NOTE: “Today” and “tonight” refer to Friday, March 4.
PORT TOWNSEND — The first weekend of PT PlayFest 20 is featuring premieres of plays by the winning playwrights of the 2015 Port Townsend Arts Commission’s One-Act Play Competition.
During the Locals’ Weekend, five plays — by Christopher Clow, Doug Given, D.D. Wigley, Judith Glass Collins and new playwright Hewitt Brooks — will be performed.
During the festival weekend from next Thursday through next Sunday, March 13, several regionally and nationally acclaimed playwrights will offer workshops on their full-length plays in progress.
This weekend’s events will be at the Key City Playhouse at 419 Washington St.
Next weekend’s events will be at the playhouse and at the Pope Marine Building on Madison Street.
Tickets — $10 for staged readings, $15 for one-act productions or passes costing $35 for the entire festival — can be purchased online at http://tinyurl.com/PDN-playfest, at the playhouse box office or by calling 360-385-5278 (KCPT).
The Locals’ Weekend began Thursday with readings at the playhouse.
Tonight, one-act productions will be performed from 7:30 to 9, and an opening night gala is set from 9 to 10. Tickets are $15.
On Saturday will be a Working Drafts Teen Lab from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. — tickets are $10 — and one-act productions from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. — tickets are $15.
On Sunday will be one-act productions from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tickets are $15.
During festival weekend, an Evening with Darrah Cloud is planned.
Cloud is the theater’s featured guest playwright this year.
Her play, “The Posthumous Democrat,” is the story of a composer, Catherine Starr, whose famous, connected conservative father leaves her a legacy both enormous and crippling.
A one-night-only Working Drafts session with Seattle playwright Duane Kelly will feature his new script “Escorting Tom,” in which a woman’s plan to help her inept and isolated husband survive after she leaves goes off the rails.
PlayFest audiences will have the chance to witness and take part in the development of “Port Townsend’s Christmas Carol: A Ghostly Musical.”
The play is an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic written by KCPT musical director Linda Dowdell and artistic director Denise Winter.
“Port Townsend’s Christmas Carol” will premiere at Key City Public Theatre in December.
Other special events will include open rehearsals, a Teen Lab featuring scripts by local teens and a panel discussion on developing the kernel of an idea, an in-depth look at how dramatic writers move from concept to creation.
For the full schedule and more details, see http://tinyurl.com/PDN-playfest.
