Lab Theater’s 24 Hour Playwriting Project

On this page you will find articles about Laboratory Theater of Florida’s 24-Hour Playwriting Project.

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Looking back on this year’s 24-Hour Playwriting project and judges (11-21-18)

Lab Theater’s 2018 24-Hour Playwriting Project is in the books, but it’s worth a minute or two to reflect back on the one-act plays produced by Laura Lorusso, Darlyne Franklin, Dave Matthew Chesebro and Candice Sanzari and the judges who evaluated each production, Nykkie Rizley, Lauren Redeker Miller and NBC2’s Amanda Skrzypchak.

All four one-act plays were imaginatively conceived, well-written and extremely funny and while the Nykkie Rizley, Lauren Redeker Miller and Amanda Skrzypchak gave their coveted Critics’ Choice Award to Sanzari, their scores reflected a numerical tie for second among the other three plays and playwrights.

Lorusso structured her farce around a character with Tourette’s Syndrome, a disorder that involves repetitive movements (such as blinking and shoulder movements), unwanted sounds or tics, and blurting out offensive words or profanity that cannot be easily controlled. Lorusso’s wrinkle on this riff was to have her character blurt out a succession of celebrity names, in alphabetical order, sometimes pantless much to the vexation of the other residents of the condominium in which he lived with his sister. Suzanne Davies directed a cast consisting of the celeb-spewing brother, Chloe Tsai (Anna in the Tropics, Heathers the Musical) as his sister and Jerry Olin as their estranged dad.

Darlyne Franklin was influenced by one of the costumes she chose on Friday night, a gilded smock that Artistic Director Annette Trossbach had made for Lab’s production of Amadeus. Her play revolved around a young woman so disenchanted with her male roommate that she’d taken to slipping antifreeze in his beverage of choice. Pandemonium ensues when she confesses what’s she done to a friend just moments before her roomie collapses on the floor, prompting a feverish attempt to revive the poor man and avoid a lifelong bid in the local pen for premeditated murder. Steven Coe directed this black comedy, with Sage Meyers (Body & Sold, An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf) channeling her inner Lizzie Borden, Todd Lyman (It’s Only a Play) lying on the floor and Gerrie Benzing (Play On!, Miss Witherspoon) taking on the role of horrified confidante.

Dave Matthew Chesebro took Audience Choice honors, and you will find information about his play, “Sunny with a Chance of Social Anxiety,” director Maddy Hayes, and her stand-out cast consisting of Misha Ritter, Isaac Osin and the incomparable Cantrella Canady.

As mentioned, Candice Sanzari received the Critics’ Choice award for her play, “Thanksgiving is for Nutters,” directed by Heather McLemore Johnson and featuring Kayleigh O’Connell, Stacy Stauffer and Justin Larsche in the cast. Read below for more on this production.

Nykkie Rizley is a familiar face at the judging table during 24-Hour Playwriting Projects. Nykkie is a founding member and Vice President of the Laboratory Theater of Florida. She has previously directed Hand to God, Veronica’s Room, Lab’s cumfuddled Shakespearean classic Twelfth Night, The House of Yes, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and BUG. In addition to judging 24-Hour Playwriting projects for The Lab, Nykkie teaches theater classes at Lab Theater (including Acting I and II as well as Acting for Seniors). Nykkie has a degree in Theater Prop Design from Grand Valley State University in Michigan (she’s a Laker) trained in both Chicago and New York.

Lauren Redeker Miller is both an actor and director. Her directorial credits include Lauren Gunderson’s I & You and she stage managed Sirens for Director Anne Dodd. She has also gained experience in direction at Lab Theater, having directed one of the plays in the 24-Hour Playwriting Project three years ago. On the acting side, Lab audiences will remember Lauren as Kit Kat Girl Texas in Brenda Kensler’s blockbuster production of Cabaret in 2015. Other acting credits include playing Mazeppa in Gypsy, Sister Mary Hubert in Nunsense and Henrietta in All Shook Up, as well as appearance in Les Miserables, Little Shop of Horrors, Smokey Joe’s Café and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast for The Naples Players. A Lehigh University grad, Lauren was also a member of the University Choir and the a capella group, The Overtones, with whom she toured Russia, Germany, Thailand and China.

Amanda Skrzypchak is an NBC2 anchor on both the 11:00 a.m. and noon broadcasts. She joined the station as reporter in June of 2016 and became the traffic anchor on NBC2 News Today a year later. Before coming to Fort Myers, Amanda spent a year at the NBC affiliate KFYR-TV in Bismarck, North Dakota as a morning reporter, education reporter, noon anchor and producer. A graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Amanda was very active at her college TV station, UWW-TV. She spent four years sideline reporting, hosting pre-game, half-time and post-game shows for Warhawk sports. As well as anchoring and producing an hour-long morning show called “Wake Up Whitewater” and holding the position of student director of news. In her free time, Amanda likes to cook, read, play basketball, do yoga, pamper her dog and cat, and try new things – such as judging the entries in Lab’s 24-Hour Playwriting Project.

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Candice Sanzari’s ‘Thanksgiving is for Nutters’ is Critics’ Choice winner (11-18-18)

Last night, playwright Candice Sanzari won the Critics’ Choice Award at Lab Theater’s 24-Hour Playwriting project. Her one-act play, “Thanksgiving is for Nutters,” bristled with biting banter by and between a caustic, condescending landlady, a prickly pill-popping pixie and a cross-dresser prone to whole body paroxysms each time he hears a grammatical mistake such as “irregardless” or “these ones” (substitute your own). Heather McLemore Johnson directed the play, which featured Justin Larsche, Kaleigh O’Connell and Stacy Stauffer.

“Thanksgiving is for Nutters” opened with Larsche dancing around his condominium unit dressed in an ankle length green—and-black plaid dress while breaking into a spirited rendition of “I Feel Pretty” from Westside Story. The choice of song and opening scene was serendipitous as 24-Hour Playwriting Project Coordinator Char Loomis also incorporated the song into the one-act play with which she won the Critic’s Choice Award four years earlier.

But for as good as Larsche and Stacy Stauffer were in Sanzari’s nutty comedy, it was Kaleigh O’Connell who stole the show. She’s poised to impress and astonish Lab Audiences during the holiday season, when she teams up with Audience Choice winner Dave Chesebro and “Thanksgiving if for Nutters” Director Heather McLemore Johnson in Every Christmas Story Ever Told (And Then Some).

Sanzari joins an elite group of Past Critics’ Choice winners that includes Carmen Crussard (2017), Char Loomis (2016 & 2014), Ben Lemoureux (2015) and Laura Lorusso (2013).

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Dave Chesebro’s ‘Sunny with a Chance of Social Anxiety’ is Audience Choice (11-18-18)

Last night, playwright Dave Chesebro won the coveted Audience Choice Award at Lab Theater’s 24-Hour Playwriting project. His one-act play, “Sunny with a Chance of Social Anxiety,” was filled with funny one-liners, hilarious situational comedy and a sunny, upbeat character who suffered from social anxiety disorder. Maddy Hayes directed the play, which starred Isaac Osin (Anna in the Tropics), Cantrella Canady (A Raisin in the Sun) and socially anxious Misha Ritter.

“When I got to the theater at 10:00 a.m. yesterday and was told I’d be directing Dave’s script, I was pumped,” said Maddy Hayes on Facebook. “When I got my actors at 1:00 and the list included Cantrella, I was thrilled. The incredible writing and heartfelt acting in this show made my job as director easy. It’s because of them that we WON AUDIENCE’S CHOICE!! Huge heartfelt thanks to everybody involved, especially my team.”

Past Audience Choice winners include John Repa (2016), Ben Lamoureux (2015), Les Abromovitz (2014) and this year’s 24-Hour Playwriting Project Coordinator Char Loomis (2012 & 2013).

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This year’s playwrights talk about their handicaps for this year’s one-act plays (11-17-18)

The premise underlying Lab Theater’s 24-Hour Playwriting Project is fairly straightforward. Take four playwrights, lock them in the theater overnight, and challenge them to each create a 17-20 minute one-act play that will be performed on stage the very next evening. The participating playwrights must each use the same set and incorporate certain sounds and lines into their scripts. They also get to choose in rotation (with the order being determined by lot) a number of props and costumes. And there’s one more feature that differentiates each play from the others – a handicap that’s unique to each playwright.

One of this year’s playwrights is Candice Sanzari, a talented young writer whose genres include prose, poetry and scriptwriting. For her handicap, she must have one of the character experience a physical spastic episode triggered by a grammatical error, which is hilarious once you discover that Candice’s Bachelor Degree from FAU is in English. “I’m going to have a lot of fun with that,” laughs Candice, who has been taking a plethora of playwriting classes from Louise Wigglesworth throughout the year. But she expects to draw from a virtual archive of life experiences to craft the characters in her one-act play. It’s just that they probably won’t be her own.

“I work as a receptionist at an acupuncture clinic, so I tend to overhear a lot of conversations,” Candice explains. “That really helps me keep my dialogue sounding natural.” It’s not that Sanzari is a busybody. At FAU, her instructor actually assigned his class to go out and eavesdrop on people. “Like that’s explicitly what he said. ‘Go somewhere on campus and spy on people.’ It comes in handy when you’re trying to write realistic dialogue.”

Dave Chesebro is also participating in this year’s playwriting project. He’s starring in Lab’s next production, a holiday tale in which he, He is being challenged to include a character with social anxiety with a sunny disposition. “There’s a lot of things I can do with that,” says Dave, giving a few examples that border on the macabre.

Every playwright has their own personal reasons for subjecting themselves to the pressure of producing an entertaining tome between 9:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. the ensuing morning that extends beyond mere masochism and self-flagellation. In Chesebro’s case, he’s using the playwriting challenge to overcome some writer’s block he’s been experiencing over the past year as he’s struggled to complete a play he’s been working on for a little more than a year. Ah, yes, catharsis can be a powerful laxative.

Laura Lorusso is the third playwright participating in this year’s 24-Hour Playwriting Project. Laura must include in her one-act play a character who has Tourette’s Syndrome, a disorder that involves repetitive movements (like blinking or shoulder shrugging), unwanted sounds (tics) or blurting out offensive words or profanity that can’t be easily controlled. “In this case, the character has to repeat a word four times,” Laura amplifies. “One of my personal heroes is The Tourettes Guy from YouTube, which is hysterical,” she adds, referring to Danny, a man suffering from Tourettes Syndrome, who is filmed during his day-to-day life doing everyday activities such as going to the supermarket or mowing the lawn, all whilst swearing constantly.

Although this is the third year in which she’s participating in the Lab’s playwriting project, Laura maintains it’s hardly an advantage as every year, Artistic Director Annette Trossbach and Coordinator Char Loomis “come up with something different, a little more challenging, and this is by far the hardest year.” But in a good way. And besides, it’s more about producing an entertaining product that garners some laughs than about winning either the judge’s or Audience Choice Awards.

The final playwright in this year’s project is Darlyne Franklin, wrote the very popular and highly-produced interactive play Joey & Maria’s Comedy Italian Wedding which, ironically, Laura Lorusso toured in several years ago. Darlyne’s handicap is that one of her characters is deaf in one ear.

While Franklin is no stranger to playwriting, her genre is interactive, which is dramatically different than what she’ll be writing for this year’s 24-Hour Playwriting Project. “It’s a lot different, but it will be a break which makes it a lot more fun for me,” Darlyne says with a broad smile. Whatever she writes over night will be comedic and her characters will likely be Italian or Bostonian. Darlyne’s recent work includes The Biscotti Sisters (a campy, corny show in which two Italian sisters battle it out in a cookie bake-off) and Wicked Real Housewives of Boston, which opened in the Boston area in 2010. Based on a mock reality television show, Housewives is an entirely new concept in interactive theater – it’s a show within a show.

The plays will be performed on the Lab Theater stage beginning at 8:00 p.m. tonight.

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Coordinator Char Loomis thrilled by this year’s 24-Hour Playwriting Project (11-15-18)

The premise is simple – take four playwrights, lock them the theater overnight to create a show that will be performed on stage the very next evening. They are given a series of items, costumes, sounds and lines that must be included, all before learning the overarching theme of the play. Following a sleepless night of writing, they meet their directors after breakfast for some edits and then their scripts are whisked away to be printed. At lunch they meet the actors who will be performing their work. A few hours later, the curtain rises. The winner is determined by both the audience and a panel of professional judges.

The project is coordinated again this year by past winner Char Loomis who says, “we are extremely thrilled for this year’s 24-Hour Playwriting Project. It is always exciting to see what the writers come up with from a simple, creative concept (insert evil laugh here). I thought to myself – ‘damn I wish I was writing one this year.’ Everyone is really going to enjoy it.”

Listed as one of Naples Daily News Must-Do Bucket List events, this production sells out every year.

Join Lab Theater for a night of zany hilarity on Saturday, November 17 at 8:00 p.m. Tickets are available online at http://bit.ly/2pwUF6h or by calling 239.218.0481.

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Meet 24-Hour Playwriting Project participant Laura Lorusso (11-14-18)

Lab Theater’s 24-Hour Playwriting Project returns November 17. This year, four playwrights are participating in the overnight playwriting challenge: Candice Sanzari, Darlyne Franklin, David Matthew Chesebro and Laura Lorusso.

Lorusso has been active in the local theater community for the past fifteen years, and has long aspired to be an accomplished playwright. She appears to have achieved that milestone with June & Jason’s Survival Guide to Divorce, whose world premiere opened in the Sugden Community Theatre’s Tobye Theatre on October 24. Sitting in the audience and hearing how viewers laughed and reacted to her work filled Lorusso with a mix of awe and pride. “As a writer, it’s the best thing in the world,” she’s said.

Her journey into the realm of playwriting started with Afterlife of the Rich and Famous, a dark comedy that was produced by Let’s Put on a Show at Golden Gate Community Center in the Fall of 2013. That same year, Laura won Lab Theater’s 24-Hour Playwriting Challenge with a one-act, 12-minute vignette titled “The Hall: Last Sunday” that sparkled with snappy dialogue, rib-splitting one-liners and a little song-and-dance number that brought down the house.

Her reward?

The following season, The Lab produced another of Laura’s plays, Scrooge TV: A Modern Christmas Carol, a spoof of the Charles Dickens classic that starred Dave Yudowitz (An Act of God) and Kendra Price.

Sometime after writing Scrooge TV, Laura began work on June & Jason’s Survival Guide, but after writing – and loving – the play’s first six scenes, she set the project aside. And that’s where it would have stayed but for the intervention of TNP’s Jessica Walck. At Walck’s urging, The Naples Players collaborated with The Lab to conduct a staged reading of the developmental work a year ago. Rife with rib-splitting jokes and surprising situational comedy, the play delivers the same kind of laughs as ‘90s-era sitcoms. In fact, it’s been described as Friends meets Will & Grace.

Laura has also seen the world of theater from behind the footlights. She has starred with the Naples Players in several shows (including Sherlock Holmes, Enchanted April and Lion in Winter) and toured with a local comedy show, Joey and Maria’s Comedy Italian Wedding (written by fellow 24-Hour Playwriting Project participant Darlyne Franklin). As The Naples Players’ special effects makeup artist, Laura’s the one who brings to life the macabre in shows like The Rocky Horror Show and Say Anything. She has also competed on Global Beauty Master, a national styling competition and television reality show.

Join Laura for this year’s 24-Hour Playwriting Project as she takes the next step in her sojourn as an accomplished playwright.

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Meet 24-Hour Playwriting Project participant Dave Matthew Chesebro (11-14-18)

Lab Theater’s 24-Hour Playwriting Project returns November 17. This year, four playwrights are participating in the overnight playwriting challenge: Laura Lorusso, Candice Sanzari, Darlyne Franklin and David Matthew Chesebro.

Lab Theater audiences know Chesebro as an actor, but he is also an aspiring writer. He was one of the playwrights who worked on The Rauschenberg Project Play (in which he also played a number of characters). Dave also participated in the 2016 Lab Theater 24-Hour Playwriting Project.

Dave was last on the boards at the Lab in the It’s Only a Play, in which he synchronously played the part of playwright Peter Ausin. Other acting credits include The Musical Comedy Murders of the 1940s and the one-act farcical tragicomedy An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf. Dave has also played Mr. Mushnik in Little House of Horrors and has worked on a number of other productions in set construction and props management.

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Meet 24-Hour Playwriting Project participant Darlyne Franklin (11-14-18)

Lab Theater’s 24-Hour Playwriting Project returns November 17. This year, four playwrights are participating in the overnight playwriting challenge: Laura Lorusso, Dave Matthew Chesebro, Candice Sanzari and Darlyne Franklin.

Darlyne Franklin was born and raised in East Boston. She came to visit Naples 14 years ago – after being a snowbird, she decided to stay and become a resident.

In March of 1992, she founded Darlyne Franklin Productions, an entertainment production company focusing on the creation, development and production of live, interactive performances.

She was one of the early pioneers of this method of theater, writing and producing Joey & Maria’s Comedy Italian Wedding later that year. This show has enjoyed a tremendously successful run ever since, being in continuous production for 20 years in a number of venues across the country as well as Canada, Australia, Ireland and The United Kingdom.

Since then, Franklin has created a number of additional interactive shows, including The Wake of Matty O’Malley, Wicked Real Housewives of the Mob and The Soprano’s Last Supper. The latter was performed in Las Vegas venues for more than ten years and was featured in a question on the TV game show Jeopardy.

Darlyne’s recent work includes The Biscotti Sisters (a campy, corny show in which two Italian sisters battle it out in a cookie bake-off) and Wicked Real Housewives of Boston, which opened in the Boston area in 2010. Based on a mock reality television show, Housewives is an entirely new concept in interactive theater – it’s a show within a show.

Franklin is mentioned in Webster’s online Dictionary under “dinner theater.”

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Meet 24-Hour Playwriting Project participant Candice Sanzari (11-14-18)

Lab Theater’s 24-Hour Playwriting Project returns November 17. This year, four playwrights are participating in the overnight playwriting challenge: Laura Lorusso, Dave Matthew Chesebro, Darlyne Franklin and Candice Sanzari.

Candice Sanzari is a talented young writer whose genres include prose, poetry, and scripts. While her passion for constructing stories places her mostly behind the curtain, she sometimes ventures out onto the stage. For example, she has been an actor in two previous 24 Hour Playwriting Projects, along with some staged readings.

But Candice also has some experience on the writing side of play festivals, having produced both a monologue and a one-act play for the FAU Theatre Lab New Play Festival three years ago. The monologue featured a single mother begging a police officer following a traffic violation to let her off with a warning as she’s just scraping by with her many jobs to feed and shelter her child, who suffers from terrible night terrors. The play, titled Dead Weight, depicted two friends bickering over the murder of their neighbor, who had previously had minor altercations with them. While the male freaks out over what his friend has done, she morbidly plans to hide the body by cooking it in a casserole to feed to their other neighbors.

Sanzari found the experience as rewarding as it was exhilarating. “It filled my heart with joy to hear the audience,” said Sanzari at the time. “It was nerve-racking but also really amazing just seeing something that you pour so much of your heart and soul into and seeing people bring it to life, and seeing how people react to it. It’s pretty, almost surreal, because you’re like, ‘I wrote this.’”

Sanzari honed her writing skills as an English major at Florida Atlantic University, but earned an MA in Sarcasm at Real Life U.

Disguised as an acupuncture receptionist by day, Candice is constantly concocting stories about unsung characters, while also throwing herself into Krav Maga lessons and finding new reasons to fall in love with Hugh Dancy. In her spare time, she enjoys baking dark chocolate skulls and crafting literary Hannibal-inspired pieces. Ultimately, she hopes to cultivate a career in film and television as a steady writer and perhaps even director.

But until then, she distracts herself by looking for new opportunities to challenge herself and grow her writing skills. Lab’s 24-Hour Playwriting Project is just the latest variation on that recurring theme.

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Lab’s popular 24-Hour Playwriting Challenge is November 17 (11-05-18)

The 24-hour Playwriting Project returns to Lab Theater at 8:00 p.m. on November 17. It’s the culmination of 1,440 minutes of highly-caffeinated fun-filled jeopardy as four playwrights spend the night in the theater producing typically-hilarious, always distinctive 15-minute one-act plays. After breakfast, a table read, and very little time for tweaks, the scripts go to the copy center. When they come back, the directors assigned to each playwright get the scripts and a cast of volunteer actors who are ready, willing and eager to learn and rehearse their lines in the seven or so hours remaining before the curtain goes up and the plays are performed before a live audience. You read that correctly. The director and actors actually have less time to stage the plays, block the action and memorize their lines than the playwrights had to write the scripts! And they didn’t have much time to begin with.

It’s easy to understand why this one-night-only event is so popular. And if you have any intention of checking it out for yourself, you better get your tickets now because the show is already nearly sold out!

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Spotlight on 24-Hour Challenge playwright Laura Lorusso (12-01-17)

Lab Theater’s Sixth Annual 24-Hour Playwriting Challenge takes place Friday and Saturday, December 15 & 16. Four local playwrights of varying experience are taking part in the challenge. Laura Lorusso is one of them.

Lorusso has been active in the local theater community for the past fourteen years. She has starred with the Naples Players in several shows and toured with a local comedy show, Joey and Maria’s Comedy Italian Wedding.

It’s only natural that Laura take the Lab’s 24-Hour challenge. It’s her espoused goal to become a well-received playwright. She has already taken a number of steps in that direction. Lab Theater audiences will recall Scrooge TV: A Modern Christmas Carol, a spoof of the Charles Dickens classic starring Kendra Price and Dave Yudowitz (who is presently appearing in An Act of God) that The Lab produced in 2014. Lorusso also wrote Afterlife of the Rich and Famous, a dark comedy that was produced by Let’s Put on a Show at Golden Gate Community Center three seasons ago.

Laura continues to hone her playwriting skills. She has a play titled Divorce, Neighbors and Zombies under development. Already two years in the making, The Lab (in conjunction with The Naples Players ‘ ETC program) just hosted a staged reading of the play, which is a fast-paced, quick-witted situational comedy in the tradition of Will and Grace meets The Walking Dead. (Including zombies in a plotline was no stretch for Lorusso. Last Halloween, she gave a tutorial on how DIY party-goers could do themselves up as zombies and deceased zombie bite victims for the Naples Daily News. As The Naples Players’ special effects makeup artist, Laura’s the one who brings to life the macabre in shows like last year’s production of The Rocky Horror Show. She has also competed on Global Beauty Master, a national styling competition and television reality show.)

Laura is no stranger to the 24-Hour Playwriting Project. Although she’s taken a 3-year hiatus from the Challenge of recent, she snagged the Judge’s Choice in 2013 with her one-act, 12-minute vignette titled “The Hall: Last Sunday,” a story that sparkled with snappy dialogue, rib-splitting one-liners and a little song-and-dance number that brought down the house.

Performances start at 8:00 p.m. on December 16; doors open at 7:30.

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Spotlight on 24-Hour Challenge newcomer Sandra Dixon (12-01-17)

The Sixth Annual Lab Theater 24-Hour Playwriting Challenge takes place on Friday and Saturday, December 15 & 16. This year, four local talents will be showcasing their playwriting talent. Sandra Dixon is among them.

Sandra Dixon is new to playwriting and is a current member of the playwriting class at The Laboratory Theater of Florida. She has written plays and skits for her church and has appeared in several productions since moving to Cape Coral five years ago from the Chicago suburbs. Sandra most recently appeared in Sordid Lives and Body & Sold at the Lab Theater. Sandra has also performed in shows produced by the Cape’s Cultural Park Theatre, including The Fantastiks, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Music Man and Elvis Has Left the Building. Prior to relocating to the Cape, Dixon appeared in productions of The Women and Little Shop of Horrors.

Sandra has been an occupational therapist for 30 years.

Dixon is a brave soul. Like the other competitors, she will have a scant ten hours or so to craft a 12-15 minute one-act play that will be performed on Saturday evening, beginning at 8:00 p.m. Don’t miss this highly popular event. Doors open at 7:30. Space is limited. Reserve your tickets in advance. 

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Spotlight on 24-Hour Challenge playwright John Repa (12-01-17)

John Repa is an actor, comedian, playwright and more recently, an author of a zombie apocalypse novel titled Blood Creek Eulogy (available on Kindle), which is told from the viewpoint of the zombies!

Many Southwest Florida residents and visitors have seen him perform at The Lab and, among other venues, Florida Rep, Theatre Conspiracy and on the Seminole Gulf Railway Murder Mystery Dinner Train. He has also performed in Chicago and Seattle. Last season, he was in two lab productions, The Last Night of Ballyhoo and Gore Vidal’s The Best Man. Before that, he was Sir Toby Belch for Lab Theater in last Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

As a playwright, John has written a two-man show called Biblically Speaking. As a member of the Theatre Conspiracy Playwriting Group, he penned a full-length play in 2014 called Harker’s Journal, a take-off on Bram Stoker’s Dracula in which Harker’s wife, Mina, must consider the possibility that her husband has gone mad after she receives and reads the journal he wrote during his recent trip to Transylvania. John wrote his first script in grade school when he found out that a group book report could be done as a staged scene – but his group had read Jack London’s White Fang. He went on from there to study playwriting at SIU at Carbondale and Columbia College Chicago, where he graduated in 1990.

Last year, John not only participated in his first 24-Hour Playwriting Challenge, he won the coveted Audience Choice award for a comedic vignette about the existential crisis faced by a Latino man who suddenly discovers in mid-life that the father he’s always idolized and emulated is gay. “People find it necessary to redefine their own self-image when a parent, sibling, child or former spouse suddenly reveals themselves to be gay, lesbian or transgender, and that can be traumatic,” noted Repa afterwards.

Because John started out as stage crew member and scenic designer, he has a very practical approach to staging. Having worked extensively as an actor, he has a strong sense of what an actor can do onstage to captivate an audience. He seeks to combine thoughtful theater with a quirky sense of humor that provides heartfelt laughs during a performance and something deeper to think about later.

While playwriting experience and credentials are all well and good, Repa and his fellow challenge-takers will have a scant ten hours or so to craft a 12-15 minute one-act play that will be performed on Saturday evening, beginning at 8:00 p.m. Don’t miss this highly popular event. Doors open at 7:30. Space is limited. Reserve your tickets in advance.

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Spotlight on 24-Hour playwright Carmen Crussard (12-01-17)

The Sixth Annual Lab Theater 24-Hour Playwriting Challenge takes place on Friday and Saturday, December 15 & 16. This year, four local talents will be showcasing their playwriting skills. Among them is Carmen Crussard.

Carmen is a playwright project vet. She participated in Years 1 and 2, winning the Judge’s Choice Award in the inaugural Playwriting Challenge. Since then, she’s gone on to foster area actors both as the Youth Director at the Alliance for the Arts and as a director at The Lab on such successful productions as this summer’s dark comedy hit, The Smell of the Kill starring Tera Nicole Miller, Jessica Walck and Lucy Sundby. Lab Theater audiences will also remember her other directorial accomplishments, which include Play On!, Scrooge TV: A Modern Christmas Carol and The Second Book of Ruth. Scrooge TV: A Modern Christmas Carol is an interesting line in Crussard’s resume as it was written by fellow 24-Hour Playwriting Challenge participant Laura Lorusso.

With Smell of the Kill, in particular, Crussard demonstrated more than just (just?) the ability to formulate and express a unique take or slant on the script (i.e. vision). The play demonstrated a panache for pacing and handling the transitions between and during scenes. But while bringing out the best in adult actors may indeed be satisfying, what makes Carmen’s heart skip a beat is helping children develop into young actors, directors and stage hands. She genuinely enjoys working with kids of all ages and talent levels, as evident in productions like Peter Pan, Jr. and Xanadu, Jr. But in Almost, Maine, she enjoyed the rare privilege of working with a small group of serious older aspiring actors just finishing high school or embarking upon their college careers.

Of course, it wasn’t too long ago that Carmen was first learning the ropes herself. Several seasons ago, she served as Assistant Director for Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, and her early directorial credits include Thoroughly Modern Millie Jr., Wizard of Oz and The Addams Family.

Carmen’s experiences in working with large and small casts consisting of younger and older actors gives her an affinity for designing a storyline, dialogue and thematic content appropriate no matter the concept, characters or cast that Lab Theater might throw at her during this year’s Playwriting Challenge. It will be interesting and fun to see what Carmen comes up with in the scant ten hours or so that are available to her and her fellow playwrights. One prediction can be made without reservation. Whatever she writes is likely to be entertaining, and that bodes well for the 120 or so who are lucky enough to secure seats for the Sixth Annual Laboratory Theater 24-Hour Playwriting Challenge.

The performance takes place on Saturday evening, December 16. The show starts at 8:00; doors open at 7:30.

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Labor of love – the evolution of Lab Theater’s 24-Hour Playwriting Challenge (11-09-17)

Lab Theater’s popular 24-Hour Playwriting Challenge is just around the corner. Now entering its sixth season, the high-tension, pressure-packed competition invites between three and five playwrights to produce a short one-act 12-15 minute play in just ten hours. The writers typically work through the night, starting around 9:00 p.m. on a Friday night and wrapping up at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, just before breakfast is served.

After a table read, input from a panel of directors and some last-second fine-tuning, the scripts are printed, copied and handed to teams of directors and actors who have a mere matter of hours to learn their lines and blocking before hitting the boards beginning at 8:00 p.m. – in front of a standing-room-only audience.

Admittedly, the Challenge represents an incredible amount of work for The Lab, but in the opinion of Artistic Director Annette Trossbach and Prop Mistress Stella Ruiz, the benefits justify the huge outlay of time and effort.

The inaugural 24-Hour Playwriting Challenge took place in December of 2012.

“We didn’t know what we wanted to do that first year,” concedes Ruiz, who has placed her own imprint on the 24-Hour Playwriting Challenge in the years following that seminal contest.

“By year three, we had worked everything out pretty well. The schedule is all important. It has to be tight and everyone has to adhere to it because it’s such a truncated experience. Obviously everyone rehearses outside of their stage time, but stage time is critically important. It has to be timed really, really carefully.”

The parameters of the Challenge have evolved over time. In 2012 and 2013, the concept was fairly simple and straightforward. The playwrights were given a common setting, such as a waiting room (2012) or the hallway in a rundown apartment building (2013). But they were free to structure the plot, characters and even time period of their play any way they wished within the confines of that set.

But Lab has built a reputation for innovative work and always strains to push the proverbial envelop.

“We decided pretty quickly to change things up in order to keep everyone on their toes – playwrights and audience alike,” comments Ruiz, a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth.

Two years ago, Lab introduced the idea of a progressive play revolving around the day before, the day of and the night after a wedding. New for 2015 was the creation of a family tree that reflected the pool of actors who would be performing in the Challenge.

“We gave them names and relationships, although not the character traits or arc,” Stella expounds. “[To the casual observer], it may look like we do the same thing each year, but we really don’t. We like to experiment. In 2016, for example, we created a collaborative work, set in the same universe but in which the action didn’t necessarily happen chronologically or linearly like with the wedding scenario.”

No matter the Challenge’s specific structure or format, Trossbach and Ruiz seek to advance two synergistic goals through the auspices of the competition.

First, they take immeasurable pride in being able to encourage people who’ve never really written before to explore the realm of playwriting. “We’d prefer to have people who have some kind of theatrical background because you’re writing with a live performance and audience in mind,” Ruiz notes. “It helps to know how theater actually works in practice. Lab has always been about nurturing people and giving them opportunities. That extends to the 24-hour project, as well. There’s a bit of learning process, and that’s intended. But we’ve had writers who’ve written things before and others who are new to playwriting.”

Secondly, Lab endeavors to provide live theater experience for the actors who participate in the project, as well. “It’s always challenging for actors to memorize lines and perform,” states Ruiz, who knows of what she speaks, having starred in such productions as Bad Jews, Happy, Mr. Marmalade, The Rimers of Eldrich, Othello and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. (She currently stars for Ghostbird Theatre Company in Writing Shadows, which takes place in the historic Langford-Kingston Home.) “But here, we’re compacting into a mere matter of hours what would normally transpire over days, weeks and even months.

The audience is a big winner as well. “People like to see what the playwrights can come up with in such a short amount of time. It’s high energy, fun, and you can actually feel the buzz and tension when you walk into the theater on Saturday night. There’s a vibe you can actually sense.”

Lab employs a clever device to keep the audience involved. It gives the playwrights three lines of dialogue and several props that they must incorporate into their plays. Trossbach tells the audience what they are during her curtain speech, and that induces the audience to not only watch and listen, but to be on the look-out for how they’re used by the playwrights in each of their one-act vignettes.

Trossbach and Ruiz devote two months to the project each year. They brainstorm throughout the year, of course, but their efforts intensify during those final two months leading up to the project and performance.

It requires a tremendous amount of organization and, of course, there’s always the challenge of working around the set of the production that’s going to take place next. And it takes a special type of person to accept the challenge of producing a performance piece in such a compressed amount of time.

“There’s a lot of pressure,” concedes Char Loomis, who has won both Audience Choice (2012, 2013) and Judge’s Choice Awards (2014, 2016) in past years. But it’s more than just getting something down on paper within a scant ten hour timeframe with little or no sleep. “It’s the pressure of writing something that entertains. Judge’s and audience choice awards are nice, but not really important in the larger scope of things. The tension is about whether the audience is going to laugh or not laugh at the funny parts or laugh at parts that weren’t intended to be funny.”

Last year, actor John Repa participated in his first 24-Hour Challenge. Many Southwest Florida residents and visitors have seen him perform at The Lab and, among other venues, Florida Rep, Theatre Conspiracy and on the Seminole Gulf Railway Murder Mystery Dinner Train. He has also performed in Chicago and Seattle. Last season, he played political candidate William Russell in Gore Vidal’s The Best Man. Before that, he was Sir Toby Belch for Lab Theater in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

In college, John majored in playwriting and is currently a member of Theatre Conspiracy’s Playwriting Group. He’s also written a two-actor show called Biblically Speaking as well as a full-length play called Harper’s Journal, which is a take-off on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. His fear when he took the Challenge was writer’s block.

“I’ve never experienced writer’s block in the conventional sense because I always have more than one project going at the same time, so if I ran into a situation where the words weren’t coming easily, I just shift to something else and then come back to it later on,” Repa shares. But the 24-Hour project is different because the deadline is intransigent.

“It really comes down to finding your hook, what is it that will make for an interesting story, and as soon as you get that down, the rest writes itself,” John shrugs. Whether his comment reflected self-confidence or nonchalance, it all worked out well as Repa won over the audience last year picking up the coveted Audience Choice Award.

“I love the freedom that the Lab gives to do this kind of project and see what happens – even though it’s so compacted and there’s a lot of pressure for everyone involved from Annette and me, to the playwrights, directors, actors and even stage hands,” adds Ruiz, who has playwriting experience herself. She wrote about a third of the Rauschenberg Project Play two seasons ago, as well three full-length plays and some shorter pieces. However, she is having too much fun organizing the challenge to participate in it herself.

“Maybe someday, when I pass on the reins to someone else,” she says wistfully.

The 2017 Playwriting Project takes to the stage at 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, December 16.

[Author’s Note: Because of other commitments, Ruiz will not be involved in this year’s Challenge. However, Lab has found a qualified replacement in the guise of Char Loomis. Lab has other changes and surprises in store for this year’s participants and audience.]

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Loomis is judge’s choice, Repa wins over audience in 5th Annual 24-Hour Playwriting Project (12-04-16)

This past Saturday night, Lab Theater staged three one-act plays that had been written the night before by Dave Chesebro, Char Loomis and John Repa. It was part of Lab Theater’s Fifth Annual 24-Hour Playwriting Challenge. In a very close contest, Char Loomis won the Judge’s Choice Award , with John Repa garnering the coveted People’s Choice Award.

The playwrights convened at Lab Theater at 8:00 p.m. the night before with sleeping bags, blankets and laptops in hand. It’s only then that competition director Stella Ruiz and Lab’s Artistic Director Annette Trossbach divulge the storyline, characters and bits of dialogue they must include in their scripts. This year, each play had to center around a family reunion being hosted by two recently wed grandparents anxious to integrate their respective dysfunctional families into a cohesive whole. But Ruiz and Trossbach included a diabolical twist – the newlyweds were two men by the names of Timmons and Stephan.

“We created a family tree for each so that the playwrights could reference the characters appearing in the other two writers’ plays,” Ruiz explained to the audience prior to the performances.

Ruiz and Trossbach also provided each playwright with three lines of dialogue they were required to incorporate into their scripts, vis: “But why did I have to hear about it on Facebook,” “You hate bananas,” and “Do you really want to touch that?” How they employed the lines and the order in which they appeared was left entirely to the writers.

Stage-ready scripts were due by breakfast at 7:00 a.m., and following a couple of table reads where they received invaluable editorial suggestions, the playwrights made final revisions before the completed scripts were handed over to the director and contingent of four actors that Ruiz and Trossbach assigned to each play.

“To memorize a 20 or 25 minute play in just five hours is a tall order,” noted Trossbach, but the twelve actors who participated in the challenge pulled off the feat with barely a missed or flubbed line.

Chesebro and Repa got about two hours of sleep in the wee hours of the morning. Loomis took a scant half hour cat nap. But the over-caffeinated Waterman Broadcasting Chief Video Editor received an added jolt of adrenaline when her comedy was selected by the judges as the best play of the night. It’s the second time Loomis has taken that honor. She was Judge’s Choice in 2014 and Audience Choice in 2012 and 2013. Char has dabbled in various aspects of film, television and theatre, and her credits include one line in “Rat Bastards,” an award-winning independent film directed by Emmy award winner Mike Stivala, a small acting bit in Florida Repertory Theatre’s production of WIT, and making eye contact with Kevin Spacey while working for MSNBC.

Repa also opted for comedy in his poignant play about the existential crisis faced by a Latino man who suddenly discovers in mid-life that the father he’s always idolized and emulated is gay. “People find it necessary to redefine their own self-image when a parent, sibling, child or former spouse suddenly reveals themselves to be gay, lesbian or transgender, and that can be traumatic,” noted Repa afterwards.

Many theater-goers in Southwest Florida know Repa from his 15-year stint on the Seminole Gulf Railway Murder Mystery Dinner Train. He was last on stage at The Lab as presidential candidate William Russell in Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man” and has also performed at Florida Rep and Theatre Conspiracy. But John is also an accomplished writer. He recently authored a zombie apocalypse novel told from the viewpoint of the zombies, and as a playwright, he has written a two-man show that will be read at Theatre Conspiracy this season. A member of the Theatre Conspiracy Playwriting Group, he also penned a one-act play in 2014 called “Harker’s Journal,” a take-off on Bram Stoker’s Dracula in which Harker’s wife, Mina, considers the possibility that her husband has gone mad after she receives and reads the journal he wrote during his recent trip to Transylvania.

Chesebro’s piece was a dramatization of the highly-confrontational arguments waged between families, friends and complete strangers over the gay rights and marriage on the one hand and those who believe that homosexuality is prohibited by God and the Bible – with each camp finding it impossible to accept the other’s right to act and believe as they do. Chesebro knows of what he writes. He was one of the playwrights who worked on”The Rauschenberg Project Play,” in which he also played a number of roles.

This year’s 24-Hour Playwriting judges consisted of Florida Weekly’s “Diva Diaries” columnist, stage director and actress Stephanie Davis; Florida Weekly Editor and Fort Myers Film Festival Executive Director Eric Raddatz; international documentary filmmaker and human rights advocate Connie Bottinelli; and Lab Theater founding member and frequent director Nykkie Rizley. Tera Nicole Miller took time away from her role as Squeamish in Theatre Conspiracy’s production of “The Country Wife” to direct the cast of Char Loomis’ Judge’s Choice play. Miguel Cintron directed for John Repa, and Kate Dirrigl directed the cast of Dave Chesebro’s piece.

The 24-Hour Playwriting Challenge is part of Lab Theater’s ongoing effort to provide unique cutting edge theatrical experiences for playwrights, directors, actors and, most of all, Southwest Florida community theater audiences.

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Meet the 2016 24-Hour Playwriting Project contestants, Char Loomis, Dave Matthew Chesebro and John Repa (12-03-16)

Last night, Char Loomis, Dave Chesebro and John Repa converged on the Lab Theater in downtown Fort Myers for an all-nighter. The three are taking part in tonight’s 24-Hour Playwriting Project, an annual event that challenges participants to come up a 15 to 25 minute one-act play in just 12 hours that’s performed the following evening by a cast of volunteer actors who have less than 8 hours to memorize their lines and blocking.

Loomis is the veteran of the trio. After judging the competition last year, Loomis returns as a playwright. She won the Audience Choice Award in the project’s first two years, followed by the coveted Judge’s Choice Award in 2014 with an edgy one-act play that crackled with humor, wit, sarcasm and irony that had both the judges and the audience howling with laughter. Loomis is the Chief  Video Editor at Waterman Broadcasting, a post she has held for more than a decade. She also moonlights as a freelance video editor on a range of projects. Char has dabbled in various aspects of film, television and theatre, and her credits include one line in Rat Bastards, an award-winning independent film directed by Emmy award winner Mike Stivala, a small acting bit in Florida Repertory Theatre’s production of WIT, and making eye contact with Kevin Spacey while working for MSNBC. A jack of all trades, Char mostly enjoys working behind the scenes on any project and writing in her spare time. Originally from upstate New York, Char made the journey to the Sunshine State many years ago as a Florida Repertory intern following graduation with her Master’s Degree from Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Lab Theater audiences last saw Chesebro as Chef Gaston in An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf. But Dave is no stranger to writing. In fact, he was one of the playwrights who worked on this past season’s The Rauschenberg Project Play, in which he also played a number of roles. He also played Mr. Mushnik in Little House of Horrors, and has worked on a number of other productions in set construction and props management. But this is his first time accepting Annette Trossbach and Stella Ruiz’s challenge to write a play overnight. Being an inveterate night owl will help, says Dave, as he hammers out lines of dialogue on a laptop.

Rounding out the field is John Repa who was last on stage at The Lab as presidential candidate William Russell in Gore Vidal’s The Best Man. Many Southwest Florida residents and visitors have seen him perform, among other venues, at Florida Rep, Theatre Conspiracy and on the Seminole Gulf Railway Murder Mystery Dinner Train. He has also performed Chicago and Seattle. Prior to The Best Man, John played the role of Sir Toby Belch for Lab Theater in last season’s production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and he will appear in The Last Night of Ballyhoo at Lab Theater in April.

But John is also a comedian, playwright and more recently, author of a zombie apocalypse novel titled Blood Creek Eulogy, which is told from the viewpoint of the zombies! As a playwright, John has written a two-man show called Biblically Speaking, which will be read at Theatre Conspiracy this season. As a member of the Theatre Conspiracy Playwriting Group, he penned a one-act play in 2014 called Harker’s Journal, a take-off on Bram Stoker’s Dracula in which Harker’s wife, Mina, must consider the possibility that her husband has gone mad after she receives and reads the journal he wrote during his recent trip to Transylvania. John wrote his first script in grade school when he found out that a group book report could be done as a staged scene – but his group had read Jack London’s White Fang. He went on from there to study playwriting at SIU at Carbondale and Columbia College Chicago, where he graduated in 1990.

Because John started out as stage crew member and scenic designer, he has a very practical approach to staging. Having worked extensively as an actor, he has a strong sense of what an actor can do onstage to captivate an audience. He seeks to combine thoughtful theater with a quirky sense of humor that provides heartfelt laughs during a performance and something deeper to think about later.

See what these three courageous 24-Hour playwrights produced tonight at The Lab. The action starts at 8:00 p.m.

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Playwrights convene at The Lab for start of 24-Hour Playwriting Project (12-02-16)

Three local playwrights are lugging their sleeping bags, coffee mugs and laptops to Lab Theater for an all-nighter. No, they’re not hoping to sight the ghost who inhabits The Lab. They’ve accepted The Lab’s challenge to write a one-act play in a single night, with the results being produced and performed by volunteer actors tomorrow night beginning at 8:00 p.m.

Here’s how it works. After the playwrights are all settled in, Lab Artistic Director Annette Trossbach and Stella Ruiz will assign them a theme for their plays. Then they’ll draw straws and choose costumes, props and even sound cues that they must incorporate into their scripts. They only have until morning to come up with a one-act play that’s no less than 15 and no more than 25 minutes long.

After breakfast, a table read, and very little time for tweaks, the scripts go to the copy center. The directors assigned to each playwright get the scripts just before lunch, when a diverse group of actors shows up ready, willing and eager to learn and rehearse their lines in the seven or so hours remaining before the curtain goes up and the plays are performed before a live audience. You read that correctly. The director and actors actually have less time to stage the plays, block the action and memorize their lines than the playwrights had to write the scripts!

The three plays are not just performed. They are judged by a panel of area theater and arts professionals … and by the audience. That’s right. The playwrights are not only vying for the judges’ award. They’re hoping to win the coveted Audience Choice Award as well.

Last year, Ben Lamoureux was both the judge’s and the audience’s choice for best play – the first time a playwright has ever one both awards. This is the fifth year of the Laboratory Theater 24-Hour Playwriting Project and promises to be as hotly contested as ever.

Read here for details about The Lab’s prior 24-Hour Playwriting Projects.

A hugely popular event, your season ticket will gain you entry! Or get online tickets HERE

The Lab and the participating playwrights thank Bennett’s Fresh Roast and Chick-fil-A on Colonial Blvd for donating food for our creative entrepreneurs!

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Lab Theater’s 24-hour playwriting challenge returns December 3, 2016 (05-11-16)

The 24-hour Playwriting Project returns to Lab Theater at 8:00 p.m. on December 3, 2016. The night before, playwrights will bring their sleeping bags and coffee mugs to Lab Theater, where they will be assigned a theme, a director, and actors. Within just twenty-four hours, you will see the fruits of their labor when Lab Theater stages all of the 15-minute one-act plays! Each year, the plays are judged by a panel of area theater and arts professionals. Mark your calendar for this hugely popular event!

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A look back at Aricka Shuck’s ‘INNdiffernet’ (12-18-15)

Two weeks ago, Aricka Shuck did something she had never done before. “ I wrote my first play.  Well, my first one act,” she reveals. “And it was one of the scariest, most rewarding experiences of my life and I did so under some of the strangest, most high-pressure circumstances ever.”

Aricka is referring, of course, to Lab Theater’s 24-Hour Playwriting Project. This year, Aricka and aspiring playwrights Patty Duncan and Ben Lamoureux assembled in the old theater on Woodford at 8 p.m. on Friday, December 5. The challenge: each had just ten hours to write a one-act play that was no less than 15 and no more than 25 minutes long.

“I had never even written a scene or taken a writing class, but I once had a wise professor named Michael Gillespie who told me that if a project frightened me, it was definitely worth doing,” says Aricka of her decision to accept the challenge of writing a play in one night. “As with every piece of advice he gave me, I heeded this one as well and jumped in face first.  I got there at 8 p.m. and was given my parameters.  At 9 p.m. we were given the green light to start.  At 7 a.m. we had a table read and from 8 to 9 we worked with a completely wonderful playwriting teacher who gave us fantastic notes. We then were able to make final changes and at 12:00 p.m. our scripts went to the printer. We then met our actors for the first time, had a table read, one hour on stage to block, and then roughly 6 hours to try to help them memorize the lines. At 8 p.m. the plays were performed before an audience and three judges.”

huck mentions parameters. Here are a few of them:

• The play had to take place in Maine at an Inn named the Mainely Lodge. It could take place in any era, but had to take place in this dimension, country, earth, solar system, reality, etc.
• The set included a check-in desk, rocking chair, sofa, side table, hat rack and, most importantly, outside a plague is a taking place.  That is what the central action of the play had to deal with.
• “We were each told we would have four actors with details limited to their sex, basic build, age range and race.”
• One actor had to be a staff member of the Inn.
• “We had to use and refer to two props. I had a bottle of 6 prescription pill bottles and a small metal decorative box which had to be referred to as a ‘prized possession.’”
• “We has to use three lines verbatim but in any order.  They were “It doesn’t affect me. I don’t live there;” “I’m not homeless, I’m displaced;” and “How can we tell if they’re contagious?”

Shuck’s one-act play was performed first and it contained some very funny lines between lead characters, Ellice Delflorio, a 31-year-old refuge directionless English grad who secretly aspires to be a stand-up comedian and who uses humor to deflect criticism and cope with people and problems, and Penelope Parker, a tech-savvy junior in college majoring in sociology and who annoys people ad nauseum by shortening words and spewing acronyms whenever she speaks. But conflict erupts between Ellice and Penelope because of their disparate social and political views. You see, Ellice is a staunch liberal while Penelope is a passionate conservative and they take turns blaming each other for creating the predicate for the plague, which is a viral form of indifference. The following dialogue will give you a taste for both the tension and humor that Aricka built into the fabric of her play.

FINN: Huh?

PENE: It seems as though apathy can exceed a level that is healthy and can become fatal. Once you reach a certain level of indifference it causes something called ‘Akinetic Mutism’ which is a form of brain damage.  The damage is so severe a person becomes unable to talk or move.  Once the brain stops delivering messages to your body it goes into multi-system organ failure.

DOUG: In layman’s terms; you stop caring, your brain stops caring, you die.

FINN: I didn’t even know that was physically possible!

DOUG: Nobody did until it was too late.

ELLICE: You see, dangerous levels of indifference have spiked over the years.  The Trail of Tears, the Holocaust, genocide, the Kardashians, but the collective spike in apathy was unprecedented and led to a pandemic that we didn’t foresee.

FINN: How did this happen?  What caused the levels to get dangerously high?

DOUG: I blame my parents’ generation, the Baby Boomers. As their generation got older they became less and less concerned with what was going on around them.  The earth wasn’t going to be their home much longer and they passed the buck to the younger generations. They figured it was our responsibility to fix what was broken.  I find it kind of bizarre though because their generation used to be so involved.  They were going to change the world with love and compassion.  I guess as the world got uglier they became more frustrated and disillusioned and before you know it they didn’t care  what earth we would inherit.

ELLICE: Nonsense!  Finn, you want the real reason?  Thank Pene over there and her generation of Millenials. It wasn’t even a matter of the cessation of caring, they never cared to begin with.  They think everything they want in life is owed to them.  They created this plague and I can pinpoint the moment that it happened.  The Selfie!

PENE: Are you totally crazy?

ELLICE: If Indifference is the disease, social media is what helped deliver the virus! The Millenials said, “how can we make photography better? Got it!  Pictures with only ME!”  That total free fall into narcissism was the beginning of the end.  Once you only care about yourself you stop caring about others.  You guys never wanted to get involved, learn the issues, join the debate, you guys couldn’t even take an hour to vote every 4 years.  The cold hard fact is you can only care about one thing for so long before you stop caring all together.

As this excerpt from the play illustrates, the writing is sharp, the dialogue snappy and the premise imaginative and clever. And in the final analysis, the judges declared a tie among all three playwrights in every category save one – time. When finally performed, Aricka’s play and that of Patty Duncan came in under the 15-minute minimum, giving Ben Lamoureux the win. But is clear that Aricka has a bright future as a playwright, and local community theater audiences await eagerly her next effort.

Please keep reading for more on Aricka Shuck, Patty Duncan, Ben Lamoureux and this year’s Lab Theater 24-Hour Playwriting Project.

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Ben Lamoureux’s ‘Bird Flew’ wins judges’ and audience choice awards (12-08-15)

Last Saturday night, three short one-act plays were performed at Lab Theater in downtown Fort Myers. They were part of Lab Theater’s 24-Hour Playwriting Project, a challenge in which three to five playwrights arrive at the theater at 8 p.m. on Friday night and have roughly ten hours to write a 15 to 25 minute play. After a table reading over breakfast, the plays are tweaked, typed, printed and given to their volunteer directors just before lunch, when a diverse group of actors shows up ready, willing and eager to learn and rehearse their lines in the seven or so hours remaining before the curtain goes up and the plays are performed before a live audience.

This year’s courageous playwrights were Patty Duncan, Aricka Shuck and Ben Lamoureux.

“This is the fourth year of the 24-Hour Playwriting Project,” said judge Nikkie Rizley after the performances. She was joined on stage by fellow judges Connie Bottinelli and Char Loomis, who earned the Judges’ Choice award last year.

“This is the first year where everyone was equal in all parts except for the time, and we thought it was very important that we said to the playwrights and the audience that there pretty much would have been an across the board tie on what you needed to do and were asked to do except for that.”

Among other requirements, the plays could be no shorter than 15 minutes and no longer than 25.

“For every minute over or under, we had to deduct one point,” Rizley continued. “So if someone was under by five minutes, we had to subtract five points. So we thought it was important to come on stage and let everyone know that time was a big factor.”

That said, their decision was nonetheless unanimous. Ben Lamoureux’s comedy, Bird Flew, took top honors.

“My first thank you has to be to my actors,” said an overwhelmed Lamoureux. “I came into this at the last minute,” he continued, shaking his head. “Annette only asked me to participate on Monday [when one of the other contestants had to bow out due to illness]. I said, ‘Yeah. Sure thing. Why not?’” He very nearly couldn’t convince his employer to give him the time off.

“But coming in here last night and getting all the criteria for the play, I sat down at my blank computer screen and said, ‘What in the hell am I going to do?’ But then I remembered that one of the sound effects we could use was a loon crying and I thought, ‘I can do something with that.’ Of course, I didn’t know it would be people actually turning into them …..”

Minutes later, Ben learned that he had also won the Audience Choice Award – by a landslide. It is the first time in four years that the same play earned both the judge’s choice and Audience Choice awards.

Ben has aspirations to move to New York City to hone his skills and refine his craft. But not quite yet. He has taken a lead role in Lab Theater’s Rauschenberg Project, in which more than 175 local lesbians, gays and transgender 14-24 year olds are sharing their stories and weaving them into a production that will take the stage in late March of 2016. If the 24-Hour Playwriting Project is any indication, the Rauschenberg participants are in good hands and the Southwest Florida theater community is in for a treat next Spring.

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Spotlight on 24-Hour Playwriting Project participant Ben Lamoureux (12-05-15)

One of the playwrights taking part in tonight’s Lab Theater 24-Hour Playwriting Project is Ben Lamoureux. Originally from Massachusetts, Ben moved to Florida in 2009 and graduated from North Fort Myers High School in 2013. During his time in Southwest Florida, he performed with many of the theatrical companies in the area, including Florida Rep, The Naples Players, Creative Theatre Workshop and Lab Theater.

In 2015, Ben graduated with his Associate’s degree in Musical Theatre from Florida School of the Arts, where he trained in voice (Dr. Kandie K. Smith, Rhonda Nus Tinnin), acting (Patricia Crotty, Ed Kelly), and dance (Hee Ra Yoo, Jenne Vermes, Mary Love Ward, Jessica Mayhew), as well as aspects of technical theatre such as costumes and makeup (Emily Strickland, Tracy Lloyd). Favorite credits from FloArts include Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, Les Miserables (Vocal Captain. Bishop, Feuily, Javert u/s), and Mr. Bennett in Pride & Prejudice.

Professionally, Ben has worked summer stock with Lees-McRae Summer Theatre (Swing! The Musical) and has attended the Southeastern Theatre Conference as a professional auditioner for the last two years. He is currently involved with Lab Theater’s Rauschenberg Project. Now 20 years old, Ben plans to move to New York City in the near future.

You can see for yourself what Ben produces as a playwright tonight. The Lab Theater 24-Hour Playwriting Project takes the stage tonight at 8 p.m. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Season ticket holders will be admitted at no charge. For everyone else, get your tickets online HERE or at the door.

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Spotlight on 24-Hour Playwriting Project participant Aricka Shuck (12-05-15)

One of the playwrights taking part in tonight’s Lab Theater 24-Hour Playwriting Project is Aricka Shuck. When Lab Theater audiences last saw Aricka, she was portraying Petronella van Daan in last season’s highly popular Diary of Anne Frank.

Aricka was actress Kim Basinger’s photo double/stand in for the movie 8 Mile. A veteran of the stage, her favorite roles include Kay in Father of the Bride, Maggie in The Man Who Came to Dinner, the good witch Glinda in The Wizard of Oz, Maddy in Tony and Tina’s Wedding, Madge in Picnic, Kate in She Stoops to Conquer, Hermione in Winter’s Table, Libby in Blue Window and Helen in Cripple of Inishmaan. At the Naples Players, she played Dr. Zavalla, ADD waitress and Carolyn in Distracted and Electra in Gypsy. She majored in theater performance in college, studied improv at The Second City conservatory and was nominated for the Irene Ryan award.

Now Aricka is taking a turn at playwriting. You can see for yourself what she produces tonight. The Lab Theater 24-Hour Playwriting Project takes the stage tonight at 8 p.m. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Season ticket holders will be admitted at no charge. For everyone else, get your tickets online HERE or at the door.

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Spotlight on 24-Hour Playwriting Project participant Patty Duncan (12-05-15)

One of the playwrights taking part in tonight’s Lab Theater 24-Hour Playwriting Project is Patty Duncan. A published novelist, Patty is branching out, trying her hand at playwriting. Duncan retired to Cape Coral (although she also spends time with her husband, Joe, in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee) after spending twenty-five years in public relations and advertising, including a stint as press secretary in the Tennessee legislature.

Her novel, Detour to Dallas, grapples with the Kennedy assassination and, in particular, an assassination theory revolving around Rose Chermini, a woman who warned medical personnel of the impending assassination. “Although there is a dearth of information about Rose Chermini, she, and her warning, warrants further attention – as do some of the other players in the assassination drama,” said Patty of the book. “Subjects that belong to the American public, as the Kennedy assassination certainly does, invite us to revisit them again and again.”

In Ellen’s Eye, the main character is a ten-year old girl who loses an eye. She thinks the very worst thing that can possibly happen already has, but she discovers her biggest problem now is that she’ll have to accept all the gawking and questions from friends and relatives, which she dreads and wants to postpone. But the year (1954) progressively presents more dangerous and chilling challenges for Ellen- here mother’s strange, new silence as her older brother Buck’s behavior spirals out of control.

Duncan is no stranger to playwriting. Her play, Reasons for Grandparents, will be the subject of a staged reading at Lab Theater on March 21, 2016. When Ruth takes on a second job, her daughters begin to harbor a secret, especially about the oldest child’s new behavior. The grandparents try to intervene, only to be prohibited from seeing their granddaughters again.

Both books are available on Amazon.

Duncan graduated cum laude from East Tennessee State University.

You can see for yourself what Patty produces tonight. The Lab Theater 24-Hour Playwriting Project takes the stage tonight at 8 p.m. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Season ticket holders will be admitted at no charge. For everyone else, get your tickets online HERE or at the door.

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Three aspiring playwrights spending night in haunted theater to write plays in just 15 hours (12-04-15)

Lab Theater’s 24-Hour Playwriting Project is underway, and three brave playwrights are hunkered down in the reputedly haunted theater on Woodford Avenue turning out 15-25 minute productions that will be performed tomorrow night.

“There’s a plague out there,”  Production Coordinator Stella Ruiz told participants Patty Duncan, Ben Lamoureux and Aricka Shuck at 9:00 p.m. “People are fleeing and some have arrived at an inn in Maine, but there’s no vacancy at the hotel. At least one of your characters must be a hotel employee, but beyond that there are no limitations on the characters or plot you create. It can be comedic or dramatic. You can get really weird with it or keep it realistic. It just has to be set at this specific place.”

While each playwright has open-ended creative license, they must include the following three lines in their scripts:

1. “It doesn’t affect me. I don’t live there.”
2. “I’m not homeless, I’m displaced.”
3. “How can we tell if they’re contagious.”

“Audiences love this [part of the Challenge],” Artistic Director Annette Trossbach. “They will be told in advance what the three lines are, and they’re going to be waiting for them. They like hearing them and seeing how you use them in your plays.”

There are two other requirements, as well. On the hotel desk is a telephone, and each playwright must incorporate it into the action at some point in their play along with one of four sound effects, which include the phone ringing, howling wind, peals of thunder or the sound of a distant loon. And each playwright chooses costumes and a special prop that they must use at some point in the action. This year, those props are a bag of pills, a stuffed bear and three rangetop pots.

“You mean we have to choose costumes and props before we write our plays?” Patty Duncan asked with incredulity.

Yes, that’s part of the Challenge. And, as is true with most theater productions, beyond a general description of the actors they’ll be assigned, the playwrights do not know the identities of the director and actors who will perform their plays.

One page of text typically equates to two minutes of on-stage dialogue and action, so the challenge is for Duncan, Lamoureux and Shuck to write between 8 and 12 pages of dialogue between roughly 10 p.m. tonight and 8 a.m. tomorrow morning, when the playwrights assemble with Ruiz, Artistic Director Annette Trossbach and director Louise Wigglesworth for a table read of the scripts. After that, the playwrights have a couple of hours to tweak and fine tune their scripts before they go to the printer at 11:30.

The directors and actors who put on the show don’t arrive until noon and they don’t actually get their scripts until 12:30, which means they have a scant seven hours to read, comprehend and memorize their lines before the shows are performed before a live audience and panel of esteemed local judges.

“The actors are all good,” Trossbach assured Duncan, Lamoureux and Shuck. “They’re all really strong at memorizing lines in a short amount of time. They participate because they like to test themselves and see how well they can do learning a play and memorizing their lines and action in such a short amount of time.”

If the past is any indication of the future, the plays that these three playwrights produce will be surprisingly good and really interesting. The action gets under way at 8 p.m. and doors open at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow night at the theater. Season ticket holders will be admitted at no charge.   Or get online tickets HERE.

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Lab Theater’s hugely popular 24-hour playwriting contest takes center stage Saturday, December 5 (12-02-15)

Four playwrights will bring their sleeping bags and coffee mugs to Lab Theater this Friday night, where they will be assigned a theme and a director and actors. Within just twenty-four hours, you will see the fruits of their labor when Lab Theater stages all four 15-minute one-act plays, which will be judged by a panel of area theater and arts professionals. The audience, too, gets a vote, conferring the highly coveted Audience Choice Award. The festivities start promptly at 8 p.m. on Saturday, December 5. A hugely popular event, your season ticket will gain you entry! Or get online tickets HERE.

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24-hour Playwriting Project returns to Lab Theater on December 5 (05-17-15)

Lab Theater’s 24-hour Playwriting Project returns on December 5, 2015. Here’s how it works. Five intrepid playwrights will arrive at the theater at 8 p.m. on December 4 with coffee mugs, laptops and sleeping bags for a night of high-pressure playwriting magic. The following morning, they’ll be assigned a director and cast of actors, who will have just hours to study the script and learn their lines. And you’ll get to see the fruits of their labor when Lab Theater stages all five 15-minute one-act plays beginning at 8 p.m. on Saturday, December 5. A panel of area theater and arts professionals will pick a Critic’s Choice. The audience will have their say, too, with the top vote getter receiving the coveted Audience Choice Award. Your season ticket will gain you entry to this hugely popular event. Continue reading for accounts of the past two seasons’ participants, plays and winners.

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West Palm playwright Les Abromovitz wins Audience Choice Award in 3rd Annual 24-Annual Playwriting Project (12-12-14)

Last weekend, Lab Theater staged its 24-Hour Playwriting Project. Four playwrights, Laura Lorusso, Char Loomis, Deni Sher and Les Abromovitz, each accepted the challenge of producing a 15-20 minute 0ne-act play overnight and having it performed by actors given a scant 6-7 hours to learn and rehearse their lines. Char Loomis won the competition (see below), but West Palm Beach newcomer Les Abromovitz received the Audience Choice Award.

Abromovitz has an unusual theatrical pedigree. He is a semi-retired attorney. But not one of those high-powered trial lawyers turned bestselling author like John Grisham or Steve Berry. Les practiced law for an insurance company, writing S.E.C. compliance documents for decades. Oh, he is an author. Les has drawn upon his education and expertise to author, co-author, edit and ghostwrite business, personal finance and retirement planning books for publishers the like of McGraw-Hill, John Wiley & Sons, and Dearborn Trade, as well as two more books for investment advisers. So, no doubt, the play he turned in on Saturday morning was a dry, stodgy, erudite affair, right? To the contrary, Abromovitz’s offering was so funny, so hilarious, so wry that it rocked the house with laughter so raucous it threatened the continence of Lab Theater judges and audience alike.

To be sure, Abromovitz was aided in no small measure by the three accomplished actors who were assigned to him and director Deb Kik. Not only did Shelley Sanders, Caitlynn Crawford and Charlie Greer impeccably deliver Abromovitz’s sharp, spritely dialogue, Crawford was a hoot as she brilliantly performed a series of sight gags that would have left Lucille Ball green with envy. But Abromovitz’s premise laid the foundation for his comedic tour de force.

In his tale, a very distinguished 50-something by the name of Marvin shows up at his ex-wife’s wedding with two gorgeous 20-something sisters. Emily and Angel are worried that someone will say something because Marvin’s invitation only specified “plus one.” But it’s clearly Marvin’s intent to spoil the bride’s sweet victory in being the first to move on. In fact, Marv harbors such ill will that he blurts out “it should have been her” as he points to the chalk outline of a man killed in the church vestibule the night before the wedding. The remark should have sent Emily and Angel running for the nearest door. You see, the girls are escorts who advertised their services on Craiglist, of all places. But as this is theater and not real life, what instead ensues is a spirited debate between Emily and Marvin about the dynamics and dangers associated with their arrangement from sides of the escort equation ultimately prompting Emily to sigh, “I’ve got to quit advertising on Craigslist” just as Marvin menacingly grabs her and Angel and the lights go out.

Of course, Marvin had just as much to fear from Emily and Angel as the girls did of him. He could have easily been another Troy LaFerrara, the 42-year-old electrical engineer from Port Trevorton, Pennsylvania who was stabbed 20 times in the chest by 19-year-old Miranda Barbour after responding to an ad that Barbour posted on Craigslist promising “companionship” in exchange for $100. Barbour claims to be a serial killer responsible for more than 22 murders in four different states, but the cases are legion in which Craigslist escorts, prostitutes and even maids are raped, assaulted and murdered by men answering their ads. And that’s why attractive, seemingly sophisticated college coeds like Emily and Angel are turning increasingly to online dating services like SeekingArrangement.com.

Founded in 2005, SeekingArrangement.com touts itself as “the elite sugar daddy dating site for those seeking mutually beneficial relationships.” According to CNN, about 350,000 of the “sugar babies” who advertise on SeekingArrangement are college students, and two-thirds of them use their “daddy” as the main source of paying for their education. SeekingArrangement.com gives an even higher estimate. According to an article run by The Atlantic, “in 2013, Seeking Arrangement announced that approximately 44 percent of its 2.3 million ‘babies’ are in college,” which would mean that more than one in six female college students in the United States is paying their tuition or subsidizing the cost of their education in this way.

For some, perhaps, the perks are as important as the finances. For example, The Atlantic article tells the story of a young Princeton coed who is picked up by a sleek black limousine at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday night, whisked to Manhattan for a midnight dinner and late night sex with a 60-something Wall Street Banker, and returned to campus in time for her 10 a.m. class the next day. But whether it’s the money or the perks, Abromovitz left the audience to decide whether his play was merely a dark comedy about a couple of escorts stupid enough to advertise their services on a place like Craigslist or a modern-day parable about dilemma faced by the overwhelming majority of lower to middle class college students faced with escalating tuition and declining Pell grants and student loans as conservative elements seek to cutter ever more funding from social programs, including higher education. [“We used see affordable higher education as being part of the social contract and that it was a public good for education to be affordable in the United States,” writes blogger Saul DeGraw, “but thanks to the anti-tax far-right revolution, tuition has skyrocketed and now women are turning to prostitution to pay for their college educations because you can’t do it with working in the campus library or coffee shop anymore.”]

Regardless of deeper meaning and putative thematic content, the audience found Abromovitz’s play funny, which was music to the playwright’s ears. “I only started writing plays three or four years ago,” Les admits. “And most have been short comedies.”

His short comedies Quoth the Maven, Nevermore and Seven Bananas have been included in national play festivals. Another play, The Home Stretch, won first place in the 4th Annual International Jewish Short Play Competition and has been performed on several occasions over the past year. And his comedy Boca Raton on Ice has also been performed as a radio play on several occasions. But this is the first time Les has taken part in a 24-hour playwriting project.

“The toughest part of it was staying up past 11 o’clock,” quipped a bleary-eyed Les following the performances.

When asked how he heard about the Lab Theater playwriting challenge, he looked about somewhat sheepishly. “I found it advertised on Craigslist.”

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Wigglesworth, Rizley and Bottinelli judge Lab Theater’s 2014 playwriting project (12-10-14)

The Laboratory Theater of Florida hosted its third annual 24-hour playwriting project over the past weekend. Part of what lured Laura Lorusso, Les Abromovitz, Char Loomis and Deni Sher into accepting the challenge of writing a 15-20 minute one-act play virtually overnight was the prospect of having their work judged by a panel of experienced theater experts, and Lab Theater didn’t disappoint. This year, the plays presented on Saturday night were judged by Connie Bottinelli, Nikki Rizley and Louise Wigglesworth.

Connie Bottinelli is an international documentary filmmaker and human rights advocate. Since 1986, she has written, directed and produced for a host of national TV and global cable programs including TLC, Discovery Communications (1996-2000), Lifetime TV, America’s Most Wanted, Medical Detectives (1998-1999) and Court TV (1999-2005). She is the CEO and Executive Producer of Grinning Dog Pictures and has received five Emmys over the course of her career.

Nykkie Rizley is a founding member and Secretary of the Board of Directors at The Laboratory Theater of Florida. After attending the University of Michigan, where she received a degree in Theater Prop Design, Nicole trained in both Chicago and New York. She now teaches Acting I, Acting II, and Acting for Seniors for Lab Theater and creates wounds and bruises for area film and stage productions. She directed House of Yes last season and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest the season before.

Lousie Wigglesworth worked for three decades in secondary and college theater arts education in New Jersey, teaching playwriting and directing classic and contemporary plays and musicals. Since moving to Florida ten years ago, her directing credits have included The Lion in Winter, Picnic, A Streetcar Named Desire and Shakespeare in the Park. For Lab Theater, Louise has directed Death of a Salesman, The Stranger, Twenty-Seven Wagons Full of Cotton, The Laramie Project and The Rimers of Eldrich, as well as writing the world-premier stage play of Camus’ The Plague and In the Shade of Old Trees, which was given a staged reading last season. Louise serves on Lab Theater’s Board of Directors and is a member of the Theatre Conspiracy Playwrights and The Dramatists Guild of America.

The judges chose Char Loomis’ play as their winner. A review of Loomis’ winning production follows.

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Char Loomis wins Judges’ Choice Award at Lab Theater’s 24-Hour Playwriting Challenge (12-09-14)

After winning the Audience Choice Award the past two seasons, playwright Char Loomis received the coveted Judge’s Choice Award for Best Play in the 2014 Laboratory Theater 24-Hour Playwriting Project with an edgy one-act play that crackled with humor, wit, sarcasm and irony that had both the judges and the audience howling with laughter.

Loomis is the Chief  Video Editor at Waterman Broadcasting, a post she has held for the last ten years. She also moonlights as a freelance video editor on a range of projects. Char has dabbled in various aspects of film, television and theatre, and her credits include one line in Rat Bastards, an award-winning independent film directed by Emmy award winner Mike Stivala, a small acting bit in Florida Repertory Theatre’s production of WIT, and making eye contact with Kevin Spacey while working for MSNBC. A jack of all trades, Char mostly enjoys working behind the scenes on any project and writing in her spare time. Originally from upstate New York, Char made the journey to the Sunshine State many years ago as a Florida Repertory intern following graduation with her Master’s Degree from Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

This year, each of the four playwrights who participated in the single-day playwriting project were challenged to write a 15-20 minute play taking place in the vestibule of a church in which a murder has recently occurred. The victim was a rather robust man by the name of Thaddeus, who was offed by a closed black umbrella thrust so forcefully through his throat that it pinned him to the opposing wall. Now his chalk outline casts a pall over the nuptials of Muffy and Gavin, a couple the audience is destined to never meet. Rather, it was left to the fertile imaginations of the four participating playwrights to craft characters and storylines explaining or deepening the mystery surrounding who these people are and who and why Thaddeus was slain.

Adding to each playwright’s torment, Lab Theater Artistic Director Annette Trossbach and Production Manager Stella Ruiz decided that each play should take place at a different point along the sequential timelines on the day of the wedding. The time slots were chosen at random, with Scrooge TV playwright Laura Lorusso drawing the morning of the wedding, retired West Palm Beach attorney-turned-comedic-playwright Les Abromovitz getting the afternoon of Muffy and Gavin’s big day, and Weston author Deni Sher being assigned the night of the couple’s wedding.

For her part, Loomis started her vignette as the first strains of Felix Mendelssohn’s Wedding March in C Major pierced the darkened theater, only to be interrupted by the flower girl bursting into the vestibule, frantically searching behind and beneath chairs and table tops for a place in which to hide. She is followed in short order by her soon-to-be-stepbrother, who promptly chastises her for selfishly spoiling their parents’ moment. But as Sandy and Juan Pablo banter back and forth, the audience discovers that both children have serious misgivings about the propriety of their folks’ union, concerns that are soon exacerbated by their drunken Aunt Ellie, who comes to find out why the children have disappeared from the church in the middle of the wedding.

The ensuing juxtaposition of flower girl Sandy and Aunt Ellie provided a poignant indictment of the ways in which present-day children are compelled to become the adult in the room in the face of the increasingly self-absorbed, petulant and irresponsible behavior of their narcissistic parents and the other adults to whom their care is often entrusted. Like Aunt Ellie, who reveals that she is not only actually their nanny but has been having a longstanding affair with the groom. After she darts out of the room to throw up, Auntie Ellie goes on the divulge that she’s pregnant – probably with Gavin’s baby, “although I did have a one night stand a couple of months ago with some guy named Thaddeus that I met at a bar.” It gets worse. Ellie also had a brief tryst with Muffy while Gavin was out of town one weekend, although neither Muffy nor Gavin known about the other’s indiscretions with Ellie – at least not yet.

Armed with these nauseating facts, little Sandy and Juan Pablo come to the conclusion that they have no choice but to put a stop to the wedding. “We don’t want our parents to end up like that poor bastard,” Juan Pablo exclaims pointing over his shoulder to Thaddeus’ outline on the wall behind them. There’s still time. “It’s a Catholic wedding,” Juan Pablo remarks, “and they’re like 14 hours long, aren’t they?” But only as he and Sandy rush into the church to “speak now” rather than forever holding their peace does Juan Pablo hear a smug, sardonic laugh that lets him know they’ve been played by Ellie, who believes she and not Muffy should be the one exchanging “I do’s” with Gavin.

Although the play was replete with contemporary social commentary (“If it’s on Facebook, it has to be true,” proclaims Sandy at one point, as she implores Juan Pablo to take a good, hard look at the world around them, advising him to “just Google it; that’s what I always do.”), Loomis’ overarching aim is to simply entertain.

“My goal is always to create something that the audience finds engaging and enjoyable,” Loomis explains. “I experience pure joy when the audience laughs at a joke or responds appropriately to something I’ve written. It makes all that hard work in college worth it. It also gives a boost to my ego. I’m very critical of myself and it helps me branch out and try new things.” Like writing, production and perhaps even a little more acting.

Loomis has participated in all three 24-Hour Playwriting projects that the Laboratory Theater has conducted. Last year, she won her second consecutive Audience Choice Award for a one act play called Coming Together that featured a young man who returned from taking a haunted history tour in New Orleans with the ghost of a young girl attached to him. [See below for full review.] The reception to that piece was so favorable, in fact, that Loomis is at work expanding the shortie into a one-hour play.

“Last year I knew I was going to do something a little weird,” said Loomis in a telephone interview prior to the start of this year’s 24-Hour Challenge. “In the week leading up to the challenge, I had this Rod Serling motif going on in my head, and so that influenced my thinking as I looked at the set and chose my props.”

Loomis declined to say what she had banging around in her mind leading up to this year’s Challenge, but one sequence that brought down the house featured Juan Pablo, the bride’s sexually-conflicted son, donning a pink silk bathrobe and brown woolen shawl while singing “I Feel Pretty” and lamenting that he just wanted to be part of a “nice, normal family.”

Loomis is quick to acknowledge just how arduous the 24-Hour Playwriting Project is. The playwrights assemble inside the reputedly-haunted Lab Theater at 8:00 p.m. on Friday night and have until only 7:00 a.m. on Saturday morning to produce a 15-20 minute long one-act play. But Char finds the immediacy of the feedback that the playwrights receive from each other, the judges and the audience to be well worth the lack of sleep and pressure of writing under such severe time constraints. “Besides, I thrive on pressure,” Loomis quips. “I was always very good at cramming for finals. But creating something that resonates with the actors and audience in such a short amount of time is pressure in a whole different sense.”

Her process is fairly straightforward. She spends the first 45 minutes or so just jotting down ideas that come to her stream-of-conscious style. Then she bangs out an outline and goes to work on the dialogue and stage directions. Like the other playwrights, Loomis found the concept this year so difficult that she barely got a couple of hours sleep. But that seemed inconsequential Saturday night after the results were announced from the stage.

“I’m still in shock,” Char admits. In fact, she was so involved in reveling in Les Abromovitz’ victory in receiving the Audience Choice Award, that she didn’t hear Stella Ruiz announce that she’d received the Judges’ Choice Award. “Annette [Trossbach] had to lean over and tell me again that I’d won. Then I had this Sally Field moment. I was so pleased and happy that they liked what I wrote.”

Gracious to a fault, Loomis went out of the way to praise director Lauren Redecker. “Lauren got me and how I wanted my characters portrayed,” Char effused. “She got the comedic element so well, it really contributed to each character’s development, which freed me to just kind of walk around and hang out.”

She was equally impressed by the actors who were assigned to her and Redecker. “I gave Sandy a lot of lines and when Lauren and I asked her if she wanted to take the script on stage during the performance, she was offended. ‘I know my lines,’ she insisted. And she did. She delivered them flawlessly,” Char chuckled. “And the boy who played Juan Pablo added physical gestures and things I simply wasn’t expecting from someone his age. He’s going to be a great actor going forward.” But then again, Loomis is a firm believer that kids are smarter than adults give them credit for, which is why Loomis writes roles that make them look as insightful and intuitive as they really are.

There was plenty of praise to go around Saturday night as each playwright turned in a superlative effort. “The writing this year was at a whole new level,” beamed Annette Trossbach. “Each play epitomizes the laboratory in Laboratory Theater.

The Laboratory Theater of Florida is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization which is dedicated to the promotion of the performing arts, through live performance, education, community outreach, experimentation and the development of ensemble work. The company features ensemble productions, produces classic works, takes artistic risks and features and challenges local performers of various skill levels. Stay up to date with its news and events on Facebook and Twitter @LabTheaterFL.  For more information, please call 239-218-0481. The theater is located at 1634 Woodford Ave. Fort Myers, 33901.

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Author Deni Sher one of four playwrights taking part in Lab Theater 24-Hour Playwriting Project (12-03-14)

On Friday, four playwrights will meet inside the Laboratory Theater to take on a unique challenge. At 8:00 p.m. they will be given a set, props, wardrobe, and some lines and sound effects they must use and given the rest of the night to write a 10-15 minute one-act play. In the morning, they will have breakfast with two local published playwrights, Louise Wigglesworth and Peter Swet, who will help guide their new plays. After rewrite time, directors will arrive and start working with playwrights, and at lunchtime, the actors who will star in each play arrive to start learning and rehearsing their lines. The curtain goes up at 8 p.m., when the plays will be performed before a live audience. It’s called the Lab Theater 24-Hour Playwriting Project, and Deni Boehm Sher will be one of four Florida playwrights who is taking place in the challenge.

Deni lives in Weston, Florida with her husband, Arthur. Possessing a love for writing, she returned to college at age fifty and received her B.A. in English at fifty-two. As the adult child of an alcoholic father and recovering, codependent and enabling mother of an addicted son, Deni possesses a consuming passion to shed light on familial dysfunction, codependency, denial, enabling, alcoholism and drug addiction. Her first-hand experiences serve as the basis for her poignant memoir, How One Parent Engaged Addiction (A Mother’s Healing Journey Through Her Son’s Addiction), which she wrote over a span of 12 years. Deni dreams of one day converting the book into a musical called Tough Love. In fact, she has already written a number of songs for the production. She believes her spiritually-inspired message of hope will translate well to a staged musical production. “But I really need the help of someone with experience writing musicals to finish the piece,” she stated in a telephone interview yesterday. “The stage is such a great medium for getting messages across, but musicals are really tough.”

Sher does have a background in Children’s Theatre. After majoring in it at Emerson, she went on to perform for a decade in children’s theatre, portraying such characters as Peter Pan, Cinderella, Brer Rabbit in Brer Rabbit’s Big Secret, Androcles in Androcles and the Lion, and Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web. . These experiences equip her to write in a unique, positive, and creatively poetic style.

Deni loves theatre, but the 24-Hour Playwriting Project is unique. “I took part in the 24-Hour Playwriting Project two years ago,” Deni notes. “I love that it challenges the brain to create a piece of work without any preconceived notions about the end product.” Last time around, her characters were a woman her own age and a boy her son’s age. “But I have no idea today what I’m going to write Friday night.” That doesn’t scare Deni, who describes herself as a risk taker who is always up for a challenge, including the physical demands that an overnight playwriting project entails.

“Last time, I finished around 3 a.m.,” Deni recalls. “If I get three or four hours of sleep, I’ll be fine.” A college athlete who competed in basketball and field hockey, Deni is not really planning to do anything special to prepare for going without much sleep. “Adrenaline takes you through the rest of the day,” she laughs.

Deni is especially looking forward to having a director this year. “Having another set of eyes and ears can only add to the stageworthiness of the play,” says the playwright, who loves the idea of collaboration. While Sher has no aspirations to be on stage as an actor, she is an accomplished public speaker. She is proactive in the prevention of addiction while working to take both shame and blame out of being in recovery. Deni wants teens and young people to know alcohol, drugs, and other vices are not the answer to emotional pain, and to understand how easily addiction can happen––even to them. Toward that end, she gratefully accepts speaking engagements whenever and as often as she can.

The 24-Hour Playwriting Project sold out last year, so don’t wait to get your tickets. See above for ticket information, location and directions

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Lab Theater issues call for playwrights up for a 24-hour challenge (10-27-14)

The Laboratory Theater of Florida is seeking talented local playwrights for its upcoming third annual 24-Hour Playwriting Project, which takes place from December 5th to the 6th.

Here’s how it works. Playwrights meet inside the Lab Theater on Woodford and Second at 8 p.m. on the night of December 5. At that time, they will be given lines they must include in their play as well as props and costumes. They will then have the rest of the night and following morning to write a one-act play. In the morning, actors arrive to memorize their lines and rehearse the play. That evening, all plays are staged for the public and a panel of local celebrity judges. The audience and judges will select a winner, and prizes will be awarded.

The theater will provide all meals, along with actors, costumes, and props. Playwrights will also receive guidance and critiques from professional, published playwrights.

Playwrights wishing to enter must submit writing samples. Samples must be one scene between 4 and 8 pages. The deadline for applying is November 16, 2014. Please email submissions to 24hpp@laboratorytheaterflorida.com. Submissions without a writing sample will not be considered. Playwrights will be notified of acceptance via email. Space is limited.  For further information, please visit www.laboratorytheaterflorida.com or call 239-218-0481. The Laboratory Theater of Florida is located at 1634 Woodford Avenue (corner of Second Street and Woodford) in the Fort Myers River District.

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THE FOLLOWING ARTICLES ARE ABOUT 2013’s 24-HOUR PLAYWRITING CHALLENGE.

Esteemed panel judges Lab Theater’s ‘Second Annual 24-Hour Playwriting Challenge’ (12-10-13)

The Laboratory Theater of Florida hosted its second annual 24-hour playwriting challenge over the past weekend. This year’s challenge not only attracted five area playwrights with exceptional writing and directing talent, but an esteemed panel who agreed to judge this year’s productions.

The judges included Connie Bottinelli, Nykkie Rizley, Di Saggau, Dr. Sidney Simon, Nancy Stetson and Marsha Wagner.

Connie Bottinelli is an international documentary filmmaker and human rights advocate. Since 1986, she has written, directed and produced for a host of national TV and global cable programs including TLC, Discovery Communications (1996-2000), Lifetime TV, America’s Most Wanted, Medical Detectives (1998-1999) and Court TV (1999-2005). She is the CEO and Executive Producer of Grinning Dog Pictures and has received five Emmys over the course of her career.

Nykkie Rizley is Secretary of the Board of Directors at The Laboratory Theater of Florida. After attending the University of Michigan, where she received a degree in Theater Prop Design, Nicole trained in both Chicago and New York. She now teaches Acting I, Acting II, and Acting for Seniors for Lab Theater and creates wounds and bruises for area film and stage productions. She directed House of Yes in August and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest last season.

Di Saggau writes for The Island Sun and The River Weekly. In a previous life, Di worked in radio in Omaha, Nebraska, and was director of communications for Nebraska public schools.

Dr. Sidney Simon is Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is an internationally and nationally recognized authority in the areas of values clarification and values realization, self-esteem and negative criticism. Dr. Simon has published numerous books including the best seller Values Clarification and Getting Unstuck. His articles have appeared in Reader’s Digest, Ladies Home Journal and Glamour, among many others. He also reviews theater for The Sanibel-Captiva Islander and The Island Reporter.

Nancy Stetson is the Arts and Entertainment writer and reviewer for Florida Weekly. Arts writer Nancy Stetson has received numerous commendations and awards for her introspective look at area theater productions.

Marsha Wagner is a reviewer for the Captiva-Sanibel Islander, an actress and community advocate. Her background includes ballet dancing in New York City and assistant directing at Radio City Music Hall. She will be bringing her production of Copenhagen to Lab Theater in March as a staged reading.

Although individual scores varied widely, the judges’ consensus winner was playwright Laura Lorusso for The Hall: Last Sunday, a one-act play that featured a cement Bertie Bloomer birthday cake, neurotic delivery man with melting feet, and an apartment resident who just wanted to watch some football on the last Sunday before his life changes forever as a result of the impending birth of his first child. The 12 minute 45 second vignette sparkled with snappy dialogue, rib-splitting one liners and even a little song and dance that brought down the house.

The Laboratory Theater of Florida is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization which is dedicated to the promotion of the performing arts, through live performance, education, community outreach, experimentation and the development of ensemble work. The company features ensemble productions, produces classic works, takes artistic risks and features and challenges local performers of various skill levels. Stay up to date with its news and events on Facebook and Twitter @LabTheaterFL.  For more information, please call 239-218-0481. The theater is located at 1634 Woodford Ave. Fort Myers, 33901

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Playwright’s experience on haunted history tour inspires People’s Choice play (12-09-13)

On Saturday night, Char Loomis won her second consecutive Audience Choice Award in the Lab Theater’s 24-Hour Playwriting Challenge. Her one act play, Coming Together, featured a young man who returned from taking a haunted history tour in New Orleans with the ghost of a young girl attached to him.

How could this happen? Well, it seems that young Damien foolishly ignored the warnings of his guide and left the tour before the portal through which the ghosts pass could be closed back up again. “People were seeing orbs. It was just too weird, so I left the tour. This ghost attached to me and now I’m stuck with it,” Damien laments to his love interest, who fears that her erstwhile boyfriend has slipped a cog. She become convinced of it moments later when Damien tells her that he’s returned to town to kill the down-on-her-luck old woman who lives in the abandoned restaurant where the play takes place. “I have to do it,” Damien wails half-crazed. “It’s the only way I can be free of the ghost.”

Well, of course, the bereft and bedraggled woman was the young child’s mother. “We were taking a ride on a paddleboat,” she tells Damien and his girl. “I just turned my head for a moment. When I turned around, she was gone. The found her body floating in the river two days later.” Murdering her is the only way that Damien can reunite mother and child.

“I got the idea for Coming Together from a haunted history tour I took in New Orleans,” Loomis said on Saturday night. Although many cities (including London, Manhattan, Savannah, Gettysburg and St. Augustine) offer haunted history tours, post-Katrina New Orleans is reputed by the History, Discovery and Travel channels to be the most haunted city in America. With its colorful history and fair share of outlandish personalities, it is small wonder so many New Orleans homes and taverns have been investigated by paranormal investigators, but Loomis did not encounter any ghosts or orbs on the tour she took. Still, the stories made an impression and surfaced on Saturday night during the Lab Theater’s Second Annual 24-Hour Playwriting Challenge.

Loomis has a Masters in Communication Arts from Maryland University, where she also concentrated on script writing. Char has been writing as a hobby for several years, but with two Audience Choice Awards in a row, the theater community may be seeing a lot more of her in the years ahead.

“I’ve heard about it and am dying to take it,” answered Char when asked if she’d been on True Tours‘ haunted history tour of downtown Fort Myers. Let’s hope that’s just a figure of speech.

The Laboratory Theater of Florida is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization which is dedicated to the promotion of the performing arts, through live performance, education, community outreach, experimentation and the development of ensemble work. The company features ensemble productions, produces classic works, takes artistic risks and features and challenges local performers of various skill levels. Stay up to date with its news and events on Facebook and Twitter @LabTheaterFL.  For more information, please call 239-218-0481. The theater is located at 1634 Woodford Ave. Fort Myers, 33901.

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Six local playwrights accept Lab Theater 24-hour writing challenge (11-27-13)

The Laboratory Theater of Florida will be showcasing six original plays this December 7 at 8 p.m. The plays will be the culmination of a 24-hour writing challenge issued to six regional playwrights.

The playwrights will be given a theme, some lines each of them must use in her script, and about 18 hours in which to write a 10-15 minute long one-act play. Directors and actors will be assigned to the playwrights. Community support comes from published playwrights who will offer guidance once the first draft is complete.

Accepting the challenge are:

• Laura Lorusso (top right), who has been an active member of the local theater community for the past decade. During that time, she’s starred in several shows with The Naples Players, toured with a local comedy show (Joey and Maria’s Comedy Italian Wedding), and just this fall wrote and co-directed her first play, Afterlife of the Rich and Famous, with Let’s Put On A Show Productions in Naples.
• Char Loomis (right), who graduated from Marywood University with a Master’s degree in Communication Arts. One of her concentrations in her studies was script writing. Char has been writing for several years mainly as a hobby, but her first public acknowledgement came last year at The Laboratory Theater’s first annual 24-hour playwriting showcase.
• Michael Tomes (right), who has written short stories and plays for most of his adult life. His plays have been critically acclaimed by the Key West Waterfront Playhouse and at the Firehouse Playwriting Contest in LaBelle.
• Carmen Crussard (lower right), who has been acting, directing, writing, and teaching for many years. Carmen co-wrote and directed Naked with her theater company, City Scenes. She was also honored with the critic’s choice award at last year’s 24-hour Playwriting Project at The Laboratory Theater of Florida.

Other playwrights include Taylor Adair Nave and John Fry.

“The jeopardy involved for writers and for actors is delightful!” says Artistic Director Annette Trossbach. “The audience can feel the energy sizzle – and of course there are running gags that are woven into each play.”

Playwrights will be judged by a panel of professionals as well as by the audience. The theater will award Critics’ Choice and Audience Choice Awards.

The 24-hour Playwriting Project will be presented at 8 p.m. on Saturday, December 7. Tickets are $12 and are available for purchase online at www.laboratorytheaterflorida.com or at the door. Seating is limited and advance ticket purchases are suggested. Doors will open at 7:30 p.m.

The Laboratory Theater of Florida is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization which is dedicated to the promotion of the performing arts, through live performance, education, community outreach, experimentation and the development of ensemble work. The company features ensemble productions, produces classic works, takes artistic risks and features and challenges local performers of various skill levels. Stay up to date with its news and events on Facebook and Twitter @LabTheaterFL.  For more information, please call 239-218-0481. The theater is located at 1634 Woodford Ave. Fort Myers, 33901

1. 

   Annette says:

   December 10, 2014 at 3:36 pm

   Thanks again for your detailed story on our 24-Hour Playwriting Project! It was a special challenge that each playwright met with grace!

   reply
2. 

   Connie Bottinelli says:

   December 11, 2014 at 2:27 am

   Congratulations to Annette and Stella for making the 24 Hour Playwright Competition’s 3rd year a reality – and the highest acknowledgement to the playwrights, the actors and directors for an amazing act of stretching and being fearless! Kudos to all.

   reply