For the past nine years the Shawnee Playhouse in the Poconos has invited aspiring playwrights to submit their works for their one-act and full-length Shawnee Original Playwriting Competition (SOPS).
This year the playwriting competition selected six one-acts and will be producing them in an evening of one-acts running through January 17th.
The plays are a diverse range of styles and storylines as one would expect from six different playwrights. Unlike the read-throughs held in March to determine the winners the winning scripts are fully produced shows with fine acting, albeit limited sets and basic (but effective) lighting
The first play is titled “The Bureaucracy of Existentialism” byElizabeth Kennedy. Ms. Kennedy crafted her play about the grim reaper and his subordinates trying to locate him when he simply decides he's had enough of doing his job. On the way to find him the minor “grim reapers” have encounters with heroes of folklore and Olympian gods.
Next is “Errant Souls” by Robert S. Robbins. This play is a dramedy about pursuing what it is you want in life and experiencing rather than simply existing. The characters in the play realize that they are both seeking different goals but with ironically similar results.
The third play is Absolution Green by Paul Kodiak. The play is bookended by sermons by a priest who then takes us into his insightful (and humorous) confessional with three parishoners. Kodiak has won this competition several times, including having his play “The Dead Indian Museum” performed last January as the Shawnee full-length winner.
After intermission the audience returns for “The Birthday Room” by Rich Strack. This show, set in a nursing home, offers the timeless message of “appreciate each day for the gift that it is” and swings from humor to bawdiness to tenderness with ease. A mysterious “elixir of youth” promises to grant the residents a few moments of “feeling as if they were fifty instead of eighty” when they drink it and humorous and poignant moments are the result.
The next play is “Angel on the Yellow Couch” by K.K. Gordon. This is a quirky, fast-paced and funny little piece about the expectations we set on others with regard to love. A young man is in love with his best friend's sister-in-law and yet his friend refuses to divulge her phone number as he believes his sister-in-law is completely wrong for his friend. The sister-in-law appears as an unseen “angel” between them as they discuss her and it makes for a clever piece.
The evening concludes with “The Counterfeit Dick” by Zanne Hall. This play concerns a successful but reclusive writer who is visited by the manifestation of the frustrated main character of his novels, an abrasive and no-nonsense private investigator the likes of Sam Spade.
There is something satisfying about seeing a new show at a festival such as this, especially hen this is the first time the piece has been produced and you are the first audience to see it. The Shawnee Playhouse does a fine job with these six shows and audiences will surely be made to feel as if they are also a part of the creative process when they see these six fine one-acts.
“The Messenger”, a SOPS winner written by Paul Kodiak, went on to New York and was named a top ten theatre pick by the New York Daily News and also won two NEPTA awards. Another past winner “Ethereal Killers” by Zanne Hall was performed Off Broadway and is currently part of the New Ten Minute Plays at Manhattan Repertory Theatre.
If you are interested in seeing intriguing and varied new works which might quite possibly be heading to New York City in the near future (at a much better price than you will pay for them Off Broadway) you would be wise to take a short drive to the Shawnee Playhouse and see the winners of the Shawnee Original Playwriting Series. You will also be supporting original theater and the arts by skipping the blockbuster movie for something more rewarding.
The Shawnee Original Playwriting Series one-act winners will be presented through January 17th. For tickets call 570-421-5093 or visit www.theshawneeplayhouse.com.