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Festival Showcases Emerging Writers
Ioana Patringenaru | April 16, 2007
An Arab-American archeologist looks for a sacred book in Saudi Arabia. Five idealists try to start a commune in the mountains of Kentucky. A fifteen-year-old and his mother visit the wildflower capital of Colorado. A Mexican immigrant helps a twelve-year-old girl get over her fears.
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| From left to right: Alex Lewin, Jennifer Barclay, Lila Rose Kalpan and Josh Tobiessen. Photo: Manuel Rotenberg |
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Their stories will unfold on a UCSD stage in April during the university’s Baldwin New Play Festival, showcasing the talents of student writers, directors, actors and designers. The event will give San Diegans the opportunity to see plays by emerging writers before they move on to well-known stages in New York and elsewhere, said Allan Havis, head of the playwriting strand in UCSD’s MFA in theatre program. “It’s really about San Diego itself,” he said.
Festival organizers go to great lengths to give playwrights a boost and make sure their works get picked up by major theaters, Havis also said. They fly top theater professionals to San Diego to see the plays and meet the authors. So far, they have been wildly successful. Plays have moved on to the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, Huntington Theatre in Boston and the Atlantic Theatre in New York City, among others.
John Tobiessen, one of this year’s playwrights, is one such success story. A New York theater will put on his “Election Day,” which premiered at UCSD in spring 2006. In that play, a young man tries to make it to the voting booth on Election Day, but uninvited guests keep interfering. This year, Tobiessen wrote “Red State Blue Grass,” which chronicles the adventures of five disenchanted Americans who start their own commune. Hilarious mayhem ensues as each commune member connives to create their own personal utopia. Tobiessen said he hopes his play, written as a satire, will get the audience thinking.
Joining him in this year’s line up are Alex Lewin, author of “The Near East,” featuring an Arab-American archeologist; Jennifer Barclay, author of “Freedom, NY,” featuring a Mexican immigrant and a twelve-year-old girl; and Lila Rose Kaplan, author of “Wildflower,” featuring a fifteen-year-old and his mother. |
