A decent theater showcase should last at least three days. But a truly significant one will set into motion positive repercussions that spider out for the remainder of the year.
The first Playwright’s Showcase of the Western Region, last August, attracted 168 entries from 18 states, making the fledgling effort, which returns Friday to the Arvada Center, one of the largest of its kind in the United States – at least geographically.
But no one is under any delusion that the showcase, a collaboration between the Arvada Center and Red Rocks Community College, has yet arrived at any level of national prominence. Yes, 128 actors and 29 directors representing nearly every significant theater company in the metro area helped stage readings of all the winning entries last year. But only 544 people showed up to see them performed over nine sessions.
The showcase offers no prizes beyond inclusion, so the real measure of its initial success and impact is in tracking the many playwrights, producers and actors who met, performed or networked their way into greater artistic opportunities because of it. One new theater company even formed, at least in part, as a result.
“Our intention was to give playwrights the opportunity to have their voices heard, and to do so on a large scale,” said showcase founder Pamela Mencher. “I also think we were successful in pulling together a large number of people from many different local companies to create a network on a scale that hasn’t happened before.”
The greatest success story is Denver playwright Melissa Lucero McCarl, whose “Carlene Yakkin”‘ led directly to a $5,000 commission from the Mizel Center to write “Poignant Irritations,” the acclaimed Gertrude Stein-Alice B. Toklas love story. The play was staged in April, starring Billie McBride and Erica Sarzin-Borrillo.
“The Mizel Center had decided they wanted a Gertrude Stein piece to be the theatrical centerpiece of their ‘Upstarts and Matriarchs’ multidisciplinary project about Jewish women artists,” said Mizel artistic director Steve Wilson. “And when I saw ‘Carlene Yakkin”at the showcase, I knew I’d move heaven and Earth for Melissa to be the one to write it.”
The greatest development of Lucero’s year was when Curious Theatre Company associate artistic director Bonnie Metzgar attended “Poignant Irritations.” Metzgar tapped McCarl to join a team of eight national writers, including three Pulitzer Prize winners, to create “The War Anthology.” That series of war explorations, each based on combat photographs, is slated for its world premiere in March. McCarl’s collaborators include Tony Kushner, Paula Vogel and Suzan-Lori Parks.
Lucrative ripple effect
“The effect of that showcase on my career was just huge,” McCarl said. “The ‘Poignant Irritations’ commission was a great milestone for me. It led me to a completely new level of writing.”
Metzgar is such a fan of “Poignant Irritations” and McCarl’s earlier Frida Kahlo piece, “Painted Bread,” she is shopping both pieces to New York producers, including Loretta Greco’s prestigious Women’s Project.
And “Carlene Yakkin’,” a monologue by a woman in a bar, went on to win the Rocky Mountain Theatre Association’s annual playwriting competition, sharing the top prize with Scott Gibson, another ’04 showcase playwright. Pam Clifton will direct “Carlene Yakkin”‘ next season for the South Suburban Theatre Company.
Actors also enjoyed huge windfalls from the exposure that came with their participation in the community celebration. Acclaimed director Jane Page, who was on a panel of showcase luminaries who evaluated each reading, became enamored of Elgin Kelley’s performance in “Sin,” a full-length play by Ken Cross.
“That’s where I first saw Elgin,” said Page. “I was so impressed I went up to her afterward, gave her my business card and said, ‘I think you’re just awesome.”‘ Page cast Kelley in the Arvada Center’s “The Crimson Thread” and as Desdemona in the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s current hit, “Othello.”
“I can’t tell you how great it is to be approached by a director you’ve never had a chance to work with before,” Kelley said. “And she’s an internationally respected director, so it’s a complete blessing for me to get to know her, and for her to get to know my work, in a way that would not have happened otherwise. Having her sitting out there watching you perform in a 90-minute reading is so much better than a two-minute cattle-call audition.
“The showcase was a dramatic changing point in my career, more so than any other singular thing I have ever done.”
Other success stories
Peter Porco won a $5,000 grant that allowed him to take time off from his job to rewrite his 2004 entry, “The Hanging of Marlon Brando.” “At the showcase, (panelist) Steven Dietz and others gave me very pertinent criticism and some good ideas that allowed me to think in terms of a total revision and expansion of the play from a 15-minute short to a full one-act,” Porco said.
The reading of Cynthia Davies’ children’s play, “Little Red Riding Wolf,” helped motivate her to found the Playwright Theatre, which recently staged “Shaking the Dew From the Lilies.” “I think perhaps my own insanity had more to do with me opening the Playwright, but I suppose … having my play read (and practically start a Jerry Springer chair fight in the talk-back afterward) gave me the confidence to sally forth into the theatrical abyss,” she said jokingly.
Mark Ogle’s “Five Square” went on to win the New Rocky Mountain Voices writing competition in Westcliffe.
David McClinton, who wrote “Sybil’s Others,” met fellow writer Karl Kopp at the showcase, and they are now planning their own writing festival for February. McClinton also saw an audition notice for “A Raisin in the Sun” at the showcase, and he was later cast to perform in the acclaimed Arvada Center production.
Rebecca Burroughs’ “Cries for Help” was produced as part of the Colorado Quickies’ 10th-anniversary production at the Lakewood Cultural Center.
The Pioneer Drama Service published Marlene Remington’s 1930s drawing-room mystery “In Memoriam.”
All told, showcase founder Mencher said, “I think the showcase definitely satisfies my desire to assist.”
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
