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THE HARRIETT LAKE
FESTIVAL OF NEW PLAYS
February 8-17th, 2008
This year's Playfest is now concluded.
Thanks to all who attended! We'll see you next year.
If you are a writer seeking our guidelines for 2009, please click here. If you would prefer a printable PDF of our guidelines, please click here. |
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What is Playfest?
PlayFest:
The Harriett Lake Festival of New Plays is a ten-day theatre event
packed with dynamic new plays and new play programming for anyone who
loves great theatre! Buy a PlayFest button and step into the
interactive theatrical maelstrom of readings, workshops, world
premieres, seminars, master classes and more!
Our Mission
Our
mission is to celebrate and cultivate new plays, nurture new
playwrights, attract new local and national audiences, introduce the
community to new theatrical voices, and provide a marketplace for local
and national theatre professionals.
Of
last season's PlayFest, the Orlando Sentinel hailed, "Something
promising has come out of PlayFest...and it's something that is likely
to shape Orlando's theater scene for years to come." |
PLAYFEST 2008 IS HERE!
Welcome to Playfest 08! Here is the list of events, exciting new plays and schedules for this year's Playfest. Click here to buy tickets.
Click here to download our 2008 PlayFest guide.
HIGHLIGHTS
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Free Dinner!
Before the opening events on Friday the 2/8/08. Come join us for a free dinner at 7pm, then head off to the opening three events.
Sponsored by the Orlando Shakespeare Theater's Associate Board
Friday, 2/8/08 -10pm
Shakespeare Center
Free with Button to Opening Night Attendees, Friends of OST, and PlayFest Artists!
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Keynote Address w/ John Pielmeier
Writing What Matters
by John Pielmeier – Author of Agnes of God
Saturday, 2/9/08 - 7:30pm
Margeson Theatre
Free with Button
Followed by a one-time only reading of the first act of his new play, Madonna and Child
Madonna and Child contains strong language and mature content
What Is The Role Of The Critic In New Play Development?
Panel will include Representatives from the American Theatre Critics Association, The Dramatists Guild and Playwrights TBD
Sunday, 2/10 – Noon-1:30pm
Mandell Theater
Free with Button
Produced by Orlando Fringe Festival Artistic Director, Beth Marshall
Monday, 2/11 - 7pm
Margeson Theater
$5 with PlayFest Button
Drawing held Sunday 2/10 in the Mandell Theatre Immediately following the Panel. Come for the Panel and stay for the selection
Remember Typewriters? Assorted typewriters will be scattered throughout the Shakespeare Center Lobby. Try your hand at a one-page, 2-character play. Typewriter plays will be collected and a winning entry will be selected by a specialized team of judges for a cool prize at the end of PlayFest 2008!
CLASSES
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Fringe 101 and 102 with Orlando International Fringe Festival Producer, Beth Marshall
Sunday 2/10 and Sunday 2/17, 2-4pm both days
Cost $10 + PlayFest Button required |
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Classical Adaptation Class with Orlando Shakespeare Theater Artistic Director, Jim Helsinger
Saturday, February 16 – 12:00-2:00pm
Cost $50 + PlayFest Button required |
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Master Playwriting Class with John Pielmeier (Author Agnes of God) and this year's keynote speaker
Please bring a current script you are working on to this class - it will focus on problem-solving.
Sunday, February 10 – 2:00-4:00pm
Cost $50 + PlayFest Button required |
CENTRAL FLORIDA PREMIERE! FULL PRODUCTION
 OPUS
By Michael Hollinger
COMIC DRAMA. The huge hit reading of PlayFest! 2007 becomes the premiere this season. A world-renowned string quartet has only a week to rehearse Beethoven’s “Opus 131” for a performance at the White House. Tempers and partners flare as the pressure increases. The Orlando Sentinel proclaimed, “The audience loved this comic drama.”
Opus contains strong language and mature content.
Click here to buy tickets. No Playfest Button required for this production.
WORKSHOPS
Admission Cost for Workshops is $8 + PlayFest Button required
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THE BLUE-SKY BOYS
By Deborah Brevoort
Mandell Theatre
Saturday, 2/9 – 2:30 to 5:00pm
Wednesday, 2/13 – 7:00 to 9:30pm
Friday, 2/15 – 8:00 to 10:30pm
Saturday, 2/16 – Noon to 2:30pm
COMEDY. The engineers behind the first Apollo moon landing are in big trouble. President Kennedy has ordered the United States must beat the Russians to the first manned landing on the moon. Time is running out, so there is only one thing left to do…Blue Sky it! Enter Buck Rogers, Icarus, Galileo, Snoopy, and the Red Baron as the heavenly heroes that inspired these NASA engineers to pursue their boyhood dreams of space exploration.
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THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO
By John Minigan (past PlayFest author – Breaking the Shakespeare Code)
Mandell Theater
Friday, 2/8 – 8:00 to 10:30pm
Thursday, 2/14 – 7:00 to 9:30pm
Saturday, 2/16 – 5:30 to 8pm
Sunday, 2/17 – 8:00 to 10:30pm
COMEDY. Prince Manfred has ruled Otranto for years, despite his fear of a prophecy that he will lose power when the true owner of the castle grows “too large to inhabit it.” When a giant helmet falls from the sky killing son Conrad on his wedding day, followed by enormous body parts appearing throughout the castle, Manfred must scramble to divorce his wife, marry his son’s fiancée and produce a male heir before the prophecy is fulfilled. |
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THE UNFORTUNATES
By Aoise Stratford
Mandell Theater
Saturday, 2/9 – 5:30 to 7:30pm
Sunday, 2/10 – 7:30 to 9:30pm
Saturday, 2/16 – 3:00 to 5:00pm
Sunday, 2/17 – 5:00 to 7:00pm
DRAMA. Mary Jane Kelly has a problem. She’s a pound forty behind in her rent, she’s lost her key and her boyfriend has moved out. It’s 1888-not a good time to be poor and unfortunate on the streets of London. Somewhere out there in the foggy shadows of night, one of the history's most notorious criminals, Jack the Ripper, is at work. Mary only has two ways to secure her own front door. One of them is prostitution. The other is selling something she shouldn’t posses in the first place, something she’ll have to betray her murdered best friend and herself to give up. |
READINGS
Admission Cost for Readings is $3 + PlayFest Button required
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ALFRED KINSEY: A LOVE STORY
By Mike Folie
Studio B
Tuesday, 2/12 – 7:30 to 10pm
Sunday, 2/17 – 5:00 to 7:30pm
DRAMA. It’s 1953. Famous sex researcher Alfred Kinsey is giving a speech in Troy, NY when he is accosted by a young woman in the audience who is strongly opposed to any scientific study of human sex. Kinsey tries to respond, but plagued with a weak heart since childhood, collapses. The play then travels back and forth in time to examine Kinsey’s life and work. It is a highly theatrical and fictionalized biography, which reveals the raw emotions that often hide beneath the seemingly cold search for scientific truths.
WARNING: THIS PLAY CONTAINS EXPLICIT SEXUAL MATERIAL. ADULTS ONLY. |
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ERRATICA
By Reina Hardy
Studio B
Sunday, 2/10 – 2:00 to 4:30pm
Wednesday, 2/13 – 7:00 to 9:30pm
COMEDY. Professor Samantha Stafford is trying to write a book on Shakespeare in the midst of a host of distractions. One of her students is madly in love with her. Her publicist wants her to do something more commercial. And she is persistently haunted by an entity claiming to be the ghost of Christopher Marlowe. Meanwhile, Jack Hooper, a librarian who just might be a match for Dr. Stafford, has lost a prized manuscript to a mysterious thief. |
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THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME BY VICTOR HUGO
Adapted by Suzanne O’Donnell from the novel by Victor Hugo
Studio B
Saturday, 2/9 – 5:00 to 7:30pm
Saturday, 2/16 – 8:30 to 11:00pm
DRAMA. It is evening in a Parisian tavern, Pomme d’Eve. Pierre Gringoire, celebrated poet and playwright enters and is begged by the patrons to give a speech or recite a poem. Instead, granting a particular request from a mysterious man at the bar, he begins to tell the infamous tale of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. |
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KAFKA’S SHORTS
Adapted by David Karl Lee
Mandell Theater
Sunday, 2/10 – 5:00 to 6:45pm
Sunday, 2/17 – Noon to 1:45pm
DRAMA. Three of Franz Kafka’s most elusive and phantasmagorical short stories, The Hunger Artist, A Report to an Academy and The Country Doctor are brought to the stage. The transformation of the animal and human body and soul are examined amidst swirling snow storms, raging seas and a dark and mysterious circus midway menagerie. |
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LETTERS TO SALA
By Arlene Hutton Based on "Sala's Gift" by Ann Kirshner. Originally
conceived by Laurence Sacharow
Studio B
Presented by Women Playwrights' Initiative
Sunday, 2/10 – 5:00 to 7:00pm
Saturday, 2/16 – 3:00 to 5:00pm
DRAMA. In 1940, sixteen-year-old Sala Garncarz volunteered to take her sister's place in a Nazi forced labor camp. During the next five years, in seven different camps, Sala received over 350 pieces of mail. Risking her life, she managed to save every single letter...and then hide them for almost fifty years. |
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MADONNA AND CHILD
By John Pielmeier
Margeson Theater
Saturday, 2/9 – 8:30pm
Immediately following Mr. Pielmeier's Keynote Address
Reading of Act I only
DRAMA.
A brutal murder. An abandoned child.
A disenchanted son. A desperate mother.
A dying saint. A wayward priest.
A passionate detective. A lost masterpiece.
And nothing is quite what it seems.
A new play by John Pielmeier tackles faith, art, and the politics of disbelief.
Madonna and Child contains strong language and mature content |
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MISS JULIE: FREEDOM SUMMER
An adaptation of August Strindberg's original play by Stephen Sachs
Studio B
Friday, 2/8 – 8:00 to 10:00pm
Saturday, 2/9 – Noon to 2:00pm
DRAMA. Limited engagement! It's the 4th of July, 1964 in Greenwood, Mississippi – just two days after the signing of the Civil Rights Act by President Johnson. Miss Julie, the daughter of a wealthy white Superior Court Judge is drinking and dancing with the servants in the barn. Meanwhile her father's African American chauffer, John, and cook Christine are judging her in the kitchen. But a moment of passion will soon change the lives of all three for eternity. |
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MISSING CELIA ROSE
By Ian August
Studio B
Saturday, 2/9 – 2:30 to 4:45pm
Thursday, 2/14 – 7:00 to 9:15pm
DRAMA. On a bleak, autumn evening in 1921, a young boy named Geoffrey Pitts discovers that the beloved wife of the Baptist minister, Missus Celia Rose Richards, has stolen the only car in town and vanished without a trace. Neither his parents, his teacher, nor townsfolk know anything about the mysterious flight. With the aid of his friend and confidante, Taffy Prull, Jeffery decides to find Celia Rose and uncover the truth about her disappearance. But in doing so, Jeffrey uncovers hometown secrets that will change life there forever. |
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TROG AND CLAY
By Michael Vukadinovich
Mandell Theater
Saturday, 2/9 – Noon to 2:00pm
Tuesday, 2/12 – 5:00 to 7:00pm
COMEDY. It’s 1880 and Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse are in the middle of the War of Currents, as Westinghouse’s Alternating Current becomes a serious rival to Edison’s Direct Current. Westinghouse is trying to hold onto his scheming wife, Margueritte, who wants to be an actress, Thomas Edison is using her to get William Kemmler to kill his wife, and Trog and Clay are two foolish, dog-catching hobos at the center of it all. Based on actual events, court transcripts and a little imagination. |
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WITTENBERG
By David Davalos
Studio B
Friday, 2/15 – 8:00 to 10:45pm
Sunday, 2/17 – 2:00 to 4:45
COMEDY. Set during late October of 1517, this sprightly and audacious battle of wits features university colleagues Dr. Faustus (a man of appetites), Martin Luther (a man of faith), and their student Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (a youth struggling not only with his beliefs but also with his tennis game). Playwright David Davalos brings us the story behind the story of Hamlet in a highly entertaining and accessible exploration of reason versus faith. |
READINGS, WORKSHOPS & PREMIERES - WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?
Readings - A public reading of a play with actors reading from scripts. In a
nutshell, the actors rehearse the play three times (as the playwright
listens and makes changes), then perform the play in a seated reading
for a live audience. The actors read from scripts placed on music
stands. Afterwards, the audience is invited to share their feedback to
the director and playwright, focusing on the development of the play.
Workshops - Workshops focus on getting the play "on its feet." Actors rehearse
for a week and a half, then perform with scripts in hand, rehearsal
props, and a minimum of technical design. Again, audience feedback
helps shape the play.
Premiere Mainstage Productions - are fully produced productions using the best professional actors, designers, directors and production values available.
TICKET INFORMATION
Prices:
PlayFest Button - $5 (You must have a button to get into any PlayFest Event!)
Readings - $3; Workshops - $8
Opus - $20 - $37 (Main Stage Production - No Button Required for Opus)
All events are currently onsale now. You can purchase tickets to by clicking here to purchase tickets online, or call the box office at 407-447-1700.
Running Times
No
PlayFest show is expected to run more than 2 and 1/2 hours. With new
plays, it is difficult to judge exact running times because these plays
are so new! When planning your schedule, keep in mind that most of our
offerings have been scheduled (especially on weekends) so that when
your show lets out, you will have a short break and then be able to
proceed directly to the next show or event available that afternoon or
evening. Thanks!
PLAYFEST SCHEDULE
Click here to download a PDF of the schedule.
About Food and Travel
Catering
Food during PlayFest will be available in the upper lobby on Saturdays and Sundays. The
Orlando Shakespeare Guild will also be selling beer, wine, soft drinks
and packaged snacks, candies, etc., throughout PlayFest in the lower
lobby!
Sponsoring Hotels
BE A PLAYFEST PATRON!
THIS YEAR'S PATRONS SO FAR ARE...
Gordon and Susan Arkin
Sig and Marilyn Goldman
John and Rita Lowndes
Albert and Lisa Prast
A Special Patronage In Memory of Marjorie Dewitt Margeson
It's a pass! It's a ticket! It's a sponsorship!
Become
a Playfest Patron and receive two all-access reserved seating passes to
all events at Playfest plus two tickets to the Opus and your name recognized in all PlayFest Programs. All PlayFest events
are general admission, first-come-first-serve seating except for you.
The best seats will be reserved for you in advance to all events you
wish to attend, including all readings, workshops, master classes and Opus. Patron passes are $1,000 per couple.
Please call the Box Office at 407-447-1700 to become a PlayFest Patron today!
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SPECIAL THANKS TO HARRIETT LAKE!
Harriett
Lake, local arts patron, has assured the future growth of our new play
development program with two major gifts to Orlando Shakes. Not only is
she the lead donor in the Orlando Shakespeare Theater Eminent Scholar
Endowed Chair in Playwriting, a million dollar endowment in partnership
with the University of Central Florida designed to attract well known
playwrights to the festival and UCF, she has also donated an additional
$50,000 per year toward the operational costs of The Harriett Lake
Festival of New Plays for the next four years. Bearing her generous
gifts in mind, the new play development program now also bears her
name. From the staff, board, and patrons of the Festival, "Thank you,
Harriett!" The Orlando Shakespeare Theater's commitment to the development of
new plays is greatly helped by your generous gifts. |
CONTACTS
Patrick Flick, Director of New Play Development
For General PlayFest Programming Inquiries, cal 407.447.1700 x 212
patrickf@orlandoshakes.org
David Lee, Associate Director of New Play Development
407.447.1700 x 213
davidl@orlandoshakes.org
Scottie Campbell , Director of Marketing & Public Relations
For Marketing & Publicity, call 407.447.1700 x 206
scottiec@orlandoshakes.org
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