Short New Play Festival
New York's Red Bull Theater Company
By: Aaron Krause - Jul 06, 2021
The New York-based professional Red Bull theater company will give audiences a chance to watch seven world premiere plays in one night. Specifically, the short pieces comprise Red Bull’s 11th Annual Short New Play Festival.
This online benefit will take place at 7:30 p.m. ET on Monday, July 12. But you don’t have to watch it live. That’s because a recording of the festival will be available until 7 p.m. ET on Friday, July 16.
While there is no set price for online admission, Red Bull is asking audiences to pay what they can.
“All of our current programs are free,” an announcement reads. “If you’re able, please consider making a donation with your registration to support our online activity and our return to in-person programming.”
To register, go to https://ci.ovationtix.com/2722/production/1062510?performanceId=10761398.
Red Bull is a professional company in New York City. It “brings rarely seen classic plays to dynamic new life for contemporary audiences,” according to its website, redbulltheater.com. “Our work unites a respect for tradition.”
The following are the plays that comprise this year’s festival.
- If This Be Not A Good Play Then The Devil Is In It, by Constance Congdon: Deep in a night of 1599, on the banks of the Thames, players from one theater (disassembled to escape abusive rent payments) wait for barges to carry their lumber across the river, where they will build another theater.
- Echo, by Rosslyn Cornejo: A twist on the Greek myth of Narcissus and Echo. What happens when you’re in love with someone who only loves themselves?
- George LaVigne’s The Wolf Tree: Just past the turn of the 17th century, Captain Pouch, a revolutionary leader of the Midland revolt in hiding, encounters a simple shepherdess beneath the Wolf Tree.
- Restoration Playhouse by David Lefkowitz: The artistic director and stage manager of a tiny New York theater face obstacles, post-pandemic.
- Abigail C. Onwunali’s Jewel: A modern-day short play written after the character Sidi from Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel,this play explores the complexities of what it means to chase after the “American Dream.”
- The Misanthrope Breaks His Quarantine, by Charlotte Rahn-Lee: The year is 2023. COVID is over, and everyone has left social isolation and moved on with their lives…everyone, that is, except Alceste.
- Lunar by Jose Rivera: On a cool summer night, five close teenage friends – two Latinos, two Blacks, and one white woman – get together in a rundown basketball court in Brooklyn to watch a total lunar eclipse.