For the past few months, LAVA hosted a theater incubation series, in which six local playwrights workshopped and developed new plays. Now they’re ready for an audience! Get a glimpse into the process of making theater, in this festival of staged readings of new works in many stages of development.
As We Were: Nine Days in October by Jan Maher
available online through July 13
Over sixty years ago, Bob Dylan recorded his first album, “Rocky and Bullwinkle” dominated Saturday morning television, and the world teetered on the precipice of all out nuclear war.
As We Were: Nine Days in October focuses on the impact of the Cuban Missile Crisis on the lives of ten students on a Midwestern campus. In the lounge of their small college, the students play chess, cards, and guitars; discuss homework, music, and Halloween pranks; flirt and banter. Abruptly, their cocoon is ripped open by JFK’s announcement that the world is on the brink of nuclear war. Each is wrenched into stark confrontations with identity, sexuality, values, mortality, themselves, and each other.
The Cuban Missile Crisis ends a mere nine days after JFK’s speech to the nation, but during that time the students and their world—our world—are forever changed.
Audiences are invited to stay for post-play discussions, led on Friday night by Pat Hynes, of Traprock Center for Peace and Justice and on Saturday night by Doug Selwyn, LAVA Board President.
As We Were will be performed by Joe Doyle, Rebecca Hicks, Penney Hulten, Jayse Matrishon, E.C. Piper, Zac Poulin, Will Quale, Vanessa Query, Seth Rosenbaum, Kiersten Samalis, and Clara Witty.
Playwright Jan Maher was a freshman in college during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Events depicted are, as they say, “based on a true story,” though Maher freely admits she is primarily a writer of fiction. “1962 was a cusp year,” she notes. “We entered college that year at the tail end of the conforming Fifties, and emerged as the cutting edge of the legendary Sixties. The complacency of the Eisenhower years were behind us, and political assassinations, liberation movements, hippies, Yippies, massive demonstrations and massive concerts were yet to fully manifest.”
“750%” by Christine Benvenuto
Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” adapted by P. H. Crosby
“750%” by Christine Benvenuto
A seemingly random encounter on a subway platform brings two people together. Their story unfolds, revealing who they are to each other, their shared past and separate futures, and the intimate partner violence that has brought them to this moment.
Performed by:
Shannon Chabot
Mary Budzn
Christine Benvenuto’s plays have been produced by the Boston Theater Marathon, the Sixth Festival in NYC, The Braid in Los Angeles, and online. Her play Bridges was part of The LAVA Center’s social justice series last year. Her play Destination Wedding received its first public reading at LAVA last summer, and its second at Clamour Theater in Northern Florida as part of a playwright’s residency in March. A new play, Yours, will be produced as a podcast and released next fall. She is the author of two books published by St. Martin’s Press, and her short stories, essays, and articles have appeared in many newspapers, magazines and anthologies.
Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” adapted by P. H. Crosby
Who is Bartleby?
Where did he come from?
What does he want?
The head of a Wall Street law firm in the 1860s wrestles with proper management of his office staff, including a strange newcomer…
Performed by:
Rick Malone
Tracy Trimm
Kevin McVeigh
Becca Mandel
Andra Daunhauer
P.H. Crosby, a resident of Gill, is a writer of poetry, fiction and drama, published in Changing Men, The Other Side, War, Literature and the Arts (WLA), the Montague Reporter, Sparks of Calliope, Friends Journal, Blue Unicorn and other venues. A short play, “A Change in Climate” was produced on-line in 2020 by the LAVA Center, where Crosby’s adaptation of George Gissing’s The Odd Women also received a two-part stage reading in 2022-23. Crosby has a Master of Arts in Teaching from Brown University and studied English and Drama at Catholic University and Greenfield Community College.
“Time in Tatters” by Silvia Martinez-Howard
“Inheritance” by Nina Gross
“Time in Tatters” by Silvia Martinez-Howard
This is a story of identity, uprooting, exile, and traumas of war.
Silvia is a native of Argentina, who produced events for Amnesty International, in honor of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, and to the Minority Task Force on Aids, in New York City. Her eclectic work encompasses poetry, playwriting, ceramic sculpture, photography, textiles and jewelry. She teaches Spanish and loves cooking.
“Inheritance” by Nina Gross
Set in the late antebellum south, “Inheritance” is a story of privilege, power, and deception. In this existential coming of age, a young man groomed to take his place in genteel society grapples with his hidden past and the hypocrisy that is his inheritance.
Performed by:
Satya Johnson
Terrell Jones
Lily Farizon
Jennifer Bido
Kevin McVeigh
Interview with Archie by John McDonnell Tierney
Interview with Archie is a new play by John McDonnell Tierney that focuses on two themes: Faith and Dementia and yet it is not “about” either. Rather, this play explores the experience of “two men-of-the-cloth,” one old, one young, with Faith and Dementia. “Archie,” a 90 year old retired Catholic Bishop who doesn’t believe Heaven exists, meets Elijah, a 20-year old Evangelical Seminarian whose whole purpose in life is to get to there. The play is quick at “engaging” your attention; everything you need to know is upfront as you learn, even before Elijah does, that Archie is in stage four of Alzheimer’s disease. As to what that means? Well, that’s the “enlighten” part because, it is quite possible, after seeing Interview with Archie, and having been “entertained” along the way, you will know a lot more about the deeply human experience of having Alzheimer’s and loving someone who does.
Performed by:
Tracy Trimm
Seth Rosenbaum
Louise Krieger
David Fersh
John McDonnell Tierney, aka “Jack McT” is a composer and playwright with an Off-Broadway track record and numerous plays and musicals in his portfolio. His musical, “Humanity’s Child,” premiered at the New York Theater Festival and played four weeks at the Players Theatre Off- Broadway in 2019. “Extraordinary Hero,” Jack’s full-length musical for virtual theater, was streamed on the Rogue Theatre Festival, 2022 and a trio of his comedies will play at the 2023 Festival in July. Jack’s most recent works include numerous Short Plays, One-Acts, and full- length dramas. Jack’s first non-musical “Keepers of the Secret” had a professional “Virtual Staged-Reading” with costumes, props, music, sfx, and scenery on July 6, 2022. He is a contributing playwright to several on-line theater groups and is an in-demand director and actor as well. Jack works out of his home studio in Heath, Massachusetts where he lives with his wife Patricia and cat Willow.
All plays are also viewable online, on demand, for two weeks.
Discounted tickets: We are offering a limited number of $1 tickets for Card to Culture participants. If you have a current EBT, WIC, or ConnectorCare card, contact us for details on how to reserve a discounted ticket to this event.
On the Boards is made possible by grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the local cultural councils of Greenfield, Bernardston, Gill, Leyden, and Northfield.
