The Rocket

Issue date: 4/25/08 Section: Focus

Media Credit: Steve Reed Dennis Whaler (left), a post-baccalaureate English literature student, and Morgan Pritchard, a junior theatre major practice lines for the Brave New Plays festival. The festival, which will be on May 1 and 2 will showcase student-produced,-directed and-written plays. [Click to enlarge]

A compilation of student-produced, -directed and -written plays will be hitting Sheehy Auditorium in this year's Brave New Plays festival.

The festival will take place on May 1 and 2 at 8 p.m. in Sheehy Auditorium, located in the basement of the Maltby Center. Admission will be $2.

This year marks the 13th anniversary of Brave New Plays, a festival which was organized by a small group of SRU students.

It all started in the spring of 1994, when a group of playwriting students in David Skeele's class approached their professor in hopes of creating something to showcase their work. The project was given the go-ahead and the students took off with their new creation, organizing the whole event on their own. The 10-minute play festival consisted of five pieces and turned out to be a great success.

"It got a great audience response," Skeele said. "It was small, but the audience was really vocal and people seemed excited about it."

The festival continued to take place nearly every spring semester afterwards. It wasn't until four years after its creation that it finally received its current title, Brave New Plays. Also, in 2002, the 10-minute plays were joined by another form of theatre, the solo play, in which only one actor is on stage. This solo play segment of the festival was called "Flying Solo."

This year, the students' plays were submitted to a committee of theatre department faculty members at the beginning of the spring semester and six scripts were chosen to be performed in early May. This method of selecting plays was adopted a few years ago due to the growing popularity of the festival.

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