In May we go to a college with The Albatross by Seattle playwright Dennis Schebetta:
David is an award-winning poet and teacher at a small private university. He has a great academic job and a golfing buddy in his colleague Mark, a recent divorcee. But underneath his polished lectures about "life as an artist", he hides a secret pain, the suicide of his wife five years ago, a pain numbed through alcohol. He is violently shaken out of this numbness by Sofia, one of his eccentric students. A reactionary response to one of her poems begins a chain of events that will eventually cause David to drown under the watery weight of the past. He becomes a mentor to Sofia, recognizing her amazing talent yet also wary of it. There's something else about her that he won't talk about it, can't talk about, and it's this denial that will eventually cause his downfall.
Dennis has worked as an actor, director and playwright with various companies regionally and in New York City. His plays include EINSTEIN'S BRAIN, PAINTING BY NUMBERS, GREEN-EYED MONSTER, BURNING BOTTICELLI and LOVE & DEATH IN THE TIME OF CRAYOLA and have been seen at Ensemble Studio Theater, 13th Street Rep, Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Play Festival, NY Fringe Festival, Vital Theater, and the Chester Horn Festival. He received his MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University where he wrote and directed OBSCURA, which won the Charles Getchell New Play Award and was a finalist for the Kennedy Center David Mark Cohen Award. After moving to Seattle, his play DOG PARK premiered at Theater Schmeater and he participated in 14/48; the world's quickest theater festival. Dennis is also the Regional Representative for The Dramatists Guild of America, Inc., writes for The Dramatist magazine and teaches at Bellevue Community College.
The cast will include Ami Jhaveri, Garland Lyons, and Darius Pierce.
The Albatross by Dennis Schebetta
7 p.m., Monday, May 19th
Theatre Noir at Theater!Theatre! (3430 SE Belmont St., Portland, OR)
FREE and open to the public
The FreshWorks program is designed to give playwrights to the opportunity to hear a draft of their play read by some of Portland's finest actors. FreshWorks readings are free and open to the public.
These readings will take place at 7 p.m. on the 3rd Monday of every month in the Theatre Noir at Theater!Theatre! in southeast Portland. We're very pleased to be partnering with Profile Theater in presenting this program.
This ends our 2008 spring FreshWorks series, we'll return in the fall with more new plays. In the meantime...
In June Portland Theatre Works presents Trying Not to Stare by Ellen Margolis in it's LabWorks program. Unlike the FreshWorks program, LabWorks presents intensive, rehearsed workshop performances of new plays. Trying Not to Stare was presented in the FreshWorks series in April 2007.
Portland Theatre Works is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated exclusively to developing new work for the theatre. Our goal is to provide playwrights with the time, space, tools, and artistic support required to fully develop their plays and refine their craft.