Five vagabonds meet up in the desert; a dentist postpones her trip to Hungary when her estranged brother comes home with an urgent dental problem; a mayoral election gets out of hand; two sisters struggle with family issues; and two men on track for a one-night stand form an intensely meaningful connection. These are the plot synopses for the exciting productions that will be featured at this year’s Baldwin New Play Festival. The annual event premieres original work written by UCSD graduate students in the Master of Fine Arts Playwriting Program and features MFA directors, actors, stage managers and designers.
Dental Drama: Ruth McKee’s “Nightshade Family” tells the story of a dentist whose life spirals out of control when her kernel-corn-toothed brother pays her a surprise visit.
This year’s selection includes three full-length plays: “Santa Ana Winds” by Tim J. Lord, the “Nightshade Family” by Ruth McKee and “Election Day” by Josh Tobiessen. Also featured are two one-act plays by first-year MFA students: “Catching Flight” by Lila Rose Kaplan and “Water Street” by Alex Lewin, as well as a reading of “As If Body Loop” by UCSD theater professor Ken Weitzman.
Grad students, through the festival, gain experience and exposure — playwrights choose 10 professional guests to come from all over the country to view their work, impart feedback and perhaps help their plays find another venue.
Playwrights undergo an extensive development process that starts with a rough draft at the beginning of the school year and culminates in a stage production featuring graduate actors and directors.
“Everyone in the department is aware that they’re there to serve the play most of all and to try to realize the playwright’s vision,” McKee said. “There’s a lot of back and forth because unlike a play that’s been staged a bunch of times before, it really hasn’t been established what the visual world of the play is going to be.”
The collaborative give-and-take results in fresh, innovative material. McKee’s curious “Nightshade Family” explores the intricate power struggle between a dentist and her younger, scurvy-toothed brother. In the course of the play, as Hannah works to fix her brother’s dentition, she develops a rash that gets progressively worse. “The scenes are somewhat realistic, but then they’re interspersed with these big scenes that are almost like little dances where all the really graphic dental stuff takes place,” McKee said.
In Lewin’s “Water Street,” Martin, a gay New Yorker deeply affected by Sept. 11 and Bobby, from homophobic North Dakota, flirtatiously consider doing the down-and-dirty. “These guys are really in your face,” Lewin said. “They’re talking about what gay men do; they’re doing what gay men do.” It quickly becomes apparent that the men can’t just fulfill their physical desires because their lives are suffused with deeper issues. For Martin, these pertain to his lingering memories of Sept. 11.
“People don’t really talk about it,” Lewin said. “I mean, I was there and nobody ever asked me about it. There’s a kind of overlap with the world of being a gay man in New York City … a callousness and a dryness and an emotional distance that ultimately hurts.”
McKee hopes that students who are reluctant to go to the theater will relate better to this batch of new plays. “I think it’s a really great opportunity for UCSD students to come see works by living playwrights, by people who are pretty close to their age,” he said.
The Baldwin New Play Festival will be staged at the Mandell Weiss Forum Theatre, the Mandell Weiss Forum Studio, and Galbraith Theatre 157. The festival lasts through April 29. Tickets for UCSD students are $10 (except for the one-act plays, which are free) and can be purchased at the box office or by calling (858) 534-4574. For more info on specific performance dates and times, go to http://theatre.ucsd.edu/newplayfest/npf06.htm.
