Sketches

The following are brief descriptions of each play.

 

Last Night at the Owl Bar
by Mark Scharf
directed by Randy Dalmas
 

Last Night at the Owl Bar employs direct audience address, actors playing multiple characters and even stand-up comedy to tell the story of Jonathan Caldwell, a theatre director who is having trouble directing his own life. In an effort to gain control, Jonathan takes “side trips” in his mind to Afghanistan, Mayberry RFD, Paris and Alaska, relying on the audience’s imagination to create each location via projected images and sound and light cues. The play begins and ends in the Owl Bar inside the old Belvedere Hotel in Baltimore where Jonathan meets his good friend Rebecca, a recently widowed actress of a “certain age,” once a month for dinner. Rebecca and Jonathan realize there is no statute of limitations on grief and have dinner and talk about their losses without having to censor themselves. Rebecca balances her pain with the knowledge that her deceased husband was her be’shert – her irreplaceable soul mate -- while Jonathan longs to find his. Jonathan lives with his friend Max, who was good enough to offer Jonathan a place to stay Jonathan’s wife asked for a separation. Max also suffers from “romantic trauma” having recently broken up with Annie, with whom he is obsessed to the point of saving old answering machine messages he can play to listen to the sound of her voice. When Annie comes onto Jonathan, he embraces the opportunity believing his pain gives him carte blanche to pursue happiness, heedless of the consequences.

August 3 - August 19, 2007
Thurs - Sat at 8, Sun at 3

Chesapeake Arts Center
 

Rudy Doo
by George Purefoy Tilson
directed by Jayme Kilburn
 

This is a story about how three misfits became a ménage à trios. Alison is a beautiful young heiress who runs away from her abusive Manhattan family and into the arms of handsome Rudy, an obsessive brain-injured former hockey player from a trailer park. Realizing that she has traded one sick situation for another, Alison takes off again, on a cross-country bus. She lands in the middle of Nowhereville (formerly Bumfuck) Iowa where she becomes caretaker to a brilliant recluse named Vic, who has severe cerebral palsy. Vic has recently escaped the institution after killing off his cruel nurse with a jelly donut. Not to be deterred and hot on Alison’s trail, Rudy finds himself doing time as a dancer in a gay strip joint, lover to an old lady, and dumpster diver. Four other actors comprise the Greek Chorus -- and play the 15 other characters in the lives of our three protagonists.

August 17 - September 2, 2007
Fri and Sat at 8 and Sun at 2

The Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre
410-752-1225
817 St. Paul Street 

Touch of Spring
by Ben Logan
directed by Gordon Parksby

A drama about a couple who had been married for almost thirty years. Through overlapping flashbacks, they tell about their life together: the first time they met, the love found, lost and found again, the good and bad times, and the pain and humor. They speak of the search for the courage to go on after a tragedy. When the husband dies, the wife cannot handle the death of her love of a lifetime and soon afterward has a breakdown. In the two years since, she has been in a mental hospital. In her confused state, she imagines that he comes and talks to her. Talks that will pull her away from her illness.

July 5 - July 22 , 2007
Thurs - Sat at 8 pm, Sun at 7 pm

Fell’s Point Corner Theatre
410-276-7837
251 S. Ann St. 

Save Me
by Stefanie Zadravec
directed by Ian Belknap

When Caroline, a food stylist and frustrated artist, is diagnosed with a stage-four glioblastoma multiforme, she finds herself unable to reach out to her self-centered friends, especially her best friend Martin, a self-proclaimed sex addict who has a thing for men in tights. She does, however, call her estranged sister, Beth, who is on the first greyhound bus to New York with Bible in tow.

Also in tow, is Beth’s teenage daughter, Rachel who hasn’t uttered a kind word to her mother in months. After a botched surgery attempt to remove the tumor, Beth enacts a faith healing on Caroline, while Martin engages in a power struggle over the declining health and care of his friend. However, it is Rachel’s touch that suddenly has Caroline leaping off the sofa and across the living room at the end of Act One.

As Act Two opens, we see a very different Caroline- manic, affectionate, and painting furiously for the first time in 17 years.

Beth, satisfied that her work is done, begins packing so she can return home and settle some marital turmoil. Martin, worried about Caroline, tries to convince her to see a doctor, and entreats Beth to admit that her sister isn’t healed. Rachel refuses to return to Virginia if it means living with her stepfather. When Caroline suddenly collapses in the hall, all illusions of healing are erased.

Caroline dies in the hospital, and Beth confronts the limits of her faith in God. Rachel reveals to her mother the extent of the abuse she endures from her step father, and Beth sees for the first time, who it is she has come to the city to save. Save Me is ripe with humor, and demonstrates how life’s greatest gifts come in odd packages – a bright red wig, a postcard from the edge, a superhero sex – addict, or a bouquet of flowers from a woman without a nose.

August 19 - September 2, 2007
Thurs - Sat at 8 pm, Sun at 7 pm

Fell’s Point Corner Theatre
410-276-7837
251 S. Ann St. 

CYA
by Kimberley Lynne
directed by Carlos Del Valle

Mary and Jane are administrative assistants in an American investment-banking firm that is being sold to a German company. Mary’s long time boss Jerry Braxton refuses to work for the Germans, based on his British father’s experience in the London Blitz. When Mary learns that Jerry is leaving and not taking her with him, she tries to extort him with her knowledge of his various SEC violations. By the end of the play, Mary resolves to organize the investment banking administrative assistants into a union and fight the powerful banker who once protected her. Although Mary assumes that Jane will leave banking as well, Jane decides to stay, seduced by money and power.

As the play tracks Mary’s growth and Jane’s seduction, it concentrates on the lack of empowerment of American workers and the socialism and communism inherent inside the structure of capitalism. Within the strict economic and social striations in American business, the servant/master relationship thrives.
 

August 3 - August 25, 2007
Fri - Sat at 8, Sun at 4

Mobtown Theatre at Meadow Mill
410-467-3057
3600 Clipper Mill Rd., #114
 

Perpendicular
by Joe Dennison
directed by Susan McCarty

Donna dreams of going to Paris but her 6 year old child and her just as 6 year old husband Buck stand in her way. Suddenly she decides to throw caution and her French dictionary to the wind and goes off on her vision quest to France leaving hubby, son and just as perplexed brother Hoyt in the wake. The people she meets and the life Buck leads with little Buck while she's gone lead them eventually back to each other.

Jul 26 - August 5, 2007
Fri and Sat at 8 and Sun at 7

Vagabond Players
410-563-9135
806 S. Broadway

The Blessed Mothers of War
by Ty DeMartino
directed by Barry Feinstein

The play focuses on two mothers -- one American, one Arab -- searching for their sons during a time of war. Zaira wanders the streets of the Middle East, asking if anyone has seen her son, Raja. Rosie, the owner of a small bookshop in Appalachia, waits for correspondence from her only son, Brian, who is stationed overseas guarding prisoners of war. When Brian receives an early discharge due to a mysterious injury, he returns home to a hero’s welcome. However, Brian’s internal struggle about what really happened in combat pushes him to the edge and away from his mother. As Rosie reaches out to her troubled son, Zaira finally finds Raja. The lives of these two women parallel one another and show the heart-breaking effects of war on all mothers -- no matter on which continent or side of the enemy line they reside. The structure of “The Blessed Mothers of War” mirrors Greek tragedy with a chorus of townspeople offering commentary on the action on stage and on war in general. The play shows how war can tear apart a world, a community and a mother and child.
 

July 6 - July 22, 2007
Fri - Sat at 8 pm, Sun at 7 pm

Theatrical Mining Company
     performing at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland

Almost Vermilion
by Sonja Kinzer
directed by Kathy McCrory

Set in the 1950’s in a rural WV farming community, Almost Vermilion is the story about the oppressive life of a creative young boy named Henry and his inventive mother Dorothy, who tirelessly attempts to balance out the tension & chaos ever- erupting by way of her overbearing husband, Clyde. Henry, who is about to turn 16, is an emerging art prodigy...a talent lovingly nurtured by his mother and desperately despised by his father who finds his art “sissified” and downright useless, to say the least. Meanwhile, Paul Edwards the town doc and lifelong friend of Dorothy continues to encourage Henry with his artwork, all the while carrying a secret of his own.

As Clyde's ill-mannered nephews settle in for a long, uncomfortable visit, both Henry and Dorothy struggle to come to terms with their very clouded futures. Called away to a family emergency, Dorothy begs Clyde to let her son come with her but is instead forced to leave him behind. When her worst nightmare is realized, Dorothy's struggle challenges her ability to trust in God, to trust in anything. Soon, it isn't possible to “keep the peace” any longer, and she is forced to face the truth about her years of disappointment and the lifetime she spent wondering “what could have been.” Isolation, oppression and ignorance are the opponents to the struggle for freedom, artistic expression, and evolution of self for both Henry and his mother. It is an account of a sometimes ugly journey that boldly spits in the face of all that is supposed to transpire within the protective walls of hearth and home.
 

August 3 - August 19, 2007
Fri - Sat at 8 pm, Sun at 7 pm

Theatrical Mining Company
     performing at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland

Barbie: A Doll Her
by Terry Kenney
directed by Miriam Bazensky

The play opens with two Barbies on a shelf in a vintage toy store. 1962 Barbie is a classic, made from the original 1958 mold; 1988 Barbie has bendable knees and a new, modern attitude. The dolls work through their physical differences, and what it means to be a Barbie.  The play then moves into a flashback to close the first act. Barbie (1962) was a very happy doll, solidly bonded with her person, Lexi. She had a great boyfriend in Ken; they were always busy, going to a dance or a party with their close friends Alan and Midge. But Lexi began abusing her dolls. Now they are in bad shape, held together mostly by duct tape, glue, and dust bunnies.

Act 2 opens with Barbie’s arrival in doll Limbo after she was sold by the toy store. In Limbo dolls are given a choice: go back to the world of persons to bond with a new person; or wait in Limbo until the person they last bonded with needs them again. Barbie, horrified by her memories of abuse, had chosen to find a new person, more than once, but has failed to bond. Despite her overwhelming fear of Lexi, Barbie chooses to stay in Limbo, to be in a safe place, with her friends.  When the time comes to move to the place of imagination, where dolls and persons are equals, Barbie hesitates. But, through the magical connection dolls have with the person, she sees who and what Lexi has become in the thirty years since Lexi stopped caring about her. To be reunited with Lexi, Barbie must identify with Lexi again, and forgive her.
 

July 26 - August 12, 2007
Thurs - Sat at 8 pm, Sun at 7 pm

Uncommon Voices
     performing at Fells Point Corner Theatre
410-276-7837
251 S. Ann St.