GREENFIELD, MA — The LAVA Center’s festival of new play readings by local playwrights, “On the Boards,” concludes this weekend with performances of As We Were: Nine Days in October by Jan Maher.
For the past few months, LAVA hosted a theater incubation series, in which six local playwrights workshopped and developed new plays. Now they’re ready for an audience! Get a glimpse into the process of making theater, in this festival of staged readings of new works in many stages of development.
Over sixty years ago, Bob Dylan recorded his first album, “Rocky and Bullwinkle” dominated Saturday morning television, and the world teetered on the precipice of all out nuclear war.
As We Were: Nine Days in October focuses on the impact of the Cuban Missile Crisis on the lives of ten students on a Midwestern campus. In the lounge of their small college, the students play chess, cards, and guitars; discuss homework, music, and Halloween pranks; flirt and banter. Abruptly, their cocoon is ripped open by JFK’s announcement that the world is on the brink of nuclear war. Each is wrenched into stark confrontations with identity, sexuality, values, mortality, themselves, and each other.
The Cuban Missile Crisis ends a mere nine days after JFK’s speech to the nation, but during that time the students and their world — our world — are forever changed.
As We Were will be performed by Alana Blake, Joe Doyle, Rebecca Hicks, Penney Hulten, Jayse Matrishon, E.C. Piper, Zac Poulin, Will Quale, Seth Rosenbaum, Kiersten Samalis and Clara Witty.
Playwright Jan Maher was a freshman in college during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Events depicted are, as they say, “based on a true story,” though Maher freely admits she is primarily a writer of fiction. “1962 was a cusp year,” she notes. “We entered college that year at the tail end of the conforming Fifties, and emerged as the cutting edge of the legendary Sixties. The complacency of the Eisenhower years were behind us, and political assassinations, liberation movements, hippies, Yippies, massive demonstrations and massive concerts were yet to fully manifest.”
Audiences are invited to stay for post-play discussions, led on Friday night by Pat Hynes, of Traprock Center for Peace and Justice and on Saturday night by Doug Selwyn, LAVA Board President.
All plays are also viewable online for two weeks. For more information and tickets, visit https://thelavacenter.org/on-the-boards/.
On the Boards is made possible by grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the local cultural councils of Greenfield, Bernardston, Gill, Leyden, and Northfield.
The LAVA Center is a community arts space in Greenfield, MA whose mission is to create opportunities and build inclusive community in and through the arts and humanities. We are focused on making The LAVA Center a space where all artists, including marginalized communities and individuals, can have their voices heard. The LAVA Center is located at 324 Main St., in downtown Greenfield, MA. https://thelavacenter.org