Up-and-coming Hoosiers get a chance to play

Friday night will mark the beginning of BloomingPlays Festival 2010, a three-week event that showcases the abilities and aspirations of up-and-coming Hoosier playwrights.

The event is put on by the Bloomington Playwrights Project, a nonprofit professional theater organization that is the only theater in the state of Indiana focused exclusively on developing original plays. The festival will be divided into different series, each staged at 107 W. Ninth St. on the BPP performance space.

The Mainstage Series Showcase will run each Thursday through Sunday from May 14 to 30. It will feature full-budget productions of never-before-seen plays written by three local playwrights, each of whom won the right to have his or her play performed after competing in a BPP playwright contest.

The plays from the prominent series of the festival are “Russ Miles” by April Smallwood, “Thespian” by Chris White, and “Virginia’s Last Drive” by Matt Anderson.

Each will be performed in full costume, with complementary scenery and lighting.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening performances will begin at 8 p.m., and Sunday matinees will begin at 2 p.m.

Friday and Saturday nights will also feature a fourth play written by Gabe Golden, “How to Kill.” This play is part of the BloomingPlays After Dark Series portion of the festival, which will start at 10 p.m.

Tickets for the Mainstage Series may be purchased at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater Box Office and online at http://www.newplays.org. General admission tickets are $18, $15 for students and senior citizens. Tickets for the 10 p.m. performances are $5; however, a ticket from the 8 p.m. show will also grant entry.

In August 2009 the BPP held the BloomingPlay Development Series, a playwriting contest open to submissions from any playwright in the state of Indiana.
Of the 75 script submissions received, members of the BPP selected the top eight plays to go through rigorous workshop sessions. Throughout the process, the playwrights reworked their scripts and received feedback from various audiences, BPP Producing Artistic Director Chad Rabinovitz said.

After numerous revisions were made, the top four plays were chosen to become full-
budget productions that will be featured during the Mainstage Series.

“We’ve chosen the four plays that are more than ready for an audience,” Rabinovitz said. “Rather than giving it another workshop or another reading, the only way they will benefit now is by taking the next step and seeing the reaction of an audience during a full production. It’s really the best of the best.”

Smallwood has been honing her craft for the last three years and said she is ecstatic to see her play finally performed to an audience. Smallwood’s brainchild, “Russ Miles,” has been a few years in the making.

“I have had these characters in my head for years, and I can’t wait to see them up on stage moving around, and I can’t wait to see people’s reactions,” she said. “All I have ever seen is readings of this play, and I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for it to be produced.”

Although only half of the plays fleshed out during the BloomingPlay Development Series were chosen as full productions, the hard work of the remaining playwrights who took part in the process will not go unrecognized, Rabinovitz said.

The BPP will present on May 19 the first leg of the Staged Readings Series of the festival, in which three of the remaining plays will be read and performed by local actors with script in hand. The performance will be choreographed, but it will lack the production values of the Mainstage Series, Rabinovitz said. The readings begin at 8 p.m. and are free of charge.

The Student New Play Showcase is the second part of the festival’s Staged Reading Series. On May 26, the BPP will highlight four Hoosier playwrights at the collegiate level. Original works written by two students from Hanover College and two students from IU will be read during the event.

The BPP chose these plays for their high standard of work, Rabinovitz said.
Hanover College junior Abby Guthrie is the creator of “An Evening Bath,” a story of love and relationships. A new playwright, Guthrie said she is very excited to see her first work performed during the festival.

“As a really young playwright, I am really glad I’ve been given this opportunity to see my work and be recognized for it,” she said. “I think it’s a wonderful program.”