13th Annual Boston Theater Marathon
Produced by The Boston Playwrights’ Theater
May 22, 2011
12 Noon – 10 PM Sunday
Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts
527 Tremont Street, Boston, MA
TICKETS: $25 in advance / $35 at the door. To purchase tickets please visit www.bostonplaywrights.org or call 617-933-8600.
Fifty different 10 minute plays written by fifty different New England playwrights, performed by fifty New England theater companies…how do you spell lalapalooza!
If you want to have your play-loving brain scrambled by the wildest assortment of themes, actors, directors, and playwrights, this is the ticket for you. Stay an hour, stay two! Stay until you get hungry, find a nearby place to eat or drink, and head back to the theater and find a general admission seat. You’ve got all day, baby!
The fifty ten-minute plays have been chosen from about 400 entries according to straightforward submission guidelines.There are no restrictions on subject matter. This is as wild and wooly a batch of little plays as you’ll ever see. I’ve been to several “marathons.” Trust me, I mean that.
Boston Theater Marathon Artistic Director Kate Snodgrass writes a fabulous letter explaining the decision-making process that begins after the November 15th submission deadline. The plays are read and scored by an extraordinary range of readers. The cream usually rises to the top.
“More years than not, over half of the chosen marathoners are new to the BTM–and this is a good thing!” Ms. Snodgrass writes.
If you’re like my friend Ann Baker (formerly known as “The Queen of Casting” in Boston), you get the most brilliant bang for your buck. She packs a lunch, arrives before noon to secure her annual perch in the back row, in a seat near her pal Jack (who is one of the "readers" in the BTM play selection process), and stays for the whole shooting match. Cost? Fifty cents a play.
Ann knows theater. I asked her for a little ‘guide’ to help me get a handle on what feels like a Niagara Falls of plays spilling out one after the other.
“The Marathon is a mix of sketches and plays,” Ann said. “A sketch/skit is situational. A play is character driven.”
“In a sketch/ skit, it is the action, the situation, and little or nothing to do with the actors involved. There is no change, growth, development of any kind that takes place with the actors in a sketch/ skit. The actors simply react to the action taking place. After the action ends, they go right back to who they are. They are the same character at the end of the action as they were in the beginning.”
“In a play, there is a beginning a middle, and an end… exposition, climax, resolution. There should be a change in the development of the character or a change in the degree of the character's being. For example - the shy character may come out of his/her shell, or become more shy, or become a raving lunatic. Something happens to the characters that alters their being by some degree. The thing that happens might be as little as a tone of voice of another character - which changes everything.”
The Boston Theater Marathon program lists the entire day’s timetable (five ten minute plays each hour), play titles, playwrights, actors, directors, technicians, and theater companies. Most plays have two or three actors and two or three props – essential because while we’re applauding the ten-minute piece, those actors take a brisk bow and remove the props while the stage crew and next actors arrange the next play’s set in one minute flat. There’s a very brief breather at the end of each hour and the show rattles on.
Audience members can change seats or enter/exit between plays. I’ve never managed to stay longer than three hours (thirty plays!).
“If you come to BTM next year, plan to stay for the WHOLE ten hours,” Ann exhorts me. Last year was one of the best I've seen in the last 5-7 years. The writing was better and they used more of the best actors. It is sometimes hard for me to see, while the play is being performed, if I'm seeing a good piece of writing, or a very good performance of an average piece of writing. So I need time to mull over what I've seen.”
I’m packing a lunch for The Boston Theater Marathon this Sunday. I know I could never finish the fabled 26.2 mile Boston Marathon even if I walked from Hopkinton to Copley Square…but, with any luck at all, I’ll be able to break my own personal best record and sit through more than three hours of this entertainment marathon.
Come on down and join me, I’ll be in the back of the pack, somewhere around Ann and Jack.
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Plays and Playwrights of BTM XIII (alphabetical order by playwright)
All net proceeds from ticket sales will benefit the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund which provides financial support to theatres and theatre artists in times of need.
Doll Hospital by Jeanne Beckwith
Pentagon Mashed Potatoes by Cliff Blake
Rox-N, Miss Thang by Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich
Sarah in Blunderland by Robert Brustein
Mirror Touch by Michael Burgan
Late, Lamented by Lynne Cullen
The Curator by Jennifer Diamond
Boy-Man by Diane Di Ianni
The Fudgicle Thief by Bill Doncaster
Procession by William Donnelly
Wasted Kisses by Thomas G. Dunn
Park ‘N' Ride by Michael Ennis
A Ballad for Peggy by Stephen Faria
Oops by James C. Ferguson
Escape to Wonderland by Patrick Gabridge
Game On by Gary Garrison
Our Part to Change by Susan Goodell
Big Squirrel Lick by Gregory Hischak
10 Years After Paradise by Israel Horovitz
The Mouse by Colleen Hughes
Every Seven Seconds by Dan Hunter
Beep...Doot by Aaron Kagan & Seth Soulstein
Slugger by Terrence Kidd
M. Riverside by John J King
Little Boys by Margaret Lagerstedt
Crickets by Emily Kaye Lazzaro
Trust Fall by Steve Lewis
Stuck by Christopher Lockheardt
Downward Facing Dog by Melinda Lopez
Squirrelly by James McLindon
Teddy Ballgame by Caitlin Mitchell
Casting Amanda by Jack Neary
Share This World by Ronan Noone
Cat in a Box by Julian Olf
The Resurrections by Catherine M. O'Neill
Birdbaths, "Twilight", and Other Sundry Topics by Rick Park
Backfire by Leslie Powell
Those Still Living by April Ranger
Open House by Theresa Rebeck
Camberwell House by Amelia Roper
Uncommon Ground by John R. Sarrouf
Bible Study by Daniel Sauermilch
There's an App for That! by Richard Schotter
A Handy Man by March Schrader
Rogue River, Oregon by Phil Schroeder
Perfect Strangers by Peter Snoad
Welcome to the Hate Store by Jan Velco Soolman
Ms. Connections by Erin Striff
One More to Go in Beantown by Debbie Wiess
A Tall Order by Sheri Wilner
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