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Popular
One-Act Festival Opens Tonight
The
popular Festival of One-Act Plays at Smith College presents
short works by nationally and internationally renowned authors
and talented, emerging young playwrights. Featured this year
are three new plays by MFA playwriting candidates who have
already received significant recognition for their existing
body of work: Scarlet P by Kendra Arimoto, directed by Jeffrey
Stingerstein; Board of Review by Darren Harned, directed
by Roger Gordon; and Detour by Roger Gordon, directed by
Hillary Haft Bucs.
The festival takes place Thursday
through Saturday, Feb. 25-27, and March 3-6, at 8 p.m. each
night in Hallie Flanagan Studio Theatre, Mendenhall Center.
Tickets are $3 for Smith students, $8 for public, and $5
for non-Smith students and seniors. Wednesday, March 3, is
Dollar Night for all students. Seating is limited; reserve
tickets early at 413-585-ARTS (2787) or boxoffice@smith.edu.
Scenes from
the One-Act Festival:
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Arimoto’s
Scarlet P is about an Iraq War veteran who reunites with
her brother-in-law in the aftermath of her sister’s
death. Together they search for consolation and meaning while
tiptoeing around landmines of memory. Kendra Arimoto graduated
from Stanford University (BA in Drama, ‘05) where she won
the Sudler Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts, and
the Edoga Prize for Creative Arts Work Involving Social Issues.
Her 35-plus production history includes appearances in One4All:
SF Asian American Theatre Festival, San Francisco Fringe
Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Pacific Repertory Theatre,
Stanford Shakespeare Society, SF No Nude Men and numerous
roles for commercial/print/industrial/film. Next up for Arimoto
is No Child Left: The Living Obituary, commissioned by Thin
Man Theatre Company, and a stage reading of an excerpt from
Shikata Ga Naie (It Can’t be Helped) in the WORD! Festival
at Mt. Holyoke College. She spent this past August at the
Berkshire Fringe developing her full-length play No
Traveller Returns as an EarlyStages playwright-in-residence. Arimoto
is a member of Dramatists Guild of America.
The director
for Scarlet P, Jeffrey Stingerstein received his AS in Theatre
from Niagara County Community College in 1998 and his BFA
in Dramatic Writing from Purchase College in 2006. He was
an apprentice at Touchstone Theatre in Bethlehem, PA, for
the 2007-2008 season. He has had previous productions at
the college level, including Afterwords at NCCC in 2001,
Something Lost (Somewhere, Somehow,
Along The Way) at Purchase
College in 2006, and Pauly’s Wager at the Signature Theatre
in New York. His short play, Kool Aid, was part of a staged
reading at Smith in October 2009. In January, 2010, Stingerstein
produced Smith’s first 24-hour play festival.
Harned's monologue is
about a corporate worker who must defend his personal and
professional record before a panel of his superiors. Harned
is a graduate of Hampshire College. His play Ephemera was
accepted into the 2007 Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short
Play Festival and was performed as part of Smith College’s
Festival of One-Act Plays in 2008. He has also been the recipient
of the Five College Denis Johnson Playwriting Prize.
Gordon's Detour follows
a young couple away on their first vacation in five years
of marriage, where a long-buried secret from the husband’s
past is revealed that jeopardizes the marriage. Roger Gordon
is a second-year MFA playwriting student at Smith. He has
also studied theatre at Bennington College and at Boston
University’s School of Theatre Arts. His numerous
playwriting teachers have included Len Berkman, Marcus Gardley,
Sherry Kramer, Bob Glaudini, and Catherine Filloux, among
others. He has interned with TheatreWorks, Young Playwrights
Inc., and Theatre Without Borders. In November he presented
a paper at the 2009 Horton Foote American Playwrights Festival
at Baylor University.
The director of Detour, Hillary
Haft Bucs, is assistant professor of theatre at Western New
England College and has been an adjunct lecturer in Smith’s theatre
department. At Western New England she has directed Proof,
Psycho Beach Party, Prelude
to a Kiss, and Cinderella Waltz.
Her children’s play, It’s Good to be an Ant, had its premiere
at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood in 2000,
and featured members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Her
play toured for three years throughout Los Angeles County.
To celebrate the play’s ten-year anniversary, It’s Good
to be an Ant will be performed at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture
Book Art with students from Western New England College.
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