If you’re anxiously anticipating Capital Fringe Festival, starting next week, quench your theater festival urges with the Source Festival, which runs through Saturday. At Source, you’ll find a different play every night until the final day, during which time all three of the festival’s full-length plays will run consecutively.
Each of the three weeks of Source featured a different type of performance. The first week was devoted to 10-minute plays, and the second week featured Artistic Blind Dates – featuring collaborations between artists of different disciplines, including dance, film, and visual arts. The three full-length plays this week, making their debuts at the festival, were penned by “three incredibly exciting and very different young playwrights,” according to Jenny McConnell Frederick, the festival’s producer.
The three playwrights chosen to present their work–out of more than 50 submissions from across the country – are Aaron Wigdor Levy, Sean Graney, and Emily Schwend.
Levy’s play, This is Not a Time Bomb, is the story of five wealthy teenagers in a Brooklyn brownstone whose lives are ruled by sex, drugs and hip-hop. “This show has some of Washington’s hottest young actors and a pair of custom kicks to die for,” said Frederick.
Frederick described Graney’s play, It’s Lonely Out in Space, as “one of those plays that sucks you in and just doesn’t let you go.” It’s a dark tale full of plot twists and featuring an astronaut bartender.
Schwend’s Splinters, which tells the story of a lost little girl and a family who tries to put their lives back together with toothpicks and bubbles, is “heart-wrenching and hopeful, funny and tragic,” according to Frederick. The play also features Sylvie Ashford as the young girl, who, at 11 years old, is the festival’s youngest cast member.
Look for a number of Source participants to take part in Fringe.
“There’s definitely a lot of people doing double duty,” said Frederick. “Source and Fringe share a similar final goal, but choose two different approaches. Both involve providing essential opportunities for the development of new work and new talent, and both festivals showcase the enormously diverse talents Washington has to offer.”
The festival takes place at Source, 1835 14th St. NW. Tickets to full length plays are $18. The festival ends Saturday, July 3.
ReSource: More on the Theater Festival was originally published by Washington City Paper on Jun 30, 2010
