@dramatistsguild  @schlueter_j

Evolution Theatre Company, Central Ohio’s LGBTQQIA company, has come to the forefront of the Columbus, Ohio, theatre scene since focusing its mission on issues it is passionate about. Their mainstage subscription series has featured revivals of musicals like Yank! and Zanna Don’t, as well as plays like Del Shores’s Sordid Lives, that dovetail with Evolution’s focus on “advancing the understanding of gender issues, and fostering the expression of creative performance arts by and about the LGBTQQIA community.”

But Evolution is also committed to new work. To that end, Mark Phillips Schwamberger, Evolution’s Managing Artistic Director, established a biannual new works festival in 2012. That year, Columbus’s bicentennial, featured new plays about the city itself. In 2014, Evolution took national submissions for its festival. Schwamberger underscores the role of the “A” in LGBTQQIA in this selection process: “We are focused on the ‘Ally’ portion of our mission as much as anything else,” he said. “We want to be inclusive both in the work we produce and in who we choose to work with.”

For their third annual new play festival, then, Evolution’s focus is also all-local. In association with Columbus’s Contemporary American Theatre Company (CATCO), Evolution will kick off Pride Month this election year with a two-week Local Playwright’s Festival of world-premiere plays that address political figures and the LGBTQQIA community. Further, these plays have been commissioned from playwrights featured in previous Evolution festivals, demonstrating the company’s commitment to developing not only plays, but also relationships with playwrights.

In the first week of the June 2016 festival, four short plays will be performed together each night. DG member Amy Drake’s Alexander the Great In Love and War takes audiences back to Aristotle’s time, exploring Alexander the Great’s bond with Hephaestion and how “Alexander balances conscience with conduct.” Sheldon Gleisser’s Vetted takes a fictional look at a sitting vice-president vetting his own vice-presidential prospects and wrestling with the past of his first-choice candidate. In Shall I Run Again by Jack Petersen (DG member), audiences confront a President’s ghosts as he decides whether or not to seek a second term. And in DG associate member Cory Skurdal’s A Point of Diminishing Returns, a stump speech from Ulysses McKinley Rutherford Harding Garfield Hayes III goes off the rails in the best possible way.

In the second week of the festival, focus will turn to a full production of Skurdal’s Sticks and Stones, a full-length play and the winner of CATCO’s 2014 Playwrights Fellowship. Sticks and Stones examines the politics of outing and the role of the arts critic.

Together, the works commissioned for Evolution’s 2016 Local Playwrights Festival demonstrate the company’s commitment to expanding the dialogue around LGBTQQIA issues while also fostering deep community relations. Schwamberger says he is “passionate” about new work. Columbus is grateful for Evolution’s commitment to that passion.

More information about the 2016 Local Playwrights Festival is available at evolutiontheatre.org or by emailing info@evolutiontheatre.org.

jschlueter@dramatistsguild.com