Each year OPP presents a New Play Festival. Plays performed in the Festival are written by members. These plays have been read and critiqued at least twice during our regular Monday night meetings and then voted into the event by a majority of members who have participated in the critiques.
Plays are staged-read (script-in-hand) and incorporate minimal blocking, props, set pieces and lighting effects. Playwrights arrange for directors and together they select actors during auditions. After no more than five rehearsals (fifteen hours) and one tech rehearsal, the plays are presented once to the Tucson community at large.
The primary purpose of the Festival is to acquire feedback regarding the relative merits of our plays from a wider audience. This is the reason for the talk-back sessions after each drama has been performed. These sessions are conducted just as we do our in-house critiques. The playwright selects a facilitator who then leads the audience in a discussion of the work they experienced. In this way, audiences have the opportunity to be involved in the development of exciting new dramas for the stage, and playwrights are the beneficiaries of their insightful comments.
Plays are staged-read (script-in-hand) and incorporate minimal blocking, props, set pieces and lighting effects. Playwrights arrange for directors and together they select actors during auditions. After no more than five rehearsals (fifteen hours) and one tech rehearsal, the plays are presented once to the Tucson community at large.
The primary purpose of the Festival is to acquire feedback regarding the relative merits of our plays from a wider audience. This is the reason for the talk-back sessions after each drama has been performed. These sessions are conducted just as we do our in-house critiques. The playwright selects a facilitator who then leads the audience in a discussion of the work they experienced. In this way, audiences have the opportunity to be involved in the development of exciting new dramas for the stage, and playwrights are the beneficiaries of their insightful comments.
Play in a Day
A marathon event where plays are literally written overnight.
For the past several years, Old Pueblo Playwrights has produced a Play-in-a-Day event. Each time it has been enthusiastically supported by both artists and audiences. While we continue to ‘tinker’ with specific elements of the event, Play-in-a-Day (PAID) – generally unfolds as follows:
- On opening night, usually Friday, the audience is treated to a series of short plays written by OPP members. These plays are stage-read and played out with some props and set pieces. Local actors rehearse the plays previous to their productions.
- After these ‘warm-up’ acts, OPP members introduce a number of props. By audience applause, three are selected. These three must be in every play to be written overnight.
- Following this, the audience is asked to select a line that must be written into every play as well – again by applause. (These lines were submitted by individual audience members at intermission.)
- Playwrights are then introduced and paired by a random drawing of names from the proverbial hat.
- Finally, the audience leaves and the paired playwrights are excused to write their play. They have until early the next morning.
- Once scripts are in hand, directors are assigned a script. An hour later, actors arrive and ‘auditions’ occur.
- During the day the plays are rehearsed. Saturday evening the audience returns to see what has been wrought.
- A cash prize is given to the play the audience, by applause, judges the best-of-show. A second prize has been provided in memoriam. The drama winning this award has been determined by a panel made up of leaders in the Tucson arts community
