Time To Play

By Penn Bullock
Published: Friday, May 23, 2008

This summer, don’t be surprised if you drive by the Arsht or Broward Center and notice a horde of ventriloquists (and their puppets) carrying placards and shouting. They’ll be protesting the Summer Shorts Festival—and one play in particular at this year’s run.
Wood, by Justin Cooper, is a short play about a woman who can only achieve sexual satisfaction with a ventriloquist’s puppet. The ventriloquist himself sits sadly on the bed with his arm bent while the woman and the doll copulate. One can imagine the anger this production will send coursing through the ventriloquist community.

The Summer Shorts Festival by City Theatre is now in its 13th year. This is the inaugural year for its new program Undershorts, happening at 11 p.m. with alcohol on the side. Stephanie Norman, executive director of the festival, describes Undershorts as “x-rated ‘Saturday Night Live’.”

“For whatever reason, the world is getting dirtier,” Norman says, explaining the need for Undershorts.
The fare is sexual, political, and politically incorrect. In Guns Don’t Kill, by Craig Pospisil, a fourth grade teacher demonstrates her new handgun in front of the class, a faux pas ever since Columbine. Paul and Eddie, by Ken Brisbois, brings to light the two men crucified next to Jesus. There’s also a vicious drama about tetherball and, of course, the live portrayal of ventrilosexuality.
Shorts 4 Kids, now in its second year, is a program of six plays that is assuredly free of gun violence and puppet sex. With this program, Norman says she was aiming for the “Shrek effect”: great for the kids, great for the parents. X500, a tame version of Blade Runner by Lloyd Suh, takes place at a technology convention, where an inventor is presenting his newfangled android. Little does he know that an android is in the audience, too. In Tina Thompson Tries the Tuba, a six-year-old girl has to fend off her angry boyfriend of the same age, who’s heard rumors that she used to play the triangle. Double Mandible, by Julie Jensen, follows two sisters as they prepare for the most difficult formation in synchronized swimming. Shorts 4 Kids will also put on a Shel Silverstein play, A Giraffe and a Half.

By concentrating so much art in the middle of the city, The Summer Shorts Festival is doing for Miami’s June what Art Basel did for its December. Indeed, it’s becoming a national event. Two years ago it gained a spanking-new venue at the Arsht Center. The same year, it partnered with the Actors Theatre of Louisville, whose annual festivals since 1976 have produced Pulitzer Prize winners and serve as bellwethers of American theater. The two theaters now co-sponsor the National Ten-Minute Play Contest.

City Theatre lures the best actors and directors in South Florida; many of them have to juggle several plays or characters at once, a challenge that might bring less skilled people to the brink of schizophrenia. The plays are between 3 and 20 minutes long. The action takes place on a thrust stage, with the audience on three sides. Sets must be hurried off and miraculously assembled in minutes.

Summer Shorts attracts playwrights from across the country. More than 1,000 scripts were submitted by playwrights over the past year and culled by the staff at City Theater. The chosen 31 are mostly comedies, with a few dramas in the mix. According to Norman, the tally of 31 puts City Theatre ahead of the Actors Theatre of Louisville.
Signature Shorts, the biggest event, is a series of 17 plays divided into Programs A and B. Theatergoers can see both programs in a single sitting or each on separate days. Seven of the plays are world premieres and eight are southeastern premieres. The freshness of the offerings calls to mind a market after the spring harvest.

“Many of the writers are young and up-and-coming,” Norman says.
One such rising talent is Michael Lew, a graduate of Yale. He’s won a slew of theatre awards since 2005. He was even a finalist in the Westinghouse Science fair for his experiments with mice genetics. His play in Summer Shorts is about a couple of friends who go to France in search of—what else?—romance. One of them falls in love with a street mime. In Paris You Will Find Many Baguettes But Only One True Love won the Heideman Award for Best Ten-Minute Play at the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival.

Some of Summer Shorts’ talents are established writers. Two are involved in America’s popular television. Rolin Jones, a writer for “Weeds” and a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2006, has three plays in the lineup. Bill Wrubel, a writer for “Ugly Betty” and “Will & Grace,” has contributed On Story, about the cutthroat world of sitcom writing.  There are several domestic dramas. In It’s a Girl, by Erik Gerand, a young father is suddenly confronted with parenting advice from his newborn daughter. Home, by the titan playwright David Mamet, chronicles an imploding marriage in three scenes. Eros is Sore, by Martin Russell, is a lighter take on marriage: in those volatile minutes before bedtime, a wife inquires suspiciously into her husband’s newfound love for French erotic fiction. Others touch on the themes of teenage rebellion and death in the family.

The short-play format frees up playwrights to experiment—and that propensity will run wild at Summer Shorts. Last year, local playwright Michael McKeever arguably stole the show with Splat!,a Wizard of Oz spoof in which the munchkins let down their fairytale facades and curse Dorothy for leaving them with the Wicked Witch of the East’s cadaver. This year, he might best himself with Laura Keene Goes On, the not-so-true story of the diva who won’t let the assassination of President Lincoln interfere with her final scene in Our American Cousin.
The Summer Shorts Festival runs May 31 through June 22 at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Carnival Studio Theatre in Miami. In Fort Lauderdale, it runs from June 26-29 at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Amaturo Theatre. For information, visit www.citytheatre.com.