New Rep's Festival of New Voices kicks off Sunday 5/19

Gabridge | Mavromatis | Girard | Floyd

This season, I've had the great fortune of being a playwriting fellow at New Rep alongside fellow BPT alums Peter Floyd and Deirdre Girard, and my Rhombus pal (and BTM vet) Patrick Gabridge. Together with New Rep Associate Artistic Director Bridget O'Leary, who founded the program, we have met every three weeks to discuss the progress of each others' plays. It's been an amazing journey for all of us and this week we will share our progress with you. Join us if you can!

I asked each of my fellow fellows to share a little bit about their plays (including goals for their readings) with you here...

Playwright Patrick Gabridge on the Boston Theater Marathon

Playwright Patrick Gabridge

I'm a Boston Theater Marathon enthusiast.  It's my favorite theatrical event of the year in Boston, by far.  I love its energy and how the day brings together so many members of the Boston theatre community into the same building work together and see each other perform, all while raising money for a charity that's all about caring for members of that community.  How do you beat that?

I try to see every play.  I don't manage it every year, but I usually come pretty close.  Back in the old days, this required a bit more of an ass of iron--nowadays, the Wimberly seats are a bit more conducive to making it through the whole day without numbness and possible nerve damage.  For me, the Marathon is a way for me to check out work by some 150-250 actors, many of whom I might want to work with someday.  I scribble little notes all over my program, highlighting actors, directors, or companies that I want to start following closely.  (And I really do use these notes.)  The Marathon is a theatre smorgasbord where I just keep on feasting (though my brain gets a little fuzzy after watching the first 40 plays or so).

Fatigue or Addiction

Patrick Gabridge

Go read Boston playwright Patrick Gabridge's latest post on his The Writing Life x 3 blog.   He's done research on new play productions in Boston, and it's worth a read.  BPT skews the data!  He writes a good blog, and it's worth following. 


Working at BPT where every weekend is jam-packed with some new play something,  I've maybe become too acclimated to the new.  I used to describe new plays as the albino alligators of the theatre world. Beautiful or ugly, they are a rare find and worth lining up for.   Lately I've been thinking of new play fatigue, something I have to contend with when I have my marketing hat on.  New plays take more energy from the audience, don't they? 

I think of myself going to the theatre; sometimes I really want to see how THAT company does THAT show.  Every patron walks in with a choice of how critical to be, and what to be critical about.  A new play begs to be criticized along a whole new set of criteria:  the choices the playwright made, the truth inherent in the dialogue, what the actors are doing with the new material, how the director helped or hindered the playwright's strengths and weaknesses.  This extra weight on the audience can even extend to whether the marketing copy representing the play they are seeing is accurate.  That's a lot of critical attention for a night out. 

All of that takes extra effort, and I know it wears me out.  How many times a season can you take on that challenge? 

Still, new play theatre going can be addictive.  The magic of your first theatre experience (for me it was Peter Pan puppets in the elementary school gymnasium) can be recreated only when you don't have a clue of what you'll see when the lights go up.

New plays: do you get the fatigue or the addiction?  (I hope you're addicted.  We're opening Leslie Harrell Dillen's brand new Two Wives in India tonight!)