Just Desserts

 

Like dessert, theater comes in many different shapes, sizes and forms. It would only make sense, then, that theater and dessert combined would engender quite a creation. New Play Cafe has intended to do just that with The Coffee Shop Chronicles, a festival of 10-minute plays born and bred in San Diego by local playwrights. The plays are being produced at the Big Kitchen Restaurant (with remaining showings on May 3, May 10 and May 15), rotating between the cafe’s two dining areas while audiences are served fresh-brewed coffee and dessert. Two of the founders of New Play Cafe — as well as actors and writers of their respective plays — Kevin Six and his wife, Jennie (a UCSD alumna), talked with the Guardian about the festival’s supernatural inspirations, being a fly on the wall and producing San Diego’s newest work.

Guardian: What is New Play Cafe?

Jennie Six: New Play Cafe was the vehicle that Lizzie Silverman, myself and Kevin Six decided to operate under. We wanted to provide more opportunities for San Diego playwrights in a venue that was interesting to audience members and might offer more to the creative process for playwrights. We wanted the playwrights to have a mini-workshop experience, something that gives them the opportunity to see if what they thought on paper actually worked with actors, directors and an audience.  

Kevin Six: New Play Cafe is like an oven that makes tasty treats. We figure that audiences could use an incentive to see new work, so we’re promising food.

G: What inspired you to make this all happen?

KS: Jennie and Lizzie participated in the Playwrights Village program, which is a collaboration between the Playwrights Project and several theaters in San Diego. I recently got to participate in the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, which is a playwriting development conference. Participating in that process — and witnessing Jennie and Lizzie in theirs — was defining for me, because I had heretofore believed that the process was: Write a play, produce it, get it published, retire. So we want to help people take more time with their plays, get to know them, to let others know them and have time to add, remove, adjust ingredients. Actors and directors pull plays apart to get what they need out of them, and then they come up with some really good questions to ask. With published work, you sort of have to answer those questions yourself, but with a living playwright — one who is invested in the process — you can get answers. This is good for the playwright, because some of those questions may mean that what he or she was thinking did not translate.

G: Can you tell us a little about the casting process — how the playwrights, actors and directors were chosen?

KS: For this first process, we went to people we knew. Jennie literally texted people we knew who were writers and said something like: Plays set in coffee shops, performances in late April, go. We already knew we had the space and wanted to do plays set in coffee shops. Once we figured out that this was going to be a bear of a process, we discussed directors. It was a more organic process this time, and in the future, we’re going to make it more formal. 

G: Why set all the plays in a coffee shop?

KS: I love coffee shops. I love writing in them. Jennie and I worked on a sketch program a few years back, and some of [the sketches] took place in a coffee shop, and I got the germ of an idea. What if there was a coffee shop at the corner of Heaven and Hell, and all humanity (and all manner of supernatural beings) passed through there at one time or another? And what if I were a fly on the wall? I just love the idea of allowing the audience to listen in on these powerful stories taking place around them. Besides, we love Judy [Forman, owner of the Big Kitchen]. We have been talking with her about doing something in her space for years.

G: What are the plays about?

KS: I was surprised about how many of the plays deal with extra-normal themes. It’s like something wants to happen in each of these 10-minute slots in a cafe, and it takes on supernatural proportions. Of course, not all the plays are supernatural, but all of them are deep. There is a lot of emotion and a lot of thought that goes on. Suffice it to say, the people will get dessert and a seven-course theatrical meal.

G: Rotating the shows between dining areas is quite different from a typical proscenium arch production — how did this affect — if at all — your writing process or character development?

JS: It didn’t. So we put out the call, which was “Write a play set in a coffee shop.” Obviously, there are limitations to the space, which makes it interesting to stage. 

KS: It was always my intention to have the audience-as-voyeurs thing going on. Like with you hear something you shouldn’t. When I first thought of it, the plays were going to take place in the main dining room, but then we realized that we want more than 20 people to see these plays. So now, we have the plays starting in the first dining room and then moving on to the next, and by doing this, we have solved the age-old problem of how to seat latecomers. It will be easy: They go into the second dining room and see the plays second.   

G: What kind of performance should we be expecting from this festival?

JS: This is a workshop production, meaning limited technical elements, but the actors and directors have been rehearsing them for about a month. 

KS: We will not have all the technical elements you would have in a regularly outfitted theater, but I think that stuff is overrated. Plays should be able to stand on their own with actors, necessary props and available light. These plays will be well-rehearsed and the performances well-polished. The “workshop” title is largely honorary, and it is for the playwrights, mainly. We want them to come away with unpublished, unproduced plays that can go on and have a world premiere somewhere else. So, in exchange for watching a “workshop production,” audiences get food.  

G: And what types of desserts will be offered?

KS: I know for a fact that Judy makes the best coffee cake in the world, so I’m pretty sure that will be on the menu. I hear talk of a sundae and some other things. People will have a tough decision. They get two courses of dessert and will have to decide from five menu items.

G: What do you hope audiences will take from this festival?

JS: Theatrical performances give this intimacy that isn’t found anywhere else. When you’re watching theater on stage, you’re in the room with the actors having that experience, watching firsthand. In this, you aren’t watching them on stage; you’re in the room with them. I hope this gives audiences a new experience that excites them about the possibilities that new works bring and what theater outside of the box can bring. 

KS: I think they will get a unique experience that they will remember for a long, long time. I want them to come away with how powerful and how cool it was to see acting up close. I hope they really like all the plays and want to see more from our stable of playwrights and more site-specific theater, and just more theater in general. We’re saving the world, here!

Saving the world with good seats, some supernatural scripts and dessert seems like a mighty fine way to do it, indeed.

Tickets can purchased for $20 online at http://newplaycafe.com/shows.

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