New plays, new voices — on a brand new stage

The McCormack Family Theater is providing new inspiration for Brown’s playwrights, who will offer their best work on alternating festival weekends Feb. 8 through May 12.

by Mary Jo Curtis

When the annual New Plays Festival opens this weekend, it will mark the debut of the first of seven original plays — in an exciting new theater.

The plays, all original works written by MFA candidates in the University’s playwriting program, will be presented in the McCormack Family Theater, designed and constructed as part of the renovation of the English Department building at 70 Brown St. The two-tiered area is "a state-of-the-art facility imagined by Elizabethan-minded architects," according to Ruth Margraff, visiting associate professor of playwriting and artistic director of the festival.

"It’s a very flexible space, and each of the directors will decide how the theater will be set up," whether it be with a traditional stage or as a theater-in-the-round, she said. "The Elizabethan balcony can also be used, inspired as extra audience space or performance space."

While in Elizabethan times the balcony was used for seating important and influential patrons — who were there to be seen as much as to see the play, that may not be the case here at Brown.

"Being an audience member will be an amazing experience," said festival producer Tonietta Moffett. "Depending on the staging of the two tiers, there may be an audience looking down on a show, or the audience may be looking up to a performance — and that’s something they’re certainly not used to.

"It’s an amazing space, very different from anything I’ve seen before."

The McCormack Family Theater is providing new inspiration for Brown’s playwrights, who will offer their best work on alternating festival weekends Feb. 8 through May 12.

"We can see the difference already just in having classes there," said Margraff. "We can just get up and stage things right then and there, and that’s so important to theater. It will change the way people write.… The quality of what can be imagined is excited by being in three dimensions instead of just on page."

Having formerly staged the New Plays Festival in the small and limiting quarters of Lucas Lab, the playwriting students are particularly excited about this year’s event, Margraff added. For the first time, each play is scheduled for its own three-day run, something that wasn’t possible in past years.

The unique new setting matches that of the program and students, according to Moffett and Margraff.

"Brown’s playwrights are known worldwide for their vision of theater as both literature and art," said Margraff. "Brown has a legacy of playwrights of distinction.… Many who’ve come through the program have had a unique vision, and they’ve been able to hone that here instead of conforming. Here playwriting is approached as art as much as poetry, fiction and visual arts are — and that’s not the case elsewhere."

The annual festival, which dates to 1985, is "a wonderful opportunity for playwrights to present their work before an audience," noted Moffett. She hopes to build the festival’s following "to bring even more people into the shows" and introduce them to upcoming playwrights.

"We all love Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams, but there’s still undiscovered talent out there that needs to be heard," she said. "A new voice — that’s what [the festival] offers."

"That’s really what the Brown program is known for; the unique voices of its playwrights have been a quiet legacy — but this will provide resources for the voices who’ve always been there," agreed Margraff. "It’s really an exciting to time to be a playwright at Brown."