BPF Calendar

April 2011
Apr 3
Sunday 		Fells Point Corner Theater 7:00 pm: BPF Production Meeting

The producers, directors, and playwrights meet with the BPF board to discuss new play development, publicity, and other concerns.
Apr 10
Sunday 		Spotlighters Theatre 6:00 pm: BPF 30th Season open auditions.

Producers, directors, and playwrights will be looking for actors to cast in their productions for the Baltimore Playwrights Festival's 30th Season (June - Aug). This is an open audition, times are not reserved.

To audition, please arrive between 6:00 and 7:30 with a prepared TWO MINUTE monologue and 14 copies of your resume (w/headshot).
Apr 30
Saturday 		Vagabonds Theatre 1:00 pm: BPF Playwrights Symposium.

In celebration of its 30th Season, The Baltimore Playwrights Festival will present a Playwrights Symposium April 30th at 1 p.m. at The Vagabond Theater, 806 S. Broadway, Baltimore, MD 21231. The topic will be The Playwright in the Twenty-First Century, and attendance is open to the public.

Panel members for the Symposium are: Gary Garrison, Executive Director of the Dramatists Guild and the event's Keynote Speaker; Ed Herendeen, founder and producing director of The Contemporary American Theater Festival; Judy Rousuck, long-time theater reviewer for The Baltimore Sun, current theater reviewer on WYPR, and faculty member of The O'Neill Theater Festival; and Juanita Rockwell, playwright, director, Fulbright recipient, and founder of Towson University's MFA in Theater. The discussion will be moderated by Rich Espey, playwright, actor, former Chair of The Baltimore Playwrights Festival and current area representative for The Dramatists Guild.

Registration will begin on April 1st, with advance ticket prices of $20 for nonmembers, $18 for Sustaining Members and $16 for Voting Members. Advance prices end April 26th, tickets will be $25 at the door.

Tickets may be purchased online via paypal, or can be acquired by posting a check. Checks should be made payable to The Baltimore Playwrights Festival and mailed c/o Kathleen Barber, 1500 Shadyside Road, Baltimore, MD 21218.
March 2011
Mar 12
Saturday 		Spotlighters Theatre March 12 Public Reading
A Saturday Marathon of Public Readings at the Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre

All three playwrights are Flying in from out of state. Let's get out and give them a warm welcome as they return to Baltimore to hear their plays!

11:30 am: Veteran's Day by Judith Glass Collins directed by Natalia Leimkuhler
Synopsis: Three male Vietnam Veterans are slated to have a reunion on Veteran's Day, 2007, at the bar owned by one of the three. One veteran does not show. In his stead, an Asian American woman arrives unexpectedly. In the course of the play, we discover that the woman is also a veteran, but from the Gulf War, and that she is the progeny of the third veteran who did not show to the reunion, because he has killed himself. One of the precipitating factors of this suicide is his daughter's rape by one of the men in her unit. By the end of the play, we discover that the woman in the play is actually the product of a rape, an atrocity from the Vietnam War, which the two surviving veterans have denied until the present.

1:00 pm: Inconstancy by Bob Barr directed by Bill Largess
Synopsis: At the end of THE CONSTANT WIFE, Constance Middleton, having achieved financial independence, leaves her unfaithful husband, John, to go off on a short holiday with an old flame, Bernard. At the final curtain, John has asked her to return.

INCONSTANCY begins a year and a half later, in 1931. The holiday has turned into a long trip, the couple having gone to China for Bernard's business interests. Due to the Depression, they have returned to Constance's Mother's home.

John, meanwhile, has gone through a crisis, recklessly spending and, ultimately losing his house in the Crash. He arrives at Mrs. Culver's to assure her that he does want Constance back. While becoming business partners, Constance and Bernard have stopped being lovers, but Constance is unsure of what or whom she wants. When John's ex-lover, Constance's best friend, returns from California to seduce John anew, the situation becomes further complicated and Constance must act.

Ultimately, with the help of a "Judge's Bench", Constance chooses ... and her choice is surprising.

3:00 pm: Familiar Strangers by Margy Kahn directed by Yvonne Erickson
Synopsis: Massoumeh thought she made the right decision to leave her overbearing husband and seek her own life as an independent woman in Los Angeles. But now it is 1991 and Donya, her 15 year old daughter, is getting picked up for shoplifting. Sally, Massoumeh's longtime friend, was running a sociological study on arranged marriage when she met Ali and then Massoumeh in the late 1970s. Now she is shocked to hear Massoumeh wonder aloud if she would have been better off raising her daughter in post-revolutionary Iran. Into this welter of doubts and clash of values walks Massoumeh's former husband, a man partly broken by his experiences in Iranian prison. When Donya and her bad-ass friend Carissa dream up new ways to risk their lives, Massoumeh must come to terms with the choices she has made.

Mar 15
Tuesday 		Fells Point Corner Theater 7:30 Public Meeting
Agenda: TBD
8:30 BPF Producing Theaters will meet to select their scripts for our 30th Festival.
February 2011
Feb 12
Saturday 		Loyola University Maryland February 12 Public Reading
A Saturday Marathon of Public Readings at Loyola University in the Andrew White Student Center
(building 24 on the campus map)

11:00 am: Cleansing by Terry Kenney directed by Jay Gilman
Synopsis: Sea level is up 10 feet and the gated community of Calvert Crossing is faced with a lack of electricity, gasoline, and other utilities they'd taken for granted. When they decide to close their gates and form a militia to protect their property, the Lessing family must confront the new reality. The estranged father, Alan, is in favor of the community's decision and encourages his children to join the militia; the mother, May, wants to evacuate to her parent's farm in the country. Bob, a retired military neighbor, takes the title of Colonel, declares martial law, and forms the Calvert Crossing Defense Force. The 17-year old Lessing twins, Mason and Alison, are impressed into the defense force to the consternation of May. Meanwhile, Bob's daughter Kat wants to renew her relationship with Mason after dumping him the previous summer. Alison objects to protect her brother, risking her lifelong friendship with Kat. To make matters worse, Bob starts to hit on May. It's a mess that needs cleansing.

1:00 pm: The Patron Saint of Jellybeans by Courtney Sender directed by Lynn Morton
Synopsis: The Patron Saint of Jellybeans follows Jean Gorner, a renowned journalist on the cusp of publishing the pinnacle work of her career: an autobiography that will catapult her to journalistic celebrity. But only days prior to publication, her teenage son, Ethan, dies in a tragic roller coaster accident. Suddenly, Jean's omission of Ethan from her professional autobiography takes on unprecedented weight. Even as her agent, her publisher, her husband, her town, and the media portray Ethan as a talented and promising life cut off too early, Jean struggles with the memory of Ethan as a mediocre student, a JV soccer benchwarmer, and an insignificant figure in her own globetrotting life. As a mourning mother, Jean must grapple with what omitting her son means about her family; as a professional journalist, she must decide whether to sacrifice the truth of Ethan's life in order to claim a heroic place in the profession she has always put first.

3:00 pm: Fallout by Bob Bartlett directed by Jay Brock
Synopsis: Sheldon and Bick, like many Americans, were happily raising their son and working in the manufacturing industry until the worst economic downturn since the great depression forces them to move home with a parent who hardly approves of their family. Fallout is inspired by For Many Americans, Nowhere to Go But Down by Paul Schwartzman a feature article appearing on the front page of The Washington Post on August 6, 2009.
Feb 15
Tuesday 		Fells Point Corner Theater
7:30 Public Meeting
Agenda
TBD
 8:30 Staged Reading of Web of Deceit by Colin Riley directed by Rebecca Wyrick
Synopsis: Web of Deceit is an absurd drama about two college students, Keysha and Mia. Keysha is the only one with a computer, and from it, accesses knowledge about the outside world. Mia is constantly fighting with Keysha to check e-mail and Spacebook, but Mia also longs for the outside world. Mia also wants Keysha's attention, and tries to hold it as long as possible, but Keysha dismisses Mia until Mia threatens to leave. Both characters have been communicating with an outsider, Mark. When Mark comes to their room, they want to listen to him, but they are also afraid of the message he brings. Mia eventually cuts Mark off and tells him to leave, choosing the miserable existence with Keysha over the danger of the unknown. Yet Keysha still refuses to share her vast knowledge with Mia, and when Mia finally decides to go to sleep, Keysha realizes that she needs her. With one last painful attempt to connect to Mia, Keysha runs back to the computer, never fully escaping the Internet world.
Feb 26
Saturday 		Strand Theater February 26 Public Reading
A Saturday Marathon of Public Readings at The Strand Theater

11:00 am: The Rapier and the Rose by Steve Provosto directed by Lauren Sanders
Flavor: (setting for Scene 2) The Black Angel Tavern in London. Toward sunset the next evening. Upstage-right is the entrance off of the street. The exit off upstage-left leads to rooms upstairs. Patrons are standing or sitting at tables scattered across the stage with stools or benches. Some enter and leave at various times. Christopher Marlowe and Robert Green sit at a table downstage left drinking a pint of ale.

11:45 am: The Unfinished Story by Steve Provosto directed by Terry Moritz
Synopsis: (snippet of text) He's in a gang, Arthur. As sure as I'm sittin' here thinkin' about my money tonight, he's in a gang ! And that's the worst kind of family anybody could be in. I'd refuse to be a kid today. I'd say, 'God, take me outta here ! I refuse to be here !'

12:45 pm: Protest by Adam Meyer directed by Peter Davis
Synopsis: What if someone organizes a protest and no one shows up? That's the dilemma faced by Lizzie, who she shows up to speak out against something called "flerbing." The only other protester is a musician named Tyler, who's as earnest as she is. But the more Lizzie opens up, the more she finds herself realizing that she may not be as committed to the cause as she'd like to think.

1:30 pm: Top of the Hour by Kitty Feld directed by Gillian Drake
Synopsis: It's a very bad night for two strangers waiting for news from a commuter train crash. His wife is on the train. She's a reporter who has to report something at the top of the hour.

2:30 pm: The Chick Files by Sharon Goldner directed by Miriam Bazensky
Synopsis: A set of one-woman monologues: Killing Barbie; Men, Monsters, & Mysteries; Your Word or Mine; Nothing up my Sleeve, There is Something to be Said; What You Wish Your Therapist Would Say.

January 2011
Jan 15
Saturday 		Single Carrot Theatre January 15 Public Reading
A Saturday Marathon of Public Readings at Single Carrot Theatre Theater

11:00 am: Bloodlines by Rosemary Frisino Toohey directed by Miriam Bazensky
Synopsis: It's mid-June when Cookie arrives in Silverton, Colorado, for a summer job with a theatre troupe that entertains and serves lunch to the tourists at the Last Chance Café. She soon realizes that the tourists aren't the only ones with appetites. Everyone at the Last Chance seems to be hungry for something, whether it's true love, financial good fortune, or just megawatt fame. There's Dixie, a girl far too generous with her favors, Gail, trying to re-ignite last summer's love affair, Sherri, the ambitious runner-up in the Miss Snake Day contest, and Will, the quiet guy who works behind the bar. The place is run by a guy named Jack who's always just a step ahead of his creditors. As the end of summer approaches, the bill collectors become more demanding and Jack decides to solve his problems with a proposal of marriage. He chooses Gail, the one whose daddy is hip-deep in oil. A Labor Day wedding is planned but Will, the mild-mannered bartender with a skeleton in his closet, unexpectedly throws a hitch into the proceedings. Even more startling, Jack's mother arrives and reveals that one of his employees is really the daughter he never knew he had. Neither the dad nor the daughter is thrilled by this revelation, but in the end, bloodlines do prompt unexpected urges.

1:00 pm: Fortune's Child by Mark Scharf directed by Natalia Leimkuhler
Synopsis: Susan's ovarian cancer has come back with a vengeance; no treatment works and chemo even feeds the growth of a tumor -- so she decides to abandon treatment despite pressure from her brother Mike not to. Sarah, Susan's niece, prepares to strike out on her own at college despite pressure from her high school boyfriend. Fortune's Child follows both women as they escape to fulfill Susan's wishes to ride horses on the Irish coast, ski in Vail, Colorado and snorkel in Hawaii -- and the brother/father and boyfriend they leave behind and must return to if only to say a final good-bye. Fortune's Child is a bittersweet play about letting go to live despite the hand one is dealt.

3:00 pm: End Papers by Barry Weinberg directed by Deborah Bonds
Synopsis:When Kathy loses her house and all her possessions because of her husband's criminal acts, it makes no difference that he was a bank vice president or that she had been the editor of a respected literary journal. Kathy's friends give her advice, and they are very funny people. But there's nothing funny about being homeless. And she has a special anger at the old boyfriend who left her years ago, who has just reappeared and who might be at the center of all the bad things that are happening to her. But when Kathy realizes that she can build a business where books are a commodity as well as a good read, she is back on her feet with a young boyfriend and ready for the future she always wanted: to publish her own literary journal. Or is she? Kathy's story is one of resolve; of learning that mistakes in love are easily repeated; and of discovering how painful taking control of your life can be.
Jan 18
Tuesday 		Strand Theater
7:30 Public Meeting
Agenda
Resubmission Rules
Public Readings
Open Discussion

 8:30 Staged Reading of Sick Stories, Gentle Granddaddy by Sherna Johnson
Synopsis:Sick Stories, Gentle Granddaddy is told through the voice of Little Miss Mabelle, the only person in the family who has never bared witness to the drunken monster that her maternal grandfather once was. The only grandfather she knows is her popped-belly protector -- a gentle, sweet old man who makes her laugh and spoils her rotten. However, the rest of the family has witnessed the transition Granddaddy has made over the years to become such a gentle soul. They have witnessed him get in verbal and physical fights with Queen (Little Miss Mabelle's maternal grandmother) and miss important milestones in his children's life. While Little Miss Mabelle knows her grandfather to be her protector, he surely was not around to protect his daughters when they were molested as young girls. In Sick Stories, Gentle Granddaddy, each family member shares a story with the audience. Little Miss Mabelle also narrates select stories that she has been told over the years, as the scene plays out before the audiences' eyes. Through tears, laughs, joy and pain, this play chronicles the life of a father, grandfather, husband, and just plain human being whose painful past helps him to survive in the present.
Jan 29
Saturday 		Single Carrot Theatre January 29 Public Reading
The 2nd Saturday Marathon of Public Readings at Single Carrot Theatre Theater

11:00 am: Mandy by Ben Logan directed by Dwight Cook
Synopsis: A love story set in Baltimore. Mandy is from a solid middle class family. David is from an upper middle class family. To both families, each is the perfect child. They met and fell in love with each other. The only problem is that Mandy is white and David is black ... two similar families ... two different worlds. What happens when the perfect child wants the unthinkable?

The story starts in the 1990s. Way after the "whites only" and "no colored" signs, way after the water hoses and dogs. We have come so far that race is no longer an issue...right? Oh young love, that once in a lifetime love. A flame that never dies.

1:00 pm: My First Love by Paula Stone directed by Lance Lewman
Synopsis: Lily and Cliff have not seen each other for thirty-five years. But they realize they will meet again -- GULP -- after they each receive an invitation to the wedding of a mutual relative. All their old, jumbled feelings for one another resurface. There's love: Lily's first love was Cliff, and Cliff thinks Lily was probably his first, too. But there also are not-so-loving feelings: Their relationship ended badly, without even a goodbye. Both Lily and Cliff agonize about their impending encounter and seek advice from the other characters. Turns out the others all remember their first love; and the comic, poignant stories they tell help prepare the former lovers to face both each other again and the past.

3:00 pm: The Sculptress by Marilyn Millstone directed by Juliana Avery
Synopsis:(Historical note: Camille Claudel, a gifted sculptor and the mistress of Auguste Rodin, was committed to an asylum by her mother and brother eight days after her father's death in 1913, when she was 48.)

It's January 1935: Genevieve Renat, the assistant administrator of the asylum where Camille Claudel is still committed, has requested a meeting with Camille's brother Paul. A prominent French ambassador, Paul hopes the meeting will be brief so he can return to his pressing, high-level duties. However, what Renat wants is problematic for him: she wants him to permit someone new to enter Camille's life --a Spanish surrealist painter named Remedios Varo. Camille has seen Varo's work in art magazines Paul pays for her to receive in the asylum; she is intrigued by Varo's work and is clamoring to meet the young artist. Reluctantly -- and in part out of guilt for continuing to keep Camille committed, even after their mother's recent death -- Paul arranges for Varo to visit his sister. What unfolds is a story about the power of friendship, the fine line between eccentricity and madness, and the things that matter - -no matter what.



Our festival is geared towards the cultivation of new and diverse plays that showcase the skills of talented Maryland writers. The public is invited to attend our meetings on the third Tuesday of every month. Open readings are held November through March.These readings will lead to on-stage productions in the summer months by participating Maryland theatres.We encourage you, the theatre going public, to join us for play readings, discussion and critiques.