Marc Siegel and Bill Campbell in ‘Taking The Drop’ by Greg Foote. OCT photo.
Everyone, it seems, wants to write a play these days. That’s good. That means there’s more plays.
And you can see some of the best new plays being crafted in our wet and rainy part of the country starting this weekend at Oregon Contemporary Theatre, where the seventh annual festival of new 10-minute plays, Northwest Ten: Seven Year Itch!, opens Friday after a preview on Thursday night.
More than 80 original plays were submitted by playwrights from Oregon and Washington. Those selected include one by a 16-year-old high school girl, Isabelle Rogers, who lives in Creswell and is a senior at Oak Hill School in Eugene. She’s the first high schooler to have work accepted into the festival.
Isabelle describes her play as “a comedic campus film noir that discusses love, death and murder.” It grew out of a short film she wrote and directed last year for a school project, inspired by the jade Qing pagoda at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. The enormous pagoda was donated to the museum by a polo player named Winston Guest. “No one knows why he donated it, so I created my own story to solve the mystery,” she says.
Isabelle is a prolific writer. Her third full-length play, a comedy called Vacation of the Gods, will be produced at Lane Community College’s Ragozzino Hall in May.
Three of the other playwrights in this years’ Northwest 10 are college students – two from the University of Oregon and one from Oregon State.
Blind judging was done by Canadian playwright Paddy Gillard-Bentley, founding artistic director of Flush Ink Productions.
The winners are:
Dating Outside Your Light Cone by Tim O’Donnell (Springfield)
Disappearer by Dale Light (Eugene)
Fish Queen by Suzanne Bailie (Seattle)
ID Number 22374 by Barbara Pope (Eugene)
On Again, Off Again by Ricky Zipp (Corvallis)
Taking the Drop by Greg Foote (Eugene)
The Jade Pagoda by Isabelle Rogers (Creswell)
The Sale Rank Also Rises by John Yunker (Ashland)
The preview performance begins at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 19. Regular performances begin Friday, March 20, and run at 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday through March 28.
Buy tickets at OCTheatre.org.
In addition, festival founder Paul Calandrino and NW10 executive producer Connie Bennett will teach a playwriting workshop from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday March 21 at OCT. To enroll call 541-684-6988.
Finally, new works by Bennett and by Portland playwrights Merridawn Duckler, Sandra de Helen and Claire Wille, will be read on Saturday March 28 at 2 p.m. at OCT. Admission is free.
Jorah LaFleur and Tommy Schreiner in ‘The Jade Pagoda’ by Isabelle Rogers. OCT photo.