An online short play festival will be performed by Greenfield and regional performers, bringing to life 18 short views of COVID-19.
The LAVA Center will present “From A Distance: 2020 (corona)vision(s)” on Sunday, June 28, at 2 p.m. To access the online short play festival, go to facebook.com/theLAVAcenter or facebook.com/events/278350236691449.
The festival will feature the pandemic views of Nina Gross, Karen Miller, Vanessa Query, Marlon Carey and Jan Maher and be performed by Kyra Anderson, Jane Barish, Anna Baskowski, Sara Becker, Amanda Bowman, Adelaide Carey, Marlon Carey, Shannon Chabot, Rocco Tyler Desgres, Sarah Gruber, Kate and Ken Hebert, Ann and Ray Horn, Torie Jock, Rick Malone and Kimberly Salditt-Poulin.
Performers range in age from 13 to over 60 and come from as far as Providence and Boston, and as near as Greenfield and include West Springfield, Amherst, Ashfield, Ware, South Hadley, Turners Falls and Holyoke.
On March 13, after being open only six weeks, The LAVA Center — a new community arts center in downtown Greenfield — closed due to the COVID-19 emergency and has remained closed since then.
“We anticipate a careful, socially distanced re-opening in July as part of Phase 3. In the meantime, we have produced a number of events online, the most ambitious of which is our ‘From a Distance’ short play festival,” Maher said.
In April, five writers began to meet to develop short plays in response to the pandemic. They shared script ideas, read one another’s plays, offered suggestions and arrived at a sequence of 18 short plays. The shortest is about a half a minute; the longest about 10 minutes.
By the end of May, they were auditioning via Zoom and casting; they began rehearsals in early June, also via Zoom.
“The pieces cover a range of experiences, attitudes and ages, from young teens texting about friends busted for not observing social distancing through young adults, parents and children, to middle-aged couples sorting out their relationships, to visions of near- future dystopias that bring out our better qualities: loyalty, persistence and hope,” Maher said.
The festival is being produced by two of the LAVA Center’s co-coordinators, Vanessa Query and Maher, who have also written plays for the program and will direct several of the pieces. Marlon Carey joins this team as a writer, director and performer; Nina Gross and Karen Miller make up the balance of the writing team.
“Each of us has found unique ways to re-envision a theater that is proscribed by online platforms, looking for ways to draw on the strengths, rather than the limitations, of this new way of working,” Maher said. They used Zoom “sometimes as the acknowledged set, other times as the way to document phone calls, texts, dreams, domestic scenes and fraught shopping trips.”
The LAVA Center is an arts incubator, black box theater and community space at 324 Main St., in Greenfield’s Crossroads Cultural District. It is run by Local Access to Valley Arts.
Its June 28 program will be followed by a question-and-answer session with the playwrights and directors.
The event is free, but donations will be accepted.
For more information, call 413-512-3063.
"Short" - Google News
June 22, 2020 at 12:07AM
https://ift.tt/2zRG3aL
LAVA Center to stream short play festival - MassLive.com
"Short" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2QJPxcA
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "LAVA Center to stream short play festival - MassLive.com"
Post a Comment