Summer Shorts: Popular theater fest hits a growth spurt

Published: Friday, May 30, 2008
BY CHRISTINE DOLEN
cdolen@MiamiHerald.com

When it comes to City Theatre's Summer Shorts Festival, the numbers have always been impressive. A company of 10 actors (give or take a few) tackles 17 short plays (again, give or take a few) grouped into two programs. Then the thing runs for five weeks, playing to thousands of theatergoers hooked on the variety and sheer fun of it all.

This year, Summer Shorts turns 13. So what's on its bar mitzvah bill? Three separate programs: Signature Shorts, the classic Program A/Program B event that made the festival's reputation; Shorts 4 Kids, a program of five original plays aimed at elementary and middle-school students; and Undershorts, a late-night program of eight edgy, adults-only plays.

The contrast between the festival's beginning, when it ran two weeks at the University of Miami's Ring Theatre and had 3,600 seats to sell, and its ambitious current program in the Carnival Studio Theater at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts is huge. Literally. This year, between Signature Shorts, and Shorts 4 Kids and Undershorts, City Theatre will be presenting 30 plays to a potential audience of more than 28,000.

So you ask Stephanie Norman, City Theatre's executive director and the only one of three founders still running the company, the obvious question: Are you crazy?

''This the most exhilarating and exhausting challenge we've set for ourselves,'' says Norman, looking excited and frazzled simultaneously. ``Everything is kicked up three notches. . . . We have 68 people (doing the festival) this year; usually it's half that. We have 15 actors in two companies. It's insane.''

Yet this is a happy kind of insanity -- challenging, creative, collaborative. More than any other theater event in South Florida (though the Naked Stage's 24 Hour Theatre Project, which will happen for the second time in August, also does this), Summer Shorts brings together major talent from the region's far-flung theater community.

In addition to versatile stalwart Stephen Trovillion, aka ''Mr. Summer Shorts,'' this year's company includes Carbonell Award-winning actors Paul Tei, Antonio Amadeo, Kim Ostrenko and newcomers Laura Turnbull and Terry Hardcastle (who calls the Shorts process ``intense, like performing the hardest part of a longer play five times'').

Margaret Ledford, one of this year's directors, is resident director at Davie's Promethean Theatre. New Theatre founder Rafael de Acha is making his Shorts directing debut this summer. Also part of the Signature Shorts directing group are Amy London, Kim St. Leon, Clive Cholerton, New York-based Michael Montel, Stuart Meltzer and Norman.

Meltzer, now City Theatre's artistic director, directed shows in four seasons of Summer Shorts before taking on his new job. Buoyant and engaging, Meltzer acknowledges both learning as he goes and having very clear notions of what he wants the festival to be.

''I've learned so much since rehearsals started. I've had 1,001 epiphanies about how things work,'' says an exhausted, slightly manic Meltzer. ``We're doing 30 plays I'm unbelievably proud of. I read every one, picked them. I'm proud of the material and the aesthetic. I looked at what made the festival successful -- which is to respect the playwright.''

Meltzer, however, was just as certain about what kind of company he wanted to assemble.

''I picked the actors even before knowing all the plays [in the festival]. I wanted the top actors we could afford,'' he says. ``And I only want to work with people who are pleasant and consummate professionals.''

Among those consummate professionals is Trovillion, who now spends most of the year teaching, directing and coordinating the bachelor's degree acting program at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Trovillion has acted in more than 50 plays during 10 seasons with Summer Shorts, and though he is memorable in both dramatic and comedic roles, Shorts aficionados practically revere his work in a pair of plays by Paul Rudnick: 2003's Mr. Charles, Currently of Palm Beach and 2005's Pride & Joy.

The good news for fans of the pairing is that the actor will tackle another crazy Rudnick role in this year's festival, opening Program B with Sheepish, based on a New Yorker piece about the world's first openly gay sheep.

''I read it and called Stuart,'' says Trovillion, who calls the festival his busman's holiday. ``It was in the first person, and I started reading it to him. So now I'm hoist on my own petard, and here I am sitting onstage in a sheep outfit.''

Tei, who runs Miami's Mad Cat Theatre Company and has both directed and acted in past Shorts festivals, says he had a tough time turning off his director's instincts at first.

''I always want to direct, but Stuart said, `I really want you to act,''' says Tei, who won two solo acting awards and shared the best ensemble honor at this year's Carbonell ceremony. 'It's a really good ensemble . . . There are some really strong dramas, some really funny pieces, with heartfelt `dramadies' peppered in.''

Making the experience more of a trip for Tei is his first chance to act opposite Elena Garcia, the big sis of his best friend since first grade and a woman he calls ``the funniest person ever.''

Funny she is, but Garcia also has had most of a lifetime to observe Tei's tricks and excise them from their play, M. Thomas Cooper's Tongue Tied.

''He can't get away with stuff with me,'' she says with a laugh.

Christine Dolen is The Miami Herald's theater critic.
 

-- CHRISTINE DOLEN