Faigen: 'Snow' business like show business, awk!

Port playwright Joshua Faigen, back at the Big Show.

Josh Faigen is on the phone. We’re supposed to be talking about his new play, and maybe we are. Who the hell knows? The only sound clearly audible is this horrendous, god-awful squawking, apparently some kind of bird, a parrot maybe. Name's Mary or Barry or something. Harry? Yeah, Harry. Named after his grandfather? "Don't ask," he says. Faigen, that is, not the bird. He squawks about ten minutes a day, then settles down. The bird, not Faigen. Except when he's talking on the phone. Faigen, not the bird. He doesn't like that. The bird, not Faigen. And expresses his irritation with unscheduled squawking. Usually lasts about ten minutes, then everybody can calm down. Faigen's been dealing with Harry's telephone envy for about 17 years, since  Pittsburgh, where Harry, Faigen and his wife, Penny Lazarus, lived before moving to the Port about a decade ago. Apparently, these creatures can irritate people for up to four decades, which is also interesting, but, at this point, I know more about the bird than "A Book of Snow," the new Faigen production, which will anchor this year's New Works Festival. So, now that Harry's finally calmed down, let's get busy.

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Pasternack chillin' at this year's New Works

Playwright Leslie Pasternack with Sylvia, um, Simon.

Yup, Leslie Pasternack's back at the New Works Festival, but this year it's gonna be a little different. Way different, actually. Instead of running around like a crazy woman backstage or running lines in rehearsal, she's been kicking back at home, without a care in the world, other than dealing with a lingering case of, well, theater's equivalent of postpartum depression — when all that's left of a production is the memories and the reviews and, in Pasternack's case, a bloody goat head. You see, a month and a half ago, Pasternack had to say goodbye to Sylvia, the virtually unseen character in "The Goat, or who is Sylvia," Edward Albee's controversial — and creepy — parable about a guy who falls in love with a goat, who nobody actually sees until the end of the play, and all you actually see is the head. Which Pasternack, who directed the play, had been babysitting since the show closed last summer and had become strangely, perhaps dangerously, attached to it — her? — right down the sinewy stump, for which she had to pay extra.  She had to return Sylvia to Steve Faria, the Newbury actor, playwright and director who mounted the Actors Studio production. She's said her goodbyes — and has moved on, she says, but also admits, in an unguarded moment,  that she is "pining still" for sad Sylvia. Or maybe she's just playing. She is an actress, after all.  But, if true, the big win came at the perfect moment.  

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All dressed up for New Works

Funny thing is “Entree Gold,” the John Minigan play that won top honors at this year’s New Works Festival — a piece that will likely raise more than a few eyebrows when it finally hits the stage next week, seeing how it looks at fallout from the complete emotional collapse of a cross-dressing Catholic pedagogue (a word conjuring up another — pedophile — because of the context, which also figures into the background), and a production so powerful that both the organizer of the festival and one of its judges both virtually called dibs on it — has been languishing in the author’s desk drawer for almost 15 years. It wasn’t until the playwright saw the call for submissions, specifically for one-act plays — a new New Works category this year — that Minigan decided to dig out and dust off this old piece of his  “and see if it made more sense” than it did back in 1995, when he “gave up on it.” It did. 

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New year, busy year for New Works winner

It’s feast or famine out there in theater land, right? Sometimes — and that, of course, means usually — you can’t even give your stuff away, and sometimes ... well, sometimes things really start to groove. Just ask Ann Marie Shea, the Worcester-based playwright who is starting the new year in a big way, with three productions  — one full-length play and a couple of 10-minute shorts. On the same weekend, of course. And in different parts of the state: Her full-length play “Last Word,” which looks at the unraveling of a hotshot poet and lit professor’s life, kicks off this year’s New Works Festival, and “Old Friends, New Benefits,” a Shea short about a sudden, undeniable and inconvenient love in the over-60 set, gets a reading the following day. All of this happening while Turtle Lane Playhouse in Auburndale  stages “Family Archive,”a one-act play, and as Shea prepares to take her one-act, one-woman show “Madame Secretary Frances Perkins,” about Franklin Roosevelt’s  controversial secretary of labor — and Worcester native — on the road.

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A parade of plays at New Works

A lot of new faces at this year's New Works Festival, the two-weekend play series focusing on new works by local and regional playwrights, but also a  lot of familiar faces, too. Like James McLindon, the Northampton-based scribbler who has taken home top honors in three of the last four years. This year, however, he’s playing a supporting role instead of his more familiar position as the festival’s top playwriting dog, landing a spot on the lineup with “Japanese Schoolgirl Night,” a short that sounds like a show you might find on one of those pay-per-view channels, but, the author assures us, is most definitely not a porno — despite the proximity of Jell-O shots, schoolgirls and a prestigious all-girls college. And the Girard-Faria machine continues to roll, with the Newbury playwrights — and New Works regulars — Steve Faria and Deirdre Girard taking two spots at the two-week festival. Other locals on the playbill include Bruce Menin, who’s back at the Firehouse festival after a five-year absence with a dark comedy about infidelity, murder and forgiveness, and Exit Dance Theater founder Fontaine Dubus, who contributes a short about two techies who sort out a bit of personal business in between cue calls at a dance recital. 

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Menin's unexpected New Works entry

Surprise, you’re in the New Works Festival! Um, thanks … huh? That’s how it happened, more or less, at least for Bruce Menin. The school committee member, you see, is an inveterate, although not especially detail-oriented scribbler. Last summer, he looked at the calendar and noticed it was like five minutes to deadline for the New Works Festival, so, he rifled through the old desk drawer and found  a 10-minute play he had written almost three years ago. A couple of tweaks and, for better or worse,  the thing was in the mail. He didn’t think too much of it, just kind of wrote it off. “It was such an afterthought, that I completely forgot about it,” he says. Until he ran into one of the festival organizers, who congratulated him for landing a spot in the festival, a two-weekend celebration of new plays by local writers. ”Much to my embarrassment, I had to ask him for what,” says Menin. “ When he told me that I had been selected for New Works, to my further embarrassment, I had to ask him which play I had submitted.”

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At New Works, proof's in the 'pudding'

Like old Forrest Gump says, “Life's like a box of chocolate pudding.” Except, of course, he didn’t actually say that. Maybe he should have, but he didn't. Gump was talking about a box of chocolates, not chocolate pudding. And we're not talking about Gump, we're taking about Michael Tooher, whose play about the subject — pudding, the creamy comfort food that Bill Cosby is always prattling on about, not Gump — kicks off the second weekend of the New Works Festival this year. The Maine playwright doesn't especially like pudding, but understands feel-good dessert as a metaphor for love, not life, although, it turns out, the two are closely related ... Actually, just so there's no confusion, here's what he said: “I like the idea of pudding,” he said. “It's light and messy. It should be messy. Pudding is a messy business. Like love, like life. There are no rules, there are no instruction manuals. No matter what you do, you're going to get some of it on you. And that's how it should be. Pudding should be messy and love always will be.”

Pudding, the food, is the glue that holds “pudding,” the play, together. It's how our reluctant hero, John, relates to the world — and how he hides from it. He mails boxes of chocolate pudding randomly as gifts: closing his eyes, stabbing a phone book with his finger, taking down the mailing address, sending out the anonymous gift. It seems like a lovely and selfless, if somewhat perplexing activity, and it is, but it’s more acutely observed as a daily act of desperation designed to conceal an all-consuming desperation. He has been doing this for years, since his wife of 31 years died and left him alone in the world. It’s his way of reaching out, but never having to connect. It becomes more than that after Mary gets involved.

Mary? A strange bird, who kicks in John’s doors, emotionally and physically, while trying to track down Fernando, a hot Latino stud who scored absurdly high on the compatibility chart for a computer dating company. She immediately senses something is going on but fails to grasp its significance as she tries to turn private pain into profit and, perhaps, transcendence. She shakes his tree, luring him into an economic affair — a cheap ad campaign — that misundersands the act entirely, turning it into mere product, profit, allthough deep down she senses that there may be something else going down. It doesn't quite work out the way anyone expects.

Explosive stuff
Tooher has been writing for about five years and has seen some success. His moody short "In a Clearing Quiet," in which a seemingly innocent 10-year-old girl pursues a mysterious agenda — "a creepy little tale," says Tooher — has been staged by four companies in three states over the past two years. "The Sentry," a short that focuses on a TV reporter interviewing a soldier on a surprising mission, was featured at last year's Boston Theatre Marathon and the Seven Short Play Festival in Albuquerque, N.M. But the Portland author's main gig has been as a stage hand, a job title that doesn't really cut it. What he actually does is blow stuff up, or make it look like stuff has been blown up — like his work for the National Geographic Channel's "Dirty Bomb Attack," part of its "Naked Science" series, in which a radioactive car bomb goes off in a busy area of Portland. He also does pyrotechnics for sports teams and stage shows.

He treats stage-writing as a job, tries to produce a page a day ("setting the bar really low," the playwright says.) He doesn't plot, he doesn't outline. "I'm not that good a writer," he says. All h needs is a title, or a first line, or both, or a notion where the thing is going. The first line and concept of "pudding" is "Come in," which doesn't seem like much but, Tooher says, sets he stage. "I'm a great believer in sitting back and letting the characters talk," he says. "Pudding" is the first full-length play Tooher has had staged. The production, which will kick off the second weekend of the New Works Festival, stars Jennifer Wilson, Terry Blanchard, Mary Shapiro, Kathy Isbel, Sherry Bonder, Julie McConechie, Myron Moss and Sam Szabo. Maureen Dailey directs.

While the current production seems to have come out of nowhere, Tooher says "pudding" may be a action to his ironically named, still-unproduced full-length "The Perfect Sameness of our Days," a ripped-from-the-headlines look at a returning soldier in need of mental and medical care who is all but abandoned by his country — a dark story written quickly and in anger. He was looking for lighter material when the idea came to him.

Ultimately, the play is about loneliness, about grief that has numbly metastasized and leaves a desperately empty human shell — and that's the modern tragedy. “The biggest disease is loneliness,” says Tooher. “ We fumble around trying to find one another, trying to connect — or reconnect. John's wife dies and his world collapses. He needs to feel again.” The play is also about fame, which has become an end in itself. “It's hollow and it's wrong," he says. "It used to be a means to an end. Now it's the end itself. It borders on the sociopathic.”

THE FACTS, THE FOLKS: The New Works Festival runs Jan. 22-23 and Jan. 29-30 at the Firehouse Center for the Performing Arts, 1 Market Square, Newburyport. The first weekend will open with “Dead and Buried,” the new full-length play by James McLindon. The following night will feature half of the 14-shorts accepted into the festival. The second weekend will open with a staged reading of “pudding,” a new full-length play by Michael Tooher, followed, the next day, by the remaining shorts. Show times are 8 p.m. Tickets are $12. A limited number of four-day passes are available for $35 each. For information, call 978-462-7336 or go online to firehouse.org.

Friday, Jan. 22: "Dead and Buried,” drama by James McLindon, starring Astrid Lorentzson, Ashley Risteen and Eliot Johnson. Directed by Sherry Bonder.

Saturday, Jan. 23: “Soldier Boy,” drama by Leslie Powell, starring Kate Bossi and Jesiah Hammond; directed by Tim Diering. “No Strings Attached,” comedy by Kara Sorenson, starring Jennifer Wilson, Phil Thompson, Eric Lamarche and Steve Sacchetti; directed by Lois Honegger. “Knowing,” comedy by Gregory Hischak, starring Pam Battin-Sacks and Danny Sklar; directed by Cynthia Arsenault. “If You Love,” drama by Marc Clopton, starring John Sheedy and Jesiah Hammond; directed by Anna Smulowitz. “Sleeping with the Cat 1963,” drama by Daniel Sklar, starring Maureen Daley and Mary Shapiro; directed by Alan Huisman. “Jock Itch,” comedy by George Sauer, starring Sandy Farrier and Brad Ritchie; directed by Jack Rushton; “Touching Elephants,” drama-comedy by Stephen Faria, starring Gloria Papert, Dennis Flynn and Victor Atkins; directed by Diana Kerry.

Friday, Jan. 29: “Pudding,” comedy by Michael Tooher, starring Jennifer Wilson and Terry Blanchard, with Mary Shapiro, Kathy Isabel, Terry Donohue, Sherry Bonder, Julie McConechie, Myron Moss and Sam Szabo; directed by Maureen Daley

Saturday, Jan. 30: "Egg Whites and Miracles,” comedy by Stephen Faria, starring Missy Chabot, Irene Sanders and Fontaine Dollas Dubus, directed by Kimm Wilkinson. “Free Will and Kat,” drama by Deirdre Girard, starring Kayt Tommasino and Teddy Speck; directed by Stephen Haley. “Last Dance,” comedy by Kerry Zagarella, starring Bruce Anderson, Tracy Bickel, Kari Nickou and Jack Rushton; directed by Suzanne Bryan. “A Simile,” comedy by Robert B. Boulrice; directed by David Frank. “A Crooked Chapatti,” comedy by Priya Tahiliani, directed by Kathy Isabel. “Amenities,” comedy by Gregory Hischak, starring Stephen Faria, Kari Nickou, Irene Sanders and Steve Turner; directed by Anne Easter Smith.

Bryan surveys dance floor at New Works

No, it isn't your eyes playing tricks on you. Or an apparition - the ghost of theater past or something. Or proof of a wormhole or some kind of weird tear in the space-time continuum. It's just Suzanne Bryan, who enjoyed a nice run on the local scene as the head of Persephone Theatre, but dropped off the radar about eight years ago. She was in town to direct "Dancing in the Dark," a short play by George Cope and Bruce M. Menin, at Random Acts, the play-in-a-day series at the Firehouse last November, and she has been around the past couple of weeks to rehearse "Last Dance," a comedy by Ipswich playwright KerryZagarella for the New Works Festival, which opens Friday with a production of three-time winner James McLindon's "Dead and Buried." But, no, it's not a revival. Bryan is retired. From nursing, at least.


She left local theater – and the city - about eight years ago to work full-time at Dna Farber, shortly after staging "Fully Committed" in 2002. But she hasn't retired from theater. She staged several productions, including "Wit," at Dana Farber. And she's also volunteering at Dorchester Academy, an after-school theater program at Dorchester High School that, like many schools in the state, has had to deal with tough cutbacks - especially to arts programs. "They don't have any other options," she says. And, of course, dashing in and out of the city from her just-north-of-Boston home.

Right now she's on the phone, en route to Home Depot, with a carload of material to build "special props" for the play. What exactly those might be, she's not saying. She's not talking much about the play itself either, saying only that the 10-minute short has strong comedic and physical acting - "a comedy with a soupcon of noir," she says – and promising that "jaws will drop" when the lights come up.

The playwright, a kindergarten teacher in the Ipswich public schools, is a little more expansive about the play, her second at the New Works. "Last Dance," which will be staged Jan. 23, the last day of the festival, is "another comedy ... I hope." The father, who has disappointed the daughter her entire life, ups and dies just before her wedding. He was supposed to give her away. Figures, right? All that's out the window, of course, but his selfish death does not necessarily
negate his role in the wedding entirely. The story takes place in a funeral home - after business hours, without the consent of the owner, who doesn't know, or the father, who doesn't care. Awkward? Perhaps. Illegal? Yup. But that doesn't mean that father and daughter can't work things out, finally. The show will feature performances by Bruce Anderson, Ritza Elizabeth, Kari Nickou, Tracy Bickel and Jack Rushton.

Unlike "The Odor of Existech," the first play she ever wrote, which found a spot in the new play festival four years ago, Zagarella will be relegated to sitting quietly in the audience. Bryan will direct. "I guess I have to trust her," she says. Not that this is a bad thing. Zagarella has spoken to Bryan on the phone and knows that "she gets it." And the playwright, who is co-founder of the long-running Wail! Magazine and a former touring member of Boston's First Slam Poetry Team, says that "Odor of Existech," her last New Works entry "became so much better" because of the collaboration with the actors. It was a dark comedy ("Is there any other kind?" she asks) that used household recycling efforts as a metaphor of how to process memories and thoughts in our own lives - all of our history, whether good or bad, makes us what we are - "and how you choose to reuse and recycle these memories dictates who you are and how you lead your life," she says. "A lot changed. It made it a much better play because of the collaboration. "Still, she says, letting go is difficult for a self-described control freak. "At first, I'm sure I'll be hyperventilating."

JUST THE FACTS: The New Works Festival runs Jan. 22-23 and Jan. 29-30 at the Firehouse Center for the Performing Arts, 1 Market Square, Newburyport. "Last Dance," a comedy by Kerry Zagarella, will be one of six short plays closing out the festival on Jan. 30. Show times are 8 p.m. Tickets are $12. For information, call 978-462-7336 or log on at firehouse.org.

Sklar connects spies, kitties at New Works

Don’t underestimate the power of prose — or poetry. Daniel Sklar sure doesn’t. The 56-year-old Hamilton resident moved to the North Shore from New York, where he painted apartments and drove a cab while studying acting and getting a master’s degree in English from New York University. He met his wife, Denise, in the city. She was a dancer. He started looking for a respectable job, as a teacher, but there was nothing, and the Big Apple started feeling oppressive, and it was no place to raise a family. They wanted out. She had Salem roots, so they ended up on the North Shore. He started painting again, which was depressing. ”I thought I would be painting the rest of my life,” he says. Then one day he found himself outside Endicott College, an institution that he really didn’t know much about. He just walked in and got an interview. Which sounds unlikely and definitely not the best approach to landing a job, but the timing was right, the English department had one retirement, one firing and one guy just walking out the door. They needed someone right away. Sklar showed them his resume and one of his poems — and he landed the job, “So anyone who tells you that poetry will never get you anywhere is out of his mind,” he says. The Beverly liberal arts college offered him a full-time gig teaching creative writing and literature a year later.


That was 23 years ago. Now he’s a full professor and editor of the Endicott Review. His poetry has been published in a variety of publications. In 2001, he published “Hack Writer: Poems, Stories, Plays,” and in late 2008 followed up with ”Bicycles, Canoes, Drums,” a collection of his recent work. And, this weekend, “Sleeping with the Cat 1963,” his new short, will make its debut at the New Works Festival, a four-day event that focuses on original plays.

The name refers to a nightly, ritualistic bonding with a furry friend, which may be sweet and loving and therapeutic, but, when it’s all the emotional support you have, is a little sad. The story takes place on New Year’s Eve at the Saugus Iron Works, where two female spooks are nearing the end of their careers, which have lasted from the end of World War II to the Bay of Pigs. They meet for reasons that have not been fully explained to them. It’s all very mysterious. But the 10-minute play is not about espionage or intrigue or Cold War strategies. It’s about two people who have spent their entire adult lives lying about who they are and what they do. The end is nearing and, it appears, they’re crossing the finish line with nothing. They couldn’t have close friends because of their careers and now, save kitty, their lives are empty.

“It’s about relationships,” says Sklar, who will also make his Newburyport acting debut the same night, performing in “Knowing,” a comedy by Gregory Hischak. “It’s about choices. After they learn how to trust each other, no mean feat, coming from the world of cloak and dagger, they let down their defenses and spill their guts to each other.”

The production, which will be staged with six other shorts on Jan. 23, the second day of the festival, stars Maureen Daley and Mary Shapiro. Alan Huisman directs.

McLindon returns to New Works

So James McLindon topped the ticket at the New Works Festival this year, taking home the Pestolozzi Award for best full-length play? Big surprise, right? It’s his third win in four years. The guy should probably just find a place in town, right? “I could probably save gas money if I did,” the Northhampton-based playwright says, laughing. But, seriously, after learning he was top dog again, he offered to step aside, “if it felt uncomfortable in any way.” The board demurred, pointing out that he won it clean, after blind readings by a panel that included Joe Antoun, co-founder and artistic director of Centastage in Boston, and John B. Welch, one of the founders of Boston Theatre Association, and that the rules do not exclude playwrights with multiple wins. So, when the four-day play festival opens on Jan. 22, “Dead and Buried,” McLindon’s latest, will join “Faith,” last year’s New Works winner, and “The Garden of Dromore,” which took top honors in the 2007 edition of the festival - completing a literary hat trick and a veritable “wrighting” dynasty.

The play looks at three characters — a teenage boy, a teenage girl and an older woman. The girl is trying to find, or at least learn something about, her birthmother, whom she has never met. But each is “searching for someone or something missing in their lives,” says McLindon. “They’re trying to fill a void.” It’s set in a cemetery on Halloween and weaves themes of life, death, discovery and loss.

And it’s a comedy.

Huh?

“What? A play that takes place in a cemetery doesn’t sound funny?” McLindon says, laughing. “No, it’s a difficult play to categorize. Ultimately, it's very serious, but there’s a lot of comedy along the way.” Or as director Sherry Bonder put it, the playwright tackles heavy material but does it with a light touch. “It’s serious and redemptive,” says Bonder, who has worked with Theater in the Open for more than 15 years and is an adolescent therapist. “There’s a lot of humanity in the play. It’s a very serious, but balanced approach.”

Case closed
Before he was a playwright, he was a lawyer, taking home a law degree from Harvard, graduating magna cum laude and serving as editor of the Harvard Law Review. He practiced law, but resigned his partnership in a Beantown firm to write.
And while it might seem like a pretty dicey move, McLindon points out that “no career choice is especially stable these days.” He was actually a writer before he was a lawyer, scribbling for Yankee Magazine and the Boston Phoenix, as well as serving as speechwriter for presidents of the American Bar Association and for the Harvard Law Review. “I never stopped writing,” he says. And he never stopped lawyering either. He practices civil law part time in western Massachusetts - necessary because, despite his track record on this side of the Merrimack, it’s not easy getting from manuscript to playbill: “Writing is easy enough; getting established as a writer is always slow going.” At any given time, he has two full-length plays and several shorts going.

The premiere production will feature Ashley Risteen, whose last role was in the Actors Studio production of “Picnic,” and Eliot Johnson, last seen in the Michael Wainstein production of “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris,” in the teen roles. They will be working with Astrid Lorentzson, a veteran of many local productions and, like Bonder, a therapist who works with adolescents and teens. The New Works reading will be the first time McLindon has ever seen “Dead and Buried” staged in any manner - and the production is crucial. “It’s very helpful to a writer to see a work in progress,” he says. “Hearing it out loud helps; it gives you a perspective you’ve never had before. I hope it feels like a complete piece. Thing is, you don’t necessarily know until you see it living and breathing on the stage. Every play has its own course.”

The ‘wright’ stuff
It is very different from his previous two New Works offerings, both of which tackled religious themes: “Faith,” last year’s winning production, looks at an adolescent boy’s struggle to find meaning in life and to be “special.” He longs to be given a message from God and won’t give up until he receives it. “The Garden of Dromore,” which was renamed “Dusk,” looks at the aftermath of the Catholic clergy sex scandal - and how those who spoke out were painted as enemies of the church if they dared to speak out. Why the shift in subject matter? “It’s hard to tell why you write something and not something else,” he says.

How long will it take before “Dead and Buried,” which the playwright still very much considers a work in progress, is finally done? McLindon says it’s anybody’s guess. He made changes to “Distant Music,” his first play, complete in 2005, after each of its five productions - some of the changes minor, just tweaks, but changes nonetheless. The play is about to be published this year. It is, he says, done - not necessarily because there are no possible changes that could be made, but because it is in print once and for all, for better or worse.

THE FACTS, THE FOLKS: The New Works Festival runs Jan. 22-23 and Jan. 29-30 at the Firehouse Center for the Performing Arts, 1 Market Square, Newburyport. The first weekend will open with “Dead and Buried,” the new full-length play by James McLindon. The following night will feature half of the 14-shorts accepted into the festival. The second weekend will open with a staged reading of “pudding,” a new full-length play by Michael Tooher, followed, the next day, by the remaining shorts. Show times are 8 p.m. Tickets are $12. A limited number of four-day passes are available for $35 each. For information, call 978-462-7336 or go online to firehouse.org.

Friday, Jan. 22: "Dead and Buried,” drama by James McLindon, starring Astrid Lorentzson, Ashley Risteen and Eliot Johnson. Directed by Sherry Bonder.

Saturday, Jan. 23: “Soldier Boy,” drama by Leslie Powell, starring Kate Bossi and Jesiah Hammond; directed by Tim Diering. “No Strings Attached,” comedy by Kara Sorenson, starring Jennifer Wilson, Phil Thompson, Eric Lamarche and Steve Sacchetti; directed by Lois Honegger. “Knowing,” comedy by Gregory Hischak, starring Pam Battin-Sacks and Danny Sklar; directed by Cynthia Arsenault. “If You Love,” drama by Marc Clopton, starring John Sheedy and Jesiah Hammond; directed by Anna Smulowitz. “Sleeping with the Cat 1963,” drama by Daniel Sklar, starring Maureen Daley and Mary Shapiro; directed by Alan Huisman. “Jock Itch,” comedy by George Sauer, starring Sandy Farrier and Brad Ritchie; directed by Jack Rushton; “Touching Elephants,” drama-comedy by Stephen Faria, starring Gloria Papert, Dennis Flynn and Victor Atkins; directed by Diana Kerry.

Friday, Jan. 29: “Pudding,” comedy by Michael Tooher, starring Jennifer Wilson and Terry Blanchard, with Mary Shapiro, Kathy Isabel, Terry Donohue, Sherry Bonder, Julie McConechie, Myron Moss and Sam Szabo; directed by Maureen Daley


Saturday, Jan. 30: "Egg Whites and Miracles,” comedy by Stephen Faria, starring Missy Chabot, Irene Sanders and Fontaine Dollas Dubus, directed by Kimm Wilkinson. “Free Will and Kat,” drama by Deirdre Girard, starring Kayt Tommasino and Teddy Speck; directed by Stephen Haley. “Last Dance,” comedy by Kerry Zagarella, starring Bruce Anderson, Tracy Bickel, Kari Nickou and Jack Rushton; directed by Suzanne Bryan. “A Simile,” comedy by Robert B. Boulrice; directed by David Frank. “A Crooked Chapatti,” comedy by Priya Tahiliani, directed by Kathy Isabel. “Amenities,” comedy by Gregory Hischak, starring Stephen Faria, Kari Nickou, Irene Sanders and Steve Turner; directed by Anne Easter Smith.

Powell-ful production at New Works

She’s trying to be cool about it, not to rub it in, but it's hard to hold back the gloating: While we're, thankfully, between winter batterings, winds whipping, blowing the snow and our opportunity to truly enjoy a much-deserved long holiday weekend, Leslie Powell’s looking out her window at the Santa Catalina mountains, drenched in sunlight, as the mercury dances around the 70-degree mark. Ah, Tucson, Arizona, the Newburyport playwright Southwest escape destination, where she can spend some time with Sis and, of course, fellow scribblers from the Old Pueblo Playwrights, her literary home-away-from-home. Not that there's anything wrong with escaping New England’s winter treachery. (“I know, I know,” she says in a sotto voce that almost masks the smirk we expect is manifesting itself more than 2,000 miles away on the other end of the receiver, “but I still feel kinda guilty.” Yeah, right. Then it's off to southern California on a business trip, and back to chill Newburyport in time to take in the New Works Festival.


Yup, she’s in the line-up again. With some of the other usual local suspects, locally. Like Steve Faria, who nabbed the festival’s first-ever Peter Honegger Award for his short play “Egg Whites and Miracles,” and Deirdre Girard. And big picture, like James McLindon, the Northampton playwright who is making his third appearance in the anchor position and taking home the Pestolozzi Award for best full-length play.

Powell's latest is a little different from her previous stuff — much darker than, say, “Movie Mogul in his Mama’s Muumuu,” a hilarious collaboration with her husband, Ron Pullins, in which the main character writes breathless homo-erotic sports stories in his splendid, sartorial comfort. No, “Soldier Boy,” despite its name, which conjures up hazy memories of ’50s innocence, is much darker material: A returned, broken veteran picks up a woman in a bar, but it all goes very wrong, turning from a cheap-but-possibly-fun one-nighter to an attempted abduction, with the soldier threatening to kill her — or himself.

The material has its roots in news reports prompted by reports of the miserable medical and psychiatric treatment that have awaited veterans back home. “It just made me so angry,” says Powell, who founded Random Acts, the Newburyport play-in-a-day festival, with Hailey Klein, and the North Shore Readers Theatre Collaborative, which brings original plays to the stage in a readers' format, with Pullins and Actors Studio founder Marc Clopton.

This will be the third production of the piece, but its first local showing. Its first time out was during the 2008 Boston Theatre Marathon, where it was produced by the Metro Stage Company. Second time out was during the 2009 Gloucester Fall Shorts Festival, where it was directed by Holly Little. (New Works rules allow previous festival entries in the lineup.) Both were dramatically different productions, says the playwright: “I want to see it as many times as I can with different actors,” she says. “It's always different. It's like seeing it new and fresh because different actors and directors bring a different perspective." The current production, which will open day two of the festival, will be directed by Tim Diering, who closed out 2009 with two Michael Kimball plays: “Santa Come Home” at the Players Ring and “I Fall for You” at the Firehouse. Jesiah Hammond and Kate Bossi star. As for Diering, he’s keeping mum about what his plans are for the show — even keeping the playwright in the dark — saying only that “it will knock your socks off."


THE FACTS, THE FOLKS: The New Works Festival runs Jan. 22-23 and Jan. 29-30 at the Firehouse Center for the Performing Arts, 1 Market Square, Newburyport. The first weekend will open with “Dead and Buried,” the new full-length play by James McLindon. The following night will feature half of the 14-shorts accepted into the festival. The second weekend will open with a staged reading of “pudding,” a new full-length play by Michael Tooher, followed, the next day, by the remaining shorts. Show times are 8 p.m. Tickets are $12. A limited number of four-day passes are available for $35 each. For information, call 978-462-7336 or go online to firehouse.org.

Friday, Jan. 22: "Dead and Buried,” drama by James McLindon, starring Astrid Lorentzson, Ashley Risteen and Eliot Johnson. Directed by Sherry Bonder.

Saturday, Jan. 23: “Soldier Boy,” drama by Leslie Powell, starring Kate Bossi and Jesiah Hammond; directed by Tim Diering. “No Strings Attached,” comedy by Kara Sorenson, starring Jennifer Wilson, Phil Thompson, Eric Lamarche and Steve Sacchetti; directed by Lois Honegger. “Knowing,” comedy by Gregory Hischak, starring Pam Battin-Sacks and Danny Sklar; directed by Cynthia Arsenault. “If You Love,” drama by Marc Clopton, starring John Sheedy and Jesiah Hammond; directed by Anna Smulowitz. “Sleeping with the Cat 1963,” drama by Daniel Sklar, starring Maureen Daley and Mary Shapiro; directed by Alan Huisman. “Jock Itch,” comedy by George Sauer, starring Sandy Farrier and Brad Ritchie; directed by Jack Rushton; “Touching Elephants,” drama-comedy by Stephen Faria, starring Gloria Papert, Dennis Flynn and Victor Atkins; directed by Diana Kerry.

Friday, Jan. 29: “Pudding,” comedy by Michael Tooher, starring Jennifer Wilson and Terry Blanchard, with Mary Shapiro, Kathy Isabel, Terry Donohue, Sherry Bonder, Julie McConechie, Myron Moss and Sam Szabo; directed by Maureen Daley

Saturday, Jan. 30: "Egg Whites and Miracles,” comedy by Stephen Faria, starring Missy Chabot, Irene Sanders and Fontaine Dollas Dubus, directed by Kimm Wilkinson. “Free Will and Kat,” drama by Deirdre Girard, starring Kayt Tommasino and Teddy Speck; directed by Stephen Haley. “Last Dance,” comedy by Kerry Zagarella, starring Bruce Anderson, Tracy Bickel, Kari Nickou and Jack Rushton; directed by Suzanne Bryan. “A Simile,” comedy by Robert B. Boulrice; directed by David Frank. “A Crooked Chapatti,” comedy by Priya Tahiliani, directed by Kathy Isabel. “Amenities,” comedy by Gregory Hischak, starring Stephen Faria, Kari Nickou, Irene Sanders and Steve Turner; directed by Anne Easter Smith.