2015 One Act Festival promises ‘Fifty Shades of Funny’

Published 3:32 pm Friday, January 16, 2015

Live theater can be a fun and cultured night out for families, a good experience for the younger crowd to be sure.

However, if you are looking for a fun way to introduce your kids to the world of the stage, maybe you should pick a different show.

The 11 offerings in this year’s One Act Festival, produced again through a partnership between the Northwest Actors Lab and Bainbridge Performing Arts, are not recommended for audiences under the age of 17 for a variety of quickly obvious — and equally hilarious — reasons.

Director Dinah Manoff said that each year during the play selection process a theme begins to make itself apparent, without any conscious intent on her part, and this year’s theme is “no drama.”

These 11 stories run more toward the funny, and the risqué.

“We drop a lot of F-bombs, and there’s a lot of more colorful language, but there’s no nudity,” Manoff said. “It’s not horrific, it’s just adult.”

“I thought some people would really look forward to some more adult fare,” she added.

The festival showcases some of the very best writing and acting talent the area has to offer in a selection of short plays, some by renowned playwrights and other pieces written by our own island authors.

More so even than the content, however, plays are usually selected for the festival based on technical requirements, such as length and casting.

“We just read and read and read and usually a theme kind of emerges out of what we pick,” Manoff said, adding that most often plays are selected based specifically  on casting requirements.

“Because I have a lot of students, and every year more join, I try to get as many people on stage as possible,” she explained.

Sometimes, while working toward the perfect cast, Manoff said she can go so far as to request a whole new play, such as in the case of Jim Anderson’s “Consolidated Worldwide,” which was written for the festival this year to include talent that Manoff deemed critical.

“I called him and I said, ‘I have three actors I absolutely have to cast. For whatever reason I feel that they have to be on stage,’” she remembered.

So Anderson wrote up a new play just for the occasion — one of the best in this year’s lineup, Manoff said.

Another interesting addition to this year’s cast, and seemingly out of place among such adult themes, is Jacob Spinak, 8, who appears in “A View from the Porch,” written by Warren Read.

This piece, which is already perhaps the most tame of the bunch, was strategically placed at the beginning of the second act, sparing the young thespian any introduction to the trashier side of the show.

In the play, Spinak plays Everett, a precocious young American on vacation with his parents in Spain, who has a touching encounter with 99-year-old Imelda, the self-proclaimed “Queen of the Tortillas,” after the family car breaks down.

Rehearsals began in October which, given the short length of some of the plays in the festival, may seem excessive, but Manoff said that she always starts practices really early, eschewing the idea that a piece can be over rehearsed.

“For me, comedy is so specific that I actually air on the side of more rehearsal than I would for drama,” she explained, noting that in shorter plays especially, precision becomes paramount to ensure the audience understands a character’s motivation at any given minute.

“I’m working so hard at specificity at every moment,” she said.

Featuring 30 actors in a variety of roles and 11 plays, this year’s festival showcases the talents of Michelle Allen, Jim Anderson, Lori Anderson, Victoria Brown, Christie Capps, Karla Cole, David Cowan, Robert Craighead, Brian Danzig and many more.

This year’s lineup includes “The Adventures Of…” by Kathleen Warnock and “The Mercury and the Magic” by Rolin Jones, directed by Michelle Allen; “Consolidated Worldwide” by Jim Anderson, directed by Jim Anderson; “That Word” by Mark Harvey Levine, “Ties that Bind” by Eric Coble, and “Arabian Nights” by David Ives, directed by Tim Davidson; “You Don’t Have to be Jewish” from the comedy album by Bob Booker and George Foster, “Workout” by Wendy Wasserstein and “A View from the Porch” by Warren Read, directed by Renee Longstreet; as well as “The Angle of Death” by Michelle Allen and “Actor’s Nightmare” by Chris Durang, directed by Dinah Manoff.

The festival will run at Bainbridge Performing Arts for one weekend only, from Friday, Jan. 16 to Sunday, Jan. 18.

Tickets are available now. The cost is $20 for adults and $15 for seniors, students, youth, military and teachers.

Visit www.bainbridgeperformingarts.org for tickets and more information.

This weekend only

What: The fifth annual One Act Festival.

When: One weekend only: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 16 and Saturday, Jan. 17, 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 18.

Where: Bainbridge Performing Arts (200 Madison Ave. North).

Admission: Tickets are $20 for adults and $15 for seniors, students, youth, military and teachers.