Lucky Penny banks on ‘PlayDemic’ Fest
It perhaps would be misleading to say Taylor Bartolucci and Barry Martin were at wit’s end. There was nothing really witty about the pandemic for the co-founders of Lucky Penny Productions.
Accustomed to presenting live theater at the 7,200-square foot Community Arts Center in Napa, the duo — and the rest of the entertainment world, of course — saw COVID-19 body slam their entire 2020 season after Gregg Coffin’s Feb. 14 to March 1 run of “Five Course Love.”
A September podcast promoting Lucky Penny was nice, but there’s nothing like a performance.
Ladies and gentlemen, the artistic director and managing director open the virtual curtain Feb. 26-28 with “The Lucky Penny Video Theater’s PlayDemic Festival,” a collection of stories by Bay Area authors presented for the stage about how life has been affected since the pandemic began, how life proceeds in the midst of it, and what happens next.
“Part of our master plan was to do things that wouldn’t cost us a lot — meaning licensed shows,” Martin said, noting that at the start of COVID-19, “licensing companies weren’t allowing you to stream anything. We thought, ‘What can we do that we can create ourselves?’”
The concept was “hatched in June,” with the call for submissions in September, said Bartolucci who joined Martin on a conference call Tuesday afternoon.
At first “worried we’d get too many submissions; get too many scripts,” Martin said the entries weren’t too overwhelming.
“We confined it to Bay Area authors only, so that cut it back a bunch and it had to be new stuff,” Martin said.
The topic requirement was simple.
“It had to be an experience or their experience with the pandemic and have minimal characters,” Bartolucci said.
“We encouraged the plays to be solo with no physical contact like kissing scenes,” Martin said.
Making the final cut: “2020 Sucks Out Loud” aka “Rob Evaluates 2020” by Rob Broadhurst; “Fitness in the Time of Covid-19” by Pat Williams and Liz Wildberger; “How to Survive a Pandemic” by Charlene Steen; “No Exit 2020” by Kathleen Andersen; “Pause” by Joan Hawley McClain; “The Grandy Family Newsletter, 2020” by George Bereschik ; “The K.A. Meeting” by Martin; and “Tonight at the Stage Door” by Donald Loftus
The plays were rehearsed and filmed “in a COVID-safe manner,” Martin said, and presented online and on-demand, as a pay-what-youcan offering.
The PlayDemic Festival was targeted for November, but was delayed because Martin and Bartolucci assisted Justin-Siena High School with its Christmas Cabaret.
“We decided to push back PlayDemic to the spring and give it the amount of time it deserved,” Bartolucci said.
Timing was a consideration in eliminating a few of the submissions, the producers acknowledged. Martin shelved his own entry — it was votecentric and became irrelevant after the November election.
Broadhurst had a few “snippets” that were rejected because they were politically-based “and not as funny as they would have been before the election,” Bartolucci said.
Most of the plays that were submitted in the summer “were still relevant” for the end of February, said Martin. Good for a virtual PlayDemic Festival, but, unfortunately, it also means that the pandemic remains omnipresent.
“I wish we weren’t doing this at all,” Martin lamented. “Hopefully, we’re on our way to getting better and this is irrelevant in two or three months.”
“It would be perfect if we were not having this experience,” Bartolucci agreed.
Virtual complimentary seats — with donations welcomed — can be reserved any time by visiting luckypennynapa.com.