GVTalk The Online Community of the Greenbrier Valley Theatre

After an overwhelming success in Greenbrier Valley Theater’s inaugural short play competition and festival in 2009. Greenbrier Valley Theatre, the State Professional Theatre of West Virginia, is pleased to announce that they are now accepting submissions for the 2nd Annual GVT’s “New Voices” Short Play Festival.

The best plays will be given a public performance at GVT’s Festival of Community Plays in January/February 2010. Plays should be 10-15 (longer plays will be disqualified) minutes in length and include between two and five characters. Plays should be appropriate for all ages and should be written to be played by adult actors. Due to the nature of the festival and production restrictions, plays with single unit sets will be given priority. The deadline for receipt of entries is December 15, 2009. A panel of professional theatre artists will judge the pieces and winners will be chosen in early December.

Who: Submissions are welcome from anyone but local playwrights in the Greenbrier Valley are especially encouraged to participate.

What: There is no official theme for the plays. Plays should be suitable for all ages, with minimal offensive material. Adult actors (15 and up) will be playing the parts during the festival, so characters should be geared towards that age range. Musicals may be considered depending on available production staff.

When: Entries must be received by GVT no later than Dec 15. The public festival performance dates will be announced at a later date.

How: Please email submissions to Kurtis Donnelly, kurtis@gvtheatre.org (prefered) or mail them to PO Box 494, Lewisburg, WV 24901.

Other important information:

By submitting a play to the New Voices Festival you will be granting GVT the rights to perform your play at the festival in January/February 2010, if chosen.

Please do not submit an original copy of your play, as copies will not be returned.

The number of winners selected to be performed will vary on the length of the selected shows. Anywhere from 4-7 may be chosen for performance.

If an inadequate number of entries are received, GVT reserves the right to not select any play for performance.

For complete details visit www.gvtheatre.org or contact GVT Education Director, Kurtis Donnelly, 645-3838 or kurtis@gvtheatre.org.

GVT has been selected as one of 100 theatres in all fifty states and 5 countries to participate in the premiere of a new 80 minute epilogue to the highly acclaimed play The Laramie Project. The reading will take place at all 100 theatres simulatenously on October 12, 2009. Check out this article in the New York Times:

The creators of “The Laramie Project,” the acclaimed play about the 1998 murder of a 21-year-old gay man, Matthew Shepard, are finishing work on an 80-minute epilogue to the original work that will be given its debut simultaneously at dozens of theaters across the United States on Oct. 12, the 11th anniversary of Mr. Shepard’s death.

Moisés Kaufman, the playwright and director who, with his Tectonic Theater Project company, wrote and produced the first “Laramie Project,” said the epilogue would explore the impact of the Shepard killing on the residents of Laramie, Wyo., where it occurred. The dialogue will be drawn from interviews with dozens of people there, some of whom were involved in the crime, including Aaron McKinney, who was convicted of murdering Mr. Shepard and who gave an interview to the Tectonic artists.

“We wanted to see what occurs in a small town in the long run when it’s been subject to such a devastating event,” Mr. Kaufman said in an interview. “What has been the long-lasting effect of this watershed moment? Is the fallout of these events positive, negative or perhaps a better question, is it measurable in those terms?”

In holding multiple premieres of the play on the same night, Mr. Kaufman said he was taking a page from the Federal Theater Project, the New Deal program that often opened plays in a multitude of cities on the same night.

Tectonic’s goal is to recruit 100 regional theaters, universities and other arts organizations to hold staged readings of the work, which is called “The Laramie Project — 10 Years Later.” More than 40 theaters have committed to the readings, including Arena Stage in Washington, Seattle Repertory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theater and the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles. The Tectonic company will hold its performance in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center.

“We’re also taking advantage of contemporary technology so that at the New York performance we’ll be connected to the other productions across the nation via the Internet,” Mr. Kaufman said. “We’re giving each production a video recorder so that they can document the event, and we’ll be answering questions live from across the country,” after the performances on Oct. 12, a Monday.

Mr. Kaufman and his epilogue co-writers — Stephen Belber, Leigh Fondakowski, Andy Paris and Greg Pierotti — returned to Laramie last fall to reinterview several townspeople who originally gave accounts to Tectonic in 1998 about Mr. Shepard, Mr. McKinney and the events preceding and following the murder. Those accounts were threaded together verbatim to create “The Laramie Project,” which has had several thousand productions since it opened Off Broadway in 2000.

In writing the new work Mr. Kaufman and his colleagues said they would reflect the range of views currently held by Laramie residents and others about whether Mr. Shepard’s murder was a hate crime by two homophobic men (Mr. McKinney and his accomplice, Russell Henderson) or the result of a botched attempt by the two men to rob Mr. Shepard.

Some Laramie residents, in defending their community during the interviews last fall, argued that they had come to see the motives and circumstances leading to the murder as more complicated than a hate crime. But others there insisted that Mr. McKinney and Mr. Henderson had been driven by their personal disgust toward Mr. Shepard, who was well known as an openly gay man in their town.

Mr. Kaufman declined to reveal details of the interview with Mr. McKinney, who, like Mr. Henderson, is now serving two consecutive life sentences. The two men lured Mr. Shepard from a Laramie bar on the night of Oct. 6, 1998; Mr. Shepard was ultimately tied to a fence, pistol-whipped and left to die.

“As always, what we found defied expectations,” Mr. Kaufman said. “It’s a fallacy to try to define Laramie the way one would describe an individual. There are 27,000 people in Laramie. There are at least 27,000 Laramies.”

“But one of the things that was very clear from the start is the question of how does one measure change,” he continued. “Is it in the number of public monuments that have been erected? Is it in the number of laws that have been passed? Is it in the number of people whose views have been changed?”

Natalie Bohnet, executive director of UApresents, which will stage the reading at a 2,500-seat theater at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, said the campus is expected to sponsor other events in conjunction with the performance in hopes of turning that Columbus Day weekend in October into “a major learning experience.”

“We’ll have some professors of constitutional law holding a forum, and students on campus are expected to hold their own events, so we can look more deeply at hate crimes in America and issues of justice,” she said.

It is unclear if the new work will be performed on that October night in Laramie, but it will be produced as close as Denver, about two hours away by car, at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts. Stephen Seifert, executive director of the Newman Center, at the University of Denver, said he chose to hold a reading in part because of the theater’s proximity to Laramie. (Mr. Shepard died at a hospital in Fort Collins, Colo., several days after the attack.)

“I was a history major in college, and my focus was the history of the American frontier,” Mr. Seifert said. “No matter what differences of opinions exist about Matthew Shepard, his murder is now a part of the West’s history, of American history.”

More to come!

Watching Bridegroom of Blowing Rock from backstage (I’m on the running crew) is a real treat! It’s so good I’m even blogging about it on my limited free time. But for those of you that have the great opportunity to watch the show as a member of the audience, you should really be excited! The cast is great and the story is really touching, but still has lighter moments. The set took a long time to paint so everyone appreciate the awesome dry-brushing compliments of moi And this is only the second place this show has ever been performed, so it’s a pretty neat thing to get to witness the “birthing” of a show and I would highly recommend it.

-Rachel Kenaston

Hey Guys,
Check out The Greenbrier Ghost Blog. The is run by journalist and Greenbrier Ghost cast member Christian Giggenbach. It has some really neat stuff on it.

Hey Everyone,
As usual, it has been a little while since I last graced the hallowed pages of GVTalk. It’s Kurtis here (Education Director, Trout Shue in The Greenbrier Ghost, and Pastor Burns in The Bridegroom of Blowing Rock)

I just wanted to write about how mince it feels that both of the first half summer rep shows are now both up and are, for the most part, alternating nights for the next couple of Wednesdays-Saturdays. If you haven’t come out to see these two shows, don’t miss your chance! They are both wonderful.

I have to go get ready for our “brush-up” rehearsal for the Ghost tonight. Basically, a brush-up is a chance for everyone to get back together (since it has been almost 2 weeks since we last did the show) and run through the show to make sure we are on top of our game for the show tommorrow. Maybe I will take soem pics during the brush up tonight. Stay tuned.

Hi, I’m Meredith, the Development Associate at GVT. If you’ve ever visited theatre during office hours,  I’m the one sitting in the private lobby office “nook” – glued to the computer.

So, right now EVERYONE has money on the brain – how much they are getting back in taxes, how much they lost on the stock market, how much their house is now worth, how much the government is spending. And you can’t escape the negative vibes.

GVT can’t either, unfortunately. We are taking a hit just like everyone else.

My simple plea is to remember GVT this year.

Come to our Rummage Sale (3/28-4/4)!

Buy our new Create-Your-Own Pass!

Donate to our Annual Campaign!

Become a sponsor!

We are blessed and so grateful for our wonderful, supportive community. We know times are tough, especially in our county, but for those of you are able to give or show financial support, please remember the unparallelled programming and productions our theatre brings to this region.

Hey Everyone,

  I am going to start putting up a few rehearsal photos for the 5 new plays we are producing in the Nw Voices Original Short Play Festival. 

Here are a couple from a comedy called “…to a flame” by Eric Fritzius

Enjoy!

Alright we started this blog a few months ago and we never really gave it a good start. It is time to make this thing a bustling metropolis of theatre related chatter!  If you are reading this leave a note or comment.  Ask a question.  We would love to add you to our blog roll.  Also we are looking for contributors to our blog.  If you love GVT and would like to contribute…LET US KNOW!

On other news the New Voices Festival of Short Plays will open at the end of January (The 30th to be exact).  Chech out www.GVTheatre.org for all the details.  Pictures to come soon!