PRESS
Playwright Urueta Speaks Out on Sex and Race
by Albert Goodwyn
Published in SF Bay Times (July 20th, 2006)
As we sat in a side-street coffee bar in the Castro, Enrique talked about his newest play, The Danger of Bleeding Brown (part of the 2006 Bay Area Playwrights Festival). He said it is an "ensemble play" with five actors playing seven parts. The two major characters are Marco and Peter. Marco has a female roomie and a drag queen friend named Dulce de Leche. While a student at Cal, Marco meets a professor of German, but not academically-- they hook up through Craig's List...
"I don't believe there is one specific way to receive a play," he replied when I asked him how the audience will feel at the end. "I never met a gay man who didn't have intimacy issues," he said. They can take your fist inside them and still not open up to you. He describes Marco as being emotionally reserved, but Enrique believes in an "ethical responsibility to provide hope on some level." He explores themes of race and the dynamics of sex. And he said there is a tension between the ideas of ethnic identity versus putting people into niches.
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New Plays
by Catherine Conway Honig
Published in Scene4 Magazine (Sept. 2005)
Theatre companies receive more audience support and more public and private funding than dance companies and yet theatre companies are less bold in taking risks with new artistic endeavors. This is the current state of theatre in the United States and, given that the arts are a low priority for philanthropic dollars, the climate will likely remain less than hospitable for new work...
In San Francisco there's hope. A loosely knit collaboration among several small theatres and an organization called the Playwrights Foundation makes it possible for audiences to savor the thrill of seeing new work while enabling playwrights to find the support and fellowship crucial to developing their work. The cornerstone project of the Playwrights Foundation is the annual Bay Area Playwrights Festival, a small but action-packed project that incubates and brings to life several new plays each year.
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A Script-in-progress gets an onstage workout
by Robert Hurwitt
This article appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle (Monday, August 19th, 2002)
The third-floor room was hot and stuffy. The makeshift stage was just a space hung with black curtains facing an audience in folding chairs on a few risers. The actors worked script-in-hand, though often it seemed they were reading lines they hadn’t much time to rehearse. Which wasn’t surprising, given that portions of the script had been delivered just hours before.
That kind of unexpected development has always been part of the excitement of a Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Now in its 25th year, the festival opened Friday at Z Space Studio with a staged reading of Catherine Filloux’s "Eyes of the Heart," a play about a mysterious blindness afflicting refugees in Long Beach–and a script, as artistic director Amy Mueller explained, so much still "in process" that it had been "almost completely rewritten in the last four days."
As at every Bay Area Playwrights Festival since director Robert Woodruff unveiled Sam Shepard’s "the Sad Lament of Pecos Bill on the Eve of Killing His Wife" in 1976, more public staged readings, panels and forums continued through the weekend. And more are to come.
Some of this year’s seven plays–selected from more than 300 submissions–are by writers, like Filloux, at an early stage in their careers. Two are by established playwrights: Brighde Mullins and Mac Wellman, whose "Project 6" and "2 September" conclude the festivities Saturday and Sunday (respectively). One writer, Oakland’s Marcus Gardley--whose play "like sun fallin in the mouth" is being read tonight–is a Yale student just starting on the theatrical road.
It’s a lineup indicative of the festival’s standing as one of the country’s leading play development forums, even if it is a far cry from the heady orgies of creativity it used to mount in the early’80’s. Heavily backed by the Buck Trust, the festival took over the sprawling campus of Mill Valley’s Tamalpais High School for a few summers, mounting full productions of new plays by the likes of Shepard, Wellman, David Henry Hwang, Maria Irene Fornes, Des McAnuff (among many others) and leading experimentalists like John O’Keefe, Chris Harmand and Laura Farabough (two of the pieces by Hardman and Farabough went on to represent Bay Area theater at the ’84 Olympics Arts Festival in Los Angeles)–not to mention writing workshops led by Shepard, Hwang, Luis Valdez, Joe Chaikin and other leading lights.
"People still refer to them as the golden years," Mueller says. "Woodruff was very into using the festival as a method of inquiry and theatrical research, looking at the playwright as a primary artist and putting him in collaboration with directors, musicians, designers and all kinds of artists."
But Woodruff and Shepard had moved on by ’85. The bucks stopped coming, tied up in mid-‘80s lawsuit that sought to spread its wealth beyond Marin County. After a split in its board of directors, the sponsoring Playwrights Foundation scaled the festival’s activities back to workshops, forums and staged readings, concentrating on its core mission as a place where writers could develop new work.
That, it turns out, has been its saving grace, as Friday’s opening night proved once again. True, Filloux’s script is far from ready for prime time. It seemed unpromisingly schematic in its attempt to address too many issues in its first act: The mysterious, real cluster of 150 cases of post-traumatic stress-induced blindness among Cambodian women in Long Beach; the struggles of the American doctor tying to solve the problem; generational dissonance between the refugees and their Americanized children over questions of arranged marriage and the like.
But there was genuine excitement in how much better Filloux dealt with her story in her much-revised second act, as well as in watching such strong actors as Bonnie Akimoto (as the blind survivor of the Khmer Rouge killing fields) and Denise Balthrop (as the doctor) work out their readings almost on the spot.
"In order to continually infuse new and innovative work into the American theater, playwrights need a home base," Mueller says. "There’s only so much you can do in your room on your computer. You have to go through a development process that’s three-dimensional, that’s lifted off the page and into the bodies and voices of actors. I think that’s the true value of the festival, providing a place for new plays to find their theatrical form.
'VOICES UNDERWATER'
by Lisa Drostova
Printed in the East Bay Express on Wednesday, October 26, 2005
At the start of the last century, progressive Jews and African Americans made common cause and struggled together against inequality, both in the labor movement and then later in the fight for civil rights. But the relationship has always been a stormy one, and not one that gets much attention in our larger discourse about American history, which is too often oversimplified into black and white. Fulbright Scholar and two-time Jerome Fellowship winner Abi Basch plumbs this dynamic with Voices Underwater, which gets a script-in-hand workshop reading at the Ashby Stage Monday night, presented by Traveling Jewish Theatre. It's perfect timing, since Voices is a ghost story, with Civil War revenants lurking in the dusty attic of an Alabama house inherited by modern-day Jewish businesswoman Emma and her fastidious African-American boyfriend Franklin. What was meant as a romantic weekend getaway turns into something very different as a storm hits, and the rising water brings out the house's ghosts -- the daughter of a KKK wizard, a young soldier -- who are younger versions of Emma and Franklin living in different times. Together the characters explore a long-buried family mystery, and the unspoken history of blacks and Jews in the post-Civil War South. Originally discovered at last year's Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Voices juxtaposes poetic language and lovers' quarrels, letters home, and magical realism, in an intense and dreamlike narrative.
The play will be read by CalShakes associate artist L. Peter Callender, which should be a real treat -- we don't often get to hear heavyweight Callender go through his magical stockroom of voices. CalShakes audiences will also recognize ensemble member Ellen Scarpaci, who played another woman faced by ghosts last year in Crowded Fire's Slaughter City. They're joined by Molly Shaiken (Flaming Iguanas with Theatre Rhino) and Rebecca White, and directed by the Playwright Foundation's Amy Mueller. The performance will be followed by a chance to talk with the director and playwright.
'like sun fallin in the mouth'
by Wanda Sabir
Printed in the San Francisco Bay View on August 21, 2002
What attracted me to Marcus Gardley's play, "like sun fallin in the mouth," was the fact that the recipient of the Playwrights Foundation Fellowship is writing about a community close to my heart -- West Oakland. Similar to Keith Adkins' one act, "Hollis Mugley's Only Wish, " "like sun fallin" is set among the people society often discards. Set in a toxic heap, the West Oakland community Gardley writes about breeds hope and defeat. I guess it depends, "Deadlust" might say, on the channel one has tuned in to.
The PFF award gave Gardley an opportunity to complete his play with the assistance of a dramaturg and have a staged reading with a cadre of seasoned actors. Directed by Delicia Sonnenberg, Gardley was, with rest of us, surprised, often pleasantly, I'm sure, with how much his play changed once it lived not just in his head or on the page but "fleshed" on stage in human form.
For some reason, this play is not having a second public run, I was told Tuesday afternoon. That's a shame considering it is written for a black audience, but perhaps we'll see it polished for a run in one of our theatres here, such as the Magic Theatre and Eureka. Both have produced plays in workshop at PFF - the best know of these plays "The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill on the Eve of Ki8lling His Wife" by Sam Shepard in 1976.
Kirsten Greenidge's "The Gibson Girl" on Thursday, Aug. 22, looks good. It's about two girls reared as twins, fraternal twins at that. "Win" is light complexioned and "Valerie" is dark-skinned. "Only a long ago Daddy can straighten this all out… if Mama can lure him back, and try she does." All the plays are at Z Space Studio, Third Floor, 1360 Mission St., San Francisco, between Ninth and Tenth streets. Tickets are $10-15$, sliding scale, For reservations and information, call (415) 263-3986 or visit www.playwrightsfoundation.org.
What was overwhelming fun for the audience that evening was the interplay between writer and observer. It's not often that one has the opportunity to help a playwrights answer artistic questions he might be toying with, give feedback on what works and what doesn't, and then get a little more insight into the author's creative process. Joan Holden, dramaturg, told one person that she push Gardley to "show more' in the second act, thus the much lamented loss of much of the poetic language that was quite a bit of the earlier landscape.
Who knows what "like sun fallin in the mouth" will look like when it's finished--the ending had been rewritten just hours before we saw it that night? I hope that Gardley will leave this week with enough material to get his play to the point where he's happy with it.
Gardley is entering his second year at Yale. He received his BFA from San Francisco State University, where he received the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Scholarship and The SFSU African American Student of Outstanding Achievement for 2000-2001. "like sun fallin in the mouth" is his fifth play. We had the opportunity to chat briefly after the show Monday evening about the play, West Oakland, the aesthetic and Yale.
It was comforting to both of us to find that we shared a common language, a language perhaps not understood completely by everyone there that evening. I sensed a feeling of validation from the playwright that at least I understood where he was going with some of the imagery and language of the work. We found it a funny coincidence that both our families are from Louisiana and that we both like stories about flying and cemeteries. Even though he left West Oakland at seven, the place remained engraved on his psyche as "home."
The actors moved from their chairs to the center of the stage (script in hand) where there was a perch for Icarus (the son), while Keba Konte's images projected onto a screen at the back of the theatre showed a young black boy with wings, another of him free falling, still another of the boy caught between two walls, both seemingly impossible to scale.
Where did the story come from?
MG: "It was such an imaginative part of life that I've never forgotten it. Later I found out that it was a ghetto and that it was supposed to be a bad place. It was so wonderful to me that I wanted to write about the beautiful people. I just loved it. I had so many friends. Everybody protected us -- all the kids. It was a 'village' raising me. What happened was, my brother picked up a syringe and was trying to stab me with it and my mother flipped and decided to move us out of the neighborhood into a predominately white neighborhood. I felt like my childhood ended at that point. I never got that back and I wanted to get this back."
WS: So you just wanted to capture that feeling of community?
MG: "It's beauty, even if it's a monster right now."
WS: I think the language is just beautiful. How did you happen to us Keba's artwork?
MG: "I was looking at a book on Oakland and saw Keba's boy with wings and used it on the playbill of a small production, and it just so happens that Amy Mueller knew Keba.
"Mueller in turn spoke to the visual art project curator, Antigone Trimis, who contacted Keba, a wonderful artist who uses a technique called photomontage n wood, which he says allows 'the spirit of the wood with its knots and grain to merge with the human image to speak (with language) that often transcends the original context.' It was a perfect marriage."
WS: As a poet and a playwright, how do you weave the two parts together so beautifully?
MG: "Well, Lorca said that 'a play is a poem standing up.'"
WS: You mean Federico Lorca? He's the bomb, isn't he! We concur, and rave for a brief moment over Lorca's contribution to the Western literary canon.
MG: "That's when I decided that that's what I want to do, especially when all my teachers kept saying, 'These are plays; these are plays.' I fought against that. When people would comment, I'd say, 'Shut up. You're not reading it right.' I'd perform it…" and people saw theatre, I concluded for him.
MG: "Right. It's not spoken word. It's a play. So I said, okay, I'll try it. I'm kind of shy, sop I said well cool-- I don't have to read it, but all my stuff is highly poetic."
WS: How many plays do you have and have any of them been produced?
MG: "I have five. Two have been performed. Amy directed the first play: 'Living Tired' at San Francisco State. It's about a place my grandmother told me about this man who lived in a cemetery who was the sweetest person. My second play was 'Shadow Men.' It's about homeless people in San Francisco."
WS: How's Yale?
MG: "I'm in my second year there, but I don't like it. I'm there because the program is the best in the country, (but) there are only five black actors there. They're in demand, so I don't have access to them."
WS: Just five actors? Isn't Yale a big school?
MG: "Yale's huge, and five actors is more than usual."
WS: So, your plays are about the black aesthetic?
MG: "Always. This year I get two black actors (to work with), so I'm having problems there but I'm sticking it out. I have a lot of friends there."
When I mention the Iowa University's Playwrights' Workshop, Marcus didn't know about it. (Kirsten Greenidge graduated from there.) But Marcus did know Edris Anifowoshe-Cooper, a director who calls the Bay Area home, who also completed IUPW. This led us to talk about Peter Macon--actor, visual artist--who used to live here too before heading off to Yale a couple for years ago. Now a senior, Macon was in some of the plays Anifowoshe-Cooper directed. He was also "Icarus" in the earlier production of "like sun fallin in the mouth."
MG: "Peter wrote a screenplay about Icarus that took place in the Bay Area, but he won't let me read it. He wrote this before we even met. So him starring in 'like sun fallin' is fate."
I told the Playwright that Icarus is one of my favorite Greek plays. It reminds me of the story Kalil Gibran tells in "The Prophet" about parents, how they are the "bow that sends the child forth" into the world, while Icarus' descent is the result of not being grounded and forgetting where he cam from. Stay connected to your people, so you don't get burned up, is the lesson there.
MG: "Absolutely!" Gardley agrees and tells me that he's headed back home as soon as the Yale gig is up. This is definitely a writer to watch out for.
Sidney Burrows Jr., who just relocated to San Francisco a year ago, agreed. "It's very hard to get a piece like this written by an African American author produced. He's a talented young writer, (so) I felt so blessed to be able to do (the role). All of these things need work. You just keep reworking and reworking it."
Keba Konte interjects. "To get the script so last minute--it wasn't about reading. I mean the script was there, but you guys…" He's cut off by Sidney, who spoke of last minute revisions.
"Here's another new page," Gardley would say. "But we didn't read the last page you gave us," Sidney recalled with another laugh. Sidney burrows, who played "Butter", is currently in Chekhov's "The Seagull" at the Santa Cruz Shakespeare Festival.
Best of the Bay, San Francisco Magazine, July 1999:
When Anna Deveare Smith was still working out her signature style of documentary theater, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival presented a staged reading of what was not yet called Fires in the Mirror.
Sam Shepard, Bill Irwin, Philip Kan Gotanda and, more recently, Karen Hartman (Gum) and Naomi Iizuka (Polaroid Stories) got their first hand up at the 22-year-old fest.
This low-profile institution has an astounding instinct for winners. Each year it sends a few lucky playwrights off with a professional director and dramaturg on a three-day retreat. Day and night they burrow deep into the play, revising it from within. It's an experience in triple perspective, which the author can then bring to all future work. So what's in it for the rest of us? The best chance we'll ever have to see great theater at its moment of first bloom.
—Apollinaire Scherr
