Welcome to On the Radar, where we preview up-and-coming arts events to mark your calendar for. Just when you think you’ve seen everything the Tampa Bay stage scene has to offer, Jobsite and American Stage serve up a fresh, hot, heaping portion of theatrical goodness. This week you can see staged readings of two plays that even the most cultured theater buffs have yet to attend — because these local playwrights are offering them up for public consumption for the first time ever.
First, see David Beckett and Ann G. Bauer’s On the Way to O’Neill’s: JFK in Ireland at Jobsite. This piece of revisionist history imagines what might’ve happened if JFK had survived Dallas. It’s set in 1999, when the former president, now an octogenarian, visits Wexford to mourn the death of his son. Get some insight on the story at the post-show talkback with the playwrights and director James Rayfield.
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This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2010.