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Anchorage Plays Set Stage for Valdez Theater ConferenceEven in this age of cable television, YouTube, 3D, HD and IMAX, the playwrights insist that live theater has retained its vitality.Related Content
The Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez has been presented annually since 1993, when it was launched with the assistance of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee. This year's conference begins Sunday at Prince William Sound Community College.
Although it is less of a star-studded event than it was a decade ago, participants say it has improved as a laboratory for playwrights -- both from Alaska and from across the country.
The impact once again will be felt in Anchorage with a performance Wednesday night.
Alaska playwrights say there's a wealth of original material being produced in the state because of the long-running conference
“A lot of people have become better playwrights because of the conference, I think myself included,” said Anchorage playwright Schatzie Schaefers. “And it also really gets you excited when your writing becomes better just over the course of a week."
The common denominator among the estimated 300 participants, says coordinator Dawson Moore: passion for the art form.
"When I coordinate the theater conference, I coordinate it from the perspective of someone who -- when I first started going there, I was a poor college student, I could barely afford the gas to get there, I slept on gymnasium floors -- and as a coordinator I try to make it the best experience that I could have had at that point in my life."
Even in this age of cable television, YouTube, 3D, HD and IMAX, the playwrights insist that live theater has retained its vitality.
"Theater is kind of like an artistic weed,” Moore said. “It will always spring up in the garden of the arts because of a couple of reasons. One, because it's something you can always do. You may not always be able to get good tech together for a TV show or a webisode, but you can always find a barn and put up a sheet and call it a stage, and put on a play. And second, it's about live connection with people."
An anchorage audience will get a look Wednesday night at four short plays to be presented in Valdez next week.
Schaefers is reprising the quartet of one-acts, 'FourPlay,' that were presented last fall at Anchorage Community Theater, which is hosting them again.
The titles convey the edginess of the plays -- for example, Steve Hunt's "Thanksgiving Dinner with the Last Whore in Calhoun County" and "Six Dead Bodies Duct-Taped to a Merry-Go-Round," co-written by Moore.
"I wouldn't call it family theater, although, you know, nobody takes their clothes off," Schaefers said. "And I think that the scripts are all really high-quality scripts. And so if you just really like good plays, I don't think anybody will mind a few swear words."
Schaefer's script, "A Wee Rembrandt," is based on the biggest art theft in U.S. history, and imagines a dialogue between two museum security guards tied up by the robbers.
The play is unusual for its complete lack of movement. "In my piece, no blocking at all -- which was a really great thing, actually, just to be able to work with the actors on the nuances of what was going on between them, because it's really just a play about a relationship, between these two men."
But the final piece, Arlitia Jones' "The Bodice Rippers," goes in the other direction, with constant, comic movement, including a sword fight.
It's a variety of subject, pace and style that the playwrights say can be traced in part to the nurturing atmosphere of the annual conference in Valdez -- an Alaska institution that's still going strong.
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