The Tampa Bay area needs more playwrights. In the region of West Central Florida there are only 41 members of the Dramatists Guild — the national playwrights' professional association — and of those 41, fewer than ten were sufficiently interested to come to Guild meetings in St. Pete last March, April and May. Where are the playwrights? Biding their time?
Maybe Gorilla Theatre can help. For the ninth year, this organization is hosting the Young Dramatists' Project, a festival devoted to the best writing of local high school and middle school students. I attended last Sunday not to review the show, but to discover what our youngest playwrights might have to offer the area. Is there imaginative, innovative work coming from these teens? Might they eventually infuse the region with new talent?
Yes and yes. The first of the five plays that made it to the Gorilla stage this year uses instant messaging to tell us the story of a doomed love affair. Amanda Buck's Sweet Nothings is about XXX2593 (Jamaica Reddick) and YYY4168 (Adom McRae), schoolmates who become sweethearts after she shows up as new girl at his high school. Buck has us watching on a large screen as the two lovers write each other over a period of months, and intersperses their writing with glimpses of their daily lives. Directed by David O'Hara, the play graphically demonstrates that even the most digital behavior can ingeniously be made theatrical. And even in the era of IM, love is still maddening.
Next on the lineup is Sam French's This One Night in the Warehouse, a Pinteresque mindgame which sees two men (Chris Jackson and Curtis Belz) thrown into a locked room containing a gun with one bullet. One of them, it seems, is a murderer, and it's up to the other to identify and execute him. Of course, neither believes himself to be the criminal, and though Amber (Belz) is physically stronger and more brutal than Campbell (Jackson), neither is at first willing to make any definitive moves. As directed by Scott Isert, the play features one terrifically convincing fight and a lot of modernist ambiguity. And the end features a surprise that not even a jaded critic saw coming.
After intermission, Courtney Hunter's Journey's End (directed by Ami Sallee Corley) graces the Gorilla stage (attractive sets here and elsewhere by Tandy Ecenia). This is a shrewdly imagined play in which Janie (Nicole Jeannine Smith) and James (Nic Carter) are breaking up over his stubborn inability to express love. What's special about the breakup is the presence of two other figures — a woman (Amy E. Gray) who represents Janie's thoughts, and a man (Nathan Caldwell) who speaks James'. With these alter egos telling us exactly what Janie and James are really thinking, we're able to watch a surface conversation and its hidden subtext simultaneously. The result is fascinating. It's thinking like Hunter's that keeps theatergoing stimulating.
Jonathan Van Gils' Gavrilo eschews formalist innovation in favor of pungent dialogue and a bold re-imagining of a key moment in world history. Gils imagines that the assassin who started World War I — Gavrilo Princip (Chris Morales) — is confronted, before the act, by the history teacher (Steve Garland) who expelled him from school. Directed by Karla Hartley, the play reminds us that we're often ignorant of the repercussions that our words may have, and that even the most innocuous of figures should be treated with care. The good news here is Gils' dialogue, which allows Garland particularly to give a virtuoso performance.
And one could hardly ask for more charming performances than Destiny Ramsey and Adam Corson's in Sierra Almengual's Route 64. This young couple — Hanna and Buddy — are expecting roadside assistance after Buddy's truck has broken down, and as they wait we discover that her college ambitions will take her far from her boyfriend. Playwright Almengual's strength is in her psychologizing: she deftly shows us the complicated duet that ensues when two caring souls find time and circumstance coming between them. As directed by Kristina Ball, the play is fragmentary, impressionistic, but still very satisfying. It's a bittersweet encounter handled with a light touch.
So now, to all you playwrights: Please a) settle in the Bay area after college, and b) keep writing dramas. Local theater needs you.
And kudos to Gorilla Theatre for giving you your professional start.
This article appears in Jun 3-9, 2009.