Taking The Stage In The Shadow Of A Tempest

It’s Tuesday afternoon, a hurricane has just raked its watery claws through the region and festival manager Tom Aposporos is in a coffee joint that sounds like a dance club, trying to be heard over the beat as he expounds upon the magic of Theatre Odyssey’s upcoming One-Act Play Festival.

And by “upcoming,” he means ‘tech rehearsal is in a few hours, dress the next day and all four plays in competition better be ready by Thursday—hurricane or no—because the curtain is going up regardless.’

“It’s going to be stunning,” he says blithely.

Welcome to Theatre Odyssey.

Running this weekend in the Jane B. Cook Theatre at The Asolo Rep, Theatre Odyssey’s One-Act Play Festival is the latest in the company’s annual celebrations of short-form theater, bringing four original productions to the stage each night over the span of two hours—each in competition for the $1000 cash prize.

To qualify for competition, the rules are simple. Productions must be between 20 and 35 minutes in length, and require no more than a handful of actors and minimal set requirements. “Exceptions can be made for work that is exceptional,” Aposporos says, but, in general, the idea is to keep the productions low on spectacle and rich in content. “We’re really looking for exemplary acting and well-written words,” he says.

And although this is only the fourth festival in five years, submissions already come in from around the country whenever the call goes out, with more than 100 scripts arriving for Theatre Odyssey’s readers less than two weeks after this year’s festival announcement. Amateurs and Obie Award-winners—all are welcome and both have been produced in the past.

But the Obie Award-winner doesn’t always win. That’s part of the excitement.

“And this year is not one to miss,” says Aposporos.

The 2022 festival line-up seems at once disparate but also of a unity. It’s about character. It’s about family. It’s about inner lives and confrontation. It’s about acting and the written word performed.

And one of them is about pornography.

Well, it has pornography in it.

No, not like that.

Without pornography, there’s James Ferguson’s “Deep Freeze,” about a megawatt movie star suffering from a debilitating illness and struggling with advice from both his doctor and his agent. Directed by Sarasota-based playwright/director Katherine Michelle Tanner, the production stars Fulvio Della Volta, alongside Debbie Davidson and Lee Gundersheimer.

The concept seems to share a strange affinity with playwright Craig Bailey’s entry, “The Mockingbird’s Nest,” about an elderly shut-in growing increasingly distrustful of the twin influences in her life—her daughter and her caregiver. Starring Betty Robinson and Nellie O’Brien, this production is directed by writer/actress Ann Morrison, whose solo show “Ann Morrison: Merrily From Center Stage” recently generated Off Broadway buzz and a profile in Variety.

The theme of familial distrust carries over to Meg Hanna-Tominaga’s “Shell Game,” which brings the audience into the room as a mother forces a reunion with her estranged daughter on Halloween night. A good idea in real life? Who knows, but it’s sure to be fantastic drama and what’s an audience but a bunch of voyeurs in nicer clothes. (Or clothes at all.) This one stars Ann Gundersheimer, Lilian Moore and Haley Hines, all under the direction of none other than Jeffery Kin, former artistic director for The Players Theatre.

I can hear you now. “Where’s the porn?”

It’s not porn. It’s a festival wild card by playwright Philip J. Kaplan, whose “What Are You Looking At?” explores the difference between fiction and reality, online and offline, with a character study of a virtual porn star with an anger problem and an identity crisis. Starring Harris Elizabeth King, Scott Ehrenpreis, Anuj K. Naidu and Michael DeMaio, the writer/actor Blake Walton of SaraSolo directs.

And if that weren’t enough for a two-hour ticket price, you get a musical interlude between each production, with Theatre Odyssey’s Preston Boyd busting out the 12-string guitar, the mandolin and even a banjo to provide some entertainment during set changes that become their own little mini-shows themselves. “It looks like a ballet up there,” Aposporos says, and I can't be the only one excited at the idea of a banjo ballet.

But a big question looms over the festival with a heavy silence like a giant storm just passed through.

Namely that a giant storm just passed through. Will audiences come out?

“Artistically, I am expecting this to be stunning,”Aposporos reiterates, nicely bringing my article full circle. But financially, he’s fully expecting that Theatre Odyssey might take a hit. People are exhausted. Some are still without power. Some are mourning. A trip to the theater may not be top of their list at the moment.

“But I wanted to go ahead,” Aposporos says, “because I felt we had an obligation.”

Some to the general audience, who may be looking for an escape, an answer or perhaps just some air conditioning and good company for a couple hours. But he’s also thinking of the actors and directors, the casts and the crews—the people to whom he gave his word.

“They’ve done the work,” he says. “And they should see the fruits of their labor onstage.”

And in the aftermath of a hurricane, maybe that’s the best place for artists to be.

The Fourth Annual One-Act Play Festival continues tonight through Sunday.
Tickets available here: https://www.theatreodyssey.org/tickets/

All photos by Tom Aposporos.