The Source Festival, which runs from June 10 to July 3, has a lot of changes in its format this year. Its three major components (10-minute plays, full-length plays and “artistic blind dates”) will play throughout the three weeks, and audience members will be able to see the entire festival over marathon-performance weekends. “We realized last year that people took really well to the final week where you could see all three full-length plays in a day,” festival producer Jenny McConnell Frederick explained in a recent interview. “So we wondered how we could do that on a broader scale.”
The 10-minute plays are a massive undertaking in which Washington-based actors and directors come together with playwrights from across the country to mount 18 new productions.
| Onstage |
| The Source Festival |
| Where: Source, 1835 14th St. NW |
| When: Friday to July 3 |
| Info: 866-811-4111; sourcedc.org/festival |
“We do a nationwide open call asking for submissions and we get about 600 plays every year,” said Frederick, who also is director of performing arts for the Cultural Development Corporation Project.
“We have two teams of theater professionals and theatergoers who read and narrow the plays down to 25 or 30. Then my associate producers and I sit down to narrow it down to the top 18.
“We look for plays that represent the most fresh and interesting methods of playwriting. We look for what’s new, not just in terms of subject matter, but also in terms of style. There are some crazy, out-there things in the festival that represent unique ways of telling a story and that give you an idea of the scope of what’s going on in the country right now.”
Another important component of the festival is the artistic blind date, in which 12 artists — ranging from playwrights to filmmakers to puppeteers and choreographers — are invited to collaborate. After four months, teams of artists present their performances.
This year’s full-length plays are “Spacebar: A Broadway Play by Kyle Sugarman,” actually by Michael Mitnick; “The Making of a Modern Folk Hero” by Martin Zimmerman; and “Volcanic in Origin” by Gregory Hischak.
The full-length plays are chosen by invitation only. “We invite anyone who has had a play produced previously in a Source Festival,” Frederick said. Festival organizers also refer to theater professionals from across the country and the National New Play Network, which offer playwrights’ names from which the finalists are chosen.
The talent show is a “one night only” event and takes place July 1. “We have about 200 artists involved in the festival,” said Frederick, “so we’ll call out to them and to the community. We’ll have celebrity judges and an emcee and we’ll give $100 to the winner. It’s a really fun night.”
