Best Of Cincinnati 2008

Out and About Feature

Pumping the Lifeblood
Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative helps connect local writers with audiences seeking new work

Interview by Rick Pender

Writer/director Kevin Crowley fields questions from the audience at a “New Voices” event at the Aronoff Center.

Photo By: Joe Lamb

As I write about theater for CityBeat, I occasionally try to remind readers where new plays come from. Believe me, it’s not just New York and Chicago.

In fact, people right here in Greater Cincinnati write plays. The way many of their scripts first see the light of day — or at least the light of a stage — is because of Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative (CPI), a 12-year-old association of writers who support one another’s work and offer monthly public readings using professional directors and accomplished actors.

“Playwrights can gain immense help and insight about what works and what does not work when they see their script in the hands of others,” says Norma Jenckes, a professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, where she also headed the Helen Weinberger Center for the Study of Drama and Playwriting for a decade and edited the journal American Drama.

After being involved with other playwriting groups in Cincinnati during the 1990s, Jenckes got the ball rolling for CPI in 1996.

“I became aware of how many people in our community were writing plays,” she recalls, “and how many had, in fact, completed scripts. It was a veritable logjam.”

She and others came together for occasional unrehearsed readings, but she felt a need for something more formal.

“I knew the writers would benefit enormously from seeing their work onstage in a reading with a real director in charge and performed by professional actors,” Jenckes says, quick to note that it was never a one-woman show. “All the playwrights who wanted their work read generated the energy that fueled the experience.”

Their idea was to “construct CPI as a conduit,” she says, “for all the desire of playwrights to channel their energy into not simply a reading of their own scripts but a community incubator for new plays. Playwrights ache to see their work come alive onstage.”

CPI taps that energy with its monthly New Voice Series.

Clearly, the concept has worked. Since the first event in early 1997, according to current CPI President Phil Paradise, the group has offered 170 readings of 145 new plays. Many have happened in the Fifth Third Bank Theater at downtown’s Aronoff Center, typically on the second Tuesday of each month at 7:30 p.m.

Paradise praises the Cincinnati Arts Association’s education and community relations department.

“CAA has provided us much assistance with marketing our New Voices Series,” he says, “and with helping us maintain our presence at the Aronoff with our monthly readings from September through May. Our rent is discounted for the New Voices readings, and CAA helps with flyers, programs for our readings, with box office and with marketing, promoting.”

Over the years, CPI has used additional venues — from UC’s Wilson Auditorium and The Carnegie in Covington to various auditoriums at area hospitals — but the Fifth Third, a black box theater with its lobby at the corner of Main and Seventh streets, remains the place where audiences most often find them.

Jenckes remembers that some playwrights from CPI’s formative years were not theater people.

“I wanted them to see that theater is a collaborative art and that they must become part of a production team if they wanted to learn to improve and see their plays produced,” she says.

Readings were an opportunity for them to grow, according to Jenckes.

“I am a firm believer in the importance of taking a script away from a writer and turning it over to a director and some actors,” she says. “When a playwright attends a reading of his play, especially if he treats it as a reading and not a performance, he will immediately see what works and what does not work. He will be strongly motivated to revise and improve the work.”

Finally, Jenckes hoped CPI would create an “interactive community experience.” She envisioned that “audiences would become aware of talented writers in our midst who needed and appreciated their input, and also playwrights would come to appreciate the acting and directing talent in our community.”

Audiences are invited to stay after each reading to provide feedback to the playwright.

Based on the numbers Paradise provides, it appears that CPI’s model works. After more than a decade, the organization has 35 active members and more than 100 local actors and directors occasionally involved in readings. It’s not a difficult time commitment for performers, Paradise adds.

“Typically, a playwright and actors and director will need only to have one or two rehearsals prior to a reading,” he says, “since actors are not expected to be off-book (to have memorized their lines).”

Jenckes says opportunities for playwriting are better than ever in Cincinnati, thanks to new developments such as the Cincinnati Fringe Festival.

“Drama must take risks and theaters must take chances on new plays and playwrights,” she says. “New work is the lifeblood.”

Thanks to people like Jenckes and Paradise, CPI’s presence has become an essential component of Cincinnati’s theater scene.

Just recently, one of CPI’s New Voices readings at the Aronoff Center featured two new scripts: Hitchhikers May Be Inmates (about two recovering alcoholics who seem to be losing a battle with their demons) by Kevin Crowley and Booty of the Year (about professional wrestling and sibling rivalry) by Cisco Montgomery. Crowley, a professional actor who’s been onstage at the Playhouse and Ensemble Theatre in addition to theaters around the U.S., directed both.

Two other works by CPI participants were presented during March at New Edgecliff Theatre’s recent Cincinnati Directors Competition, Footprints of the Polar Bear by Paradise and Testing Val, Au Naturel by Roger Collins. The recently announced 2008 Fringe Festival lineup features numerous pieces by local writers.

If you’d like to attend an upcoming reading in CPI’s New Voices series, you’ll have the chance on April 15 (Robert Yates’ Clinic Mischief), May 13 (Kalman Kivkovich’s Embers from the Ashes: A Girl’s Holocaust Diary) and June 17 (TBA). Modestly priced tickets ($4-$7) can be purchased at the door, or you can call for a reservation (513-621-2787).