The Playwrights Showcase of the Western Region emerges this week from its one-year hibernation – and, my, how it has grown.
The showcase, already the largest of its kind between Chicago and Los Angeles, went to sleep a cub and awoke a bear. When it emerges Wednesday, you’ll be able to mark the 4-year-old’s changes as if it came with a growth chart:
The showcase has expanded from three days to four, the first two at Red Rocks Community College and the second in the Arvada Center’s new black-box theater.
The number of plays selected for staged readings has grown from 25 to 31, and most of the additional plays will be of the full-length (and most nationally marketable) variety.
The panel of experts who offer post-reading tips after each reading has expanded from five to nine. This year’s group includes Denver Center Theatre Company artistic director Kent Thompson, Curious founder Chip Walton and acclaimed playwright Richard Dresser (“Rounding Third”).
Submissions from playwrights in the 18 eligible Western states nearly doubled to 155, and the number of area actors who will bring the readings to life has swelled to 135.
Most impressively, the showcase will for the first time fully stage one of its own previous selections, Greeley native Mark A. Smith’s “A Lesser Life.”
His play about conjoined twins was selected for a reading in 2005. During the showcase’s planned hiatus last year, founder Pamela Mencher tasked an independent panel with choosing the one play from the first two years that was most deserving of a second life. It tabbed “A Lesser Life.”
Original director Christy Montour-Larson is back for the one-night only presentation at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. She’ll have an impressive local cast headed by Rhonda Lee Brown, Terry Burnsed and Gregg Adams.
“This is really what the showcase was always meant to be about,” said Montour-Larson, who maintained a collaboration with Smith (who splits his time between Atlanta and Montrose) through two years of revisions.
“Two years ago, this showcase really gave Mark his first chance to even hear his play out loud,” she said. “And since then, he has made some awesome revisions. I think now this is a very theatrical and soul-searching and thoughtful play, and one very worthy of future productions.”
Smith called his selection “an honor and a tremendous opportunity.” He said working with Montour-Larson “has helped me a great deal in making the play better.”
“A Lesser Life” is the story of parents who discover they are about to have conjoined twins with a life-threatening medical condition. As they agonize over difficult ethical and medical choices, Smith intersperses the true story of Chang and Eng Bunker (famous conjoined twins born in Siam in 1811), and the tale of fictional contemporary adult twins Annie and Betty.
“It’s a really profound exploration of what it means to be normal and what it means to be extraordinary,” Montour-Larson said.
Founder Pamela Mencher thinks Smith’s play is a shining example of what the showcase is about. Now if she can only get people to come and see it.
While the showcase has rallied the participation of nearly every area theater company, the 2005 edition attracted only 250 paying audience members over nine sessions.
This year’s showcase will cost $26,000 to mount, with the Arvada Center and Red Rocks Community College splitting that expense. The Arvada Center took on the additional, estimated $7,000 expense of mounting Smith’s play. Unlike the volunteer actors participating in the readings, Montour-Larson’s crew gets paid.
“It’s been tough, but we’re continuing with our vision,” said Mencher, and that’s supporting playwrights in the development process, and bringing together the local theater community in a unique fashion.
“It’s all about sharing the art among those who do the art.”
2007 Playwrights Showcase of the Western Region
PLAY READINGS | Thirty plays, including children’s plays, dramas and musicals, will be read in three daily sessions, at 9:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.|At Red Rocks Community College on Wednesday and Thursday (13300 W. Sixth Ave., Lakewood), and the Arvada Center (6901 Wadsworth Blvd.)
MAIN EVENT | A fully staged presentation of Mark A. Smith’s “A Lesser Life,” 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Arvada Center|Each play gets a post-show talkback led by a panel of three experts, from among Kent Thompson, Chip Walton, Richard Dresser, Edith Weiss, Anne Garcia-Romero, Dawson Moore, Aoise Stratford and others | $75 for full access, $30 per day, $15 per session ($5 for under 12) | For more information, including workshops and an intensive playwright’s boot camp, call 720-898-7200 or visit .
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
