Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
C.J. Jennings and Kassidy Miller rehearse a scene from “The Cow,” an absurdist comedy by Richard Leeds.
A festival of 10 one-act plays was put together by the Sacrifice Cliff Theatre Company as the result of what amounted to a challenge.
“This year,” said company co-founder Patrick Wilson, “I’d been hearing a lot of people asking, ‘are there even any writers left in Billings who want to get their plays on stage?’”
Wilson and co-founder Shad Allen Scott were convinced there were, and they came up with a list of 30 people who they thought might want to take part in a one-act festival. They approached 20 of those writers with their idea and soon selected 10.
Wilson and Matt Taggart, a local artist, came up with the theme, “Welcome to Montana.”
Wilson and Scott settled on the idea of 10-minute plays because that length was considered do-able for a collection of writers who are either busy in the theater scene already or, in the case of several of them, new to writing for the stage.
One of the plays was created by a pair of collaborators who aren’t even writers—Taggart, who normally does sound art, collages and mail art, and Krista Marshall, a dancer with the Terpsichore Dance Company.
Their piece is “All Together Now,” about a family coming back together for a Sunday dinner.
“I think for the whole thing, everybody has been out of their comfort zone,” Wilson said.
The festival opens Friday, March 20, at 7 p.m. at Montana State University-Billings’ Studio Six, formerly LA 620. (See below for details.)
“We wanted to be more artist-responsive and as local as we could,” he said.
For Richard Leeds, that meant getting the chance to expand his horizons. An experienced actor whose previous writing experience was limited to a couple of other short one-acts, Leeds was encouraged by Wilson and Scott to try his hand at writing again.
He came up with “The Cow,” a piece of absurdist comedy set on the University of Montana campus in Missoula. He said he developed the playing by thinking of a few jokes “and just rolled with it.”
Leeds, who’s currently involved in a Billings Studio Theatre production, said dabbling in playwriting has definitely made him a more attentive actor.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “You feel terrible for every time you paraphrased a line.”
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Patrick Wilson, a co-founder of Sacrifice Cliff Theatre Company, monitors a rehearsal of “The Cow.”
Billings writer Craig Lancaster is one of three novelists who were asked to contribute a piece. He chose one of his short stories, “This Is Butte. You Have Ten Minutes,” about a bus ride across Montana.
Lancaster said Wilson wrote the script based on his story, and all he did was some minor tweaking to the script. Writers were invited to as many rehearsals as they wanted, but Lancaster has gone only to the first read-through and can’t wait to see what happens to his story on the stage.
“I have so much respect for that particular art form that I haven’t wanted to intercede with it,” he said. “It’s their story now.”
Scott was one of three experienced playwrights who contributed a piece for the festival. Wilson said Scott’s piece, like that of playwright Ryan Gage, is “a searing, wincing kind of satire.”
Scott’s piece is called “Darrell’s Downtown,” inspired by Billings Gazette editor Darrell Ehrlick, whose pre-Christmas column on the perils and pestiferousness of downtown Billings sparked an intense backlash.
“It’s all about how Billings is the most dangerous place in the world,” Scott said. “It was really fun.”
Gage’s play, “@Joshsellshisidea,” is about an ad exec who tries to convince the Montana Board of Tourism to adopt a completely realistic ad campaign about Montana, complete with references to crystal meth and cars flying off the highway in a blizzard.
Kirsten Pett, a native of Cohagen in Garfield County, contributed “Windblown,” a play about life and love set on the vast and very windy plains of Eastern Montana. Novelist Demetra Perros weighed in with “Gyros in a Small Town,” about growing up Greek in Helena.
Andy Farkas, who moved here two years ago from Akron, Ohio, to teach creative writing at Rocky Mountain College, is represented by “City of Warehouses,” which delivers an outsider’s view of Big Sky Country.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Theater company co-founder Shad Allen Scott.
New playwright Sara Grubbs of Huntley writes of a transgender youth dealing with an identity crisis. Another new writer, Delaney Kay Hardy, contributed “Driving to V.C.,” based on her frequent drives between Virginia City and Bozeman when she spent a summer acting with the Virginia City Players.
She and Scott decided to break her play into six short scenes that will be interspersed between other plays in the festival. Wilson said it was not surprising that Hardy’s piece, and some of the others, play out in transit.
“I’m just fascinated by how people are approaching the theme, ‘Welcome to Montana,’” Wilson said. “A lot of pieces are about driving.”
The acting company consists of Adam Roebling, C.J. Jennings, Kassidy Miller, Kenedee Burk, Vanessa Dent and Trevor Biondich, and Wilson and Scott also do some acting.
Details: The one-act festival will run at 7 p.m. on March 20 and 21, March 27 and 28 and April 3 and 4 in Room 620 of the Liberal Arts building on the MSUB campus. Tickets are pay what you will, but since the room only holds about 60 people, reservations are recommended.
For reservations or more information, call 672-9291 or write to sacrificecliff@gmail.com.
