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John Earl Jelks, Tracie Thoms and Michele Shay perform
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Ah, theater! Sumptuously costumed actors striding around gorgeous sets under dramatic lighting spouting their lines from memory as if they just thought of them!
Well, it can be like that, and that can be great – but not all the time. Sometimes it is just the words, delivered from the written page without the benefit of effects. Magic can happen in many guises – and unadorned is one of them.
When theater companies want to try out a new play, check audience reactions to a work they are considering for production, explore an area into which they haven’t ventured before, or help a writer improve a play under development, the answer is sometimes, “Let’s invite the public in for a ‘reading.’”
Washington Stage Guild
Take the program of the Washington Stage Guild. Here’s a company that has always placed the primary emphasis on the text of a play. Most often it has been a play by George Bernard Shaw, but sometimes it’s a play by more contemporary wordsmiths of note such as Michael Hollinger, Charlotte Jones or even Steve Martin.
Their fully staged productions over the last six years have been remarkably consistent and of very high quality. Fifteen of the 20 productions of theirs that I reviewed over that time were so good that I designated them “picks” – my shorthand for a production I believe my readers would thank me for suggesting they see.
Two years ago they lost their performance space on 14th Street NW as they prepared to move into a new facility. While “spaceless,” they lost their artistic director of 22 years: the estimable John MacDonald who died of injuries from a fall. His wife, Ann Norton, with whom he had founded the company and who has served as its executive director, has been joined by longtime company member Bill Largess who assumed the artistic director duties. Together, they have kept the company afloat. Next season they will be returning to full production when they co-host the International Shaw Festival with The Catholic University.
In the meantime, what did they do to keep their name in front of theatergoers and keep their supporters and subscribers interested? They staged readings. They took up the texts of a number of plays they either hadn’t been able to produce in the past or that they were considering producing in the future. They assigned a director, assembled a cast from among the actors who had worked with the company over the years, hired a hall (the Mead Theatre Lab in Flashpoint, a tiny black-box facility at 916 G St. NW, just steps from the Gallery Place – Chinatown Metro’s Ninth and G streets exit) and put on fully rehearsed performances without sets, costumes or special effects.
The results? Delight! Here was an opportunity to get to know some marvelous scripts, and at minimum cost. The company offered the readings with no admission charge (although they did request donations).
Two more readings are slated for this month – each to be performed at Flashpoint. Both are offered at 2:30 p.m. and again at 7 p.m.
On Aug. 9, the company presents a reading of “The Dragon,” a twist on the standard slay-the-threat fairytale. Here the town prefers the familiar threat of a dragon to the safer but mysterious unknown world. It is by Russian playwright Yevgeny Schwartz who was often banned in his home country when he used fairytale motifs to satirize the Soviet regime. It will be directed by Steven Carpenter, who has directed some of the company’s most delightful comedies (like Steve Martin’s “The Underpants”) and most compelling contemporary dramas (such as Michael Hollinger’s “Opus”).
Then, on Aug. 23, the company offers a reading of Alan Wade’s adaptation for the stage of “The Journal of a Disappointed Man,” the 1919 volume by English diarist Bruce Frederick Cummings. Wade, who directed the Stage Guild’s oh-so-intriguing production of an enigmatic French play titled “The Enigma Variations,” will direct his own script.
Solas Nua
Another company, the contemporary Irish arts company Solas Nua (Irish for “New Light”), will be completing their year-long series of free readings in the back room at the 1409 Playbill Café on 14th Street this month. These have been readings of new works from Ireland in cooperation with Northern Ireland’s Tinderbox Theatre Company. The final installments in this series will be the play “This Other City” by Irish playwright Daragh Carville, which will be directed by Jason McCool, and a solo show titled “The Virgin Father” by Jimmy McAleavey, for which Solas Nua hopes to have the actor who performed the show in Ireland, Stewart Ennis, come across the Atlantic to perform it on 14th Street.
For the new season, Solas Nua is partnering with a different Irish theater company, a Dublin-based company with the intriguing name Fishamble: The New Play Company. These readings will be offered on the third Monday of each month at Flashpoint on G Street NW. Again, admission will be free.
Theater J, Studio Theatre and Arena Stage
Later in the fall, Theater J on 16th Street will be firing up their “Tea @ 2” series of readings, which offer Friday afternoon readings of plays being worked on in their development program. These are readings featuring professional casts followed by a discussion with the playwright. Admission is $5.
Last year Studio Theatre’s Second Stage had a series of readings at their facility on 14th Street, and Arena Stage hosted a series they called “Downstairs” because they held the readings in a basement little theater. We can hope both programs schedule readings again in the new season.
The Kennedy Center
The mere labeling of a performance as “A Reading” doesn’t automatically signal it being either free or inexpensive. The Kennedy Center mounted a historic series they called “Staged Readings” last year, doing all 10 of August Wilson’s cycle covering the African-American experience of the 20th century with one play for each decade. Somehow, a “Staged Reading” turned out to include sets, costumes and all the bells and whistles of a full production – with prices to match. At $65 a pop, the full cycle would cost $1,300 per couple.
Still, if the idea of free or nearly free readings intrigues you, and you’d like to sample a wide range of examples, there is probably no better opportunity than the annual weekend-long “Page-to-Stage” festival that the Kennedy Center puts on over Labor Day. This year, that means free readings and previews all over the Kennedy Center, Sept. 5, 6 and 7.
The calendar for this year’s event is still being put together, but it already appears that it will surpass last year’s festival when over 40 companies from around the region offered readings, scenes or samples from nearly 50 different works. It will be a grand opportunity to catch the theatrical readings habit.
Here are the phone numbers for the theaters mentioned in this article:
1409 Playbill Café – 202-265-3055
Arena Stage – 202-554-9066
Flashpoint – 202-315-1305
Kennedy Center – 202-467-4600
Solas Nua – 202-315-1317
Studio Theatre – 202-332-3300
Theater J – 202-777-3229
The Washington Stage Guild – 240-582-0050
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