On Feb. 7, the Literary Arts Masters of Fine Arts Graduate Program kicks off its 25th annual New Plays Festival. For the third year running, a series of plays will be performed in conjunction with the Brown University/Trinity Repertory Consortium. In the past, the combination of these blossoming playwrights and the Trinity Repertory Company has garnered great success and high praise from both the Providence and Brown communities, as well as that of greater New England. The 2007 festival promises to live up to expectations.
MFA playwrights enrolled in the Brown graduate program for literary arts receive a unique creative experience. Working with renowned playwright and Professor of English Paula Vogel in association with Trinity Rep, students develop their writing in an intensive and collaborative environment. The intimacy offered by the size of the MFA program provides a familiar setting that allows the students to develop their personal writing style on their own terms and to experience the innovative atmosphere of Trinity Rep.
The consortium offers the MFA students the rare combination of experience in both literary arts and performed theater. This versatile approach to playwriting accounts for the impressive achievements of the University's small but strong MFA program, said Christopher Tyler '10, associate producer of the festival.
This year's festival features plays written by the three first-year graduate students in the Literary Arts MFA program in playwriting. The works that will be performed are the culmination of their year's work, Tyler said.
Earlier this fall, the playwrights submitted a series of possible plays for the festival. Each student's most promising work was then selected to be featured in the New Plays Festival. After a careful process of revisions and edits, the scripts were streamlined and polished, Tyler said.
Working closely with MFA directors, the playwrights lay out the artistic goals they hope to achieve in the production of their plays. Taking a more removed role as an involved and critical spectator, the playwrights step back from the maestro position during the rehearsal process. The directors, sensitive to the playwrights' original intentions, hold the playwrights' artistic interests at a premium, Tyler said. The end result - the play's premiere performance - is an exceptional opportunity for the playwrights to hear their words spoken and their actions played out, he noted.
This year's festival offers a variety of theatrical entertainment. The three plays comprise a range of settings, characters and plots, and all three plays identify with various manifestations of seduction, according to Tyler.
"Forever Never Comes," written by Enrique Urueta GS and directed by Donya Washington GS, tells the story of a young man's hesitant return home to rural Virginia, according to the press release. At first determined to head off to San Francisco for a fresh start, he soon finds that his initial strong will and resolution falters.
"Common Decency," written by Ann Marie Healy GS, explores the tortuous throes of love and the terrible woes of abandonment. The heroines of this play know no bounds until they find themselves facing a mysterious and murderous wedding at the play's culmination.
In Gregory Moss's GS "House of Gold," a fantastical account unfolds involving a little girl who returns to the world of the living and searches her suburban house for her internal organs. The pace of play escalates as she desperately tries to separate herself from the fantasies of the animate world and those responsible for her reincarnation.
The leaps and bounds taken by the playwrights in this year's New Plays Festival are representative of the multi-faceted and dynamic approach with which the Brown MFA program fosters these young talents. Confident in their creative capacity, these students take risks and push boundaries, showing promise that they will take modern theatre to a whole new level.
