REVIEW: Playwright contest promotes growth and innovation in theater scene

The Firehouse Theatre Project’s Sixth Annual Festival of New American
Plays comes to an exciting conclusion this weekend.

The finalists of the 2007 Playwriting Contest will have their plays performed
alternately Thursday through Sunday to determine the $1,000 grand prize
winner.

A distinguished panel of judges selected Richard Willett’s “Tiny Bubbles” and
Jon Busch’s “Pet Shop Days” from nearly 200 entries from almost all 50 states.
What makes this particular series of performances different is that, unlike most
plays, these “staged readings” are literal translations of the script as interpreted
by Christopher Shorr, director of “Tiny Bubbles,” and Billy-Christopher Maupin,
director of “Pet Shop Days.”

Both directors fully acknowledge the importance of the forum the contest
has created.

“I think it’s invaluable for the playwright to have his work presented in
front of an audience and actually come out of peoples’ mouths, because a lot
of times, it’s a very solitary job being a writer,” Maupin said.
“It’s less of a collaborative process in that the playwright has a lot less input
in the production,” Shorr said. “The playwright then gets a much better sense
of their work.”

“Tiny Bubbles” is a play about two platonic, gay roommates who base a large
portion of their relationship on drinking together. Once one of them decides to
join Alcoholics Anonymous, his roommate, the protagonist, is left to undertake
a journey of introspection, standing at a point where he must decide whether
or not to stop drinking.

Although it’s a play about alcoholism, the writing doesn’t get bogged down
with emotionally draining content, Shorr said.

“They can be very morose or preachy. Willett has done a marvelous job
developing likeable characters and entertaining, witty dialogue that avoids those
pitfalls. You don’t mind that it’s about alcoholism,” he said.

The protagonist of Busch’s “Pet Shop Days” is a former punk-rock kid that
sold out and “leaves behind his freedom to box himself into the corporate
world,” Maupin said. The plot is very reminiscent of the 1995 cult classic,
“Empire Records.”

The festival is not short on exciting features. As a gesture of appreciation
for the audience’s support, the theater allows them to participate by voting for
the winner.

“Being a playwright, it’s so dependant on the audience, because theater doesn’t
exist without the audience. So (the playwright) gets to have the experience of
having his work actually spoken on stage,” Maupin said. “Afterwards, there’s a
feedback session so he gets to hear from the actors, director and audience, and
what they thought of his piece. So it’s really invaluable from the playwright’s
end to get that interaction.”

Carol Piersol, artistic director for the firehouse, said she was pleasantly
surprised at the rate the festival has grown over the past six years.
“We had to move the deadline up so we had enough time to read all of
them,” she said.

Another remarkable feature of the contest is that it has been an entirely
voluntary effort from reader to actor to director.

“It has been a big challenge finding readers,” Piersol said. “The festival costs
us money – prize money. We pay the producer, and we keep it very low at
the door,” she said.

Piersol and event producer, Karrigan Sullivan, said acquiring a corporate
sponsor is the next logical step in promoting the growth of the festival.

“We have had a great grassroots start. I would really like to see more people
in this area become interested and committed to the development of new plays.
Getting a corporate or financial sponsor would be great. Producing one of these
plays fully would be really exciting,” Sullivan said.

The role that the Firehouse Theatre Project fills in our fair city’s drama scene
is an essential one, said the directors, readers and producer.

“Firehouse is doing really important things by filling in a niche that other
theaters aren’t filling in doing contemporary American theater,” Shorr said. “(It
does this) by serving as an umbrella organization in allowing artists to have
space to do their work.”