Weekend schedule
Friday
8 p.m. — “Darkroom,” by Devon Boan.
Weekend passes may be picked up starting at 6:30 p.m. Light appetizers will be served and a champagne toast will be offered to start the festival.
Box lunches can be ordered for Saturday with payment in advance.
Saturday
10 a.m. — “A Snake That Eats Itself,” by Chad Baker.
3 p.m. — “G-Man,” by Rosemary Frisino Toohey.
8 p.m. — “Night and Fog,” by M.J. Feely.
Sunday
10 a.m. — “Quietus,” by Richard Manley.
3 p.m. — “Carve,” by Molly Smith Metzler.
6:45 p.m. — Awards ceremony. A dinner will be served following the 3 p.m. show.
DAYTON — The accent will be on drama during Futurefest happening today through Sunday, July 24-26, at the Dayton Playhouse.
Six new scripts chosen from submissions by writers around the country will be produced during the 19th annual festival.
Subject matter includes: harvesting human organs (“Quietus”), a garbage man who makes a terrible discovery in the trash (“G-Man”), a portrait with a fictional subject who really exists (“Carve”), Hollywood’s pursuit of a director who wants to be left alone in Indiana (“A Snake That Eats Itself”), a photographer coming to terms with his mixed-race heritage (“Darkroom”) and a reunion between a journalist and a condemned war criminal in Berlin three years after World War II (“Night and Fog”).
Two of the writers have local connections. Chad Baker, 20 (“The Snake That Eats Itself”), lives in Beavercreek. The DePaul University junior is the youngest playwright ever to be part of Futurefest.
M.J. Feely of Tarzana, Calif. (“Night and Fog”), who also had a play in the 2006 festival, is a Dayton native.
The six plays will be presented in staged performances or readings and be critiqued in front of the audience by a panel of theater professionals: Peter Filichia, David Finkle, Eleanore Speert, D. Lynn Meyers (from Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati) and Sarah Lunnie (from Actors Theatre of Louisville).
The other playwrights are Devon Boan from Franklin, Tenn.; Richard Manley of San Francisco, Molly Smith Metzler of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Rosemary Frisino Toohey of Baltimore.
“The audience is so much a part of it. Some people come back year after year. After 19 years it’s like a family reunion,” said festival program director Fran Pesch.
Feely, who has written 20 plays, is a 1969 graduate of Alter High School and lived in the Dayton area until he was 19. His father was editor of “The Young Catholic Messenger.”
“One of the great joys of Futurefest is being able to come home again. I have all the memories of growing up — grade school and high school, friends, dating, first love and everything else that comes into the life of a young man,” he said.
His day job is in the advertising department of the Wall Street Journal’s Los Angeles office. “People who know I write wonder why I don’t write for the Journal. I make up my stories. The Journal tends to frown on that.”
Baker, a junior sociology major at DePaul, first submitted a script to Futurefest three years ago, and then attended one of the plays to see a friend perform. He was offered a full-weekend pass by then-executive director Adam Leigh, who told him that his play “was good and had made the top 20.” On the way out of the last show, “I told my girlfriend that one day I would have a play in the festival.”
He said he started writing one that night, the one that eventually became “A Snake that Eats Itself.”
He has finished a novel, a form of writing he found to be “lonely” compared to play writing. “It’s just you and white paper. Play writing is collaborative. You only get so much control over the telling of your story. Then you have to turn it over to other artists and trust in their abilities. It’s not going to be exactly how you envisioned it, but that’s part of the fun.”
One of the many actors who will help bring the plays to life is native Briton J. Gary Thompson, a cast member of both “G-Man” and “Quietus.”
His came to acting from music. He has composed original scores for film and theater, and fronted the area bands “Dance Positive,” “Scream Bloody Murder” and “Lucky Machine.”
Futurefest is different from other theater he has done “because the timeline from casting to stage is shortened. Combine that with the fact that six plays are all being rehearsed and six sets being designed, with lighting and props, all at the same time.”
Next up for him will be playing the title role in “Sweeney Todd,” the play by Christopher Bond that inspired the musical, in Springfield in October.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2377 or tmorris@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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