Culture
A “Hodge Podge” of Plays at ARTS/West
By: Bryan Gibson
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ARTS/West will host The Hodge Podge Play Reading Series, to be held one Sunday a month between January and March 2012. The series gets its name from the variety of plays that were submitted to the 2011 Humble Play Festival.
"Ashley Johnson, our events coordinator, came up with the idea," said Emily Prince, ARTS/West program specialist. "We had 133 plays submitted to Humble Play and only had the space to present four. So we decided to keep new play readings happening throughout the year."
A "reading" is defined as actors presenting the words of a script, with scripts in hand. With no rehearsals prior to the public reading, each presentation will be kept extremely simple so that the audience may focus on the playwright's words.
"Ashley did some research and found a couple of models for the type of reading series that we'll be doing," said Prince. "It's a bit like a salon series."
Audience members may follow along with a copy of the script (advance registration required) and everyone is invited to bring a dish to share during an after-show pot luck.
Prince says the series will take on a life of its own in the future.
"The first series is plays that have been submitted to Humble Play, but ultimately the Hodge Podge will have its own set of submission guidelines and it will be separate from the Humble Play."
The readers for the first play, Women and Guns by Steve Gold of Jamesburg, N.J., are Marlo Tinkham, Aaron Deuschle, James Stuart Frame, Joseph Balding and Carol Brown Ault. Karen M. Chan is the director.
All events are free, open to the public and begin at 2 p.m. Donations are encouraged. To receive a copy of the play to be read, make reservations by calling 740-592-4315 at least 48 hours in advance.
For more information about ARTS/West, visit www.artswest.blogspot.com.
The schedule:
Jan. 8, 2012: Women and Guns by Steve Gold of Jamesburg, N.J.
Feb. 5, 2012: Spake by David L. Williams of New York, N.Y.
Mar. 4, 2012: Dissolution of Mr. Stein by Marianne Hales Harding of St. George, Utah