24 Jul Telluride Playwrights Festival: Plays/Talks Final Weekend
Telluride Playwrights Festival runs Tuesday, July 22 – Sunday, July 27. Passes, $50, on sale now at www.sheridanoperahouse.com. or at the door.
Now in its ninth year, SPARKy Production’s Telluride Playwrights Festival week showcased classic films in Mountain Village and brought together playwrights, actors, directors, volunteers and interns from all over the country to work on brand new plays. The final weekend features two of those plays: “Tonight at Noon” and “Ayn/Sister.”
Saturday, July 26, 8 p.m. Sheridan Opera House: “Tonight at Noon,” a staged reading by Jeff Tabnick
Should Tim and Emily, Millennials have children? Tim doesn’t know what he wants, and Emily isn’t sure that it’s ethical to procreate at all. Their uncertainty in the world and themselves is stultifying. But one night they are both overcome by dreams that fill them with confidence and purpose. Tim wakes up knowing that his purpose in life is to save his attractive co-worker from a man in a black mask, and Emily wakes up knowing that she must save humanity by convincing them to stop feeding the death machine (aka stop having children).
Suddenly messianic in his confidence, Tim convinces his co-worker to flee with him down the Jersey Turnpike. He has foreseen in his dream where he must take her so she will be safe: the high-tension wires. Emily follows them so that she can convince Tim to accompany her to Washington DC where she will hold a large “stop having babies” rally. And Tim’s friend Paul is, rather inexplicably, traveling with them, too. Have I not mentioned Paul yet? See, he and his wife are having a baby, but time is moving very quickly for Paul—he’s living in a dream of his own future.
In fact, as they approach the high-tension wires, it becomes clear that everyone in America has succumbed to his or her own nighttime visions.
Reality rends, the future is foretold, lust is sated, and ideals are lost– and somewhere alone in the rubble, Tim finally understands why he might want to start a family. But in a world where everyone is consumed by his or her own delusions, is reconnecting with his wife even possible?
A talk-back between playwright, actors and audience follows.
Sunday, July 27, Gallery Room, Sheridan Opera House
10 a.m. Coffee Talk with Yury Urnov and Eric Nightengale, the state of the theatre East and West.
Yury Urnov is one of Russia’s premier directors, now working in Washington D.C. with the Wooly Mammoth Company. Eric Nightengale is a New York director who has run his own theatre company and is currently working in New York and Baltimore.
8 p.m., Sheridan Opera House, “Ayn/Sister,” with Jennie Franks
Ayn Rand
During the 1970’s in the era of Jimmy Carter, the Cold War, escalating interest rates and the advent of disco music, Ayn Rand is unwell and her husband suffers from Alzheimer’s. Unexpectedly her younger sister Nora comes to visit her from USSR. The sisters haven’t seen each other since they were both young girls. Now, as women, they are forced to reconcile their differences and affirm their love for each other, while Ayn takes an ambitious young journalist under her wing to help promote her ideas.
Talk-back with playwright after the performance.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.