When a good theatrical production does its job, the audience is moved on a cellular level by the essence of human creativity. Actors embody the soul-stirring narrative of the playwright, turning our deepest fears, hopes and joys over in the spotlight. But it’s what happens in between these two points that the Front Range Playwrights’ Showcase, a night of staged readings hosted by Coal Creek Theater of Louisville (CCT), is designed to celebrate.
“I have a lot of friends who are non-theater people, and one of the ways I’m promoting this event to them is by explaining that this is how the sausage gets made,” says Brett Nickerson, director of Earworms for this year’s showcase. “You don’t write a two-hour play and it just gets produced; you start with a draft and a reading to work out the kinks.”
Originating in 2007 as an evening of lightly produced one-act plays, the festival has evolved over the years into two distinct endeavors: The Front Range Playwrights’ Showcase and An Evening of Colorado-Grown One Acts.
“When we first started, we thought we could do a little bit of blocking and costuming,” says CCT board secretary Lynn Fleming. “But we quickly turned it into a straight-stage reading.”
CCT received 21 scripts between March and May, all meeting the nonprofit’s hour-or-less length requirement and falling under one important rubric: All plays must be penned by a Colorado resident. But when it comes to the topics of the winning works themselves, all bets are off.
“There’s a slight similarity to all three plays because they are all very future-oriented,” says CCT artistic director Kirsten Jorgensen Smith. “But I love that we were able to find three stories that really aren’t 100% alike at all.”
‘A lonely process’
The 2023 Showcase includes the aforementioned Earworms by Brad Rutledge, Plugged In by Grant Swenson, and Serving the Story by Scott Gibson. These plays will be performed in Reader’s Theater style, with adjudications by Alphonse Keasley, Madge Montgomery and Terence Keane.
“Our special play election committee has been reading them as they’ve been coming in and scoring them individually, not against each other but on their own merit,” Smith says. “We then chose our top three and matched them with directors by July 1, so we can start rehearsals for the showcase in August. Additionally, after our showcase this year, audiences will be able to return to see these plays fully produced in August 2024.”
Earworms, written by Rutledge and directed by Nickerson, follows two men who meet after the funeral of their college roommate. Although he has performed with CCT and written several plays that have been produced locally, this is Rutledge’s first submission to the showcase.
“After I talked to Steve Rausch, who is one of the board members, he encouraged me to take a chance and submit a script,” Rutledge recalls. “While trying to figure out what to write about, I saw a play featuring a local actor named Wade Livingston and decided to write something for him to perform.”
Plugged In, written by Swenson and directed by Jeremy Denning, takes place in a completely different part of the galaxy. The narrative invites readers to travel to a planet with a special form of evolution.
“Back in 2013, I joined a local playwriting group in Colorado Springs called Drama Lab and heard through that group that CCT was looking for submissions,” Swenson says. “So, I found a science fiction play that I had written the previous year, and I submitted it. And I was chosen as one of the top three and won the showcase that year. Recently, I made the decision to write a sci-fi follow-up about this alien world where evolution differed from that on Earth.”
The final production of the showcase is Serving the Story, written by Gibson and directed by Smith, which follows actors who find themselves trapped in a play.
“I’ve submitted several times, and I’ve been fortunate enough that they have selected three of my plays over the years to be produced,” Gibson says. “They’ve always done lovely work with my plays, so applying is always a no-brainer. This year, I wanted to come up with something that was sort of absurdist and surreal. As the plot progresses, you realize the characters are aware that a subpar playwright is forcing them to participate in activities … for his own amusement; it is a little dark but also has some humor in it.”
And the showcase is more than just a platform for highlighting talent; it’s also a testament to the deep bonds formed between playwrights, actors, directors and the community at large.
“Playwriting is such a solitary, lonely process,” Gibson says. “When you first begin to write a play, you are sitting in a room by yourself, writing what works for you; putting a play in front of an audience who has no idea what the play is about leads to such invaluable feedback. I may write something that seems terribly funny to me, but when the actor says it, the line lands with a thud. When I hear that, I think, ‘OK, what I find humorous is not necessarily what an audience finds humorous,’ which is a very helpful realization for any writer and really improves the play.”
ON STAGE: Front Range Playwrights’ Showcase by Coal Creek Theater of Louisville. 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 25, Louisville Center for the Arts, 801 Grant Ave. $10
