The Contemporary American Theater Festival will stake its claim as one of the country’s most important new play festivals in 2020, with five world premieres (including one rolling world premiere) among its six offerings, including new work by Caridad Svich and Chisa Hutchinson.
The only play in the CATF’s summer festival with a history is Kevin Artigue’s Sheepdog, a two-hander about an African-American police officer who falls in love with her fellow police officer, a Caucasian — and then he shoots a Black man while on duty. “Sheepdog is both impressive and important as it thrusts the viewer into matters of his or her own conscience. It’s a strong dose of realism inspired by today’s headlines,” said Tom Titus of the Los Angeles Times.
Many playwrights base their stories on real-life events; Svitch has based Ushuaia Blue on real-life research — specifically, the research of University of Alabama at Birmingham marine biologist James B. McClintock, whose study of climate change in Antarctica has documented the acidification of the oceans near there. In Svitch’s play, two scientists, in love with their Antarctic research and with each other, find their lives disrupted by a tragedy which forces them to reexamine their lives.
Hutchinson, who showed a deft hand with science fiction in CATF’s A Wedding Gift, invokes the supernatural in Whitelisted. A woman moves into a brownstone and renovates it as part of the neighborhood’s gentrification. And then the weird stuff starts to happen.
Jacqueline Goldfinger’s Babel explores a different sort of supernatural. We are years into the future, and the people have elevated new eugenics principals into law. Motivated by some stupid choices people have made in the past, such as dealing with climate change (see Ushuaia Blues, above), a future society has mandated in-utero genetic testing. Parents whose fetuses are found defective can have the option of abortion, or of relegating their children to a heavily-regulated future where, the government judges, they can do no damage. Dani, who has voted for these changes, is about to have a child with her wife, Renee. And then they do the testing…
While Goldfinger explores a future dystopia, Terence Anthony will explore a dystopia within living memory in The House of the Negro Insane. Anthony’s play takes us to the Taft Hospital in 1935, a psychiatric facility reserved for “insane and idiotic Negroes” in which some of the inmates were simply homeless. Negro Insane tells us the story of a man who found peace with his woodworking, but who is suddenly challenged by a fierce fellow inmate who wants to escape. “The House of the Negro Insane is a story I need to tell, to uncover the history of how sanity and mental health have been weaponized to control Black folk,” Anthony has said on the Playwrights Foundation website.
Finally, playwright/engineer/cryptographer Victor Lewniewski’s The Fifth Domain takes us into the world of cyber warfare. (“The Fifth Domain” is a term commonly used to refer to cyber as a field of war, following land, sea, air and space). Troy has just been removed from his position at the National Security Agency when a new opportunity comes along. He eagerly takes it, and enjoys his work — but what about the unintended consequences? In an interview with Kenneth Jones, Lewniewski said that “I hope the audience comes away thinking about and discussing big ideas like: How do we go about holding our government accountable for the way they operate in the cyber world? How can we better understand the way our government interfaces with major corporations when it comes to security? Where are the lines of patriotism and service for government agencies vis-a-vis their commitments to the private sector?”
The Contemporary American Theater Festival runs from July 10 to August 2, 2020 in Shepherdstown, WV. “Rep Passes,” tickets to four (or more) plays, are available now by called 800-999-2283.. Single-show tickets go on sale starting April 13, 2020.
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