Short Plays with Big Impact: Best of PlayGround 24
Monday Night PlayGround has been a core of PlayGround’s playwright development program since the company’s inception. The process of writing a play is unique to every playwright, but in order to refine that process, repetition is essential. Practicing the format of a short play forces a playwright to essentialize their style and eschew distractions from the theme of their piece. To pack a punch in just ten short minutes, a playwright must deftly define characters, simplify setting, and specify the play’s scope. With a new Monday Night prompt rolling in monthly, playwrights are also motivated to ditch dawdling and self-doubts and dive into bold experimentation with form and message. The skills cultivated during Monday Night PlayGround staged readings have formed the foundation for all of PlayGround’s tiers of development.
Through a process that is part audience participation and part expert adjudication, PlayGround distills six highly impactful plays from the year’s worth of monthly readings, and highlights them with fully-rehearsed productions in one evening. The Best of PlayGround is a celebration of the new, but also a commemoration of the hard-work and risk-taking of our writers pool the whole year round. Many of the plays selected for Best of PlayGround go on to find new life as full-length commissions, but even those that don’t stand in the PlayGround archives as fully-produced plays, often for many of the writers pool serving as their introduction to the professional theatre. Playwrights with even the shortest tenure in PlayGround’s history that have gone on to national acclaim can still be found in the records of Best of PlayGrounds past, so joining us for this culmination of our season is your chance to see the cutting-edge of Bay Area artistry. The following are this year’s selected Best:
Agent of Change by Addie Ulrey
Through a series of repeat interactions between a stalwart Customer and a Server at a Berkeley restaurant, Agent of Change explores the exhausting logistics of sausage shipping, client service relations, and food waste. Is caring about change enough change itself to spark global reform?
Christmas Evita by Tom Bruett
When volunteering at a nursing home on Christmas, Edgar is faced with the challenging task of serving dinner to the most crotchety member of the community. Though wildly different, the two men bridge the generational divide by connecting around shared love, loss and a mutual appreciation for a certain Andrew Lloyd Weber musical.
I’m Back by Christian Wilburn
Nobody wants Michael Jordan to play baseball, except Michael Jordan. When the ghost of Michael’s father visits, MJ know he has a decision to make: stay in baseball or return to basketball. Through this supernatural take on a superstar story, we learn that even Michael Jordan has doubts, fears and the desire to make his parents proud.
Love, Pray, Eat by Melissa Keith
Wanda is distressed by Jackie’s avant-garde views on love. Is there more to life than fulfilling a biological imperative? Wanda wants the traditional love story: to find a partner, have kids, and to decapitate and devour her partner immediately after breeding. In this story about love, lust, and tolerance, is it really survival of the fittest?
The Evocation by Leela Velautham
In this prequel to the Scottish play, Lady Macbeth is processing the pain from the premature death of her third child and looking for consolation from her husband, who’s preoccupied with his next planned battle. As her pleas for him to stay become increasingly desperate, she is pushed to the point of saying something she immediately regrets – setting in motion one of the greatest tragedies ever written.
The Gravedigger’s Wife by Martha Soukup
Following the advice of great Greek philosophers, Shakespeare’s greatest plays focus on the highest of the high: princes and queens born to greatness by nature of their nobility. But triumph and tragedy strike even the most common of common. Breathing life into the far tangents of Hamlet’s side characters, this prequel asks if it’s only “poor Yorick” we ought to pity.
For our last featured interviews of the festival, we “sat down” with some of our selected playwrights to see what inspires them and their selected plays:
How long have you been a writer with PlayGround?
Melissa Keith (MK): This is my sixth year!
Leela Velautham (LV): This is my second year in the writers pool.
Addie Ulrey (AU): This is my first year writing for PlayGround.
Christian Wilburn (CW): This is my first year in the writers pool! It’s been such an enriching experience!
Tom Bruett (TB): I’ve been a writer with Playground for the past 2 years.
How has PlayGround helped you as a playwright?
MK: Monday Night PlayGround is an excellent way to regularly hear your work out loud. Even when not selected, you are able to hear your piece read at Recess and receive valuable feedback from the actors and other PlayGround writers. PlayGround also provides great commission opportunities for full-length play development.
LV: It’s given me the opportunity of seeing my work acted out on stage! Going to Recess and thinking about why pieces haven’t worked has also really strengthened my writing.
AU: It’s really nice to have a built-in, monthly requirement to make something and make it fast. It reminds you to get simple and direct with your creative process, and not to take it too seriously.
CW: PlayGround helps me improve as a writer by giving me opportunity to expand, create and complete work under a rigorous deadline. It also gives me the opportunity to work with incredible artists all over the Bay Area.
TB: PlayGround is literally like a sandbox for writers. You get to play, explore and there are limits. It’s helped me immensely.
What is another favorite play you have written?
MK: A favorite of my previous PlayGround selections is Mission Ambivalent – It was social justice night, and I thought it might be humorous to feature a protagonist who was just too caught up in their own lives to take meaningful action. The higher the stakes, the more insane and jarring his apathy, so he was a bomb tech in a spy movie parody. He wanted to save the world…but he was grocery shopping that day, you know?
LV: I wrote a play at university called Schroedinger’s Hat.
AU: My most recent full-length play is called When the Lights Go Out and follows a teenager coming to terms with climate change.
CW: My favorite playwriting experience was lead-writing a devised piece at my alma mater, Santa Clara University (Go Broncos!), called Love_Stories. It was an in-depth look at love and dating in the digital age!
TB: I’m really excited about my play The Nesting Instinct, which I am developing with PlayGround also. I just had a developmental reading that has opened some new doors for future rewrites. It was a fantastic experience all around. The actors and director brought so much talent and energy into the room. I hope for it to be a heart opening story that will allow us all to think about what we can do to save our environment.
What inspired your play?
MK: This play was inspired by the prompt, “Anthropomorph”. I wanted to choose an animal that had a fun, bizarre behavior I could use to make a commentary on human life. Praying mantises quickly came to mind as the females notoriously eat the males during/after procreating. I thought it would be fun to use this reverse power dynamic to explore toxic masculinity, what is perceived as natural/healthy in relationships, and a love not tethered to the “traditional” societal rules.
LV: I’ve always thought that Lady Macbeth was an interesting character, given her anger, ambition and strangely sudden descent into madness. Some critics have put this down to the fact that she has lost children, and so I was thinking about grief and how Lady Macbeth and Macbeth might deal with it differently.
AU: My last ten years as a server at a certain brunch spot in Berkeley. I wrote the piece for March’s Monday Night PlayGround/Planet Earth Arts Night prompt, which was “Feeding Nine Billion.”
CW: The prompt centered around an event that happened in 1994-95 (the year PlayGround was founded), which was before I was born. One subject I did know about from that time was basketball, and Michael Jordan, so I went with that.
TB: I was thinking about loss at the holidays. And I was also thinking about intergenerational connection in the gay community. Those two combined to form the play.
Has the script changed during the rehearsal process? How?
MK: Yes! It helps so much to hear it out loud. Some parts were a bit clunky, and redundant. I think–I hope–I cleaned them up.
LV: Minimally, although it’s interesting to see the actors experimenting with pacing and rhythm in the text.
AU: Not too much. The piece is structured in very short scenes that all begin the same way. Originally the intention was for the actors to just physically “re-set” themselves, in full view of the audience. That type of stylization didn’t make as much sense for Zoom, so we ended up using more sound and projection design than we probably would have for a liver theatre version.
CW: Some, mostly because of the ‘Last Dance’ documentary. I wrote the play months before the doc came out and added some things I learned from the documentary.
TB: Yes, I always tailor the language to the actors in the room. They are a huge part of the developmental process. I think of the first draft of a play as a lump of clay. I sculpt the language and story more each time through. When we first write these plays we only have a weekend, so it’s a joy to be able to dive in and really spend some time working the script.
What excites you about this Zoom Fest premiere?
MK: It’s so nice to be able to see the work of these amazing actors and storytellers – something which I know so many of us are missing without live theatre. We can also do really silly tech things–like make Doug a floating head on a bumble bee body.
LV: It being accessible to a potentially worldwide audience – my friend in England says she’s planning to stay up really late to catch it!
AU: PlayGround employs a lot of artists annually for their New Works Festival, so I am appreciative of their work to keep the community active and employed, in this small way, during COVID.
CW: Well, everything really! I’m inspired by everyone’s performance and commitment in this process. I am really fortunate to be able to work with them!
TB: It’s exciting to adapt this story for a new medium, like Zoom. I love how close we can get to the actors’ faces.
What do you want audiences to know about your play?
MK: I personally have not murdered and then consumed any of my sexual partners, even when tempted.
LV: Although it’s ostensibly a prequel to Macbeth, the language is contemporary.
CW: That we had to get extremely creative to get the play to work over Zoom. The original stage directions required a lot of stylized movement, that doesn’t work in this field. The team really did an amazing job bringing it to life, because at the beginning I wasn’t sure how it would work!
TB: Despite the fact that these characters are both flawed, as we all are, they’re both in pain. And through sharing that pain and connection they will get through it.
What has been your favorite coping/soothing activity during Shelter-In-Place?
MK: I probably should find one of those!
LV: Alcohol, and catching up with British TV.
AU: Staring at plants.
CW: Yoga! It’s been a lifesaver.
TB: Drinking. No, honestly slowing down. It’s been nice to have more space to think.
What have you enjoyed about digital theater?
MK: It can be truly inspiring to see the creativity of artists. Digital theatre feels like completely re-learning theatre in a way, but wonderful to see so many people taking the challenge head on with such great ideas and enthusiasm.
LV: Being able to catch shows I wouldn’t have had the chance to in person.
AU: Tech in pajamas.
CW: It’s a totally new medium! How could you not be excited about being at the forefront of a new medium!
TB: I’ve enjoyed not having to leave my house for rehearsals and having an easy commute.
What do you miss about theater in person?
MK: What don’t I miss?
LV: Seeing / hearing an audience’s reaction – especially laughter.
AU: Everything else.
CW: The connection! Being in the same place at the same time, hearts beating as one…You can’t beat that.
TB: Well, my play is a comedy so it’s very strange not to hear laughter.
What is your next playwriting project?
MK: I’ll be developing a full-length play, commissioned for PlayGround’s June Anne Baker Prize commission program.
LV: I am working on something about open relationships and capitalism.
AU: It’s a secret! I’m experimenting with not allowing myself to talk about an idea until I’ve tried writing it.
CW: A full-length piece called Simulacra, which is probably my most ambitious project yet!
TB: I’m working on a few different full-length ideas. I want to do something that celebrates love, connection and humor. I think that’s what will fill me up now.
Anything else you want to say to audiences?
MK: Thank you so much for joining us! We love you!
LV: Thank you for watching.
CW: PlayGround’s ambitious commitment to keep theatre alive during this time, is amazing. To jump into a totally new medium and produce an entire festival with innovative work is the best of theatre.
TB: Thanks for taking the time to check this out. I know there are a million important things you could do with your time right now and glad you’re choosing to spend it with us.
Join us this weekend for Best of PlayGround 24, Saturday, June 13 at 8pm PT and Sunday, June 14 at 5pm PT. You can reserve your tickets at https://playground-sf.org/bestof/ and come see the future of Bay Area theater in process!