CATF announces 2005 performance lineup

By Dan Friend
Chronicle Staff


The Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) will return this July for its 15th Anniversary season of new American plays showcasing innovative works by some of the hottest writers in the nation. Producing Director Ed Herendeen has slated a thought-provoking and engaging collection of new plays for the Festival, which will run from July 8-July 31 in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.

This yearís Festival-goers will experience a new, razor-sharp dark comedy by Sam Shepard, The God of Hell, and a moving and surprising drama by promising new writer Melinda Lopez, Sonia Flew. There will be two world premieres at this yearís Festival. American Tet, by Lydia Stryk, offers a poetic juxtaposition of loss and beauty in relating the experiences of American soldiers in Iraq and their families at home. Father Joy, by Sheri Wilner, is a humorous and lyrical story that deals with father-daughter bonds and the fleeting nature of art.

"Our 2005 playwrights have applied their special gifts to today's scene. Their plays will explore some of the most urgent human and social issues of our time," Herendeen stated. "The exciting thing about contemporary theater is that it is a place where these voices can be heard." Once again, CATF is offering CATCard ticket packages that allow visitors to see all four plays during a two or three-day visit to Shepherdstown. Tickets and packages for the 2005 CATF Season will go on sale March 1. More information is available at www.catf.org or by calling 1 (800) 999-CATF (2283).

The 2005 CATF Season:

"The God of Hell" by Sam Shepard is a new dark comedy involving American flags, electricity, the heartland, secret government organizations, and cattle. The play digs into the soul of America, and sifts from that earthy substance a vision of startling spiritual contamination. Directed by Ed Herendeen. Eleven of Sam Shepard's plays have won Obie Awards. Shepard was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his play, Buried Child (1970). In 1986, Shepard was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1992, he received the Gold Medal for Drama from the Academy, and in 1994 he was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame.

"Sonia Flew" by Melinda Lopez chronicles a family's history through the turbulent times of the Castro revolution and the current post-9/11 world. In the winter of 2001, Sonia's son enlists in the Marines, tearing apart the carefully constructed modern world she lives in. She slips out of time and finds herself back in 1961 in Cuba as her parents are preparing to send her away, against her will, to America. Directed by Ed Herendeen. Melinda Lopez is a playwriting fellow at The Huntington Theatre, where Sonia Flew was developed and premiered in 2004. Lopez was the first recipient of the Charlotte Woolard Award, given by the Kennedy Center to a "promising new voice in American Theatre." Her award-winning plays include "Midnight Sandwich/Medianoche," "The Order of Things" (Kennedy Center Fund for New Plays) and "How Do You Spell Hope?" for the Underground Railway Theatre. She is also an actress and has appeared at the Huntington Theatre, Shakespeare & Co. and the Guthrie Theatre. Lopez teaches theatre and performance at Suffolk University and Wellesley College.

"American Tet," a world premiere by Lydia Stryk, relates the experiences of American soldiers in Iraq and their families at home. These include a veteran father who is haunted by his experiences in Vietnam, a mother who volunteers at an army base support group, and a woman soldier who has been horribly disfigured in battle. Lydia Stryk has written over ten full-length plays including Lady Lay, The Glamour House, The House of Lily, Monte Carlo, and most recently, Safe House, On Clarion and American Tet. Her plays have been produced at the Denver Center Theater, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and Perseverance Theatre, and seen at new play festivals and reading series nation-wide and off-Broadway. Safe House was part of the Biennale Bonn in the summer of 2004. The House of Lily can currently be seen at Theaterhaus Stuttgart and Schauspiel Essen in Germany. Her work has been published in anthologies of monologues and one-act plays.

"Father Joy," a world premiere by Sheri Wilner, is the story of Abigail, an ambitious sculpture student who yearns to create, but is struggling to give her ideas shape and substance. While her relationship with her world-famous art professor takes a romantic turn, a curious thing happens to her father. He begins to disappear. Literally. As this shy and withdrawn man becomes less and less visible to his astonished wife and daughter, father and daughter begin to feel a bond they never shared before.

Sheri Wilner's play "Hunger" premiered at CATF in 2000. It was subsequently produced by the Epiphany Theatre Company in New York and published. Father Joy was work-shopped at the 2003 OíNeill Playwrights Conference, and received readings at four theaters. Labor Day and Bake Off each won the Heideman Award at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Other plays include "The Bushesteia," "Relative Strangers" and "Joan of Arkansas." She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and several theatres in New York. She was awarded a 2005-06 Jerome Fellowship residency at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis.










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