Once upon a pageant

In many ways, it was Childsplay’s “Still Life With Iris,” enjoyed during a Desert View Learning Center field trip to the Herberger Theater Center more than a decade ago, that sparked my love for local theater. Its cast included D. Scott Withers, who’s been acting with Childsplay for more than three decades now — in shows like “BFG,” “The Yellow Boat,” and “A Year With Frog and Toad.” Also last season’s “The Color of Stars,” written by Dwayne Hartford.

Withers has often shared the stage with Dwayne Hartford and Jon Gentry, also with Childsplay, while in acting mode. But last night the trio sat in a row with other actors who’d just given the first performance of “Big Dreams,” a play Withers says he’s been working on for eight or nine years now. It’s the tale of several women consumed by beauty pageant dreams, and the men whose attitudes and actions seriously rain on their parades. There’s plenty of self-sabotage as well.

Kristin Blatchford set rendering for “Big Dreams” by D. Scott Withers

“Big Dreams” is being performed twice today as part of the Hormel New Works Festival at Phoenix Theatre. Withers wowed Phoenix Theatre audiences with his Edna gig for their production of “Hairspray” — in which he looked like a vision of pageant lovliness on a larger than life scale — and reprised the role for “Hairspray” at Arkansas Repertory Theatre in Little Rock. Gentry has performed with Phoenix Theatre as well — rocking the role of Max (opposite Toby Yatso as Leo) in “The Producers.”

The cast for Withers’ “Big Dreams,” which Hartford directs, includes Trisha Ditsworth (Shanda Drexler), Andrea Morales (Mimi Rodriguez), Adrian Hernandes (Blake Portia), Jon Gentry (Mayor Biggs) and Cathy Dresbach (Penny Lou/Louella). Tiffany Owens is stage manager, Cody Goulder serves as dramaturge and Jayson Morrison is the dramaturge intern. Their work happens behind the scenes, but that doesn’t diminish its importance.

Folks who stayed after Friday night’s premiere of “Big Dreams” for a post-show talkback with the cast and creative team had the opportunity to share feedback about the show, agreeing it was best described as a “dramedy.” It’s filled with fabulous one-liners that routinely elicited big belly laughs from the crowd, but also tackles serious themes including identity, hypocrisy, prejudice and more. Finding the perfect balance may take a tad more finessing.

Kristin Blatchford set rendering for “Big Dreams” by D. Scott Withers

But that’s the beauty of participating in something like the Hormel New Works Festival. Playwrights whose works are chosen for the festival know they’re entering what Robert Kolby Harper, associate artistic director for Phoenix Theatre, dubs one of the “most vulnerable” situations an artist can experience — presenting work in progress before peers and audiences, and staying open to a myriad of musings.

The Hormel New Works Festival continues this weekend, so you’ve got plenty of time to jump into the fray. When last I checked, tickets were still available for today’s 5pm and 8pm performances of Withers’ “Big Dreams.” José Zárate’s “Smugglers” is also being performed at 5pm, and there’s a free “2nd draft reading” of Pasha Yamotahari’s “I Am Van Gogh” that’s on my schedule for 2pm. The “24 Hour Theatre Project” happens this weekend as well.

— Lynn

Note: You can learn more about the Hormel New Works Festival at www.phoenixtheatre.com. “Big Dreams” contains mature language, and plenty of it, so consider yourself warned before deciding to take under-18 types to see the show.

Coming up: Pondering paper, Big musical meets small stage, A superhero tale

A smugglers tale

“Smugglers” is one of several plays being developed through the Hormel New Works Festival, which runs through Sunday at Phoenix Theatre

Picture yourself a single mother, widow of two men, trying to raise your son while heading a drug cartel on the Mexico/U.S. border. Odds are, you can’t do it. That’s what makes “Smugglers,” a play by José Zárate that’s being developed through the Hormel New Works Festival at Phoenix Theatre, so compelling.

It’s a glimpse into a world most of us never see, or give a lot of thought to. When you read about warring cartels on the border, or rival gangs in urban America, does it ever occur to you that they’re filled with parents, children, siblings or spouses — or do you see numbers instead of faces?

At the heart of Zárate’s “Smugglers,” I saw a mother working to protect her young son. But also helping him through the rites of passage necessary to become a man. It’s something mothers do the world over, but in vastly different ways. Sinaloa isn’t Scottsdale — as “Smugglers” makes clear.

It’s tough to read the motives of many of the play’s characters — aside from the most basic ones like staying alive and eking out a decent living — but the ambiguity ups the intrigue factor. “Smugglers” asks us all to consider how we might think or act under similar circumstances.

The lone woman in “Smugglers” is surrounded by several men, one the father of a young daughter, who have complicated relationships to her and to each other. She’s a sensuous sort — perhaps wielding her sexuality for power, or maybe merely yielding to her own need for physical gratification.

“Smugglers” is a fast-paced play that’s gripping from the get-go. There’s little time to think while swept up in all the action, but plenty to mull over once the work draws to a close — especially what possesses a character to commit the final act in the final scene.

Fellow festival goers used words like “riveting” and “instense” to describe the play, which is filled with the sort of violence and language you’d expect in a smugglers tale. Leave the kids at home with a good swashbucklers tale and a babysitter who thinks cartels are trendy coffee joints.

“Smugglers” is directed by Pasha Yamotahari, and will be performed again on Fri, July 20 at 7:30pm and Sat, July 21 at 5pm. Click here for ticket information, or to learn more about the Hormel New Works Festival at Phoenix Theatre.

— Lynn

Note: Free festival events include a Teen Playwriting Camp Showcase (Fri at 4:30pm), a Playwrights Forum (Fri at 6pm) and a reading of Yamotahari’s “I Am Van Gogh” (Sat at 2pm).

Coming up: A “slightly dark” comedy

Cornerstone meets cactus

Teen Playwriting Camp participants working on “Here I Am.” Photo by Jose Zarate.

Soon playwright Michael John Garcés will be writing a work about school justice and zero tolerance, using material gathered during a series of “story circles” taking place this week with students, parents, teachers and school administrators in Kern County, California. Garcés is artistic director for Cornerstone Theater Company in L.A.

Meanwhile, something similar is taking place in Maricopa County, Arizona — where Xanthia Walker and José Zárate have been doing story circle work with 11 youth participating in a teen playwriting camp who’ll do a staged reading of their own original play as part of this year’s Hormel New Works Festival at Phoenix Theatre.

Walker and Zárate first met through Cornerstone Theater Company, a “multi-ethnic, ensemble-based theater company” with a 25-year history. Zárate plans to return to California, eager to pitch three spec scripts already under his belt and look for a television writing gig. Walker is co-founder, along with Sarah Sullivan, of Rising Youth Theatre — established just last year in Phoenix.

Zárate’s play titled “Some Are Begining,” was produced by Rising Youth Theatre in April. It’s based on interviews with Phoenix youth, who also participated in the playwriting process. Rising Youth Theatre performs at Phoenix Center for the Arts, and plans to produce two works with a “families” theme during its 2012-13 season.

Cornerstone Theater Company and The California Endowment are presenting “Talk It Out: A Community Conversation to Fix School Discipline” later this month in collaboration with the Black Parallel School Board. It’s a free workshop in “grassroots community building & theater-making” for Sacramento community organizers and local leaders.

Tomorrow’s “Teen Playwriting Camp Showcase” at Phoenix Theatre features the premiere of a work called “Here I Am,” which is designed to help people think in new ways about the issue of bullying. “The kids felt very strongly after we did our story circle,” recalls Zárate, “that most of the media focuses on victims.”

They wanted to explore bullying from the bully’s perspective — looking at how and why bullying happens. Even the “power structures at schools” warrant a closer look, according to these young playwrights, whose work will be presented Fri, July 20 at 4:30pm on the Phoenix Theatre Mainstage. Zarate notes that it’s about 50-55 minutes long.

Zárate is a third year MFA candidate in dramatic writing at ASU’s School of Theatre and Film in Tempe. He’s a fellow with the Latino Writers Lab, managing director for Teatro Bravo and one of five resident artists with Rising Youth Theatre. He’s written plays for “four or five years” and says the key to playwriting is “being true to the characters” rather than “writing stereotypes.”

Tonight festival ticket holders can see another Zárate project come to life, as the Hormel New Works Festival presents the first performance of his play titled “Smugglers” — which imagines a little girl’s peril amidst warring drug cartels along the Mexico-United States border.

“Smugglers” is directed by Pasha Yamotahari, whose own “I Am Van Gogh” comes to the Phoenix Theatre Little Theatre Sat, July 21 at 2pm for a “2nd draft reading” that’s free and open to both festival-goers and the public. “Smugglers” will be performed three times in coming days.

Click here to learn more about the Hormel New Works Festival, here to learn more about Rising Youth Theatre and here to learn more about Cornerstone Theater.

— Lynn

Note: Watch for “Bullying — 10 Who Took a Stand” in the August issue of Raising Arizona Kids magazine

Coming up: Dye job meets doggy auditions, Exploring careers in the arts

Casualties of love and war

First Casuality is part of the 2012 Hormel New Works Festival at Phoenix Theatre

It seems friendly fire happens both on the battleground and in the bedroom. Playwright Monte Merrick’s “First Casualty,” given its first staged reading Thursday night during Phoenix Theatre’s “Hormel New Works Festival,” is the playwright’s own “what if” tale.

Dramaturgy display for First Casualty

What if a woman whose soldier husband was killed by friendly fire went in search of the man who killed him? What if it wasn’t entirely clear which of two men were to blame? What if her encounter with the man she’s labeled a murderer doesn’t go as expected?

“First Casualty” is directed by William Partlan, and has a cast of three — Paul Duran (as Jon Barrett, the soldier turned firefighter after an incident of friendly fire killed fellow soldier Matt), Angelica Howland (as Caitlin Post, Matt’s widow who’s consumed with finding answers about how and why he died) and Marshall Glass (as Mark Sessions, an active duty soldier who served with Matt and Jon).

Vision for First Casualty set design

Before Thursday night’s performance, patrons gathered around a lovely display of dramaturgical fare featuring themes and events related to the subject matter of the play — facts about various wars, information on depression and post traumatic stress disorder, details about various stages of grief. And themes that recur throughout the the play, including love and grace.

Drawings in the theater lobby that Robert Kolby Harper describes as “pie-in-the-sky” set designs imagine the work with an elaborate backdrop, but it was perfectly lovely performed with a simple set anchored by four main elements — a quilt-covered bed with pillows for two, a bistro table with two chairs, a sofa with coffee table and a high counter marking off space for a kitchen area.

Detail of Dramaturgy display

The play opens with a short acoustic guitar riff with a decidedly “Once” vibe, then slowly builds to the first confrontation between characters Jon and Caitlin. She’s tightly wound. He’s simmering far below the surface. By the end of act one they’ve cooked together, tended to a stab wound, waxed philosophical and endured “a tornado of unbearable grief lust.”

The dialogue is smart and real, familiar to anyone who’s ever been seeped in self-doubt, placed a lover atop a precarious pedestal, or felt unable to “move on” because that next person or thing simply wasn’t on the horizon. Despite its serious subject matter, “First Casualty” is authentically funny. And it’s perfectly paced thanks to Partlan’s exquisite use of silence and pause.

Pearls about the playwright

The imagery is profound, as Caitlin liken her “phantom husband pain” to the familiar “phantom limb pain” experience — and speaks of feeling like she and Matt were the two puzzle pieces around which everything else was built. Issues raised feel organic rather than contrived. “I throw a lot of stuff out,” says Jon. “It’s a ritual for me.” Later he tells Caitlin that “you can’t do anything to me that I haven’t done to myself.”

It would have been far easier to write a work accessible only to those who’ve experienced wartime trauma and loss. But “First Casualty” bridges with ease to the wider human experience of losing ourselves or another. Caitlin struggles, like most people, with finding that sweet spot between effortless and effortful. But she’s not without insight. “We save the world,” reflects Caitlin, “it’s just ourselves we let slide.”

The puzzle of love and loss, perhaps

“First Casualty” raises questions worth answering. How do we reconcile who we were with who we are? Is there a place for God outside the foxhole? What’s to be done after death reaches its shelf life? Does being a “bad forgetter” hold particular peril? How do rational creatures deal with reflex actions? Why do we merely bandage serious wounds?

Greek dramatist Aeschylus is credited with saying that “truth is the first casuality of war.” War with self. War against another. War between countries. For all their apparent differences, the similarities are striking.

— Lynn

Note: “First Casualty” performances take place tonight, July 13 at 7:30pm — plus Sat., July 14 at 5pm. Click here for details about all Hormel New Works Festival offerings at Phoenix Theatre. “First Casualty” dramaturgy by Kevin Rollins and set design rendering by Eric Beeck.

Coming up: Eye on new works, Art meets shape shifter

“I Am Van Gogh”

Plenty of people have toured the “Van Gogh Alive” exhibition that’s running through June 17 at the Arizona Science Center, but reactions to the multi-media presentation of Van Gogh’s work and words vary. I stood in a single spot for a very long time, reading Van Gogh quotes projected onto an otherwise blank wall. Pasha Yamotahari recalls heading for a corner — looking at the silhouettes of people lingering in front of towering screens featuring rotating images of Van Gogh paintings and related fare. Yamotahari says he was struck by “people standing frozen in time with something timeless.” And then it hit him.

“Hey,” he recalls thinking to himself. “I wrote something about Van Gogh some time ago.” The exhibit conjured memories of a screenplay written about eight years ago when Yamotahari was studying theatre, film and television at Scottsdale Community College. It was about a little’s boy first museum experience, which included an unexpected encounter with one of Van Gogh’s paintings. He pictured Van Gogh coming alive to interact with the boy, but felt at the time that staging such a thing would be rather tricky. Hence the choice to write it as a screenplay.

But times are changing in theater world, as new technologies make all sorts of things more doable. Yamotahari knows this better than most as a member of the artistic staff for Phoenix Theatre, where he’s been known to wear lots of hats. He holds both an AAFA in theatre arts and film/TV from SCC and a BA in journalism from ASU’s Cronkite School in downtown Phoenix — but his talents also include directing, dramaturgy and more.

For years he’s been part of bringing Phoenix Theatre’s “Hormel New Works Festival” to life. But this year, he’s adding another hat — presenting a sit-down reading of his own full-length play called “I Am Van Gogh.” It’s an adaptation of his earlier screenplay reworked after that “Aha!” moment at the Arizona Science Center. His is one of two sit-down readings that’s free and open to the public.

Playwright Pasha Yamotahari still treasures this book his mother gave him

Yamotahari’s mother gave him a book during high school that contained letters written by Van Gogh. Yamotahari remembers reading it — fascinated that someone so gifted achieved success only after his death and curious about why so few people recognized Van Gogh’s greatness when the artist was alive. Nowadays it gives him pause to consider what counts as true greatness in the arts, to wonder about the ways we define success and to live with the ambiguity of never really knowing where one’s devotion to art might lead.

“I Am Van Gogh” runs about two hours and features four actors playing close to 20 characters. The play imagines a young son of devout parents who’s magically taken inside a painting where he meets Van Gogh. The artist tells the boy it’s his destiny to be the next Van Gogh, something complicated by the fact that 8-year-old Marc is simply “not that good at painting.”

Yamotahari was born in Iran but his family fled to France around the time of the Iranian Revolution, later moving to Toronto. Play goers meet Marc as an eight year old because that’s the age when Yamotahari first saw a Van Gogh work at a small gallery in Nice. Also because children develop rich memories around that age. Yamotahari notes that Marc “sees Van Gogh throughout his life pushing him.” Marc finds his destiny, but it’s not without sacrifice.

Knowing that Van Gogh is on most short lists of artists who lived with mental illness, I asked Yamotahari whether he’d integrated the issue into the play. Yamotahari notes that the more he worked with the protagonists, the more he realized that some artists feel the only way to truly reach art is to lose their mind. He describes it as “putting themselves in a constant state of pseudo-insanity.” Sometimes it’s merely an artist’s “obsession with a piece that gets misconstrued as mental illness.”

Though we don’t have works of Van Gogh here in the Valley, Yamotahari’s been able to study the artist’s works online via the “Google Art Project” featuring artworks from 17 of the world’s great art museums. Yamotahari recalls reading the words of Van Gogh, which felt fluid early on but changed somehow as if madness was brewing — especially near the end of Van Gogh’s life.

Yamotahari says he’s fondest of Van Gogh works depicting cornfields, and thinks it’s “cool to zoom in and see those brush strokes.” If you look closely enough, says Yamotahari, you’ll see mistakes — even moments of rage and passion. The playwright wants those who see “I Am Van Gogh” to wonder about the difference between destiny and free will. But don’t expect easy answers. Yamotahari hopes the play will “evoke ambiguity and mystery.”

— Lynn

Note: The 2012 “Hormel New Works Festival” takes place July 8-22. Click here to explore selections and learn about a related art contest. Click here to explore the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Coming up: Art meets asylum, James Garcia talks playwriting and social justice, Drawing a diary