Three Nights of Off-North-Broadway Theater in Sleepy Hollow

The works of three, on-the-rise playwrights are being showcased at the the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center.

The first feature will take place this Sunday, June 5, at 4:30 p.m.

The plays were the winners, out of over seventy-five submissions, of the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center New Play Reading Series for 2011.  The lines will be read without action, and stage directions will be spoken aloud as well. 

“The plays are in development and are open to audience reaction," Frank Juliano, Executive Director of the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center, said. "It helps the playwright, actors, and director to see what needs to be tweaked.  It’s a wonderful process for playwrights.”

This Sunday, June 5, the performance is of Water Hyacinth by Jeremy J. Kamps.  Kamps’ play is set on a beach in East Africa, on the shore of Lake Victoria.  A centuries-old fishing village is on one side of the beach, and a newly built resort hotel is on the other. 

Two characters come from the different worlds:  David, a fifteen year-old former child soldier who can’t go back to his village, and Isabelle, a twenty-something American businesswoman staying at the resort.  Her brother is suffering the effects of his time serving in Iraq.  According to Kamps, the play aims to "examine the space between.”

Kamps, who grew up in Wisconsin and is now living in New York, has just finished the first of two years in the NYU Dramatic Writing Program.  He has also lived in Latin America, and in East Africa three separate times, the latter for a total of more than two years.

"I was immersed in a storytelling family and very early on my mother or a sister of mine would transcribe my narration into a story,”  he said.

Water Hyacinth’s characters, though not based on specific people, “all hold pieces of the dreams, fears, triumphs and vulnerabilities of people who have enriched my own life.” 

David, who had been abducted into being a child soldier, has to resort to begging, hustling and stealing to survive.  He just wants things back the way they were before the abduction, but his village won’t take him back. 

“My hope is that David...can be humanized and understood in a way that statistics, dramatized 'give now' commercials, and even documentaries fall short of,” Kamps said.

The second play, Nectar, by Katie Baldwin Eng, will be read at the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center on September 25.  The characters in Eng’s play, which she describes as “an absurd and comic summit of the beguiled and heartbroken,” are gathered around an elderly, dying “great man,” a famous writer. 

"Nectar begins in a naturalistic mode but quickly evolves into a world of magical realism, where metaphor goes beyond the spoken word and become tangible fact," Eng said. "The visual metaphors are a vital and central part of the storytelling.”

Veronique, “an impossibly glamorous French film actress,” in her fifties, Audrey, a “Mid-Western gal with a hidden spark, very pregnant,” and Nastya, in her late teens, “stunningly pretty, of mysterious origins, dressed like the girl in mourning from a Chekhov play,” are all past or present lovers of Max, the charismatic writer.

Audrey, her affair twenty years in the past, is now a housewife.  She has approached Veronique on the street, recognizing her from her films, and feeling a bond because of their affairs with Max. 

At the hospital, where they have gone “after hours, when his family isn’t there,” we find out that Nastya, the teenager, has problems of her own.  She has to be placed in a planter, because she has begun growing roots.  If she isn’t sprayed with water every once in a while she will die. 

Eng, who has lived in Europe, Israel, and Russia, has studied Russian language, fiction and playwriting, clowning and physical theater, musical theater, and trapeze artistry, now lives in New York City and teaches playwriting at the Pratt Institute.

Among her past journalism experiences are a feature for the New York Times Magazine and articles for the English-language Russian newspaper now called The St. Petersburg Times. 

“I am beginning to understand the recurring themes in my writing:  the innate human quest for a numinous state of being, whether that is found in love, religion, art, family, sex, etc.,” she said.

Save December 4 for Return, a play by Erin Browne, the third winner.  All of Browne’s characters are in their late twenties and early thirties except Rosalie, thirteen, the product of a teenage love affair between Julie and Richard.  Julie is now married to Leo.  For the funeral of Richard’s brother, they are gathered together, along with Richard’s wife Hannah, old friend Antonia, and Sonny, Antonia’s girlfriend.  And there’s a ghost who looks a lot like Rosalie. 

As we get to know the characters, we find out about past violence that still affects them.

Browne said that this play, “returns to my roots of writing about race, class, and sexuality in small California towns…Return is about getting out and growing up, but still being tethered to the past.” 

The play has been called a murder mystery, but she thinks it’s “more about the complicated way we build family and how we deal with massive mistakes.”  It was inspired, she said, by “a long stint at home in California” for the purpose of helping her mother through cancer treatments, “and being able to see my wonderful best friends from high school on a day to day basis, and how much I love them and consider them family.  Although I can assure you that I didn’t make some of the teenage mistakes my characters have made.”

Browne, who has a theater/journalism BFA from NYU and a playwriting MFA from Columbia, now primarily works in television documentaries and lives in Brooklyn.  Another of her plays, Narrator 1, has just finished a three-week run at the Lion Theater at Theatre Row, produced by Iron Jaw Company.  It was a Time Out: NY “Best Bet.”  Read a review online  and read about its development.  Also see the Flux Theatre Ensemble Blogspot,  and Browne’s blog,  Short Plays for Free . 

The entries were selected by judges Craig Lucas, award-winning playwright, and Josh Hecht, Drama Desk Award-winning director, and curators Jane Dubin, Tony Award-winning producer, and Howard Meyer, Artistic Founding Director of the Axial Theatre. In addition to the reading, the authors were each awarded $1,000.  See the submission rules on the Hudson Valley Writers Center website .

The price for being the first to experience and participate in discussing these new works?  Just $5 per person. 

The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center is located at 300 Riverside Drive, in the cozy, renovated former Philipse Manor Metro North Train Station.  There will be a brief Q & A and reception to follow.  For more information see www.writerscenter.org, or call (914) 332-5953.