Summer Playwrights Festival 12
Festival Details
The Road Theatre Company
Taylor Gilbert & Sam Anderson, Artistic Directors
The Twelfth Annual
SUMMER PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL
12 Days! 25+ plays! #SPF12
Tracey Silver, Executive Director
Christian Telesmar, Festival Director
Darryl Johnson, Producer
Ray Paolantonio, Producer
Krishna Smitha, Producer
Tally McCormack, Producer
Featuring plays by Oscar®, Tony® and Pulitzer Prize Winner JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY (“Moonstruck”, Doubt: A Parable), KERMIT FRAZIER (Kernel of Sanity, “Ghostwriter”), 2020 Steinberg Playwright Award Winner NATHAN ALAN DAVIS and many more!!!
The Largest Playwright’s Festival in the U.S. Continues Online As Theatres Anticipate Reopening This Fall! All Play Readings Will Stream Live on The Road Theatre’s Website & YouTube!
Streaming Thursday, July 15 through Sunday, August 1.
THE ROAD THEATRE COMPANY and Taylor Gilbert, Founding Artistic Director together with Sam Anderson, Artistic Director, remain committed to their meaningful mission to produce and develop New Work for the Stage while theatres across the U.S. seek to reopen this fall. They are thrilled to announce in this, their upcoming 30th season, the Twelfth Annual Summer Playwrights Festival returns to its online format making new plays more accessible than ever. Over 200 writers, directors, actors and technicians have volunteered their time to present 26 plays over the span of three weekends.
Executive Director Tracey Silver reveals “After receiving hundreds of play submissions, we are excited to share with you our audience SPF 12! We will broadcast 26 plays, a wide range of different stories, over the course of three weeks. And while we are so close and excited to get back into our theatre in North Hollywood, we are grateful this new virtual format has allowed us to reach a much wider audience across the country. With that in mind, please join us July 15 to August 1 to celebrate the new works of each of these playwrights. See you at the Festival!”
Taylor Gilbert, Founder and Artistic Director, recalls the very moment the festival launched in 2010: “It’s just an idea” said Scott Alan Smith, Associate Artistic Director Emeritus, “Let’s start a playwrights festival!” We said “Sure, why not?” From the up close and personal in our theatre, to going online and intimately into your virtual devices, we are excited to bring you our 12th Summer Playwrights Festival. So sit back, get comfortable and enjoy the ride”.
Artistic Director, Sam Anderson, reflecting on the process: “Following the great success of the Road’s first virtual Summer Playwrights Festival last year, with an audience of over 18,000 viewers from six continents, The Road team realized SPF 12 planning needed to start early, and indeed it has. Led by Executive Festival Director Tracey Silver, the company and invited guests began reading potential plays in late 2020. The entire Road company served as readers, as well as volunteer guest readers, carefully combing through over 600 entries of new full length and one-act plays, and winnowing down the finalists. In addition to quality, the search included ever-increasing inclusion of BIPOC writers, parity for male and female playwrights and a determination to bring the best new and returning voices to this celebration of creativity and connection to the entire country”.
STREAMING SCHEDULE:
Thursday, July 15 at 6:00 PM PST, 9:00 PM EST
ORIGIN STORY by Nathan Alan Davis
Directed by Joanie Schultz
A play about work, debt, race, friendship, drive-thru windows, and a very very big, very very sudden, existential crisis.
Friday, July 16 at 6:00 PM PST, 9:00 EST
HERE IS WHERE by Vasanti Saxena
Directed by Jully Lee
In the aftermath of 9/11, two sisters receive an unexpected package that brings them to the intersection of their uncertain present and their grandmother’s past in wartime Nanjing.
Saturday July 17 at 2:00 PM PST, 5:00 PM EST
STUCK WITH FRED by Timothy Nolan
Directed by Taylor Nichols
Hilly wants a friend, needs a friend, but the best she can do is Fred… thirty years older, irascible in the extreme, in poor health and a fellow recovering alcoholic. He’s not an easy friend. But neither is she. When his health takes a turn for the worst and his brother shows up to run interference, she finds out just how much of a friend he is.
Saturday, July 17 at 6:00 PM PST, 9:00 PM EST
MODERN MINSTRELSY by Kermit Frazier
Directed by Gregg T. Daniel
On a hot August night in a predominantly white community on Long Island, NY, a Black man shoots and kills a white teenager who with three friends has been chasing in their car that man’s 20-year-old son. That shooting triggers not only charges and a trial but also the “re-surfacing” of Nig and Jig, two timeless Black American and Irish American figures, who are locked in a seemingly never-ending struggle for agency, place, and point of view in their country’s history and psyche.
Sunday, July 18 at 2:00 PM PST, 5:00 PM EST
M-THEORY: a play told in 11 dimensions by Jami Brandli
Directed by Ann Hearn Tobolowsky
The near future. Former biographer Pauline Grey has shut herself and her daughter Ava away in a remote cabin in Angeles National Forest for nearly a year. Pauline will not let Ava go until she has the answers she is desperately seeking. But when a solar flare storm hits, cutting the women off from communication with the outside world, and a downed pilot appears at the cabin asking for help, Pauline’s reality is challenged in more ways than one.
Sunday, July 18 at 6:00 PM PST, 9:00 PM EST
FIVE ONE-ACT PLAYS
THE PEACE OF HOME by Mildred Inez Lewis
Directed by Jonathan Muñoz-Proulx
Quarantine forces two lovers to confront the cost of peace in their home.
HOW GRANDMA MET THE RAT PACK by Greg Tulonen
Directed by Bruce Katzman
In a quiet bar, an aging flibbertigibbet recounts her (possibly apocryphal) celebrity encounters with each member of the Rat Pack. Her stories are met with encouraging acceptance from her granddaughter (who is also the bartender), and deep skepticism from her grandson, who has come to believe that his grandmother is either confused or lying.
OUR LADY OF BROAD STREET by Jane Denitz Smith
Directed by Susan Vanita Diol
It’s almost time for the grand old hotel’s gala reopening. But when an inexplicable stain appears on a lobby wall, a young architect is forced to question her life-long assumptions about what is–and what might be.
INTERVIEW WITH A CAT by Jim Geoghan
Directed by Stewart J. Zully
Jim Geoghan’s cat Shadow has spent thousands of hours teaching him the ups and downs of cat care and Jim has learned nothing.
50 LOVE LETTERS by Mercilee Jenkins
Directed by Emily Jerez
What should an older woman do with 50 letters from her first love? She could burn them, bury them, float them out to sea or take them on a trip and discover they’re true, after all these years.
Thursday, July 22 at 6:00 PM PST, 9:00 PM EST
EARWORM by Shualee Cook
Directed by Ken Sawyer
Five people have five different reactions to a punk rock breakup song. Now the Song wants to know why.
Friday, July 23 at 6:00 PM PST, 9:00 EST
STOOP PIGEONS by Christin Eve Cato
Directed by Bruce A. Lemon Jr.
Stoop Pigeons takes place in the early/mid-2000s when the Bushwick area of Brooklyn experienced rapid gentrification. We witness what happens in the span of a decade: how the culture of the neighborhood changes, how it affects the people who inhabit it, and how it forgets about those who sacrificed for it.
Saturday July 24 at 2:00 PM PST, 5:00 PM EST
THE BIG RED NAUGAHYDE BOOTH (OR, WOULD-BE ELKS) by Jennie Webb
Directed by Laura Stribling
A comedy about negotiations, acceptance and belonging, The Big Red Naugahyde Booth (or, Would-be Elks) tracks the cocktails and confessions of a group of women who regularly meet to drink and dish. But on this particular evening of excess, a girls’ night out becomes a surreal exploration of female bonds in a changing world.
Saturday July 24 at 6:00 PM PST, 9:00 PM EST
REFUGEE RHAPSODY by Yussef El Guindi
Directed by Risa Brainin
Sakinah, an Arab American woman, undergoes a mental health evaluation to determine what led to the violent crime she committed against Emily, a rich heiress. The play explores race, class, privilege, and how those factors collide and play out in today’s culture.
Sunday, July 25 at 2:00 PM PST, 5:00 PM EST
FAMILY TREE by Erin K. Considine
Directed by Lauren Patrice Nadler
Isabella is losing herself to Alzheimer’s. Her communication comes in repetitive stops and starts, leaving her children to untangle the roots of their past in order to make some weighted decisions about their future. Is a fresh start possible when old growth has been gnarled and broken away?
Sunday, July 25 at 6:00 PM PST, 9:00 PM EST
WAITING FOR GODÍNEZ by Daniel A. Olivas
Directed by Sara Guerrero
Each night, immigration officials kidnap Jesús and throw him in a cage with the intent of deporting him. But each time, Jesús escapes and makes it back to the city park to be with Isabel to wait for the mysterious Godínez. Inspired by Beckett’s iconic Godot play but with humor deeply steeped in Latinx culture, Waiting for Godínez explores the meaning—and absurdities—of identity and belonging.
Thursday, July 29 at 6:00 PM PST, 9:00 PM EST
DAY OF SATURN by Leviticus Jelks
Directed by Melissa Coleman-Reed
For Achilles Jones, the reality of his son, Icarus’, attempted suicide still haunts him a year later as he works tirelessly to repair his run-down hardware store alongside a charismatic young volunteer with a painful past of his own. Soon the secrets about Achilles’ son and the truth about their relationship come to light in this planetary collision of loss, humor, Black masculinity and the generational scars that follow us through life.
Friday, July 30 at 6:00 PM PST, 9:00 EST
BELOVED by Arthur Holden
Directed by Cameron Watson
Dorothy and Stephen, married co-owners of a failing business, are shocked to discover that their teenaged son has committed a disturbing crime – and they’re devastated when they learn why. In three successive waiting rooms, accompanied by three young women, Dorothy and Stephen must decide what truly matters as they struggle to chart a better future.
Saturday July 31 at 2:00 PM PST, 5:00 PM EST
THE OUTSIDE WORLD by Dayenne C. Walters
Directed by Dan Martin
The Outside World is an immersive multimedia play about a young mother’s fight to save her family’s life, after her untimely death, and her eight-year-old son, whose emotions and feelings manifest in a superpower kind of synesthesia (“The Noises,” as his family calls them)—cacophonous sounds and music that his father is trying to help him suppress.
Saturday, July 31 at 6:00 PM PST, 9:00 PM EST
THE SWEATER CURSE Book, Music & Lyrics by Scooter Pietsch
Directed by Adam John Hunter
Warning! Knitting is bad for your relationship! Find out why when Charlotte knits her boyfriend an intricate Norwegian sweater. Is their love strong enough to survive a gift of such power, weight, and accountability?
Sunday, August 1 at 2:00 PM PST, 5:00 PM EST
BURST by Rachel Bublitz
Directed by Christina Carlisi
Sarah Boyd is going to save the earth from our self inflicted plastic disaster. The only thing standing in her way is the truth.
Sunday, August 1 at 6:00 PM PST, 9:00 PM EST
FIVE ONE-ACT PLAYS
CENSUS by Susan Miller
Directed by Abigail Deser
When Jacob, a newly assigned census taker, makes a home visit to Gloria and attempts to get clear answers to the standard questions on the government form he’s been issued, Jacob discovers that the objective facts he’s seeking are not always so, as Gloria peels back the layers and confronts him with a different reality. That she is Black and he is white complicates their encounter in unexpected and mysterious ways.
MEDUSA DOES A RE-DO by Angela J. Davis
Directed by Inger Tudor
After three thousand years as the reviled monster with snakes on her head, Medusa persuades Athena that it’s time for a re-evaluation. A play in verse for a new universe.
THE SECRET KEEPER by David Meyers
Directed by Oran Zegman
Creative Consultant – Fazeelat Aslam
Ahmad is the groundskeeper at a cemetery in Afghanistan. When a local mother visits the cemetery, she befriends Ahmad and unearths a troubling secret that unites them both.
“THE RESTAURANT PLAY” by Scott Gibson
Directed by Darryl Johnson
An innocent question posed at the start of a family dinner leads to a variety of unexpected conversations, confessions and one or two life-changing decisions. Also, there are brussels sprouts.
AFTER THE DELUGE by John Patrick Shanley
Directed by Tracey Silver
Tells the story of two New York women arguing and grieving and recovering from the pandemic. Their clash raises sparks, conjures magic and comedy, and perhaps suggests a way forward in these fraught times.
TALKBACKS
Each play reading will be followed by a moderated discussion with the playwright, director and cast.
CLOSED CAPTIONING
Closed captioning will be provided for both the readings and talkbacks.
STREAMING PLATFORMS:
www.roadtheatre.org
www.youtube.com/roadtheatrecompany/live
PRICING:
Ticket prices are suggested donation of $15. No donation is too small, but if you can’t afford to donate at this time we understand.
THE ROAD THEATRE COMPANY:
Located in the heart of the NoHo Arts district-the fastest growing arts district in Los Angeles County-the company has called the Historic Lankershim Arts Center home for the past 26 seasons. Fiercely committed to that most dangerous of theater missions-the dedication to new works-The Road Theatre Company led by founding artistic director Taylor Gilbert and artistic director Sam Anderson, is a multi award-winning theater that has been named one of the top ten intimate theater companies in Los Angeles (LA Weekly). It is home to over 150 theater artists devoted to the creation of the highest level of work. The festival is also the primary fundraising event for the theater to help launch it’s 29th season. A suggested donation of $15 is requested of virtual festival attendees and they are invited to give as little or as much as they want during each streamed performance. This year’s festival is produced by special arrangement with SAG-AFTRA and supported by a grant from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
Poster Design by Shannon Loys
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SUPPORT
Support for this program was provided through the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Arts Development Fee Program, LA County Arts Internship Program, and the Office of Councilmember Paul Krekorian.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Replays of each reading are available for 24 hours after the reading has started. Please see check back to this section when the festival has begun for links to the latest replay.
There will be a live Talkback following the reading. To watch the live talkback you can go to www.roadtheatre.org/talkback
To participate and ask questions directly to the panel of actors/director/playwright, please use the live chat right next to the video at www.youtube.com/
Making theater accessible to everyone is a key part of The Road Theatre’s mission and is why The Road Theatre aims to provide every broadcast with Closed Captioning (either transcribed or automated). This is will be provided through the YouTube player and can be turned on/off as the viewers discretion.
If you would like to give a tax-deductible donation to the Road Theatre Company to help keep theatre alive, please click here.
For more details on the readings in the festival, like Playwright bio, Director bio, Cast list and more, please select from the streaming schedule listed above.
NoHo Senior Arts Colony
10747 Magnolia Boulevard
North Hollywood, CA 91601
Phone
(818) 761-8838