Festivals Celebrate Emerging Playwrights

Based on two upcoming festivals in the Boston area, breaking down conventional barriers is the new “it” thing to do in the performance art world. The 2nd Annual Harvard Playwrights’ Festival and the 1st Annual Boston-wide Emerging America performance festival have this goal in mind as they prepare for large Spring celebrations and collaborations. The Playwrights’ Festival seeks to bridge gaps between different pre-professional aspects of undergraduate theater, while Emerging America hopes to build a connection between three professional companies and the Boston public.

The Harvard Playwrights’ Festival runs from Thursday, April 22, to Sunday, April 25, in the New College Theatre Studio, and features the original works of ten undergraduates performed as staged readings. For most of these students, the festival is the culmination of a semester of writing in Briggs-Copeland Lecturer Christine M. Evans’ Advanced Playwriting Course, offered through the English Department.

“The right outcome for a play is to do it in the theater, not to hand it in inside a binder,” says Evans, who was responsible for last Spring’s inaugural festival. According to Evans, theater is a collaborative art, and so she seeks to enhance this collaboration at the undergraduate level. Instrumental to the project are the teaming of undergraduates with graduate actors at the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) Institute and the introduction of professional directors. New to this year’s festival are the inclusion of undergraduate actors and the performance of original works. Evans wants budding playwrights to “think entrepreneurially about how to get their work out there in the future, and that all comes from collaboration.”

“It’s been a wild process,” says Evans’ student Cecelia A. Raker ’11, whose play “Lilacs in November” will run on Sunday at the festival. Raker, who has been involved with directing and acting on campus, has experimented in playwriting but never to this serious an extent. “To step out of my comfort zone and do something entirely original, or more original, is something that I’ve loved,” she says.

Raker, who is pursuing a special concentration in Theater, especially appreciates the level of professionalism associated with the course and the festival. “The dramaturges have been incredible,” says Raker. “This has been a freeing experience.”

Raker also feels all the students’ plays reflect their exposure to such high-level resources. “It’s been great to hear other people’s work,” she raves. “We’ve got plays ranging from mine, which is totally a surreal fantasy, to very realist family drama, and everything in between.”

For those who are not necessarily as artistically inclined, Emerging America—a joint-festival presented by three established Boston-area theater companies—has a simpler goal: exposing the public to new performances by upcoming American artists. The festival, put on by the A.R.T., the Huntington Theater Company, and the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA), will premiere from Friday, May 14, to Sunday, May 16. This is a new venture for the three companies, all of which have undergone important changes in the past three years; the A.R.T. and the Huntington have welcomed new artistic directors, and the ICA has only recently added theatrical performance to their agenda. David J. Henry, the ICA’s Director of Public Programs, says, “We’re hoping to be able to generate some energy in Boston for new theater.”

The companies will be joining together to publicize and celebrate the event with a parade and an opening night party. For the duration of the weekend, the festival will consist of several independent productions by emerging American theater artists at each respective location.

Publicity for the event kicks off with the parade in Cambridge on Sunday, May 2. According to Henry, the parade functions to both increase awareness and to engage the community actively. Local artists and art organizations have been invited to take part in this event, but everyone in the community is encouraged to participate. “If anyone wants to join this, we’re happy to have them,” Henry says.

After the first production, the Experiment America kickoff party will commence at the ICA, with impromptu performances scattered throughout. “You might not know the person standing next to you is a performer until they’re well into their act,” Henry says. He adds, “It will eventually break out into a giant dance party.”

The companies involved anticipate this effort—to make production tools more accessible to playwrights and make plays more inviting to the general public—will be a positive one. Between peer performances, parades, and dance parties, these on- and off-campus festivals hope to offer something for everyone to engage in and appreciate.