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MADE IN OREGON
(July 13- 16, Mainstage)

The Made in Oregon Series features Oregon playwrights for one night only readings of works in progress.

The Lost Boy by Susan Mach
Monday, July 13th at 6:00 pm

Loosely based on true events that took place in Germantown in 1874, The Lost Boy centers on the abduction of a four-year-old boy from a wealthy suburb. Faced with a $20,000 ransom demand—an exorbitant sum at the time— the boy’s father, Christian Ross, refuses to pay. Ross is only allowed to respond to the kidnappers through brief messages in the personal sections of various newspapers, leading to a bizarre series of public communications that result in the boy’s abduction becoming a media event and negotiations rapidly disintegrate, leaving a father (and a community) poised helpless on the edge of disaster.

In School Suspension by Brian Kettler
Tuesday, July 14th at 6:00 pm

At an unnamed private high school, the stage is set for a school shooting simulation. It’s just like a fire drill, except the students might not make it out alive. An actor has been hired to play the shooter and the school’s most dangerous students, Danny and Angela, are locked away in an abandoned Spanish classroom. A passionate English Teacher wants to make sure his students experience authentic feelings of fear and terror. What could possibly go wrong?

The Missing Pieces by Nick Zagone
Wednesday, July 15th at 6:00pm

Hunter S. Thompson once said, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” Take a trip back to Portland in May 1980 when another “era of change” and major recession was also completely covered in Mt. St. Helen’s volcanic ash. In this selective memory play a young boy comes of age when “Keep Portland Weird” didn’t need to be uttered; it was everyday life.

Bad Family by Andrea Stolowitz
Thursday, July 16th at 6:00 pm

Alexandra is an angry 15 year old hell-bent on breaking up her mother and step-father’s already strained marriage. When she steals her mother’s car in order to visit her estranged father in the desert, she sets off a series of domino chain comic events which force the characters to figure out the meaning of family.

JAW FESTIVAL WEEKEND
(July 24 – 26, Main Stage)

The JAW Festival Weekend is the culmination of a full week of dramaturgy, rehearsals and rewrites for 6 plays-in-progress selected from 100s of submissions received from around the country. An important next step in the development of new work, these free to the public workshop readings allow the playwrights to collaborate with professional actors and dramaturges and expose an early draft of their work to audience feedback.

Birds of a Feather by Marc Acito
Friday, July 24th at 4:00 pm
with Freefall by promising playwright Daniel Felder

Two gay penguins trying to hatch a rock in the Central Park Zoo, a pair of hawks tossing gristle off a Fifth Avenue co-op and the bird-brained humans who try to stop them collide in this hilarious true story from the writer USA Today said delivered “high-stakes pranks a la Moliere.”

遠西奇器述
(Translation: Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West )
by Naomi Iizuka
Friday, July 24th at 8:00 pm
with Open the Box by promising playwright Robyn Pritzker

A wealthy American woman arrives in Yokohama in 1885 looking for the “real” Japan. She befriends an American photographer living in Yokohama who makes his living taking pictures of rickshaw drivers, geishas, and monks for the consumption of a Western audience hungry for images of Old Japan. A century later, an American tourist with secrets of his own comes to Japan to purchase a handful rare, Meiji era photographs. In between, we explore how photography captures the anxieties and hopes of lovers and strangers, and in a larger sense, how photography preserves, obscures, and reveals truths about a culture very different from our own. This play is slated for world premiere in Berkeley Rep’s 2009-2010 season.

Futura by Jordan Harrison
Saturday, July 25th at 4:00 pm
with Fleeced by promising playwright Alec Chase

Why do letters look the way they do? What is the difference between writing a word and typing it? How can a font change the future? On her first day back at the University, a rogue Professor is out to avenge her missing husband – and the lost art of ink on paper.

Middletown by Will Eno
Saturday, July 25th at 8:00 pm
with Mental Ugly by promising playwright Emily Schad

Regular people in a regular town reckon with the mystery of being, the mystery of non-being, and with all the mysteries in between, while trying to stay calm and neighborly. Tons of fine dust rains down from outer space. The population will remain stable. Loneliness is dealt with, here and there, and the Librarian reads out loud.

On The Nature of Dust by Stephanie Timm
Sunday, July 26th at 4:00 pm
with Kick by promising playwright Ivy Knight

Clara Bliss was a typical teenager until she turned into an ape. When Clara begins to devolve into more and more primitive species, her mother, Shirley, sets out on a crusade to keep Clara from changing that instead forces her to do some changing of her own.

99 Ways to Fuck a Swan by Kimberly Rosenstock
Sunday, July 26th at 8:00 pm
with Ovum by promising playwright Malcolm Stumpf

A long, long time ago, Leda makes love to a swan. 3,000 years later, Michelangelo paints a picture. 350 years later, Rudolph impulsively buys it. 128 years later, Dave and Fiona stand in a museum, gazing at what is left. Set in a world of bizarre romantic obsessions and everyday ineptitude, 99 Ways to Fuck a Swan explores the dark corners of desire, and the eternal mysteries of love.

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