The Pagosa Springs Community Center is not exactly the location where one might expect to find a presentation of a typical theater production — but luckily, the Square Top Repertory Theatre’s New Works Festival promises to be anything but typical.
Click here to view the Daily Post video of the playwrights and actors as they first began working on the new plays earlier this week.
The festival, which opens tonight, Thursday, March 19, with the first of three brand new plays, the quirky family drama Anathema by Mississippi playwright Joseph Frost — and continues on Friday night, March 20, with Joan Dunayer’s Seeking Flight, and finishes on Saturday night, March 21 with John Philpit’s Contrapositive — will be presenting a type of theater I’ve not experienced in Pagosa during my 15 years here: the “staged reading” of new works. Continued...
Joseph Frost's four-actor play Anathema opens STRT's play reading festival tonight at 7pm. |
A staged reading presents actors on stage with minimal costumes and a modest amount of blocking, holding their scripts and “reading” the un-memorized play. This style of theater is common with brand new plays, because the rehearsal process is actually a chance for the playwright to experience, sometimes for the very first time, how the words on the page appear in the mouths and actions of live actors.
Usually, the playwright ends up revising — often more than once, and sometimes drastically — as a result of what he or she sees and hears during the rehearsal process. Thus, the final performance reading sometimes involves a substantially different script from the one the actors picked up on the first night of rehearsal.
 Square Top Repertory Theatre has gathered some fine actors from Pagosa Springs and Durango to participate in this one-week process, and enlisted directors STRT Charlie Pepiton, Shane Fuller and Felicia Meyer to guide the three plays through the rehearsal process.
All shows begin at 7:00pm, March 19-21, at the performance space in the Pagosa Springs Community Center on Hot Springs Blvd and are rated PG to PG-13. Parents are encouraged to call for details. Tickets are $5 each or $12.50 for a weekend pass.
For more information visit the Square Top website or call 264-0264.
Don’t miss your chance to be a part of this exciting and unique event right here in Pagosa Springs. |