There must be some mistake. This can’t be right.
I just received the annual notice from Contemporary American Theatre Festival announcing their 2015 season. And what I see makes no sense. At all.
Perhaps the NSA’s monitoring program is messing with my emails and replacing the actual sent content with experimental text to see what the effect might be? Maybe it’s a prank from The Onion?
Surely I am just imagining that this could be the actual theatre season of an American festival, right?
No, apparently it’s real.
If you value contemporary American theatre, you need to start following (and visiting) CATF. ASAP. Because what they do is so different from what most generic regional theatre in the US looks like, it takes your breath away. As you read the CATF lineup, it slowly sinks in – that this is how it could be.
That this is how it is – at CATF.
Imagine a world where instead of disposable one person shows or hour long, forgettable nonsense or ludicrously irrelevant and overdone plays or still more Shakespeare (yeah, that’s what we need) – in other words, instead of what forms the majority of a lot of theatres’ programming – imagine if you instead got five new, challenging plays (four of them world premieres this year) in a festival setting where the entire town is abuzz for theatre.
Wait – five new plays all in one season? You mean that’s it? They’re not doing OKLAHOMA? Or CATS?
That will never work. Will it?
Where is this magical kingdom of which you speak?
Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
Is CATF founder Ed Herendeen insane? Didn’t he get the memo? Has he lost his mind – maybe something about breathing all that Appalachian coal dust? You don’t start a new theatre festival devoted to new plays in a university town somewhere in West Virginia in 1991 and think it will work.
Do you?
Yes, in this case, that’s exactly what you do.
God bless, CATF. They built it, and the world is coming. There’s a few others out there like them (remember New York’s SPF?). But not many. If you’re brave, you can read through the history of all the new plays they have done over the years. But be warned, when you realize what you’ve been missing, your head may explode.
In the contemporary theatre landscape, CATF stands out like a martian ship newly arrived from outer space.
The takeaway? The audience wants the real thing, the new thing, and they will go anywhere on earth to get it. ANYWHERE. Message: Your new theatre festival could be anywhere. How about starting one in Burns, Oregon? If it’s good, the audience will come. Because they’ve gotta have it.
So this summer, point your spaceship toward Shepherdstown, WV and stock up on real nourishment. Come back infected with the spirit of adventurous, original vision and producing. Realize that you could do this, too. Do something different from everyone else. Dare to stray off the lockstep path of fossilized crap that is killing the American theatre.
That’s what Ed Herendeen did.
And it seems to be working out.
2015 Season – Contemporary American Theater Festival
July 10 – August 2, 2015 | Shepherdstown, WV
WORLD BUILDERS by Johnna Adams (*world premiere*)
EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH by Sheila Callaghan
ON CLOVER ROAD by Steven Dietz (*world premiere*)
WE ARE PUSSY RIOT by Barbara Hammond (*world premiere*)
THE FULL CATASTROPHE by Michael Weller (*world premiere*)
