Tim Collingwood, a CSU student and playwright (left) discusses a point at the rehearsal of "The Trial of Adam and Eve."
Festival to feature work of student playwrights
By Renée Hope
A tradition that began in 2004 at Cleveland State University is alive and growing.
Claude File, an assistant professor of CSU's Dramatic Arts Department at the time, helped start the first student-directed short play festival. He and the dramatic art students thought it would give students experiences working together without faculty assistance to learn their craft and art.
As the festival was taking shape, Michael Geither, a relatively new hire at that time in the English Department and a playwright, heard about it and talked with File.
"Hey, you know what, I have a playwright here. He's got something that is really ready to go. We could get it staged," Geither said to File, who thought it was a great idea.
That first festival included one student-written play out of the seven plays featured.
"I said next year or eventually, I really want to have a festival where we can do their writing. So the second year, it was essentially two-thirds student written. And last year it was all student written," said Geither.
At the end of this month, the Fourth Annual Student Play Festival will stage six new plays by six student playwrights. Three co-artistic directors, Michael Mauldin from the Dramatic Arts Department, and Geither and Adrienne Gosselin from the English Department, selected the six plays from the 21 plays submitted by CSU students for this year's festival.
"It's really my responsibility to create a playwriting program. It's part of the mission. CSU has historically had a very strong creative writing program. So we get very good creative writers. Now we have playwriting as an option," said Geither.
Playwriting used to be offered irregularly; sometimes the English Department would offer it and sometimes the Drama Department. Currently, the English Department offers undergraduate playwriting at least once a year and graduate playwriting is offered usually twice a year.
"And we have an MFA program now which is a big step," said Geither.
The Northeast Ohio Master's of Fine Arts (NEOMFA) in Creative Writing was established in 2005. NEOMFA is a consortium involving CSU, Kent State University, The University of Akron and Youngstown State University.
For the first time, there will be a full-length play by a student playwright in the festival.
Michael Oatman's full-length play Indelible is his thesis production and CSU's first NEOMFA in Creative Writing thesis production. Indelible will be directed by E.B. Smith, a local professional actor turneddirector.
Other plays by Oatman have been performed. He considers himself a writer, not a playwright per se, and likes all forms of writing.
"I like that playwriting is a collaborative art and I also like that there's more surprise in it (than other forms of writing)," said Oatman.
There will also be five student-written one-act plays: The Trial of Adam and Eve by Tim Collingwood, an undergraduate; Mexican Opals by Holly Christensen, a NEOMFA graduate student; Bedknobs and Handcuffs by Tara Broeckel, also a graduate student in the NEOMFA program; Murder! Lies! Other Things! by Ben Gates, an undergraduate majoring in theatre; and Beautiful Destruction by Lauren Kirk, a recent CSU graduate who will soon join the graduate school at CSU soon.
The six playwrights' works will be performed in two bills running on alternate nights. The full-length production Indelible is Bill A performed April 27, 29 and May 5. The one-acts are Bill B and will be performed April 28 and May 4 and 6.
"After years of neglect, the Dramatic Arts Department is poised to become central to the theatre community here and we'll be turning out playwrights at the rate of two to three per year for the next long while," said Geither. The hope is to expand the festival to be able to showcase more student work, including more full-length master thesis productions.
Directing and technical support are by students in the Dramatic Arts Department, including Katie
Hancheck as the production manager. Renee Patton, Carly Garinger, Arien Hodges, James Kosmatka and Sarah Clare will direct the one-act plays.
All performances are at the CSU Factory Theatre located at East 24th Street and Chester Avenue. Curtain is 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. on Sundays.
There is no admission fee, but donations will be accepted. For reservations and more information, contact the box office at (216) 687-2109.