary.  She sees that the play is more than lyricism. She can extract the realism too."

Road Through Heaven has its first performance at 8 p.m. Friday, then gets its press opening at 8 p.m. Saturday.  The show runs through June 2 at the Roxy Performing Arts Center, 1645 SW 107th Ave., Miami.  Regular performances are 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 1 and 5:30 p.m. Sunday (no evening show this Sunday).  Tickets are $40 ($35 Thursday and Sunday evening).  Students 25 and younger can get $15 rush tickets, based on availability, and the deal on opening weekend is even better:  The first 25 students under 25 get in free.

For information on New Theatre and Road Through Heaven, call 305-443-5909 or visit the company's web site.

(Photo of Javier Cabrera, Evelyn Perez and Ricky J. Martinez by Eileen Suarez)

New World debuts new voices

Two college students and six high school students at the New World School of the Arts have written short plays that will debut at this weekend's 2013 New Playwrights Festival.

Directed by faculty members David Kwiat, LaVonne Canfield, Andy Quiroga and Scott Douglas Wilson, the plays explore topics including love, marital relationships, family, suicide and more.  On the program are Making the Cut by Freddy Valle, Rubbing Alcohol by Luna Rodriguez, Like Moths to Flames by Lauren DeLion, Poor, Poor Eleanor by Armando Santana, American Hotdog by Marie Becnel, Corners by Emily Wilson, One Week of April by Ciara Alyse Harris and Superboy by Jennie Coutrier.

Performances are Friday (that's today) at 4:30 and 7:30 p.m., and Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. For info, call 305-586-9148 or 305-237-3541.  New World is at 25 NE Second St., Miami.

CityWrights offers workshops, panels, networking and more

With summer not so far away, Miami's City Theatre is gearing up for its annual Summer Shorts festival June 6-30 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts -- and for a rich week of programming in the third edition of its CityWrights gathering for playwrights.

City co-founder and literary director Susan Westfall has put together another jam-packed, enlightening symposium June 19-23 at Miami's Epic Hotel.  Two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Tina Howe will participate thanks to the Dramatists Guild Fund's Traveling Masters Program, along with master playwrights Lauren Gunderson (author of the family musical The Amazing Adventures of Dr. Wonderful and Her Dog, running June 15-30 at the Arsht) and Steve Yockey (a featured Summer Shorts playwright and stage, TV and film writer). 

Among the highlights and topics of the week:

*  Howe will send an exercise in advance to playwrights attending the conference, and the CityWrights acting ensemble will read the pieces.

*  There will be discussions or panels on how to develop, launch, market and legally protect work.

* Publishers and agents will offer information sessions.

*  Writing for film, theater, television and the internet will be explored.

*  Entertainment attorneys can earn continuing legal education credits and meet experts on law and the arts.

* A teacher training institute to help educators teaching middle and high school students integrate playwriting into English, language arts and theater classes is part of the conference.

* A dozen students ages 16-19 will attend the conference free, work with professionals and get a reading of their CityWrights-created work. Interested students should email CityWrights@citytheatre.com.

*  Two workshops for theater professionals, one on self-producing, the other on creating autobiographical solo shows, are part of the gathering.

The master playwrights and writers whose work is being produced as part of Summer Shorts will hold question-and-answer sessions about their work and careers, and the masters will read from their plays on Saturday evening.  Numerous readings will be part of the week, and the winner City Theatre's National Award for Short Playwrighting, with comes with a $1,000 prize, will be revealed at the conference launch party June 19.

Two early-bird rate all-access passes are on sale through April 30 -- $275 for regular attendees, $175 for students (those rise to $350 for a regular pass, $275 for students after the deadline).  One-day pass rates for specific programs range from $100 to $195.

To register or get more information, call 305-755-9401 or visit the City Theatre web site.

 (Photos show, top to bottom, Susan Westfall, Tina Howe and Lauren Gunderson)

Nan Barnett to head National New Play Network

Nan Barnett, the theater professional whose business savvy helped grow Florida Stage from a college-based professional company to the country's largest regional theater devoted to new plays, has just been named the new executive director of the National New Play Network (NNPN).

 Barnett has spent this season as executive director of Actors Express in Atlanta, an NNPN member company celebrating its 25th anniversary season.  But she built her career as an actor and administrator alongside Florida Stage artistic director Louis Tyrrell until the acclaimed company, which was based in Manalapan for most of its 24 years, ceased operations in 2011 due to the bruising recession and a loss of support after a move to West Palm Beach.

Florida Stage was a NNPN member theater, and Barnett led the organization's board while she was managing director of the company.  Miami's New Theatre, Sarasota's Florida Studio Theatre and the Orlando Shakespeare Theater are also members, and Miami's Zoetic Stage is an associate member. 

"You don't get two dream jobs in a lifetime, but I think I might have," Barnett said Monday from her Atlanta office.  "NNPN has taken ideas that were floating around the field and tried them, moved them forward...Several of our programs are being replicated in other organizations, which is flattering."

Barnett said that among the NNPN initiatives with great potential are the New Play Exchange, a database of new works that should help plays come to the attention of more theaters, and NNPN associate memberships.

Founded in 1998, the NNPN began an innovative "rolling world premiere" program, in which several members theaters agree to produce a new play in the same season, giving the playwright more national exposure and the chance to continue developing a script as he or she sees what different actors and directors bring to the work.

Barnett, who earned her bachelor of fine arts degree from the North Carolina School of the Arts Professional Training Program, will start her new job in May. She and her actor-husband Gordon McConnell plan to keep their home in Florida, but she notes that the timing is right for a move:  Their son Hunter goes off to college in the fall.

She succeeds Jason Loewith, who is leaving NNPN to become artistic director of Maryland's Olney Theatre Center.  NNPN is based at Washington D.C.'s Woolly Mammoth Theatre.  For more information on NNPN, visit the organization's web site.

'The Whole Caboodle'....and even more

This weekend is one of those when a theater lover could be driving from Miami to West Palm Beach to catch the four (yes, four) new productions that are opening -- and that's not counting the forever-popular Wicked, which has returned to the Broward Center for the Performing Arts for a run through Feb. 17.

Triple Carbonell Award nominee Michael McKeever, the very successful South Florida playwright whose 1998 play 37 Postcards is going to be produced (in Russian) at the Boshoi Drama Theatre in St. Petersburg starting in June, has proven he can write it all:  comedies, dramas, full-length plays and short ones.  The Whole Caboodle, a collection of seven short McKeever plays, opens at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Studio Theatre in the Mizner Park Cultural Arts Center, 201 Plaza Real, Boca Raton.

Parade Productions is presenting the show, which features several plays McKeever originally wrote for Naked Stage's 24-Hour Theatre Project and City Theatre's Summer Shorts Festival.  On the bill are American Gothic, Craven Tutweiler (The Real Life Story Of), Laura Keene Goes On, Knowing Best, Splat!, Love Machine,Rusted and Move On, or Sondheim at Studio 54.

In the versatile cast are Elena Maria Garcia, Clay Cartland, Jacqueline Laggy, Casey Dressler, Candace Caplin and the multitasking McKeever. Kim St. Leon is directing. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, through Feb. 24.  Tickets are $35 and $40.  Call 1-866-811-4111 or visit the Parade Productions web site.

Also in Boca Raton, but way out west, Slow Burn Theatre is mounting yet another lavish musical, this one the rarely produced Side Show.  Kaela Antolino plays Daisy Hilton, and Courtney Poston is Violet Hilton, real-life conjoined twins who became famous in the 1930s and appeard in the Tod Browning movie classic Freaks.

Also in the large cast are Carbonell nominee Matthew Korinko, Rick Pena, Jerel Brown, Conor Walton, Karen Chandler, Krissi Johnson, Lisa Kerstin Braun, Sabrina Gore, Alisha Todd, Justin Schneyer, John Corby, Dan Carter, Michael Mena and Bruno Faria. Patrick Fitzwater is directing and choreographing the show.

The musical, by Bill Russell and Henry Krieger, runs through Feb. 10 at the West Boca Performing Arts Theatre, 12811 W. Glades Rd., Boca Raton.  Performances are 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday.  Tickets are $35 ($30 for seniors, $20 for students).  Call 1-866-811-4111 or visit the Slow Burn web site.

Palm Beach Dramaworks takes a fresh look at an American classic with its production of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, about a black Chicago family in the 1950s arguing over how to use an insurance payment to change its future.  Carbonell Award nominee Ethan Henry plays Walter Younger, Pat Bowie his mother Lena, in a cast that also includes Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Shirine Babb, Marckenson Charles, Dave Hyland, McLey LaFrance, Jordan Tisdale, Mekiel Benjamin, Joshua Valbrun, Lanardo Davis and Jeffrey Brazzle.  Seret Scott is the director.

Performances are 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday, 2 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday-Sunday, through March 3.  Tickets are $55.  Dramaworks performs in the Don & Ann Brown Theatre, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach.  Call 561-514-4042 or visit the company's web site.

Miami's New Theatre is also tackling a classic drama beginning this week:  John Pielmeier's Agnes of God.  Christina Groom plays a novice nun accused of murdering her newborn baby.  Pamela Roza plays the psychiatrist trying to get to the heart of the shocking mystery, while Barbara Sloan is the young nun's protective Mother Superior.  Ricky J. Martinez is staging the play.

Performances are 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 1 and 5:30 p.m. Sunday, through Feb. 17 (no late show Feb. 3).  Tickets are $40 ($35 Thursday and Sunday evening; $15 student rush tickets, and the first 25 students under 25 get in free opening weekend).  New Theatre performs at the Roxy Performing Arts Center, 1645 SW 107th Ave., Miami.  Call 305-443-5909 or visit the theater's web site.

Yes, it's a way busy theater weekend with many promising choices.  But get ready: Next weekend is even busier.

 

Help get a play on...and have some fun

Putting on a play is never easy nor cheap, at least if you're aiming for high-quality professional work presented in a major performing arts center.  Alliance Theatre Lab is in the midst of a campaign to raise $5,000 for its March 7-24 production of Brothers Beckett, the David Michael Sirois comedy about twentysomethings who are finding adult life none too easy.  The award-winning play was a major hit for Alliance when the company did it almost two years ago at the Main Street Playhouse in Miami Lakes, but mounting a full production in the Carnival Studio Theater at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts is way more pricey.

So the company has come up with a couple of fun fundraisers to augment its ongoing Indiegogo campaign, which will soon hit $2,000.  First up is a comic murder mystery-Italian dinner night this Sunday at 8 p.m. at Dellaventura's Pizzeria, 4120 SW 64th Ave., Davie.  (Alliance company member Mark Della Ventura, who's in the Brothers Beckett cast, is a driving force in the fundraising.)  The cost for the interactive murder mystery show, a family-style dinner and two glasses of beer or wine is $50 per person, advance reservations required.  Visit the Alliance site for reservations and info.  

On Monday, Feb. 4, the Beckett boys (and girls) will go bowling at SpareZ Bowling Alley, 5325 S. University Dr., Davie, to raise some more dough.  If that's more up your alley, the event happens from 8 to 10 p.m., with a 7:30 p.m. check-in.  Cost is $20 in advance, $25 at the door.  Again, visit the Alliance site or call 305-259-0418.  Proof that arts fundraising doesn't have to be all earnest and stodgy.

Teatro Avante returns with 'El no'

Teatro Avante closed out the XXVII International Hispanic Theatre festival in July with its production of Cuban playwright Virgilio Piñera's El no.  Adapted by Gilda Santana and directed by Mario Ernesto Sánchez, the play is about the eternal conflict between generations, and it boasts a powerhouse case in Isabel Moreno, Gerardo Riverón, Maribel Barrios and Julio Rodríguez.  The play is performed in Spanish with English supertitles.

Avante is bringing the play back to South Florida Thursday through Sunday for a run at the On Stage Black Box at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium, 2901 W. Flagler St., Miami.  Performances are 8:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 5 p.m. Sunday, with tickets priced at $30, with discounts available for seniors, students and disabled theatergoers.  Call Ticketmaster at 1-800-745-3000 or the box office at 305-547-5414.

GableStage gets NEA grant for McCraney 'Hamlet'

GableStage, which will join with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and New York's Public Theater in premieringTarell Alvin McCraney's set-in-Haiti Antony and Cleopatra next season, has just been awarded a $10,000 National Endowment for the Arts Art Works grant to support its upcoming production of Hamlet.  The 90-minute adaptation by McCraney and Bijan Sheibani, commissioned by the RSC, will run at GableStage Jan. 12-Feb. 10, then be performed free for 15,000 Miami-Dade County Public Schools students at the Joseph Caleb Auditorium in Liberty City and the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center in Cutler Bay.

The NEA received 1,509 eligible applications for the Art Works grants from not-for-profit groups seeking more than $74 million in support.  GableStage's is one of 832 approved grants totalling $22.3 million.

McCraney will direct his adaptation, and he has now settled on his cast.  Edgar Sanchez will play Hamlet, with Dylan Kammerer as Horatio, James Randolph as Claudius and the Ghost, Alana Arenas as Gertrude, Peter Haig as Polonius, Ryan George as Laertes and Rosencrantz, Mimi Davila as Ophelia and Arielle Hoffman as Guildenstern and a player.

Performances will be at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday (no evening show the first weekend).  Tickets range from $37.50-$50.  GableStage performs in the Biltmore Hotel, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables.  For information, call 305-445-1119 or visit the theater's web site.