[NEohioPAL] Preview of Lake Erie College's "New Play Festival"

[Bob Abelman]

Lake Erie College playwrights put on a show

 

Bob Abelman

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times, Geauga Times Courier

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This preview appeared in the News-Herald 3/19/10

 

In the 1930s and 1940s, a teenage Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney did a series of "backyard musical" films where the logical solution to any of life's problems was to "put on a show."

 

Babes in Arms found the two staging a musical to help revive vaudeville after it had succumbed to motion pictures.  In Strike Up the Band, those crazy kids do a musical revue to finance their High School's band competition and, oh yeah, pay for a pal's life-saving surgery.

 

The students at Lake Erie College in Painesville may not be curing what ails the world by staging their New Play Festival, which opens tonight and runs throughout the weekend, but it certainly serves a good purpose nonetheless. 

 

"It is important for young writers to see their work on stage," notes Dr. Jerry Jaffe, assistant professor of drama at LEC and the inspiration for the festival.  "It is all a part of developing their theatrical imagination," he adds.

 

The four original plays will be performed by members of the College's play writing class and staged by students of the directing class.  Students of the lighting design class are working with Cleveland-based lighting expert Ben Needham, who teaches stagecraft, on creating original lighting designs for each play.   

 

Such communal effort is reminiscent of a Garland and Rooney production, although the subject matter in these plays is significantly more sophisticated.  

 

 Broken, by Joseph Fath, is an ironic comedy-drama about a failing marriage as symbolized by the couple's house falling apart around them.  "Nothing lasts, says Fath.  "Life goes on and everything is only for now." 

 

Factory is a social drama about two men working at a factory and the crime they are considering to help change their lives. "I got the idea from a news story that made headlines last year," suggests playwright Jonathan Sweet, "when a card box was stolen from a wedding reception."   

 

Nic Grimsic's We'll Miss You, Michael Smith  is a very silly farce about a funeral with the wrong body on display and the lengths the two men running the funeral will go in order to cover up their error.  "I wrote this in a haze of other end-of-semester assignments," admits the author, "and I wound up misplacing my copy of the script in the frenzy of projects and compositions I was working on. I'm as excited as anybody else to see what I wrote." 

 

A Simple Lesson, by Danielle Pitrone, is about a time-obsessed traveler and the troubles he has with people in a train station.  "I hope that the audience comes away with an appreciation of how quickly life goes by," says Pitrone.  "Time is precious and if we waste it arguing or worrying about frivolous things, we end up missing out on what is actually important."   

 

What:      New Play Festival.

When:     Tonight and Tomorrow at 7:30pm, and Sunday, March 20, at 2:00pm. 

Where:    C.K. Rickel Theatre located in the Fine Arts Building on the Lake Erie College

                 campus, Painesville.

Tickets:   Free.

Info:         440-375-7455.
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