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Workshop Readings

One week of down and dirty, hardscrabble rehearsals later, we’re ready to show you the razor-sharp edge of new American playwriting. A curtain raiser precedes most readings, compliments of our Promising Playwrights.*

Crazy Enough
by Storm Large
directed by Chris Coleman
July 19 & 20, 2:00 pm in the Ellyn Bye Studio; seats for this events are very limited. No one under 17 admitted.

Drawn from Storm’s life and music, this musical one-woman show is bracingly frank and revealing in a way that only our take-no-prisoners chanteuse can deliver. Her story promises to be as rock and roll as the diva herself.

A Brief Narrative of an Extraordinary Birth of Rabbits
by C. Denby Swanson
directed by Jason Neulander (Salvage Vanguard Theater)
dramaturgy by Kristan Seemel
July 19, 4:00 pm on the Main Stage

Coming up with names is a problem for Mare when she starts giving birth to an endless stream of bunnies. But that’s only the start of her problems, as a whole family of guilty consciences comes to the fore. Who can she turn to? Enter The Stork: raconteur, impresario and OB-GYN, all rolled into one.

Promising Playwright Curtain Raiser by Phillip A. Schallberger

Paradise Street
by Constance Congdon
directed by Jane Unger (Profile Theater Project)
dramaturgy by Karin Magaldi
July 19, 8:00 pm on the Main Stage

Jane arrives at her new university post ready to set academic feminism on its head. But when her mind goes wandering, everyone has to improvise, which brings her doddering mother out of semi-senility and inspires an uneducated drifter to impersonate Jane on the lecture circuit. Along the way they all discover that contrary to popular belief, parallel lines do sometimes meet.

Promising Playwright Curtain Raiser by Jordan Beck

Pony
by Sally Oswald
directed by Ken Rus Schmoll
dramaturgy by Elissa Goetschius (Woolly Mammoth Theatre)
July 20, 4:00 pm on the Main Stage

On the other side of the woods from Woyzeck, Pony lives in a queer microcosm. Marie conjures a killer, Stell wants Heath’s transgendered body, and Cav is forever on the border looking in. Sexual boundaries merge, twist and double back in this tale of five souls in search of identity.

Promising Playwright Curtain Raiser by Blue S. Dieter

Enchantment
by Carson Kreitzer
directed by Rose Riordan
dramaturgy by Mead Hunter
July 20, 8:00 pm on the Mainstage

Meet Temple Grandin, engineer and high-functioning autistic, working to make the slaughter of cattle more humane; and Bruno Bettelheim, ruining lives with his theory that the “cold mother” is the cause of autism. They lived and live on, but this is no mere documentary; as their lives interweave to create a disturbing and effecting dramatic narrative, you may never think of life and its consequences the same way again.

Promising Playwright Curtain Raiser by Daniel Felder

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* Promising Playwrights are four exceptionally talented young writers, drawn from our Visions & Voices programs at Cleveland, Lincoln, Wilson and Alliance High School’s FOCUS program. These writers spend all 10 days of the festival working alongside professional actors, directors and dramaturgs, who show them the inside workings of the theater.