Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 10, 1994 TAG: 9410140010
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Norfolk Southern Festival of New Works is seeking your opinion.
"We will be polling the audience" about the plays to be staged at Mill Mountain Theatre this week, Theatre Director Jere Lee Hodgin said. As part of the theater's new-play competition, theater-goers will receive questionnaires to fill out following each performance. "We'll factor that into our appraisal," Hodgin said.
It is only the latest curve in the ever-meandering course of the 8-year-old festival, funded by Norfolk Southern and dedicated to developing challenging new - if not-quite-ready for Broadway - work.
The festival runs Tuesday through Sunday in Mill Mountain's Theatre B.
Three plays, "Blues for Miss Buttercup," "Jewish Sports Heroes and Texas Intellectuals" and "Cherry Phosphate Saturday Afternoon," will be presented on a rotating basis - one per night, and two on Sunday afternoon.
The winner will be announced at a champagne reception immediately following the final performance, which begins at 2 p.m. Sunday.
The playwrights themselves arrived last week to work on their plays with professional actors and actresses and guest directors from the University of Virginia. The writers' travel costs and accommodations are paid for by the theater.
In another departure from the past, all of the plays in the festival will be given staged readings, with the performers holding their scripts. In recent years, the winner generally was treated to a full production.
Hodgin said they decided to do less elaborate productions this time partly to shorten the length of time between submission of plays and the choosing of a winner.
In the past, it took so long to sort through the 400-plus plays the competition attracts, select a single winner, and mount the full-blown production that much quality material had long since found another home, Hodgin said. Doing script-in-hand readings of the finalists before choosing a single winner slices months from the process.
Then, too, a script-in-hand performance makes it easier for the author to rework his material when things bog down on stage - and Hodgin considers all of the plays in the festival to be works-in-progress.
It is also, not incidentally, less expensive, since it cuts down on rehearsal time.
The festival is in the final year of a three-year, $75,000 Norfolk Southern grant, Hodgin said. Future funding is still pending.
The winner of the new play competition will receive $1,000. In addition, the wining play will probably get a full production next year during Mill Mountain Theatre's regular season, Hodgin said.
Only two of the plays are eligible for the prize. The third, "Cherry Phosphate Saturday Afternoon," was written by the theater's own literary manager, Jo Weinstein.
"Cherry Phosphate" explores the chain of events set in motion when a young girl walks into a corner drug store for a cherry coke - and comes face to face with her long-absent father.
The play is based on an encounter with Weinstein's own father in 1942. It was previously performed as a one-act play, but has been expanded for the festival.
``Blues for Miss Buttercup,'' by L.E. McCullough, is a fictionalized account of the life of 1930s blues pianist Leroy Carr.
Carr, of Indianapolis, was "the first really mass-selling blues artist," said McCullough, who is executive director of an artists' colony in New York. His play explores the tensions surrounding the pianist and two women who seek to run his life.
The play - his first - includes a sound track of vintage jazz and blues, as well as a few songs written by McCullough himself.
"Jewish Sports Heroes and Texas Intellectuals" is by Missouri Downs, a former television writer who chucked it all and moved to Wyoming.
``I got tired of it,'' Downs said of writing for TV. "It's only about money. It occurred to me I'd rather entertain a hundred people than bore 23 million to death."
Downs, who resolved to become a playwright, moved to the only state in the country with no professional theater.
Wyoming does, however, have cowboys - which helped Downs conceive his play about cowboys and feminists. "Jewish Sports Heroes and Texas Intellectuals," is not really about oxymorons but the relationship between Downs' father and sister.
Downs said that he believes the play - his seventh - is his finest.
Norfolk Southern Festival of New Works: Tuesday-Sunday, Theatre B of Mill Mountain Theatre, 20 E. Church St. Tickets are $5. 342-5740.
by CNB