City’s New Play Festival encourages creativity

By Jen McShane
Collegian Staff
January 31, 2007

Philadelphia proves to be the one of the most culturally diverse cities as it introduces the first ever Philadelphia New Play Festival: Where Theatre Begins from Feb. 8-18. The play festival is sponsored by the Philadelphia Theatre Alliance and will feature the world premieres of nine plays, all recently written and produced by Philadelphia theater companies.

This play festival is different from past festivals because it will include nine plays, not just one play. Some of the plays are comedies, some are musicals and some are satires of current day political issues.

The program for the play festival has been worked on since July 2005. The idea was thought of by a group of people who wanted to give playwrights the chance to introduce their new work and to have multiple new plays on display at one time. The organizers also hoped that the festival would give Philadelphians the chance to see different plays and gain insight into the production of a brand new play.

Deborah Golden, director of the Theatre Alliance, is excited about the upcoming event.

“We are delighted to offer this exciting opportunity to Philadelphia audiences,” she said in a recent interview about the festival.

Each theater involved will show one play that was produced by its company. The participating theaters are the People’s Light and Theatre Company, the Walnut Street Theatre, the Arden Theatre Company, the Wilma Theatre, Theatre Exile, InterAct Theatre Company, the Philadelphia Theatre Company, Prince Music Theatre and the Vagabond Theatre Troup.

In addition to the new shows, the festival will feature symposiums and readings of fledgling works in order to teach the audiences about the process of writing a new play. There will also be panel discussions with directors and writers about their individual writing processes.

The Theatre Alliance is offering festival passes for $20. Purchase of the pass will give the holder discounts to all of the shows and free admission to the symposiums and readings. With the pass, restaurants around the theaters will offer discounts to those who come to eat before and after seeing a show. These restaurants include Campo’s Deli, Soto Varalli and Moriarty’s Restaurant and Irish Pub. Some discounts include as mush as 20 percent off the entire bill. Discounts on parking will also be available with a festival pass.

The New Play Festival will allow theaters to take risks with the new works that they might not be able to otherwise. The well-loved novel Anne of Green Gables will be performed onstage at the People’s Light and Theatre Company for those interested in seeing a cute rendition of a favorite imaginative redhead, Anne Shirley.

For those interested in a more recent setting, the Philadelphia Theatre Company will be hosting Nerds:// a Musical Software Satire. Nerds tells a humorous story based on the lives of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs before the development of Microsoft. A House With No Walls at the InterAct Theatre Company deals with politics and racism on the plantation of George Washington. Whatever your interests are, the play festival will definitely have a play for you.

mcshanej2@lasalle.edu