FringeACT 2004
New play development is a tricky business. A few years ago I was commissioned to write a play for ACT Theatre's FirstACT program, which offered playwrights $1,000, a staged reading, and the tantalizing possibility of a production by ACT. Several months before the readings were to happen, I'd lost interest in the play I'd proposed and offered a couple of other projects to replace it. When told in a meeting that neither of these suggestions were plays that ACT would consider producing, I undiplomatically asked if ACT had ever produced any of the plays commissioned for FirstACT. The awkward pause that followed made it clear I wouldn't develop anything more on ACT's dime. (I was later told by another participant that the artistic director at the time didn't bother to attend the readings.)
FirstACT has since been folded into FringeACT, an expanded festival of new plays that promises less than FirstACT but delivers more. The lip-service notion that participation could lead to a production at ACT has been left behind, replaced by the sheer buzz of 30 or so new plays being presented in a single weekend. Playwrights--normally a reclusive lot--start bouncing off the walls like hyperactive kindergartners, jolted by a high-octane mix of competitive friction and synergy inspired by sheer proximity to their own kind. The weekend of April 1-4 brings the third FringeACT festival.
"FringeACT brings it all together under one roof," comments Amy Wheeler, one of three playwrights who have had work accepted into all three FringeACTs (the other two are Gregory Hischak and myself). "Word is getting out of Emerald City too--I've heard from literary managers in Portland and Atlanta who may show up this year to check out what's new in Seattle theater." Wheeler's Two Birds and a Stone was first exposed to the local scene in the 2002 festival, when Wheeler was new to town. "After both readings, audience members said they forgot where they were--one man distinctly remembered costumes that weren't there. A good reading allows the audience's imagination to take over, filling in the details." Two Birds and a Stone was just produced at Capitol Hill Arts Center.
"Though literally standing in the shadow of several million dollars' worth of decorative and tech lighting, there's an adrenaline surge to performing under a fluorescent-green work light," says Hischak, who presented a first draft of The Center of Gravity in last year's festival (the final version opens this week at Theatre Babylon). "I've produced in it every year not only because of the free cheese on opening night," Hischak continues, "but because the festival's obligations have enforced a seasonal deadline: Write the damn play."
This FringeACT may be the last, at least on this scale. The original funding has run out, and though ACT hopes to keep the program alive, it's an expensive event to produce that doesn't generate much income. So take a chance and go to some readings where, as Wheeler says, "The play is heard in all of its raw, bare-boned beauty and flaws."
