The “On the Boards” festival of play readings is underway at The LAVA Center in Greenfield for the second year in a row, giving local playwrights a chance to get feedback on their work-in-progress plays.
“The focus of the festival last year and this year has been to encourage local playwrights to work on new plays,” said Vanessa Query, The LAVA Center’s manager. “So these are all new works that are in the process of being written. … They’re all in slightly different stages of development.”
Mary Nelen’s play, “The Female Gaze,” kicked off the six-week series last weekend with a “fabulous” reception.
“We had a great audience,” Nelen said. “Really good, positive responses, and the best thing was that we had a talkback. … We got to hear from the audience what was working for them and what they loved, and what they didn’t understand.”
Nelen said she appreciated the opportunity to get feedback on the play while it’s still being revised.
“I probably have two more drafts to do before it’s finished, and this was a great experience for me because I could see what really needs to be tweaked,” Nelen said. “I feel so grateful for LAVA and their dedication and their organization, too — it’s quite impressive.”
Over the course of the six weekends the series is running, 12 plays will be shown. The plays are being performed as either staged readings or table readings.
Another playwright participating in the series is Nina Gross. Her play, “Inheritance,” is set in the Antebellum South, and is about identity and power. “It’s about all of the elements that become our collective inheritance.”
“I’m very grateful to The LAVA Center for giving me the opportunity to work on this project,” Gross said. “I went for the idea I had that felt like it was a kernel of something that could be great, and I’m really glad that I did that. And it feels like I’ve had an opportunity to develop something. When something really wonderful comes into your arms, you receive it. That’s how I feel about this. I just feel very, very grateful for the opportunity, and I want it to fly.”
Last year, Gross had three scenes of the play — the idea for which came to her in a dream — written when she heard about The LAVA Center’s table reading series. She participated in 2023, but said her play has grown since then.
“At this point, I’d like this to be the launch of the play,” Gross said.
“On the Boards” brings a wide variety of plays into the spotlight.
“They’re all really different from each other. There’s a lot of different forms of theater — there’s traditional narrative theater, and then there’s stuff that’s a little more artsy and experimental, there’s some comedy. … And there’s also some more deep, really serious issues being handled, and I think that’s also really great and important,” Query explained. “I’m looking forward to all of them. They’re all really interesting and unique, and so much passion has gone into all of them.”
Another example, Beth Filson’s play, “The Moon Over Us,” explores trauma and memory. She has two actors playing one character at different life stages — one in her 20s and the other in her 60s.
“They talk back and forth, through the narrative, about memory and how we construct memory,” Filson said. “What rises to the surface and gets claimed ‘story’ and what sinks below the surface and is forgotten.
“It’s a work in progress, which is really important to know because it does keep changing and evolving,” she added. “I’m working on autobiographical material that is focused on traumatic memory and the way that trauma is often transformed into something quite meaningful, through the storytelling process.”
Professionally, Filson worked for many years sharing her experiences of trauma to reform the mental health system. She came to playwriting through a desire to share more of her experiences in her personal life as well.
“I was really determined to bring all of my stories to my community, not just the mental health system. … About two years ago, I really left like I was hiding so much of who I was, and all of the stories I had, from friends and neighbors and just everyday people,” Filson explained.
Despite being trained as a poet, playwriting felt like the right medium to Filson to explore memory.
“I was looking for a medium that I could really play with to explore my stories in a much more multidimensional way,” she said. “It’s been pretty fun and exciting.”
Schedule
The upcoming play readings are as follows:
■Saturday, June 22, 7 p.m. — “Good Shabbos, Aronsteinowits!,” and “The Fourth Dimension.”
■Saturday, June 29, 7 p.m. — “Phoenix in the Holy Land” and “Acacia.”
■Friday, July 12 and Saturday, July 13, 7 p.m. — “The Moon Over Us” and “Cancer Mom.”
■Friday, July 19 and Saturday, July 20, 7 p.m. — “Man and his Shadow,” “Modern Times” and “American Stink Bug.”
■Friday, July 26 and Saturday, July 27, 7 p.m. — “Inheritance.”
Tickets are on a sliding scale of $5 to 15 and can be purchased in advance at tixtree.com/o/lava. More information about “On the Boards” can be found at thelavacenter.org/on-the-boards.
