The “Title Wave@Bay Street: The New Works Series is returning live on stage in Sag Harbor starting on the week end of September 10th and continuing the following weekend September 17th. The program is produced by Bay Street Theater and Sag Harbor Center for the Arts.
Title Wave is a unique opportunity to witness new “live” play readings in a theater with professional actors doing the readings. Bay Street Theater Artistic Director Scott Schwartz is very enthusiastic about the return of “Title Wave,” after its suspension during the lost covid summer of 2020 when all live art suffered on the east end and across the country.
Mr. Schwartz in an interview to celebrate the return of “The Title Wave,” said, “The basic structure of the series is a little bit different from what we have done in the past. This is our seventh New Works festival. In the past, each show has had one reading, each weekend there were four different readings one time. This year we are trying something a little new to give both the writers and the audience a chance to go a little deeper. This year it is four plays that will get two readings and there will be no musicals. It starts Sag Harbor Harbor Fest Weekend (September 10th). The shows will be socially distanced, with everyone wearing a mask along with having proof of vaccination to gain admittance to the theater.”
Mr. Schwartz said he was excited that, “The new works program will that start Friday night, opening with a new play called, ‘Between Time,’ a pandemic love story between two African Americans who meet in Baltimore across an air shaft. The playwright Dane Figueroa Edidi who according to Mr. Schwartz “… is based in Washington D.C. and is an African American Trans writer. This play is emotional, it’s funny, a real picture of how love can be born in the most unusual circumstances.”
Then Saturday night the play will be ‘Tent Revival,” by Majkin Holmquist. Mr. Schwartz said this is a play about a minister revival back in the 1950’s. He said, “It’s fiery, it’s passionate, and it’s a play about faith and what you believe. It is perhaps a story of someone who may have performed a miracle. It’s about how faith meets commercialism”
All plays will have their first shows in the evening and the second show the next day and there will be perhaps some rewrites due to the notes from the audience the night before and the talk after the evening productions.
The following Friday evening September 17, “Princess Clara of Loisaida,” by Matthew Barbot will be presented. Mr. Schwartz said, “It’s a story about a Latinx family and a passion for video games. Specifically, it’s the story of a little girl who loves a particular online video game so much and discovers that maybe she actually comes from the fantasy world of video games. This play is full of fantasy, it’s full of life and does have a child actor in it.”
The final show of the Title Wave-New Works series is, “The Right Here, Right Now,” by Peter Macklin. Again Mr. Schwartz is excited about this play. He said, “This play also deals with faith and in some ways maybe we (Bay Street) are having a meditational faith theme with this festival. It is about a very progressive Jewish lawyer in New York City who is asked to defend a Catholic woman who has done a terrible thing because she thinks God told her to. It causes the lawyer to question his own beliefs and his own faith and relationships with his brother and wife. This play is full of humanity, it’s actually kind of funny, and it really feels like it’s about all of lives right here, right now.”
Lastly Scott Schwartz mentioned, “I am very excited the addition of Hope Villanueva to our team. Hope is our new Literary Manager and has been working for us about six months. She has helped us broaden our reach to a very exciting group of writers. She connections in different communities. We are proud this year’s festival is extremely diverse; one of our writers is Latinx, one of our writers is an African American Trans-woman, we have a Jewish man, and then we have the talented Majkin Holmquist. So, the audiences are going to get to see four very different productions.”
For tickets and more information visit baystreet.org or call the box office at 631 725 9500.
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