Summerfest Daily Report - Tuesday, August 7

By Jon Kaplan

From an artist's point of view, there's lots to be learned from participation in SummerWorks.

For established theatre writers, the festival offers an opportunity to develop a new script, to pull it in different directions and see how an original idea can expand. One of the best pieces in this year's festival, for instance, is Robin Fulford's Five Fingers, which began life in 1992 as quite a different piece called Swahili Godot. Rewritten and retitled Five Fingers, it first appeared last year as a two-act play, given an environmental staging in a house on Bathurst Street. In its current one-act incarnation the writing has sharpened and - given the necessity of its single-set staging - designer and artistic collaborator Wendy White has given her own shape to the material.

For artists who are just making an entry into the theatre community, SummerWorks is a chance to show their skills, not only to audiences but also to artistic directors, producers and others with whom they might collaborate in the future. The young feminist group Stranger Theatre makes a powerful showing with their first Toronto show, a take on the fairy tale East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon.

Or maybe a theatre artist wants to work on new skills. Matthew MacFadzean, known locally as an actor for his work in Shopping And Fucking, Pop Song, The End Of Dancing and two years at the Shaw Festival, has been a closet playwright for years. He's made a splashy entrance as writer with richardthesecond, a high-energy, techno-pop story of a raver who volunteers for a genetic experiment.

But wait. There's another opportunity for younger theatre people to get a leg up. This year SummerWorks artistic producer Franco Boni extends the work he's done at Buddies in Bad Times - both as director of Youth Initiatives and as former director of the Rhubarb! Festival - by offering a new festival component featuring the works of nascent writers. Pairing them with experienced directors, Boni gives a trio of new playwrights a public voice in the first Summer Youth Reading Series.

The series runs for three nights in the Artword Alternative space, a rehearsal hall in the back of Artword (75 First up (August 8) is Devon Willis's Stuffed For Dinner: Love, Taxidermy and Carpet Cleaning, a dark comedy about obsession, religion, family and a lonely woman's pursuit of the ultimate love. It's directed by Ruth Madoc-Jones, the festival's assistant artistic producer.

It's followed by Marina Sigareva's Le Cirque Desespere (August 9), directed by Patrick Conner. Described as a cross between Freaks and Red Dwarf, this piece about love, pain and hope is set "in the happiest place on earth, the circus." The concluding reading is Gorka Coria's Soccer Moms (August 10), in which three mothers look back wistfully on the forgotten dreams of their youth, dreams abandoned when the women opted to take socially acceptable paths. Cahoots Theatre boss Guillermo Verdecchia helms the evening.

The ensemble of performers for the reading series is a new crop of actors, people you've not likely seen on stage before. Check out the talents of Christine Buijs, Lindsey Clark, Tina France, Kaitlyn McLellan, James McFadden and Karim Lalani before they move on to larger stages.

All three pwyc readings begin at 7:30 pm.