This Friday will mark the debut performance of the 8th annual Short Attention Span Theatre production at the Garfield Center for the Arts.
Featuring eight plays by eight playwrights, the plays cover a broad range of subjects, ranging from the human condition to belts and shoes, cats and bears, to the afterlife and Darth Vader. Three of the plays are by locals, “A Bear Walks Into A Bar” by Mark Sullivan, “The Mermaid’s Tatoo” by Dwayne Yancey, and “The Empire Gets Audited” by Howard Mesick. The Live Playwright’s Society, for which Sullivan acts as the director, was instrumental in bringing these plays to the Prince audience.
The individual players meanwhile offer performances that are both spastic and contemplative, goofy and restrained; thus, you might venture to say this little festival runs the gamut of the tragicomedy genre. What it is not lacking in, however, is comedy.
While it would be hard and unfair to pick a “stand-out” show from these ten-minute plays, audience members will surely have something to talk about after watching the Ethan Coen penned “Waiting”, about a dead man condemned to sit in a purgatorial waiting room for all eternity.
With no one but a mute typist and some outdated magazines to distract him, the man, played by Mark Wiening (his debut Prince performance), gradually becomes unhinged as his stay in the waiting room is lengthened, again and again, by the indifference and (calculated ?) incompetence of the purgatorial bureaucrats in charge of his files. Sound familiar?
Not the first time the SAS fest has lampooned the bureaucratic (does anyone remember last year’s “DMV Tyrant”?), there is also the sexual silliness of “Kitty The Waitress”, the Oedipal absurdity of “Your Mother’s Butt”, and the slapstick “A Bear Walks Into A Bar”, about a group of barflies too occupied with jokes about bears and bars to realize the fragility of their situation. SAS veteran Sarah Walker also gives a great performance which seamlessly blends straight forward storytelling with dialogue as she recounts/relives her experience as a waitress-turned mermaid in a seedy seaside restaurant.
So, if you are into tragicomical hijinks, neurotic ramblings, and metaphysical musings, then this year’s Short Attention Span Theatre fest will surely provide you with all the laughs and chin scratching that can be reasonably crammed into a weekend evening or afternoon. Highly recommended, highly entertaining.
SAST VIII will be running two weekends, June 22,23,29 & 30 @ 8pm, and June 24 and July 1 @ 3pm.
Tickets are $15
Students $5 with valid ID
Catherine says
Dwayne Yancey is not a local; he is from Roanoke, VA.