SCRIPTEASE is StageWest’s monthly, FREE, play reading. Join us as we explore new and experimental scripts.

Join us in August and September as Scriptease presents two original scripts followed by a talkback between you, our audience, and the playwrights. Help develop great theatre by sharing your feedback and becoming a part of the process.

NEXT Triangles - a gay / lesbian / heterosexual romantic comedy?
By William Randall Beard and Mark Carlson
DATE Tues. Aug. 31. Last Tuesday of each month
TIME 7 p.m.
COST Free
LOCATION First Unitarian Church, 1800 Bell Ave.

Tyler is in love with David, a married man.  This is fine with Tyler, until he discovers that David’s wife is his sister’s business partner. Tyler’s sister, Joanne, is having romantic troubles of her own, dealing with her closeted partner, Donna. A fast-paced blending of romantic comedy, melodrama and farce, Triangles follows a racially diverse community of characters as they come to terms with family and commitment among the orientations.

We will have the playwrights here for the performance and for a talk back with the audience after the show.

Directed by Tom Perrine. Cast: Jeanette Boderman, Robert John Ford, Gina Gedler, Juli Hale, Lan Le, Brian Roby, Karen Schaeffer, and John Spinks.

About the Playwrights

William Randall Beard is the author of the current hit, Beyond the Rainbow, a musical biography of Judy Garland, commissioned by the History Theatre in St. Paul, MN in 2005 and co-produced by StageWest and Des Moines Playhouse this year. There have been close to a dozen other productions around the country. He was also commissioned, along with Matt Sciple, by Park Square Theatre in St. Paul, MN to create a contemporary adaptation of Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart that went on to a production in Queensland, Australia.

Over the last 15 years, Beard has written for theaters across the cultural spectrum, from Stages Youth Theatre in Hopkins, MN (three commissions, including a contemporary adaptation of Cinderella), to the avant-garde Red Eye Collaboration in Minneapolis, MN (two productions, including a solo performance piece, I Made Love to Jeffrey Dahmer). He has served two terms as an Associate Member of the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, MN and spent three years as the Literary Manager of Park Square Theatre.

As an arts journalist, Beard regularly contributes theatre and classical music reviews to the Minneapolis Star Tribune and an opera column to Mpls/St Paul magazine.

Mark S. Carlson is the co-author of Coming Out, Coming Home, a play about the faith journeys of lesbian and gay Christians. Coming Out, Coming Home has been performed over eighty times in eight different states. He also co-produced a video of the play and wrote the accompanying discussion guide. Carlson also wrote the one-act Vampire Hotline, produced by Magic Circle Ensemble, and is currently at work on Conversations with the Serpent, a novel retelling the Cain and Abel story.

With over twenty years of experience as a psychotherapist, Carlson is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Argosy University—Twin Cities. Beard and he enjoy a long-standing collaboration and friendship.

SEPTEMBER  Scriptease 
The Casserole Brigade
by Robert John Ford
Tuesday, Sept. 28

We will have the playwright here for the performance and for a talk back with the audience after the show.

Suddenly finding themselves single again in the unfamiliar era of online dating, four inventive widows develop a decidedly old-school method to meet potential new partners.  Unexpectedly, one of the widows reunites with a man she had a crush on more than sixty years earlier. Along the way, their traditional views on relationships are turned upside-down as they find that new love can be found in surprising places.

Directed by Ron Gilbert

About the Playwright

Robert John Ford is an award-winning playwright, composer, and lyricist whose original theatrical works have been produced throughout the country.  His 2008 Des Moines production of Caucus! The Musical was seen by more than 2,500 people, featured in more than 200 media stories (including CNN, CBS, ABC, NPR, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, TIME, and Newsweek), and was called “the hottest new musical in the country” by the Washington Post.  Six-On-Six: The Musical has been seen by more than 10,000 people in multiple productions and was called a “slam dunk” in a Des Moines Register review.  The World’s Largest Aluminum Foil Ball was voted “Best Show” in a Des Moines Register online poll at the 2007 Iowa Fringe Festival and was designated as the first “Must See” production (out of 140 shows) of the 2007 Minnesota Fringe Festival by the St. Paul Pioneer Press.  The Casserole Brigade premiered off-Broadway in 2007 and was a featured play of the 2007 Last Frontier Theatre Festival in Alaska.  Sleeping Dogs was the winner of the 2008 Iowa Playwright’s Workshop competition and the 2009 Tallgrass Theatre production was hailed as “riveting” and “remarkable” by the Des Moines Register.  Works currently in development include My Dinner with Andrew, an autobiographical play detailing his daily conversations with gay serial killer Andrew Cunanan, and Utopia, a musical revue celebrating the unique people, places, and traditions of Iowa, currently scheduled for production in Des Moines in the fall of 2010.  He is an Associate Member of the Dramatist Guild.