Best Supporting Actor

• Rich Prien as Wayne, Cow Tipping, Zemfira Stage. (Winner)
• Kris Sayler as Lucifer, After the Garden, Prince William Little Theatre
• Will MacLeod as David/Stoner, The Quantum Suicide of Sophie Miller, Castaways Repertory Theatre

Best Supporting Actress

• Becky Farris as Heather, Chick Fillet, Castaways Repertory Theatre
• Rebecca Hausman as Rachel, Chick Fillet, Castaways Repertory Theatre. (Winner)
• Aimee Snow as Alice, The Quantum Suicide of Sophie Miller, Castaways Repertory Theatre

Best Actor

• Ted Ballard as God, After the Garden, Prince William Little Theatre
• Matt Jordan as Roberto, Clean, Fauquier Community Theatre. (Winner)
• Matthew Hartman as Billy, A Brief Period of Time, Port City Playhouse

Best Actress

• Katy Jordan as Marisol, Clean, Fauquier Community Theatre. (Winner)
• Maureen Rogers as Mary, This Play Sucks, Laurel Mill Playhouse
• Julie Rogers as Lynn, Walking Off Pluto, Laurel Mill Playhouse
• Colleen Close as Mara, Chick Fillet, Castaways Reportory Theatre
• Katherine Bisulca as Regina, Chick Fillet, Castaways Repertory Theatre
• Alexia Poe as Sophie, The Quantum Suicide of Sophie Miller, Castaways Repertory Theatre

Judges’ Discretionary Award #1

• Outstanding Set and Soundscape: Clean, Fauquier Community Theatre

Judges’ Discretionary Award #2

• Outstanding Comic Performance: Ted Ballard as God, After the Garden, Prince William Little Theatre

Judges’ Discretionary Award #3

• Outstanding Ensemble: Chick Fillet, Castaways Repertory Theatre

Best Director

• Larry Simmons, Walking Off Pluto, Laurel Mill Playhouse
• Mona Kay Helper, Clean, Fauquier Community Theatre. (Winner)
• Zina Bleck, Chick Fillet, Castaways Repertory Theatre

Best Production Of An Original Play

• Walking Off Pluto, Laurel Mill Playhouse
• Clean, Fauquier Community Theatre
• Chick Fillet, Castaways Repertory Theatre. (Winner)

Best Overall Production

• Walking Off Pluto, Laurel Mill Playhouse
• Clean, Fauquier Community Theatre. (Winner)
• Chick Fillet, Castaways Repertory Theatre

NVTA Scholarships Announced

Three scholarships were awarded this year for performance. First place with $1000 was awarded to Madeleine Curtis of Loudoun Valley High School, Purcellville (sponsored by McLean Community Players). Second place with $500 was awarded to Matt Kelly, Osbourne High School, Manassas (sponsored by Prince William Little Theatre). Third place with $500 was awarded to Emily Adler of W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax (sponsored by Providence Players).

As part of the entertainment during the awards ceremony, Ms. Curtis and Mr. Kelly each sang two numbers, and Ms. Adler performed two short monologues. More entertainment for the evening was provided by the vocal stylings of Rachel Harrington and Richard Yingling. Accompanists for the evening were Jonathan Blank and Milton Rodgers.

Each production is judged publicly immediately after the performance. This year’s judges are Roger Bennett Riggle, Kimberley Schraf, and Craig Wallace. Each judge is allowed five minutes to share their thoughts about the production. At the end of the festival, the judges will decide on awards in various acting, playwrighting, and technical categories. The Awards will be announced on Sunday, June 26th at 7pm.

NVTA also provides three scholarships to college students who will be studying theater. This year the scholarships were given to Madeleine Curtis (Loudoun Valley High School), Matt Kelly (Osbourne High School), and Emily Adler (W.T. Woodson High School).

We attended the two original comedies on Saturday evening: This Play Sucks, produced by the Laurel Mill Playhouse, and After The Garden, produced by Prince William Little Theatre. According to Deb Crawford, one of this year’s festival co-producers, the first evening’s performances were well received by the opening night audience. There were many empty seats on Saturday night. That’s a shame, because the prices for the festival are very fair ($14 per evening, or $35 for a festival pass).

What could be done to increase attendance?

• Why don’t more member companies participate in the festival? A one-act festival is a wonderful opportunity for a group to let one of their members try their hand at directing before committing them to a full play during the season. It is also a chance for getting more actors and designers involved.
• With only ten plays, it would be helpful if each could be performed twice, perhaps each show once per weekend. Some buzz could be generated from people that see the first performance, as well as allowing audience members some flexibility for attending.
• NVTA is made up of volunteers, all of whom are very active in their home theaters, but it would be useful for NVTA to have a stronger presence on Twitter and Facebook. Even asking the companies that are putting on shows to make Facebook events and mention the performance on Twitter would be useful, and free.
• Perhaps the festival could be upgraded to a conference. Friday and Saturday evenings could remain performances, while during the day on Saturday NVTA could hold a series of roundtable discussions, or tutorials, or lessons from experienced directors, designers and actors.

NVTA is in a good position if they could capitalize on their history. A new effort at getting more participation in the annual festival should result in a stronger organization as NVTA enters its second thirty years.

Disclaimer: NVTA provided two complimentary media tickets to ShowBizRadio for this article. And ShowBizRadio donates web site hosting and maintenance for the NVTA web site.

Twenty-seven years ago, NVTA was founded by Bruce Follmer (President Emeritus), an area actor and director who is still heavily involved in the festival today. The festival would not be possible without the support of Anita Gardiner (Current President), Peggy Jones (Vice President), Don Wilson (Secretary) and Gavin Tameris (Treasurer & Box Office Manager), or the talent & dedication of Co-Producers Deb Crawford and Zina Bleck. Mary Brick assumed the all-important role of festival Time Keeper this year, Adrienne Showker was the Reception Coordinator, and the technical aspects of the festival were brilliantly handled by Nancy Owens (Lighting) and David Sher (Sound). 

There were 11 entries in the festival, with an unprecedented seven original entries! The shows touched on a wide range of topics, from a May-December romance to a bumbling burglar and victim in a panic room, five women learning about self-defense, the broad spectrum of relationships (former lovers, fathers & daughters, betrayed spouses, and coworkers) to a brave spoof of the NVTA Festival Adjudication itself.

A treat this year was the rarely-seen entry of an original one act musical, Believing Ruth, performed by Dominion Stage. The show featured strong singers and a lovely score (book and lyrics by Jessie Roberts and music by Larry Zimmerman) and was a worthy effort.

Overall, the festival itself enjoyed the efficiency of great teamwork, full and responsive audiences, and made for two weekends of truly entertaining theatre.

Congrats to all involved!

Best Supporting Actor

• Kevin Walker – The Open Meeting – Castaways (winner)
• Creg Crowe – The Open Meeting – Castaways

Best Supporting Actress

• Kelly Glyptis – Believing Ruth – Dominion Stage
• Jennifer Lambert – Believing Ruth – Dominion Stage
• Joanna Edie – The Art of Self Defense – Zoon Vader (winner)
• Jennifer Speerstra – The Art of Self Defense – Zoon Vader

Best Actor

• Teddy Gron – Solitaire – Little Theatre of Alexandria
• Greg Powell – See You on the Outside – Prince William Little Theater (winner)

Best Actress

• McCall Doyle – The Typists – Fauquier (winner)
• Ellen McKinstry – The Open Meeting – Castaways

Best Director

• Liz Couchman – The Art of Self Defense – Zoon Vader
• Sallie Willows – The Typists – Fauquier
• Liz Owens – Solitaire – Little Theatre of Alexandria (winner)

Best Production of an Original Play

• See You on the Outside – Prince William
• Lizard Brains – Silver Spring Stage (winner)
• Solitaire – Little Theatre of Alexandria

Best Overall Production

• The Typists – Fauquier
• The Open Meeting – Castaways (winner)
• The Art of Self Defense – Zoon Vader

“Judge’s Discretionary Awards”

• Zoon Vader – The Art of Self Defense – received two awards for the Best Voice Over and and Best Ensemble
• OutOftheBlackBox – Double Play – received a best Play Within a Play (or “Playlet”) for the first play within Double Play entitled Then, Now, Me

If your group is interested in performing, contact Zina Bleck at (zbleck -at- aol.com) for more information and the forms you need to fill out. The entry form and fee is due February 29, 2008.

For the 2007 Festival, we interviewed many of the directors, performers, and Zina and Deb. Those interviews (audio and transcripts) were quite interesting, showing the wide rage of types of shows performed at the Festival. They are available online.

Best Supporting Actor

(presented by Erin De Caprio)

• Christopher Tully “Man” All In My Head, Foundry
• Greg Crowe “Kenny” Fragile X, Fauqier (winner)
• Carl Long “Boolie” Driving Miss Daisy, PWLT
• Will Morrison “Abel” Dogg’s Hamlet, Foundry
• Christopher Tully “Baker” Dogg’s Hamlet, Foundry

Best Supporting Actress

(presented by Greg Crowe)

• Lori Muhlstein “Sigmund Frued” Just a Stage He’s Going Through, Tapestry (winner)
• Lauren Farrell “Fantasy Girl” All In My Head, Foundry
• Andra Witt “Gnadiges Fraulein” The Gnadiges Fraulein, Rockville Little Theatre

Best Actor

(presented by Patty McCoart)

• Ted Ballard “Dwight” Just a Stage He’s Going Through, Tapestry
• Ardith Collins “Hoke” Driving Miss Daisy, PWLT (winner)

Best Actress

(presented by Josh Redford)

• Joanna Edie “Deedee Johnson” Third and Oak: The Laundromat, St. Mark’s
• Aimme Meher-Homji “Mrs. Crenshaw” Three Times A Lady, Tapestry (winner)
• Mona Kay Helper “Daisy” Driving Miss Daisy, PWLT (winner)

Best Direction

(presented by Zina Bleck)

• Bob Benn, Dogg’s Hamlet, Foundry (winner)
• Susy Moorstein, Driving Miss Daisy, PWLT
• Kay Sullivan, Three Times A Lady, Tapestry
• Terry McKinstry, All In My Head, Foundry

Best Production of an Original Play

(presented by Deb Crawford)

• All In My Head, Foundry (winner)
• Two Girls, One Place, Castaways
• Three Times a Lady, Tapestry
• Fragile X, Fauquier

Best Overall Production

(presented by Ted Ballard)

• Third and Oak: The Laundromat, St. Mark’s
• Driving Miss Daisy, PWLT
• Dogg’s Hamlet, Foundry (winner)

Judge’s Award: Best Ensemble Cast

(Judge’s Awards were presented by Kathryn Silvia d’Alelio, Michael Kramer, and Roger Bennett Riggle)

• All In My Head, Foundry
• Dogg’s Hamlet, Foundry (winner)
• Pandemic, Pied Piper Theatre
• Fragile X, Fauqier

Judge’s Award: Best Conceptual Design

• The Gnadiges Fraulein, Rockville Little Theatre (winner)
• Dogg’s Hamlet, Foundry

Judge’s Award: Best Original Script

• All In My Head, Terry McKinstry
• Two Girls, One Place, Sara Joy Lebowitz
• Three Times a Lady, Ward Kay (winner)
• Fragile X, Kevin Kirby

Mike: This is Mike Clark with ShowBizRadio I am talking with John Adams who is directing How To Measure Half an Egg at the NVTA Festival, the entry of Dominion Stage. They’ll be performing Friday evening at 7:30. Thanks for talking with me, John.

John: Glad to be here.

Mike: So tell us a little about the show: How To Measure Half an Egg.

John: It’s a short play. I don’t want to give too much of it away. Let’s say it happens in the present time. It could be happening in restaurants all over the area during the same time it’s happening on stage. It’s about finding opportunities and losing opportunities.

Mike: The play is by Christine Rusch. How did you find the play?

John: Several of her plays were submitted to the Dominion Stage board for consideration in a variety of things I guess. When I was planning to direct this, I looked over the plays that were available and selected this one. I thought it was the best play in the group and it was kind of a fun play. Nice play to do for this kind of venue.

Mike: So who is in the show? How many performers do you have?

John: We have Richard Isaacs in one of the roles. He plays a fiance of a woman. He’s kind of self obsessed I guess would be a good way to put it. Amy Hard plays his fiancee. Gary Cramer is a waiter in the restaurant. A fellow named Wally Joe.

I’ve worked in a few plays with Richard. He’s a terrific actor. I saw Gary at Terra Nova that Port City did a couple of months ago. Although he was wearing a heavy overcoat and snow shoes and all this other stuff, I could really picture him as the waiter. I hung around in the lobby after the play was over and recruited him through for the show. Denise Marwa, our Assistant Director and Stage Manager recommended Amy for the role. She’s a drama teacher for Fairfax County. She’s just been great to work with. That’s the cast.

The fourth member of the cast is actually an inanimate object. It makes sounds, but doesn’t have any lines. Sometimes it intrudes upon our lives. Sometimes it helps bond people together and sometimes it causes people to distance themselves from each other. I’ll just leave it at that.

Mike: You mentioned in an email to me that this is your first time directing.

John: I’ve been in a number of plays. The last show I was in I played Robish in Desperate Hours at Little Theatre of Alexandria. I’m in an independent student film that has it’s first screening in Maryland Thursday night. We filmed that last Spring. I was in Dominion’s Tom Sawyer, The Musical also last Spring and several other shows. This is my first crack at directing a stage play. It’s been an interesting experience.

Mike: Is it more difficult or trickier than you were picturing?

John: Well, I don’t know. One of the things I like to do when I’m reading a play or in a play is analyze the script from 17 different directions and try to pick up all the meaning I can from it. Directing requires a lot of that. The good thing is you don’t have to memorize the lines. The more work part is there is a lot of behind the scenes work that you’re not even doing during rehearsals and a lot of preparation. You have to be engaged in every moment of rehearsal. Which in some plays actors don’t need to be engaged every moment because they’re not onstage or they have a small part or things like that.

I’ve been finding it a lot of fun and I’ve tried to make it, I have such a good cast that I’ve been trying to make it a collaborative experience for everybody. I made that clear at the first rehearsal we had. And fun. I’m not sitting there calling cut and telling everybody what to do. I’ve been very open to suggestions. We’ve had some that have actually changed significant things in the play. Some of the decisions that we’ve made. With this kind of cast I wouldn’t want to waste the opportunity of getting in as much knowledge and intelligence and creativity from them as I could.

Mike: Do you want to direct again on a full length show?

John: Well, I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it. I definitely would like to come back to NVTA next year. I was even talking to one group about possibly directing something that they ended up not doing. I saw a couple of roles in that play that I would have liked. I think I would rather have been on stage for that than been directing it. It’s nice to have experience doing both things.

Mike: Dominion Stage is the group that is sponsoring this.

John: Yes. Jesse Roberts is the president. Denise is on the board. We’ve gotten a lot of support from them in doing this and a lot of encouragement. I hope there are as many Dominion subscribers as possible come to our performance. In fact come to
all the performances in the festival that are left.

Mike: There’s three sets of performances. Friday night is when yours is at 7:30. Then Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening.

John: Then we go to the awards ceremony Sundayevening and bite our fingernails to see who won.

Mike: Well, I wish you all the best of luck with it. Or break a leg with it.

John: Thank you much. We’re looking forward. I hope you can make it to some of the shows. If you do see a short fat guy with a beard come over and say hello.

Mike: Will do. We’ve made it to all the sessions so far and we’re planning to come to the next set.

John: Ok. Terrific. We’ll look for you then.

Mike: Thanks a lot, John.

John: Thank you.

Mike: Hi, this is Mike Clark with ShowBizRadio and I am talking with Sara Joy Lebowitz who wrote a play for the NVTA One Act Festival and she also performed in it. How are you doing Sara Joy?

Sara Joy: I’m doing very well, thank you.

Mike: So the show is called Two Girls, One Place. It was part of the Castaways Repertory Theatre’s entry into the NVTA. You wrote this show?

Sara Joy: Yes, I did.

Mike: Didn’t you write your first show for last year’s NVTA?

Sara Joy: No. This is actually the fourth show I’ve done for NVTA.

Mike: Are you getting better at it do you think?

Sara Joy: I definitely think that I am. A couple of people have said that last year was my best show. A couple of people have told me last year that that was their favorite show. Now this year people are telling me that this one’s their favorite show.

It gets easier, I think, as you go along. You learn more and you refine your craft better and you figure out which is the best way to work certain situations. But I’ve also found different ways of attacking the material and attacking the story line.

The last two years that I wrote I actually knew who the cast was before I ever started writing the play. That was helpful in a much different way because I was able to write towards people’s strengths and weaknesses. I was able to write towards what would stretch an actor. The other girl in the show with me was McCall Noelle Doyle. She is a very good friend of mine. A lot of people have told us that things would have been easier if I had switched the parts if she had played Faith and I had played Charity because those roles are a lot closer to who we are as people. But neither one of us were interested in doing anything easy. We wanted to make it challenging for ourselves. We wanted to stretch ourselves. It was a little bit more frustrating of process to have switched the roles because we were both uncomfortable with certain aspects of our characters.

Mike: Of the characters you actually played?

Sara Joy: Of the characters we actually played.

Mike: Ok. So for this show you didn’t have McCall in mind for the other part?

Sara Joy: I did. I had McCall and I in mind. The play started because McCall asked me to write a play for the two of us to do at NVTA. We talked about different characters and we talked about different things we wanted to do and then I just sort of started creating characters and started writing and this particular play developed. People have asked me where it came from and I honestly don’t know because it’s not anything that’s ever happened to me. It’s not anything that I’ve ever had to deal with. I just created a very fictional story.

A lot of people think it’s about the issue because that’s what’s most prominent when you see a play like this. But it’s not. At it’s core it’s simply about the fact that no matter who you are or where you end up, anybody can be there with you and you’re not alone. It may not even be the person you ever thought would be there with you, but these things can happen to anyone.

Mike: I definitely saw it as a relationship theme.

Sara Joy: Yes.

Mike: You wrote the parts for you and McCall. How did you pick Don Peterson as the director?

Sara Joy: I’ve always wanted to work with Don. I had the play probably about half way to where it ended up. It was a long proces to getting it to where it was on Friday night. We were still rewriting lines the week before the show just trying to make the characters, I don’t want to say more real, but when you’re writing you have one way of looking at things. Then when people finally get into those parts and you start performing it and you start saying things out loud you kind of realize, “Wait that doesn’t actually work” or that line doesn’t sound like something the character would say. It’s always a work in progress. That’s a great thing about being part of the process is that you have people telling you, “that doesn’t really sound right.”

I’ve always wanted to work with Don Peterson. I think he’s a phenomenal director. We had talked about it briefly a few months back when I was first handing the script over to Castaways. I asked him if he would be interested and he told me to send him the script. He let me know that he would definitely be interested. That was really great. I think I actually scared people when we were at actually at Port City seeing another show when he told me that yes, he would do it. I screamed so loudly I think I scared the other people in the lobby.

Mike: Since it was evolving, probably not, but couldn’t that be kind of dangerous if you’re the writer and then you’re in the show and the director started changing it or interprets things a little differently?

Sara Joy: It is, it is always dangerous. I don’t want it to sound like I’m boasting about myself, but I hapen to be very collaborative. Both when I’m acting, when I’m writing, and when I’m directing. Theater is a collaborative process. No one person makes a show. Not even a one person show. There is no one person because you have a cast, and you have a director, and you have a playwright, and set designers and costume designers, and lighting designers and all these different people who are contributing to a piece of the show.

Especially for me as a writer creating a new work. I’m very self concious about my writing because it is such a close extension of myself. But I am not so naive not to realize that after working on a play for six months that I can’t see all the holes and I can’t see all the gaps because I get to the point where I’ve read it so many times. I know what I’m trying to say and I may not realize that somebody else doesn’t get it. It’s actually wonderful to bring Don in and to bring McCall in and have them say, “Well, what if we tried this? or what if we tried that?”

There were suggestions that they made that I didn’t take into account because it wasn’t what I was trying to do with the play and it wasn’t where I was trying to go. There were suggestions that I thought were absolutely phenomenal. For anyone who didn’t see the play, at the end of the play there are these two little girls that pop up in the background. That was not written in the play. That was Don’s choice as a director. It was his artistic vision for how he wanted to kind of put his stamp on the end of the play. I thought it was phenomenal. I’ve written it into the play. I think it’s a great idea.

Mike: I was going to ask you about the girls.

Sara Joy: Yeah.

Mike: Laura and I were both a little confused by the girls. We were like, “Ok, so is this the two characters being friends, being innocent with each other?”

Sara Joy: It’s competely open to interpretation. I never give anything away as a writer. If you can make people walk away talking then you’ve done your job. For us, our intention was that they were the unborn children. The children who could become if these two girls walked out of this clinic and didn’t come back. Of course the question remains at the end whether or not do they come back and not part of what people question.

People saw a variety of things in those two little girls. Some people saw McCall’s and my characters as children and our innocence of our childhood. One of the judges saw the children as simply the complete innocence of the life of a child, any child. The fact that there’s so much potential in a child and you don’t know where they’re going to go and where they’re going to end up. Certainly when Faith and Charity were children I’m sure they never dreamed they would end up where they were or that they would ever even meet each other. Those kind of things people always have some sort of intention in their artistic nature when they put it up on the stage, but when somebody walks away and they see someone else and that resonates with them, great. I love it.

Mike: Was the feedback from the judges positive?

Sara Joy: It was, it was very positive. They really enjoyed the performance. I was very happy. It’s always nerve racking putting something like that up there and wait to see what people have to say.

Mike: Switching topics just a little bit. You’ve also taken on some new responsibilities at Vpstart Crow in Manassas.

Sara Joy: I have indeed. I’m now the Managing Director of Vpstart Crow.

Mike: So what is involved in being managing director?

Sara Joy: Right now it is simply keeping track of the day to day functions. It’s a lot of legal work. I’m in charge of drawing up the contracts for the actors whenever we cast a show. It’s just taking care of making sure that financially we are where we need to be. It’s being a liaison between our artistic director, Chrisine Lange, and the board. The board is concerned with how we’re doing financially and fiscally and Christine is concerned with how we do artistically and making sure we all stay on the same page and we’re working together.

Mike: So what is the next show that they are doing out there?

Sara Joy: They are doing the Wonderful Adventures of Don Quioxte. It will open July 13th and run for three weekends. Friday, Saturday and Sundays. It is going to be absolutely fabulous. I saw a rehearsal on Saturday and a rehearsal on Sunday. It’s not the musical. People should know that in advance. It is not the Man of La Mancha. It is a very fun, family friendly. It’s going to be colorful and campy.

I think people are going to love it. I think people are going to adore it. It’s very different from our last show, the Ghost Sonata, which was in my personal opinion an artistic success. I believe Don Quixote is going to be just as much of a success. But it is completely different as far as scope and artistic vision and what people are going to see and who it’s going to appeal to, which is great. I love that we have such diversity in our seasons.

Mike: I remember the last time we talked about a year ago, you weren’t quite sure how to use your theater experience professionally. Is this kind of part of that?

Sara Joy: This is definitely part of that. My undergraduate degree from Penn Stae University is a major in management with a minor in theater. Being a manging director is actually exactly what I went to school for.

Mike: Great. Is there anything else you’d like to share with us about NVTA or Two Girls, One Place or Vpstart Crow or anything?

Sara Joy: I think everyone should come support NVTA. The final weekend is this weekend and there are a number of great shows that are going to be up Friday night, Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening. I think people should come. I think people should mark their calendars for Don Quixote, because I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. And keep track of what’s going on in a theater in your area because it’s really important to support these theaters so that they can continue to put on wonderful shows for everyone.

Mike: Thank you very much for talking wih me. I appreciate it.

Sara Joy: Thank you very much.

Mike: This is Mike Clark with ShowBizRadio and I am talking with the co-chairs of the 2007 NVTA One Act Festival, Zina Bleck and Deb Crawford. Thank you very much for talking with me.

Deb: Thank you for having us.

Mike: Start off with the very basics. What is the NVTA One Act Festival?

Zina: This is actually the 26th year the festival has been in existence. It is a forum to stage both original and previously published works. NVTA is an organization that has support from various groups in the DC metropolitan area, from Virginia, Maryland, and DC. The goal there is to get groups together so they can share information, share resources, and generally help each other out. The festival grew out of that organization as a way to also share art. And you don’t get one acts done very much. You really can’t do them very easily during the regular season. The festival was created. It’s an opportunity to for people to take a chance, do something a little different.

Deb: It also gives them the opportunity to allow the members of the groups to have another avenue of expression through the support of the original work. Plus a lot of the groups will use it as a forum to try out new directors. If they have somebody with a little less experience, sometimes they might want to try them out directing a one act play as opposed to directing a full main stage production.

Zina: It is also a timed event where there are awards given. The way the timing works is you’re given ten minutes to put up the set. The performance has to be no less than twenty minutes, but no more than sixty minutes in length. Then you have no more than five minutes to put your set away or tear it down. Any one of those that exceeds the timing will disqualify you from participation and receiving an award.

Deb: Also it’s a nice opportunity for everyone to get together and see each other which happens so rarely around here. We’re all so busy with our schedules.

Mike: The theaters that seem to be involved seem to be a pretty wide range. You’ve got children’s theater with Pied Piper, then you’ve got a lot of the bigger name community theaters. Is that on purpose?

Deb: It’s a little bit of everything. The festival is open to all theater groups in the area, whoever wants to participate. We don’t bar them based on any criteria as far as who their core members are or who they cater towards as far as the children’s theater or as you said some of the bigger community theater names in the area. The festival prides itself on trying to be as inclusive as possible.

Mike: Does the one act format help the smaller theaters and you’ve also got the time limit you were talking about. They don’t have to have a really elaborate set. They’re all pretty simple from what I’ve seen.

Deb: We encourage simplicity as far as the sets are concerned because of the space limitations because you do have something you have to set up in a short period of time. And then tear down even faster. The festival really likes to have you concentrate on the meat of the play. To get your story across and tell it as effectively as possible and to use simple and innovative sets to tell the story.

Zina: It also gives the actors and actresses who have a lot of family commitments and can’t commit to a full run of a full length show the chance to practice their art. I know several people who really enjoy participating in the festival as their forum for that.

Mike: It seems like a lot of the shows only had two people in them and then a couple of the shows I saw on Saturday night had eight people in it. You also have a wide range on participation.

Deb: There’s no set limit on the number of people who can be involved. We’ve had one man shows and we’ve had shows that have had fifteen or eighteen people in the cast. That’s up to the group what they feel is going to best represent them. Or a piece that they wish to present for whatever reason. There’s no limitation on the number of people who can participate in a production. Again, that’s giving the artistic freedom to the group to decide how they want to participate.

Mike: Looking back at past productions that have been done, is there usually a type of show that does better. Like comedy versus dramas?

Deb: Not really. Given the fact that there are different judges every year, you can’t really point to a trend that way. Every year is different. Really what the judges tend to do is exactly what they should be doing. Rewarding the quality of the production, not necesarily whether it’s a specific genre.

Zina: It’s not so much a matter of how big your set is or how many people you have on stage, but the forum really lets the judges focus on the quality of the actual production.

Mike: So Zina, what is your role as co-chair? What type things have you been involved in getting the festival ready?

Zina: I’ve been focusing on sending out the forms. Communicating with the various groups and getting their information. We do have four different forms that come in at various times throughout from January through May. Also sharing with the groups with the scheduling, when is tech night, that sort of thing. I tend to handle more of the front end before we move into the theater aspect of the show.

Mike: And Deb, what do you do?

Deb: I am interacting more with the facilities person at the Lee Center. David Shurr initially. Then I will be covering all of the technical rehearsals for the groups and working with the groups as they arrive for their tech rehearsals and their performances. I will also be helping out as far as arranging things for the reception part of the award ceremony. Zina and I are working together on the presentation and the entertainment portion of the awards.

Zina: Plus both of us do whatever else may be needed from pouring sodas to putting out cookies to finding a lost name badge. You name it. We do it.

Deb: And backing each other up and helping out wherever needed. Falling into the “any other duties as assigned” category that most people have involved in their jobs.

Mike: So is there a lot of other people? Is there a committee or a group of people or is it just the two of you that work on this?

Deb: It’s basically just the two of us and whoever we can wrangle in to help us out as needed, as we’re moving along.

Zina: This year Gavin Tameris is the treasurer for NVTA. He is running the box office. Robbie Snow, who is a regular with the Providence Players, is the House Manager. Then we had various group bring ushers to help us out. Nancy Owens, who has been a wonderful life saver, has been running the light board for everybody. Along with David Shurr who works there and Matt Ward who also works there. They have both been helping out tremendously as well.

Deb: Then we’ve also had our back stage crew of Don Petersen who is our main timer. Mary Brick who has been back up timer and jumping in and helping wherever we have needed her. Jared Baker has been our backstage manager. He makes certain that he helps out with spiking of the sets and handling the curtains and making certain that everything is flowing smoothly backstage.

Zina: Anita Gardiner is president of NVTA. Bruce Folmer is president Emeritus. They both provide support as well. Bruce in particular focuses on finding judges every year.

Mike: In your opinion how did the first weekend go? Smoothly or lots of bumps?

Deb: We’ve had one or two little bumps a long the way, but the groups have been great. They have been very supportive of one another and have worked well within the rules of the festival.

Zina: It’s been neat to see people from the community come in who aren’t necessarily affiliated with any of the groups performing because of course reaching out to the community and getting them a chance to share in this experience with us is also something special.

Deb: Again I really enjoy watching everybody getting to talk to each other. People from Manassas getting to talk to someone from Alexandria or wherever. They all hear about each other and every now and then they see each other’s shows. They get to talk in a relaxed environment and share what shows are coming up and what’s going on. There’s a lot of that kind of talking and sharing going on.

Mike: NVTA also does a scholarship each year at the festival. Can you tell me a litttle about that?

Zina: There are two scholarships. Each one of them is worth $1,000. One is for a performing scholarship and the other is technical. The technical can be any of several aspects. An applicant would either submit a set design, a costume design or a lighting design. There will be one winner in each category for 2007 that will be introduced at the annual ceremony. The awards ceremony is on Sunday the 17th. We have refreshments starting at 6 and the actual ceremony starting at 7.

Both winners will be there to display their work. Kelly Glift is the lady who did win the perfoming scholarship. Helen McCarthy won the technical scholarship. In her case it was for set design. We’re going to have her get up in front of everyone during the awards ceremony and express how she came up with her design and have her share that.

Deb: Kelly will be doing her monologue and song that she did for her audition piece.

Mike: Very good. That’s exciting.

Zina: That is open to the public. If somebody wants to come. It’s $10 for a ticket and they can contact the number on the website or come to the festival and buy a ticket then for the ceremony.

Mike: Something else that I think is new; you’re doing a matine on this Saturday?

Deb: That’s actually not new. There’s always been the possibility of matinees. We afford for up to 18 shows to perform in the festival. We can have up to six sessions being Friday and Saturday evening sessions, and the two Saturday matinee sesions as well. In the past we have tended to have at least one matinee session. Last year with the festival moving to the Lee Center for the first time. While we had a very good turnout of groups, we had a few fewer than we had in the past which did not allow us to have matinee sessions last year.

Zina: And we are looking forward to doing the festival again next year. It looks like it will be the same time period. We will have to finalize that, but it looks like next year the second and third weekends in June. We look forward to another NVTA One Act Festival.

Mike: Wonderful. If theater groups want to join NVTA they should just contact you through the website?

Zina: Yes, you can always give me a call at 703-615-6626 and let me know you’re interested.

Mike: Hi, this is Mike with ShowBizRadio. Today I am talking with Ellen Cribbs, who is the director and the playwright of an original drama called Pandemic, which is being performed with the Pied Piper Theatre at the NVTA on Saturday, June 16 at 7:30 PM. Good morning.

Ellen: Good morning.

Mike: So tell us what Pandemic is all about.

Ellen: Pandemic is basically a story of some strangers who are stuck in a very awkward situation. It’s a little bit of a surprise. I don’t want to give away completely what it’s about. There’s something going on that is not right with the world. These strangers have been stuck together for the past day in a first grade classroom. They basically have to deal with each other’s conflicting personalities and figure out how to work together in order to survive through this tragedy that’s going on around them.

Mike: The note from the NVTA says mature theme. But isn’t Pied Piper Theatre a children’s theatre?

Ellen: It is a children’s theater. It can have children up through age 18 in the one acts so most of my performers are in their teens. Our oldest person is 18. We have two people who are freshmen in high school. Then we have a sophomore, a senior, and then someone who is starting their first year at NOVA. It’s mostly an older cast. They’re all very smart kids and they all have mature attitudes so I thought that they could handle it.

When I actually auditioned I hadn’t decided on what play we’re doing yet. I had a couple plays in mind and I wanted to see what talent came out. When I saw these kids I thought it would be perfect to put them in this play. All of them had that energy and that drive and I knew they could handle the material. It really is more of a comedic drama if that’s possible. It’s kind of it’s own genre really. There are several funny bits.

Since it’s set in a first grade classroom there are a lot of points where the characters are playing around with all these kid’s things. There’s one character who is very sarcastic through the whole thing. There are comic bits that the kids get to play with, too. There are some more dramatic moments as well.

Mike: Have you written many shows? You said you had a few to choose from.

Ellen: I wasn’t choosing from another one that I had written. I had a couple previously produced plays to consider as well. In the past I’ve written several, but most of them have been done already. None of the unproduced ones would really match with Pied Piper so it was either this one or one previously produced.

Mike: I met you on Saturday night and we chatted briefly. I mentioned that we really enjoyed your performance in Wait Until Dark for Chevy Chase Players. What else have you done in the area?

Ellen: I’ve been in the Northern Virginia area since I started middle school. Throughout middle and high school I did a lot of community theater. Mostly with Prince William Little Theatre and Pied Piper Theatre when I was younger. Then later a couple of other community theaters in the Northern Virginia area. Then I went off to college in New York. I went to Ithica to get my acting degree, then I came back here and had an internship in the education department with the Shakespeare Theatre Company. With that internship I started in September. It’s been keeping me pretty busy. Wait Until Dark was the only play I got to do when I got back from college. I am actively trying to keep involved in community theater because I love it. Hopefully the next step is I’m hoping to pursue professional theater.

Mike: So do you want to stay on stage or backstage?

Ellen: I enjoy both, but I really want to focus in on being on stage next. I’m always going to keep up my writing and I love directing whenever the opportunity comes around. In my free time I love to just keep writing, but always I have that passion to be onstage as well. That’s my main goal so next year I’ll focus on getting on stage more.

Mike: Do you have any advice maybe for people who want to study acting?

Ellen: I would definitely say go out and observe a lot of theater. I know whenever NVTA comes around each year I try to see all the plays if possible. I think just observing theater is the best thing you can do because you can learn from the actors. You can learn from the writing. You can learn from the style of the pieces and the blocking. How the director has done certain things. The different forms and genres of theater that can impact your work as well. So I highly recommend that for people. To go out and see as much theater a possible. Then get the best training they can. I thought I knew a lot before I went to college, but I certainly didn’t once I went through. I realize how much there was to learn about theater. I think my work improved highly after spending four years studying it in college.

Mike: Is there anything else you’d like to share with people about Pandemic or NVTA or community theater in the area?

Ellen: I would just say that NVTA is a wonderful program and I know it’s tricky because it used to be in Reston and people are very familiar with it being there for a long time. Last year was the first year it moved to it’s new location in Falls Church. But I’m hoping people will make it out and keep it alive. I know it’s hard to transition to a new space. It’s great because there are so many companies and so many shows involved this year so I hope it continues to go and that people will keep coming out to see the shows because it’s a great way to see a whole bunch of work from all these different theaters.

Mike: Definitely. I’ve enjoyed the ones we’ve seen so far.

Ellen: Yeah, Definitely. Me too.

Mike: Ok. Well let’s see it’s Pandemic. It’s going to be Saturday night at the 7:30 session. The Pied Piper Theatre will be the performers.

Mike: Thanks very much for talking with me. I appreciate it.

Ellen: Thank you.

Mike: Hi, this is Mike with ShowBizRadio. Today I am talking to Kevin Kirby. He is directing the Faquier Community Theatre entry into the NVTA One Act Festival. The show is called Fragile X. Thank you very much for talking with me today, Kevin.

Kevin: Thank you very much for talking with me.

Mike: The name of the show you’re directing for NVTA is called Fragile X. Tell me a little bit about that. That’s a strange title.

Kevin: Fragile X is something that is new to me as well. Fragile X Syndrome is one of the leading genetic causes of Autistic behaviors and also of mental retardation. It is caused by a fragile part of the X chromosome. That’s where the name come from.

Mike: So you built a one act play around that concept?

Kevin: One of the characters has Fragile X Syndrome. He’s an adult in his 40’s. It’s mostly about life and family, but there is one character that has this particular situation. It’s also about his mother who has been caring for him for the past 40 years and her plans for what to do with him now that her health is starting to fail. She’s trying to find the caretakers and think of other situations for him.

Mike: So is this all focusing on the family and her decision?

Kevin: This is all about sons and daughters and family and role of caretakers and putting those sort of responsibilities on each other. Some things that people really face in this situation. As part of researching this play I actually contacted three mothers who have children with Fragile X Syndrome in various stages. One lady has two children in their 40’s who had Fragile X and she had to figure out what their situation was going to be. Then there is another mother who has younger children, and then one mother who has a son who’s 19. They all had to make decisions about what sort of long term care, whether they would be at home, whether they would go to a group home, or some sort of residential facility.

Mike: Were they encouraging to you for writing this story about this syndome?

Kevin: They were very enthusiastic. I sent them a first draft of the play. It was kind of rewarding to me that in all three cases they wrote back and asked if I had a son or sibling with Fragile X Syndrome because the things that you describe in the play are exactly things that we’ve gone through in our own personal life. This was very nice for me because I had not experienced that directly. I had never heard of that syndrome until I started researching the play.

Then they went through and helped me fine tune the characteristics of the character. All of them have had to face this situation. What’s best for the child and what’s best for the family. They’re all in different stages of trying to face that. Whether they want to keep the child at home, whether they want him to go out on their own and be away from home or be away from home in some sort of residential facility or a group home. There are a lot of emotions and feelings of responsibilities there. A lot goes on when you have to make those kinds of decisions.

Mike: So does the play take place in an evening or does it take place over time?

Kevin: The play is forty minutes running time and that’s forty minutes of actual life. We even make a point of that at one point we say “You’ve only have this much time left.” That’s the running time of the play. It’s set in real time.

Mike: Has that been challenging getting a lot of emotions worked out that quickly?

Kevin: It’s almost like, sometimes when you’re possibly traveling in the airport or something and you pass somebody in the airport and all of a sudden you’re thrown into their life. You see the situation going on. For that brief amount of time there you’ve got a window into their relationships and their conversations. That’s kind of what this is. At the beginning of the play it’s like your sort of eavesdropping on a situation that’s going on here at a very pivotal point in all of these people’s lives. Then at the end of the play it’s like your plane’s come and you’ve left. You’re not exactly sure, but you wonder what’s going to go on with them. You’ve sort of had that insight into the forty minutes of their lives.

Mike: Who are the performers in the show?

Kevin: I’m actually very happy with my cast. I have Maryann Sullivan who plays the daughter. Patty McCort plays the mother. Greg Crowe plays Kenny who is the adult with Fragile X Syndrome. Erin Dicaprio plays the local lady who come in to be the caretaker. Actually, Patty, Greg and Erin were in a play Gas ‘N’ Go last year at NVTA. They all won awards for their performances. Patti won for best actress. Greg for best supporting actor, and Erin for best supporting actress. Maryann didn’t perform or have a show in NVTA last year. In the prior year she actually won for best director for a show she directed.

Mike: So no pressure on you now, right?

Kevin: I’ve done things at NVTA and I’ve never been nominated or won anything so I’m hoping this will elevate me to their same status.

Mike: Is this the show that you had talked about when we interviewed you last Summer that you had worked on at community college?

Kevin: Katie Helper had suggested I take a class with Katherine O’Sullivan at the Northern Virginia Community College. As part of that class we had to write a ten minute play. I wrote a ten minute version of this play. The rules for NVTA is that the show has to be at least twenty minutes long and not to exceed an hour. I took that play and reworked it because it’s quite a challenge to get all that emotion and cover the topic in minutes. This gave me the leisure to sort of open that up a little bit more. Add another character. Give a little more background and show more of the arc of the emotions and the feelings.

Mike: Was that hard going from a ten minute show and expanding it?

Kevin: The original creating of a ten minute play was the first play I had worked on. This is still really my first play. This is an expanded version of that first play. I had a lot of material, but in the ten minute format you really want to get it down. It’s almost like writing a short story. You want to get at one precise emotion and do that in one clean stroke. Unlike a big epic novel where you can fill in a lot of details. This was a nice transition where I was able to bring in a lot of material I wasn’t able to squeeze into the first version into this version and give you a better feeling for who the people are and what they’re motivations are and what their goals are in life.

Mike: Was it difficult for the actors to get into their roles for this?

Kevin: That’s one nice thing. This is actually only my second time directing. My first time directing the actors would come up and say, “This dialogue that Agatha Christie wrote, we don’t want to say it this way.” I felt like I can’t change her words. That’s something that she wrote. We worked with that together to try to make those words sensible. Here I didn’t have that leisure so when they came in and said,” We don’t really like the way this is written or this could be better here.” I could say well let me consult with the playwright, oh that’s me. Let’s work on that.

It was actually a very collaborative process which I really enjoyed. The actors really got into it. They knew it was important to me, and I think it was actually important to them, too. They really are into their characters and they have a really good feeling of what their characters would say and do and how they would react.

The first version that I sent out to the actors with to say please be in my play was twenty page long, which in that format equates to twenty minutes. It was the minimum to be in the show. As we talked about it and it evolved the play is now forty minutes long. It’s forty pages long. It actually doubled in size based on collaboration with the actors and their thoughts and what they needed to be able to reach that emotional pitch.

Mike: Has it been hard on them doing a lot of this work and then only being able to perform it one time?

Kevin: They all are sort of seasoned experts now where they’ve done it before. That is really difficult. Actually in their case, since their show also won for best show and best ensemble and a number of other things. They went on to perform at VTA as well. Maryann and her production she went on to VTA as well. Technically they got to perform more than once, but we’re only looking at right now. We’ve been rehearsing twice a week for a couple months now. That’s a lot of effort to go into for one performance.

Mike: Is there anything that you learned that you would do differently next time now that you’ve got a writing and directing gig at the same time under your belt?

Kevin: I wasn’t really planning on directing this one. I’ve only been doing community theater for four years. I’ve actually ended up doing everything. I’ve ended up directing and being a stage manger, designing the set, and being an actor. This is my first time writing the play. I really didn’t want to direct it. I really just wanted to be the writer and hand it off and see how that would be. Then I really had a feeling of what my dream cast was going to be. So to ensure that I could get Erin and Greg and Patti and Maryann, I sort of asked to be the director so that I could make sure that I got them in the play. I’m quite pleased about that.

But it is tricky. I know a lot of times people don’t want that involvement where they either write it or direct it, but they feel they can’t do justice to it by doing both. Just last night we were having a conversation about some dialogue and I said, “Well, don’t you think it should be this?” They said yes, but the writer wrote it this way. Oh well, let’s just ignore what the writer said in that particular case. I’m sure he meant this. So it actually has worked out really well.

Mike: So the show is being performed at NVTA on the 16th, a Saturday, at the 1:30 session.

Kevin: One thing I’m very happy about that is that two of the mothers I had contacted are actually planning on attending with their sons who have Fragile X Syndrome. When I first wrote the show I did it from research on the Internet and books. But I didn’t have any personal connection. Last weekend we were corresponding and they said they were taking their sons to a Special Olympics softball game. I went to the softball game last weekend. The schedules had gotten messed up where by the time I got there when I thought they were actually going to start the game, the game was over. The Special Olympics team was there on their own. I got to hang out with the guys and we talked for about twenty minutes until the bus came to pick them up and their caretaker showed up.

It was a very amazing situation. I was so happy at how I was accepted and we were able to communicate. A couple of the gentlemen had Fragile X Syndrome, there were some people with Down Syndrome. They had a whole gambit of different levels of ability. They all were sort of unified in that they were just really nice and real accepting and had just a great spirit. I think that’s part of the theme of the play. It is about perfection and differnt concepts of beauty and perfection. That is discussed quite a bit. It was kind of net to see a real life version of that with those gentlemen I got to spend a Saturday with. It was pretty cool.

Mike: Well, I wish you all the best for this. I hope it turns out really well.

Kevin: Well thank you very much.

Mike: The show is being performed at NVTA on the 16th, a Saturday, at the 1:30 session. Thank you very much for talking with me today, Kevin.

Kevin: Thank you.