Elly and I just wrapped up a perfectly wonderful weekend at the Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University, right in our adopted home town of Shepherdstown, WV. I've already written about some of it. We saw THE OVERWHELMING, about the devastating Rwanda Genocide of the 90s; then we saw PIG FARM, by Greg Kotis, whose surreal and entertaining writing we were used to form Urinetown, which I directed in Greenbelt; we attended a tent lecture where we got to hear a little bit from 4 of the 5 playwrights represented at the CATF; and yesterday we topped everything off with an early evening production of A VIEW OF THE HARBOR, by Richard Dresser, in the studio theatre-in-the-round.

On Sunday Morning, I went to a "Breakfast with Ed Herendeen", the Executive Director of CATF and the actual director of three of the five plays being presented.

Ed is an amazing man who founded this Festival 18 years ago after spending a couple of days as a consultant to Shepherd U's then President (Ed was working in Massachusetts at the Williamstown Theatre Festival at the time) and agreeing on the spur of the moment to create what became one of the foremost new play festivals in the world... and one of the few that perform in repertory.

He answered questions, but at the same time you could see he was getting input from the assembled visitors who had made limited reservations to sit with him and have coffee and bagels and talk theatre. Ed is a listener... and you can see by how this festival has developed over the years how important that is.

I was so impressed that I dropped him an e-mail today in hopes of doing some volunteer service at some point at CATF. I'd like to get to know Ed and his staff much better. Elly agrees that it would be mutually beneficial, now that we've moved away from the DC area theatres I was directing and designing for over the last few years.

Anyway... next weekend we have 2 more plays to see and another tent lecture. More later. (If you've never attended the CATF, it runs to the end of the month. Go to the Box Office web site and get a reservation in!) Print Add a Comment Back to All Articles