New York Theater's Industrial Incubator
Vassar's Powerhouse Festival kicks off its 29th edition
by Philip Ehrensaft
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| Chloe Sevigny in Abigail/1702. © Vassar & NYSF / Buck Lewis. |
Industrial incubators are key organizations for local
economic development. They offer low-cost space, communications facilities, and
expert advice to young enterprises that will hopefully grow up into pillars of
the regional economy. The Powerhouse
Theater Festival, a partnership between the nonprofit organization New York Stage and Film and Vassar College, is a parallel
incubator for the Big Apple's theater scene. Its mission is to provide a
setting and resources where playwrights, directors, actors and staging
specialists can develop new works, free from the usual commercial and daily
living pressures. The development stages range from first readings of scripts
in progress, all the way through fully staged productions of dramas and
musicals.
Powerhouse began as a modest festival in 1985, presenting
three staged plays and three script readings. The name of the festival comes
from the conversion of Vassar's old electric generation plant into one fine
theater. Now Powerhouse involves 200+ New York City theater professionals, plus
49 students following an intensive apprenticeship program. They live and work
at Vassar College during June and July, and kick off a performance calendar running
from June 21through July 28.
As one actress put it during a post-play discussion
between audience members and performers, interchanges are one of the most
attractive parts of the Powerhouse experience: Vassar College and New York
Stage and Film have created a wonderful summer camp for the New York City
theater world—a camp where actors can actively collaborate with writers and
directors in shaping new works, as opposed to receiving a finished script and
learning one's part. For authors, this brings us nicely back to Shakespeare's
time, when such mutuality was the norm.
Powerhouse is spearheaded by two people: the producing
director, Vassar's Ed Cheetham,
and New York Stage and Film's artistic director, Johanna Pfaelzer. Cheetham
is a local boy from Wappingers Falls who went on to study theater at Niagara
University. He considers himself very fortunate, given the precarious theater
employment market, to have landed this plum but very demanding job—and back
home in the Hudson Valley to boot. It took long, hard work to get there: after
graduating with a drama degree from Niagara University in 1987, Cheetham was
hired as an assistant to Powerhouse's producing director in 1988, returned in
1991 as an apprentice director, then returned in various roles every summer
from 1999 onward, and was named producing director in 2006.
Cheetham actually has two
demanding jobs in the Powerhouse Festival. First, as producing director, he has
to make the whole ball of wax work: the physical and administrative
infrastructure, and the logistics of everything from housing artists to opening
nights. If the theater world is anything like the opera world that I know, that
can often be the equivalent of trying to herd cats.
Second, Cheetham also directs
Powerhouse's intensive internship training program. Performances of three
different plays are the public face of this program. This year, the 49
carefully selected interns will perform an ancient classic, Agamemnon by
Aeschylus; Shakespeare's As You Like It; and a modern classic, Frederico
Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding. Behind the scenes, the interns are getting
classes in all the dimensions of the theater world: writing, directing, stage
design, the theater business and on. If they want to spend their life in
theater, they see the full range of possibilities. The most important
part of their training, however, is likely informal
occasions like BBQ dinners where they can interact with the top professional
writers, directors or actors taking part in the festival.
To my eyes and ears, intern
performances were highlight events in the 2012 Powerhouse Festival, and that's
saying a great deal, given the high caliber of the professional productions. These
talented, hard-working student artists, directed by professionals who love to
teach, bring exceptional energy to the stage. The internship performances are
free to the public, all the more incentive to take them in.
Powerhouse interns are also
trained in Soundpainting,
Woodstock-based composer Walter Thompson's invention of a gestural vocabulary
for directing on-the-spot composition of music, intertwined with visual arts,
dancing and literature. Late Thursday evening Soundpainting performances start
on July 4 at Vassar's Lehman-Loeb Art Center. We'll get a chance to see why
this Hudson Valley invention sparked an international Soundpainting movement.
As Powerhouse's artistic
director, Johanna Pfaelzer must read through a plethora of scripts and
proposals before making hard choices about what gets on the festival calendar. That
calendar includes two Mainstage
productions that are in the final stages of development, and ready after the
2013 Festival performances to shop themselves as candidates for runs on
Broadway, or Broadway's Off and Off-Off variants.
Downtown Race Riot by two Broadway veterans, writer Seth Zvi Rosenfeld and
director Scott Elliot, looks at the hard choices that an 18-year-old must make
in the face of a Washington Square race riot compounded by tribal loyalties and
petty beefs. When the Lights Went Out centers around six interwoven
stories about experiences during the Northeast electric blackout of 2003. This
is a debut for the Iraqi-American playwright Mozhan Marno; One of the six
stories focuses on an Iraqi immigrant making her way across the Brooklyn
Bridge, chasing memories of her lost son and homeland.
Bright Star, the first of two fully staged musicals for 2013, features
bluegrass-tinged music co-composed by star actor Steve Martin, who also wrote
the book. You best buy tickets early on for this musical set in the Blue Ridge
Mountains. A Musical Inspired by the
Brooklyn Hero Supply Company is based on
characters created by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman. A superhero's daughter
does not want the cape passed on, and is ready and willing to exchange roles
with an idealistic young Brooklynite who longs for super-herodom. Who else but
Chabon would dream up something like that?
The Inside Looks series features two semi-staged workshops. Found is a musical loosely inspired by the life of Found magazine editor Davy Rothbart, who must choose between his cherished, wild road life of discovery, and settling down with the love of his life, a school teacher. Mother of Invention unfolds as an aging Dottie Rupp is moved into assisted living by her children. Mom's memory is failing, a mysterious stranger shows up, and the offspring start wondering whether the mom they thought they knew might have a very different history.
Powerhouse 2013 begins and ends with a weekend of readings
of plays in first drafts. The Readings
Festival has no admission charge, but the venue is small, so it's best
to reserve a place in advance. This intimacy offers maximum opportunities to
interact with authors, learn different approaches to making drama work, and
offer feedback that improves their work.
If you are looking for a good at-home vacation in Stubborn
Recession times, devoting your free time to the nationally prominent Powerhouse
Theater Festival is a fine option. The same goes for anyone who loves theater
or wants to discover theater. We have a national resource in our own backyard.
Posted by Chris Hewitt
on 5:10 PM.
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