Duende’s Playwrights Collective grew out of workshops in playwriting offered by Duende’s Rick Foster under the auspices of Sonora’s Stage 3 Theatre in 2006. Foster found some of the plays submitted very promising and continued to work with the writers on their revisions. By the time the workshop was repeated in 2007, Foster realized that some of these plays would soon need the kind of work that can only be advanced when the playwright sees them performed, off-book, by good actors, and before an audience. In short they would need a workshop production, something a step short of a world premiere.
The missions and resources of local theaters were not keyed to creating such workshop productions, so Foster proposed to his playwrights that they take their fate into their own hands. Duende’s board agreed to provide a non-profit umbrella, advice, and dramaturgical support while the budding playwrights were to exploit their knowledge of the community’s theatrical resources to cast, direct, design, and raise a little money to produce the exciting, home-grown work before a hungry public.
First up in this irregular series is C.N. Taylor’s Unforgettable, the highly topical story of an eighty-eight year old man, in good health, who feels it’s time for his life to end. He has been through the slow hell of metastasized cancer with his late wife and wants to get off the bus before the inevitable happens to him. He will simply stop eating. He asks his daughter to take him in for the days during which hunger will run its course. And she says…. Well, that would be telling. But so begins the tale of devotion and conflict as two lifetimes of differences are revisited.
Unforgettable can be seen at Murphys’ Black Bart Theatre on the weekends of August 15th and 21st. Details on the poster.
The workshop will be repeated in October 2008. Anyone interested in participating should contact Jill Figler on 209-753-7081.