For theater veterans and newbies alike, Vashon Theatre Fest’s Plays In A Snap! will offer a chance to see artists shape new theatrical material.
The series, featuring professional actors reading six new works in progress by seasoned Northwest playwrights, will take place at 3 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays during Vashon Rep’s Second Annual Theatre Fest, set for July 22 to 25 and July 29 to 31. All readings will take place in Snapdragon Bakery & Café’s Black Cat Cabaret, with a full bar and menu available.
Opening the series Friday, July 22, is “Working For Crumbs,” by prolific author and playwright Kate Danley. In the play, Grace and Amy, two admins stuck in soul-sucking jobs, are slogging their way through the work week. But when their supervisor chokes, everything goes awry and begins a domino effect of destruction in this quick-witted farce.
Next up in the series, on Saturday, July 23, “Plays in a Snap” will present “Crumbs/Migas,” a drama by Rebecca Tourino Collinsworth. Set in a fictional Latin American country, two hungry children are orphaned by a U.S.- backed coup. Fifteen years later they return, a modern-day Hansel and Gretel, to follow what migas (crumbs) they can in search of their father. Revisiting the scene of the violence they survived, they discover a landscape of secrets and sacrifices they are only beginning to understand.
On Sunday July 24, the play being read comes from the fertile imagination of Brian Dang, a Vietnamese/Chinese playwright, poet and teaching artist. Dang’s “H*llo K*tty Syndrome” takes us on a journey of a character at a turning point in their life when they find themselves caught in the throes of a family drama, noir, and romance.
On Friday, July 29, Plays in a Snap curator and island playwright Trista Baldwin’s play “Fetal” speaks to our times in an unfiltered exploration of women’s physical realities, encompassing a kaleidoscope of reproductive journeys. Written on the precipice of the end of federal abortion rights, “Fetal” is intended as a love song to the body and a howl for freedom.
On Saturday, July 30, Randy Noojin’s “Mrs. Hank” is a new musical that takes the audience behind the scenes of the King of Country Music, Hank Williams, Sr., telling the lesser-known story of his wife and muse, Audrey, and her daughter, Lycrecia. Randy’s critically acclaimed multimedia solo show, “Seeger,” will be staged in full as a co-production with Open Space for Arts & Community throughout the Theatre Fest at the Bruce Black Box Theatre.
The Plays in a Snap series finale, on Sunday, July 31, is Ramón Esquivel’s “¡O Cascadia!” For the play’s characters, discovering each other among the waters, forests, and mountains of the Pacific Northwest offers glimpses of the lives they yearn to live and the hope that together all things are possible. But are they? As expectations of culture, family, society, and religion threaten to pull them apart, four friends struggle to hold their fragile world together, even as the earth breaks apart.
Plays In A Snap! tickets are $15 at the door, and audience feedback is encouraged after each reading. Theater enthusiasts can catch every reading and still attend the other Fest productions of their choice in daily double features.
Tickets are available for all performances now at vashonrepertorytheatre.org.
