DG National Report: Ithaca/Syracuse by Aoise Stratford
@dramatistsguild @AoiseStratford
The start of the fall has been a busy one for playwrights and Guild members in central New York. Here’s a quick round up of some of the happenings:
Last night I drove up to Rochester for the third reading in the CNY/WNY Roving Reading Series: Spencer playwright George Sapio’s Fault Lines at Geva Theatre. The reading was nicely done, well-attended, and followed by an insightful talk-back with the many playwrights and Guild members in the audience. This reading followed Syracuse writer Donna Stuccio’s elegy in blue at Know Theatre in Binghamton, and Buffalo playwright Bella Poynton’s thought-provoking The Aurora Project at The Kitchen Theatre Company in Ithaca.
This year, the roving reading hosted by Geva was part of their Festival of New Theatre–a fabulous weekend of readings of new work that featured plays by Guild members Andrea Lepcio and Joe Calarco.
The latest installment of the Rep On The Road program saw me driving through the beautiful upstate New York Fall foliage to Schenectady, where I met with a small but enthusiastic group of playwrights from the Albany area in the delightfully quirky Moon and River Café. We exchanged information about local theatres, and got to know each other over tea, chatting about proposed upcoming programming for far-flung members. Plans are now shaping up for a workshop on getting your play out there, an Albany area writer’s group scene night series, and an event with literary managers and artistic directors from area theatres.
A new Ithaca area theatre company, The Cherry Artspace, was launched earlier this fall with their first production, A Cherry Timedive, taking place on the banks of a canal in Ithaca where the new Cherry Artspace will be built. Timedive, a collectively written and wonderfully elliptical piece of site-specific theatre that brought together the voices of four very different writers (including Guild member Wendy Dann), established the company’s mission to do innovative work that is both local and far-reaching.
Hot on the heels of the Cherry’s launch was Civic Theatre Ensemble’s community written project On The Corner, which built on their earlier production exploring race relations and asking the question, how did we get here? Both On the Corner and A Cherry Timedive are notable for achieving gender parity in their collaborative construction, and with the Kitchen Theatre Company’s 25th season featuring more plays by women than by men (not for the first time), Ithaca is proving to be a home for equitable and innovative theatre.
Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany is getting ready for their four-day Next Act! New Play Summit. Next Act! In the words of Capital Rep, this event “highlights the process of new play development and affords an opportunity for playwrights, directors, actors and composers to share their ideas and passion for the craft of theatre with the audience.” Alongside Geva Theatre’s Festival of New Theatre, it is encouraging to see some of central New York’s bigger stages turning their attention to new work this fall. It’s a delightful season up here–for theatre, as well as for foliage.