It’s time once again to take in the talent of Southern Maryland. The Newtowne Players are presenting The Footlight Festival, and evening of both original and published one-act plays. The Festival runs June11-13 and June 24-27.
The evening is presented by two emcees, Craig Miller and Emily Funderburk, who act as newscasters and keep the audience laughing and groaning in appreciation during set changes between plays. They are occasionally joined on stage by Keith Williams, producer and director of one of the plays, who dons a few different pieces of head gear.
Williams has produced and directed with NTP in the past, but found a special challenge this time. “The most challenging part was finding time for 34 actors in six different plays to rehearse,” says Williams.
Beginning the evening is the original play The Hospital, by Mike Bajoreck, which uses clever lighting and dialogue to add to the comedic mayhem the actors are faced with when trying to do a play inside a play. Next up is Relative strangers, a published play by Sheri Wilner. The premise involves two women both named Marie who end up seated next to each other on a flight.
The younger woman tries to adopt the older as her mother, much to the older Marie’s annoyance. The characters are both exasperating and endearing, leaving the audience entertained and reflective.
House of the Holy Moment, a published play by Cary Pepper, follows with an introspective look at what religion really means. This comedy poses the philosophical question of what makes a church really a church, and leaves the audience thinking even after the play is over.
Next is woman: revised, an original one-act by Trish Cole which uses word play, linguistics and grammar to humorously examine the ever-changing definition of woman. The actual definition of woman is personified in the form of a fifties housewife, who has to fight to keep her place amongst others such as crone.
Rounding out the evening are two more original one acts. The Bench, by Larry Wenderski, puts a clever twist on the age-old good vs. evil scenario. The Devil and an angel from heaven are fighting over the soul of a recently deceased man who is sitting on a bench in a park.
Both the Devil and angel are trying to collect as many souls as possible, and it soon becomes apparent that all souls are not equal. In The Importance of Being Hairy by George Johnson, gives a comical nod to The Importance of Being Earnest. A comedy of errors ensues as a dating misadventure turns into a case of mistaken identities.
Witty and entertaining, the Footlight Festival has something for every kind of sense of humor. For
more information on times and ticket prices, please visit The Newtowne Players website at: http://www.newtowneplayers.org.
