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4189 Orcharo [the Roao
Orcbaro Coke
5/14
1999
90 Detroit Jewish News
248-5-4000
aix : 24 863 0 20
Aspiring playwrights will be able to
showcase their work in Ann Arbor
each spring, thanks to the University
of Michigan's newly created annual
"Festival Of New Works: A Showcase
for Dramatic Writing," which this
year runs from May 21-June 20.
The festival will feature the works of
carefully selected playwrights, says
playwright and artistic director Frank
Gagliano. "The writers will develop
their pieces over a two-week period
with a company of professional actors
and a professional director, then give
three public staged-reading perfor-
mances at the University of Michigan's
Trueblood Theater." Gagliano, who is
married to a former cantor, launched
many hits when he was artistic director
of Pittsburgh's Showcase of New Plays.
The festival's mission is billed as
"continuing a history of major talent
in the tradition of Arthur Miller and
Lawrence Kasdan."
In fact, notes Gaglione, famed play-
wright Arthur Miller will be in Ann
Arbor June 4 for a performance of
Willie Holtzman's Hearts and the pre-
sentation of U-M's first annual
"Arthur Miller Award for Dramatic
Writing." Michael Weller, the screen-
writer of Ragtime and Hair and play-
wright for Moonchildren, Loose Ends
and Spoils of War, will be the keynote
speaker at 7 p.m. Friday, May 21, pre-
ceding that evening's performance.
The festival also has planned an
Arena Series, to be held in the base-
ment of the Frieze Building, featuring
staged readings, with no production
values, and free admission. The play
schedule includes Dead and Kicking,
by Tim Pollock, 8 p.m. May 21 and
22; Road Rage, by Wendy Hammond,
8 p.m. June 4 and 5; and Wzr Is ...,
by Oyamo, 8 p.m. June 18 and 19.
Behind each of the three plays
planned for the Trueblood Theater is a
Jewish talent. Those plays, which will
feature staged readings with some pro-
duction values, include the following:
Rock Garden, by Beth Winsten, is
the only screenplay in the series. It
will have staged readings May 21-23.
Demonstrating the importance of
music in our culture, the story is
about a 40-year-old rock critic, who,
when a newspaper strike forces him
out on the street, becomes caught up
in a scheme to re-create Motown in
Detroit. "He doesn't get the new
music scene — and he shouldn't; he's
too old," explains Winsten, who
earned a bachelor's degree at Wayne
State University and a master of arts at
the University of Michigan. "He has
been in the game too long."
In preparing for the showcase,
Winsten had the opportunity to
work with Birmingham-based
Hollywood screenwriter Kurt
Luedtke (Absence of Malice, Out of
Africa), who has been her script con-
sultant, helping her with rewrites.
Winsten, a Hopwood Award win-
ner while in graduate school, was born
and raised in New York and has lived
in Michigan since the early 1980s. She <
teaches screenwriting at U-M and has
written and directed short documen-
tary films. Among her credits is Body
Soul, which was featured at the
33rd Ann Arbor Film Festival.
N Hearts, by Willy Holtzman, will be
presented June 4-6. A psychological
drama based on a true story, Hearts
begins during the closing days of
World War II and goes back and forth
between1945 and the present. The
play focuses on the emotional journey
of a man who, as an 18-year-old
American GI, was part of the libera-
tion force at Buchenwald. While at
the camp he does something he
regrets, and he's kept it a secret since
the war. In the play, he must come to
grips with his painful experience and
his own Jel,vishness.
The experience scarred him for
life," says Holtzman of the man whose
story he tells.
As a Jew, Holtzman, 47, feels it's
important to keep stories of the
Holocaust alive. "Much of that gener-
ation is disappearing and I don't ever
want people to forget what hap-
pened," says. Holtzman.
This is not the first time Holtzman
has written about the Holocaust. In
Sabina, which ran Off-Broadway a
couple of years ago, he also focused on
the atrocities of World War 11.
Born and raised in St. Louis,
Holtzman graduated from Wesleyan
in Connecticut. He moved to Boston
and then to New York to pursue a
writing career.
Summer Of '42, with music and
lyrics by David Kirshenbaum and
dialogue by Hunter Foster, will be
presented June 18-20. Originally a