First-time directors, a first-time playwright and several
returning favorites mark the 10th edition of Changing Scene
Theatre Northwest‘s “Summerplay” festival of new one-acts
plays, the line-up for which recently appeared on the company’s Web
site (changingscenenorthwest.org).
The capper of the festival’s first decade will be presented Aug.
31 to Sept. 9 at the Bremerton Eagles Aerie 192,
205 Sixth St., according to Changing Scene artistic director
Pavlina Morris. Friday and Saturday performances
will be at 7:30 p.m., with Sunday matinees at 2 p.m.
Playwrights John C. Davenport, Scott
Gibson and Josh Hartwell, all of whom
have extensive histories with the Bremerton troupe — who have been
celebrating summer by producing evenings of original short stage
works from around the country since their inception. At the same
time, Darren Hembd, one of Changing Scene’s
longest-tenured members as an actor, director and technician, takes
the play-writing plunge with a show titled “The Playwright.”
Morris has doled out two of the plays each to two first-time
directors, Jeffrey Bassett and Dray
Young, and Samantha Camp, who’ll be
making her Changing Scene debut. Bassett, one of the area’s busiest
actors, just completed a tour-de-force run as Arnold Beckoff in
Changing Scene’s production of “Torch Song
Trilogy.” Young, another “Torch Song” veteran, is a CSTN
regular. And Camp has worked on stages in Tacoma, Gig Harbor and
Port Orchard, notably Western Washington Center for the Arts’
production of “Hot L Baltimore.”
Bassett will direct Davenport’s “Collector’s Edition” and
“Airport Diner,” by Californian Carol Roper.
Another California writer, Stanley Toledo,
contributed “Introductions,” to be directed by Camp, who’ll also
helm Gibson’s “Professional Eye-Opener.” Young gets the director’s
chair for Hembd’s debut piece, as well as Hartwell’s “The
Extraordinarily Mundane Adventures of Earth Boy.”
Seattleite Davenport and Colorado-based Gibson and Hartwell make
up a sort of all-star team of providers of original material to the
Bremerton-based fringe company, which is an offshoot of the
original Changing Scene Theatre in Denver. Among them, they’ve had
five full-length plays and a festival full of one-acts produced in
Bremerton.
Another franchise player in the “Summerplay” pantheon, L.A.
playwright Mark Harvey Levine, is notably absent
from this year’s lineup. But Morris has hinted that an evening of
selected Levine one-acts might be in the offing in the near
future.