by kellie abrahamson
We on the First Coast are fortunate enough to have a great theater community. Each week there’s at least one new show gracing a stage somewhere in town and most of the time the audience is rewarded for their attention with poignant performances by some very talented local actors and actresses. Too few people are aware of just how terrific our local performers can be, but that’s another story for another time. Instead, we’re going to take a look at two people on the other side of the page- local playwrights Deborah Jordan and Ruth Coe Chambers. ABET (Atlantic Beach Experimental Theatre) will be presenting staged readings of original plays by both women in April.
If you’ve never been to a staged reading (also known as a “reader’s theater” performance), you’ll probably need some pre-show preparation. Instead of conventional performances complete with elaborate seta and costumes, staged readings are “theater of the imagination.”
“[Actors] play the characters but there’s no staging, there’s no movement or props or sets or anything like that,” explained Celia Frank, ABET’s Artistic Director. “A lot of times when a playwright is working on a script, many times in New York and other cities, they’ll have a staged reading just to get audience reactions.”
In these productions it’s the words on display, not the actors or the stage make-up. That said, this is the perfect arena for getting to know a writer’s work. It frees the performers and the audience from the physical limitations of traditional theater and allows everyone involved a chance to hear the beauty of the words without distraction. What better way to experience the work of an up-and-coming playwright?
The back-to-back weekends of reader’s theater begins with Deborah Jordan’s “The Calling.” The piece is a monologue play about a real life religious community made up of 62 sisters who live and minister in the Northwest. The stories told were penned from over 200 hours of taped interviews from the Sisters of St. Gertrude’s Monastery, a Roman Catholic community out of Cottonwood, Idaho, and include tales of how the monastery was founded in the late 1800s and why these “modern day ‘monks’” have chosen a life of prayer and service.
“Debbie Jordan is a friend of mine and I was aware of the script she was writing,” Franks said. “I knew that her sister is a member of the convent that this script is about and I was just real interested in it. I thought it sounded like an interesting thing to maybe generate some new audience; people that might not come to a regular production of ours might be interested in something like this.”
Jordan is a familiar player in our local performing arts community. A theater professor at Jacksonville University, Jordan has had a hand in most of the plays coming out of JU, including serving as director in their recent performance of “The Grapes of Wrath.” “The Calling” will be performed on Friday, April 18 at 8 pm and Sunday, April 20 at 2 pm. Jordan will be at the opening night reception on the 18th to meet with the audience and answer any questions you may have.
The following weekend, the 2007 First Coast Writers Festival playwriting contest winner Ruth Coe Chambers will present her play “She’s Wonderful.” The story centers on a few hours in the lives of three women- a daughter, her mother and a neighbor- who all have things in their pasts that directly affect their actions and feelings today. Through these women, Chambers shows we all have holes in our lives that we try to fill, but the most difficult part is realizing the holes are there.
“ABET had done a play by [Chambers] last season [the 2005 First Coast Writer’s Festival winner “Changing Places”], a reading also, and it went well. Then she won the award again for this one and I really liked this script so I just wanted to do it,” Frank said.
In addition to penning plays, Chambers is also a novelist. Her first book, The Chinaberry Album, got great reviews and she is currently working on getting its sequel in a bookstore near you. You can see the world premiere of “She’s Wonderful” on Saturday, April 26 at 8 pm and Sunday, April 27 at 2 pm. Like the previous weekend, Chambers will be on hand during the April 26th opening night reception to meet fans and theatergoers.
Most of the plays that go on in and around the Jacksonville area are adaptations of works by famed playwrights like Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams. While these writers have produced time-tested works of art, it’s nice to see our local scribes get their due as well.
See one or both of these reader’s theater productions in April at the Adele Grage Cultural Center at 716 Ocean Blvd in Atlantic Beach. The cost for each of these productions is $5. For more information on these and other shows put on by ABET, visit their website at abettheater.com or call (904) 249-7177.
Article Published in the April 2008 Issue of EU Jacksonville
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