It’s a different kind of FutureFest
Dayton Playhouse offers virtual plays and talk-backs with playwrights.
Among the most inspiring outcomes of the current pandemic are the imaginative ways artists and arts organizations are dreaming up new methods for entertaining and educating audiences.
A perfect example is the Dayton Playhouse, the 50-year-old community theater responsible for FutureFest, the annual summer festival of new plays that now attracts submissions from throughout the United States. This year, more than 300 scripts were under consideration. The festival, entirely produced by volunteers, was originally slated for July 17-19.
Over the past 30 years, the six finalists have been invited to Dayton in July to see their plays mounted for the first time and receive constructive feedback from professional judges and audience members.
In addition to the formal presentations and adjudications, weekend activities range from informal exchanges at intermission to picnics in the lush Wegerzyn Gardens. The playwrights are treated like royalty.
A difficult decision
By the time the initial reading committee had narrowed the script submissions to 12, it was already late March and the stay-at-home order had been put into place. The second reading committee — a different group of folks — began meeting virtually and sending their votes by email.
“That part was easy, but then we began to ask ourselves how it was possible to do auditions,” recalls Playhouse Board Chair Matthew Lindsay. “And we didn’t know under what conditions live performance venues like our theater would be allowed to open.”
After much deliberation, the 13-member board decided to announce finalists, but cancel the live festival and eliminate the selection of the grand prize winner, traditionally
announced at the end of the special weekend. The board also set up a committee to explore alternative programming and a modified FutureFest.
Thanks to their efforts and creative thinking, audiences in the Miami Valley and throughout the country will be able to experience at least some of the FutureFest magic.
What you can enjoy
A typical FutureFest weekend includes three staged productions — complete with sets and costumes — and three staged readings. Following each presentation, the playwright provides some background for the play, and then a panel of judges discusses various aspects of the script. Audience members have an opportunity to weigh in as well.
The good news? Three of the plays will soon premiere virtually; each will remain up for a week. The three were chosen, according to Lindsay, because they most lent themselves to the Zoom format. Two are comedies; one is a drama.
Although no formal adjudication will take place, audiences still will have the privilege of hearing from many of the judges who’ve traveled to Dayton in the past to be a part of the festival.
“Our adjudicators are wonderful supporters of FutureFest and all reached out and offered to help in one way or another,” says Lindsay. “Three of them — Helen Sneed, David Finkle and Eleanore Speert — will be reading a play and providing reflections from their own homes. Two more judges — Peter Filichia and Ashley Rodbro — will introduce the plays and share past FutureFest memories.”
Admission is $10 per show or $25 for all three. A Zoom talk-back with the playwright is scheduled for each of the three productions with at-home audiences invited to type their questions.
In addition — and already available online free of change — are a series of three Playwright Dialogues with all six finalists. They are interviewed — two by two — by Playhouse board chair Matt Lindsay.
“It’s interesting to hear what inspired these playwrights to develop these plays and the things they think about as they are writing, and the way these things evolve, their process and inspiration,” says Lindsay. “I did my best to have them talk to each other about their plays. In no case had any of them met one another previously.”
The playwrights live in cities across the country: Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Los Angeles.
“I think it was especially interesting as a panel with another playwright to find commonality in our responses and be able to bounce the conversation off each other,” says playwright Kevin Cirone. “The medium obviously changes the energy, but this format did make for a concise and interesting conversation about our plays and their common themes.”
Production challenges
A familiar face at FutureFest is actor Annie Pesch, who is both actor and director. She will both direct and edit the Zoom version of “A Ghost of a Chance” by Kimberly Shimer of Media, Pa. It’s a comedy about a deceased wife who gets the chance to return to earth to reconcile with her husband.
“Since none of the professional theaters I have auditioned for this year have announced any plans to reopen, I thought it would be great to get involved in this unique version of FutureFest,” Pesch says. “Knowing that theater will be done virtually for the foreseeable future, I have been watching a lot of virtual theater from all over the country.”
The decision was made to use Zoom for both rehearsals and recording. “I don’t know if or when I will feel safe going into a theater with other people,” Pesch says. Some of her actors had expressed the same reservation.
Directing on Zoom, she says, is very different than directing for the stage. “The performers are acting directly to the camera; the camera is the other character. Pacing and picking up cues are much more important. Pauses and beats seem longer in virtual theater. We have had to shorten pauses and beats, so they do not feel too long but are still long enough to honor the moment.”
Also, she adds, more stage directions have to be read than in a traditional staged reading. “This is because it is not always clear which person the actor is talking to, and it is harder to read a person’s body language and gestures.”
When Pesch learned she would be directing, she knew she also wanted to edit the recording. “I wanted to make sure that the recording of Kim’s play comes across the way it did when I read it,” she explains. “Most of the virtual theater I have watched relies heavily on gallery view in Zoom, so you can see all the actors, even when they are not speaking. I really like that. When I go to plays, I constantly find myself watching the actors who are not speaking to see their reactions. I think it is important to see all the action as much as possible like you would in the theater.”
She had edited short videos and video audition submissions in the past using different editing software than she is using for this FutureFest play. “I reached out to tech people at TimeLine Theatre Company in Chicago and LAByrinth Theater Company in New York, as I was impressed with the editing of the plays they streamed,” she explains. “Both used Adobe Premiere Pro.”
The Playhouse purchased external microphones that can be plugged into laptops for a better sound. Directors were free to advise their actors about camera angle, lighting, backdrops. Costumes are minimal and up to each director.
A challenge of virtual production is that actors are not able to move and express themselves freely so voice and face become much more important.
A playwright’s thoughts
Playwright Kevin Cirone of Wilburn, Mass., had been looking forward to coming to Dayton for the festival but says, under the circumstances, he’s happy that a virtual presentation turned out to be workable.
His comedy, “The Good Deli,” was inspired by a personal story. “I started writing it during a time of medical crisis in my family, partly as a coping mechanism but mostly because I found my family’s ability to repair — if not reforge completely — somewhat strained relationships during such a traumatic time inspiring,” he explains. “While the events are still somewhat fictionalized. there are touches of my family, friends, and even myself in these characters, and I hope the love and attention I’ve paid in their creation makes for an entertaining and moving play.”
Cirone believes the theater community as a whole is going to have to learn to adapt with these uncertain times, and says it’s good to see groups like the Dayton Playhouse overcoming the technical challenges and using technology in creative new ways. “As someone who does Zoom conversations a lot for my day job as a software engineer I am comfortable with the medium, ” he says, “but for theatrical performances, audience engagement and participation obviously change the energy dramatically. At the end of the day we’re all making the best art we can with the tools that are available to us.”
Lindsay says the good news is that despite limitations, the Playhouse is still able to bring brand new dramatic plays to anyone in world. “We’re hopeful these playwrights have networks of people who wouldn’t normally travel to Dayton but may buy tickets and as a result we may have a broader audience,” he says. “It’s a wonderful festival and though it was heartbreaking to cancel for the first time we are wholeheartedly embracing this interesting challenge of finding new ways to do things.”
He admits it’s all been a little bit unnerving and frightening. “We want to do this well, we want to put out interesting plays that are of good technical quality: well-produced and wellperformed. We want people to feel that their time and ticket money was well spent.”
Lindsay says it’s been daunting but good to have something creative to work on. “We want to represent the Dayton theater community well.”