Local Playwright’s Festival Opens 9/27

City Theatre presents a Local Playwrights Festival:

“I Think This Place Has Changed”

Sacramento City College’s City Theatre is producing A Local Playwrights Festival: “I Think This Place Has Changed”. The production opens Friday, September 27, and plays through Sunday, October 13. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. on September 27, 28, and October 4, 5, 11, and 12; and at 2:00 p.m. on September 29, and October 6 and 13. Performances will be held in the Art Court Theatre in the Performing Arts Center on the Sacramento City College campus at 3835 Freeport Boulevard in Sacramento. Ticket prices are $20 for General Admission; $15 for Seniors, SARTA Members, Veterans/Military Personnel, and Persons with Disabilities; and $10 for Students. Tickets may be purchased online or in person thirty minutes before the performance begins.

Students: Grab a 2-for-1 deal opening weekend only! Use code “student241” on the ticket site. Prepare to show student ID at the door.

 
THE PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS

The playwrights were asked to write twenty-minute plays on the back patio of a local coffee house with three to four characters that somehow struggled with some kind of change. As often happens with these projects, we got five plays that, although they all followed the same prompt, were so different from each other that you would seldom know that they started from the same place. But they also all fit together really well.

• WAITING FOR CORTADO by Kaitlin Richards
• TRIA CORPUS by Lori Ann DeLappe-Grondin
• PAUL AND CYNTHIA by Carissa Meagher
• I NEVER WAS by Joy Gee
• BARK AND BITE by Roberta Sanchez

THE PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL TRADITION AT CITY THEATRE

City Theatre has been producing the current series of Playwrights Festivals since 2006. We have presented seven previous festivals, all written by local playwrights, including

• SO THIS NEW PLAY WALKS INTO A THEATRE
• A PARK IN SACRAMENTO
• OLD CITY CEMETARY PLAYS
• EIGHT VIEWS OF THE TOWER BRIDGE
• RAILROAD PLAYS
• ZOOM FOR THE HOLIDAYS
• HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

29 1/2 HOUR PLAYWRITING FESTIVAL

We also produced this unique playwriting festival for twenty consecutive years. Each year on the first weekend of September, we would gather eight to ten local playwrights on a Saturday at noon, and assign them four or five actors, a director, and a prompt. They would return at eight o’clock with finished ten-minute scripts, and we would discuss them. The next morning we would gather fifty actors, ten directors, and a dozen volunteers, and rehearse these plays all day, performing them, memorized, at seven on Sunday evening. The pandemic put a stop to that, but we hope to, someday, return to this glorious endeavor.

THE PRODUCTION

“I THINK THIS PLACE HAS CHANGED” is directed by Luther Hanson. The artistic team includes Shawn Weinsheink (scenic design), Isaiah Leeper (lighting design), Scott Bailey (sound and props design), Nicole Sivell (costume design supervisor), and student costume designers:

• Toby Putzel: Waiting for Cortado
• Isabel Melchor: Tria Corpus
• Marie Tremble: Paul & Cynthia
• Elizabeth Todd: I Never Was
• Phoenix Langley-Briggs: Bark and Bite
• Seven Scripa: café servers

The cast includes Tem Huerta, Fernando Vega, Noah Galvan, Isabella Castro, Kathleen Poe, Maddy Flint, Lorenzo Campos, Eva Hernandez, Bill Qarau, Deandre Fritz, Tim Sapunor, Ted Muhlhauser, Sinead Kennedy, Mallory Shields, Pavla Kolozor, India Veylupek, Yuliana Vasilenko, and Mackenzie Her.