Lué McWilliams as a Zombie Marilyn Monroe and Matt Stapleton as Eddie, her agent.
Emerging Artists Theatre keeps a tradition of the ten minute play evening––a staple of the Fringe Theatre in New York. This time the contributing playwrights had to work under the theme “EAT in bed.” They knew going in that they would have to write a scene in a room with a bed, table and chair. Writers picked a number from one to five out of a hat, which determined how many characters would be in their play. Out of this idea came the sixteen short plays that made up the double evening presentation. I attended program B as it featured friend Matt Boethin. These kinds of presentations can be a mixed bag and not all of the plays were successful. Most of the writers took a decidedly gay slant with their work, making the evening one of gay social politics. “Gay” as a theme was not pre-planned, but it just turned out that way. For the most part, it seems to be in the Fringe theatre where a gay point of view can be explored. In the commercial theatre, the gay voice is still very rare. A commercial play must still address the widest audience and so there is reluctance to produce a gay play on Broadway without certain conditions being met: star player, star author or a transfer from Off Broadway of a critically acclaimed production. Emerging Artists Theatre requires none of that and the huge cast of writers, directors and actors to populate the sixteen plays insures that enough family and friends will show up to fill a good portion of the seats. Any attempt to give a message is preaching to the choir, but this edition of EAT Fest was very light on message and heavy on having fun.
Friend Matt appeared as an angel in “Hard Sparkle,” by J. Stephen Brantley and directed by Jonathan Warman. The multi-lingual angel comes to earth to help free a man from his binds to his boss. “There’s No Zombies Like Show Zombies” was a crazy idea by Staci Swedeen involving an agent (Matt Stapleton) managing a living dead Marilyn Monroe (Lué McWilliams). This one included the strange comedy character of a bed bug named Bob (the zany Vinnie Costa). A serious piece, “Border of Camelot,” by Kevin Brofsky was the only non gay play and concerned JFK making a ghostly visit to Jacqueline. This play might have been just fine if the characters were not a president and first lady. Making it about the Kennedys forced the actors to give impressions of well known people. A fair attempt was made at wigs and dress, but this was not wholly successful and diminished what might have otherwise been a perfectly moving story of a wife having one last visit with the love of her life. “The Mission” by Joe Godfrey was a comic, but dumb sketch about aliens trying to figure out how to procreate like humans based on misinformation.
If anything, the mildly amusing evening of theatre gave a number of artists a chance to practice their craft.
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