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YTP at the Hunt
New York ties in YTP one-acts
By Heidi Masek hmasek@hippopress.com
In “Playwrights We Love,” the professional Yellow Taxi Productions brings three short plays by playwrights whose work they’ve produced before. Casey Preston and Suzanne Delle are back together on stage as a married couple who visit New York on the weekend before Thanksgiving to do some Christmas shopping in Helter Skelter. The wife catches her husband with someone else and confronts him in a restaurant. “It’s Neil LaBute, so things go badly,” Delle said.
Preston and Delle appeared together in Yellow Taxi Productions’ excellent May production of Burn This.
LaBute’s bash was the first play YTP ever performed — that was March of 2002. LaBute has been giving YTP small pieces the company has used for theater festival-type events. “This piece has never been done on the East Coast before,” Delle said.
“We’ve done holiday-type shows and non-holiday-type shows in December at the Hunt for quite a few years,” Delle said. It felt right to do this again, and celebrate playwrights, “which is our mission,” she said. Delle founded YTP.
Brian Dykstra’s (an HBO Def Poet, as well as playwright) writing is somewhat similar to LaBute’s, Delle said. Leah Belanger directs Gina Carballo, John Decareau and Arthur Barlas in Dykstra’s Service/Order.
Nashua playwright Lowell Williams said he wrote The Diner at one of Ernest Thompson’s (On Golden Pond) writers’ weekends. Participants have a discussion on a Friday night, spend the weekend working on a 10-minute play, and finish with a reading of it, he said.
The premise is that a basketball coach comes home as a refuge to see his family after 20 years, after an incident has occurred on the court. But he gets a surprise when he shows up.
The Diner was recently chosen for the 2010 Acme New Works Winter Festival in Massachusetts (www.acmetheater.com).
Along with teaching at Hesser College, Williams is currently working on the Negro Ensemble Company production of his play about Keene martyr Jonathan Daniels, Six Nights in the Black Belt, in New York City (www.sixnightsintheblackbelt.com). YTP premiered Six Nights.
“Playwrights We Love” runs Saturday, Dec. 12, at 8 p.m., and Sunday, Dec. 13, at 6 p.m., at the Hunt Building, 6 Main St. in Nashua. Tickets cost $15 at www.cityartsnashua.org.
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