First Stages, 2007 Readings

BOSTON PLAYWRIGHTS' THEATRE PRESENTS:

FIRST STAGES
Annual staged readings of plays by this year's graduate playwrights:

Cliff Odle
Nathan Lane
Brian Tuttle
Andrea Kennedy
Maria Torres
Les Hunter

Readings are performed by some of the best professional actors in the Boston area. A talk-back with the playwrights & actors will follow each reading

Lost Tempo
by Cliff Odle
Sunday, April 15, 7 PM
Summer Williams, Director
Willie “Cool” Jones is a semi-famous jazz saxophonist who has come home after a self-imposed exile in Europe.  Lured back with the promise of ownership in a club, he finds that his past demons and the ever-changing world of music compete for space with his ambitions.  A dramatic look at the music world of the 1950s (and now).

The Devil's Teacup
by Nathan Lane
Monday, April 16, 7 PM
Melissa Wentworth, Director
Max Fletcher has been in New York for almost ten years, trying to make it as a rocker front man.  But now he’s back…Back in the small southern Baptist town where he was born and raised—Calvary, Arkansas.  He returns to face his father’s death.  He returns to face old friends and enemies.  He returns to face the religion of his youth.  He returns to face a decision that will change his life forever.  And it all happens in the back of a little “heathen” bar called The Devil’s Teacup.  A funny, serious look at prodigal sons.

Set in Sand
by Brian Tuttle
Monday, April 23, 7 PM
Melissa Wentworth, Director
Pete Donovan, the assistant principal at an inner city public school in Boston, must deal with one very long day.  On top of the usual teacher politics, student fights and administrative chaos, he must appease a visiting Senator who may bring funding to the school as well as resolve the issue of one student bludgeoning another with a bike lock.  Set in Sand takes an unflinching look at the cobweb that is our education system.

Lights Out, Bethlehem
by Andrea Kennedy
Monday, April 30, 7PM
Victoria Marsh, Director
Mercy Skye enters the Bethlehem Correctional Facility hoping to put her past behind her.  However, she quickly learns that prison is no rehabilitation center.  In order to find redemption, she needs to deal with her demons.

Sixth Street Bakery
by Maria Torres
Monday, May 7, 7 PM
Jeffry Stanton, Director
Bakery owner Gloria can’t seem to get her younger sister to come in on time or do her job well, not to mention getting her to stop flirting with the customers. The sisters’ once-steady routine turns into a disarray of baked goods when Gloria all of a sudden can’t bake her muffins like she used to—so why not have a love affair with old friend Steve?  Sisterly quarrels get out of control.  Can they ever work together in harmony and keep their customers, too?  A comedy around about bread.

To the Orchard
by Les Hunter
Tuesday, May 8, 7 PM
David Gram, Director
Simcha Bergman, a former heavy-metal rocker, becomes a Modern-Orthodox Jew after the death of his father.  But now, some 20 years later, Simcha must come to terms with his daughter’s homosexuality.  Through characters as diverse as an Orthodox Rabbi, a black Gender Studies Professor, and the ghostly apparitions of Robert Plant and Virginia Woolf, the play explores themes of loss, guilt, and forgiveness in a magically enhanced corner of modern-day Brooklyn.    

Nostalgic Pumpkin Memory of Regret
by Jonathon Myers
Staged: Fall 2007
In the coffee shop area of a corporate American bookstore, a group of colliding misfit characters is lost within a sea of materialistic culture where reality is what one sees on TV, and what lies beyond the appearance is simply a lack of identity.  With Halloween just around the corner, as characters don costumes to hide (or is it to accentuate?) their true selves, the pathetic and hopeless coffee-shop poet Charlie struggles to win the heart of the scattered and flighty Emily.  The failed pianist Joe watches from behind the counter with a cynical lens of bitter acceptance at the loss of love in post-modern courtship.  However, somewhere within the confines of the ordinary personalities of an ordinary place, a restoration of the self is afoot.  When Charlie accidentally captures a ripple in time through the recital of his mediocre poetry, the world of consciousness is turned upside down and the reality beyond the appearance is turned inside out.  In a world where appearance is reality, is the experience of true love merely insanity?