"Hurricane Season" presented by The Eclectic Company Theatre

Hurricane Season

So much of theater produced is old works:  classics that are repurposed or modern pieces that were originally produced or written within the last ten years. But then there are showcases like fringe or playwriting festivals that pop up and encourage playwrights and theater makers to try new things on stage. This last weekend, I saw Hurricane Season, a show produced by The Eclectic Company Theatre. Their annual festival features new short plays, a total of nine shows (three per night) over a six-week period. At the end of each night, the audience votes on their favorite performances and plays, so it’s also a playwriting competition.  It was their tenth year doing the festival, and I will say I really enjoyed the final play of the evening.

The best show of the night was “Improvisation,” a short play that played with theatrical conventions to create a tense and interesting scenario. Written by Andrew Osborne, the show starts out with a simple set, three chairs on stage right, and a table with a chair off center left. I had guessed that the plot would actually revolve around an improv show, or at least the conventions of improv specifically, so I was pleasantly surprised to see Jenny (played by Beth Ricketson) walk in asking about an audition. No one is there to check her in, so she just sits in a chair and waits. Soon, a man, Jack (played by Mark Bate) walks in from back stage, and she assumes he’s there to audition her, the contact she’d been given. But no, he is just running the audition for the other man, her original contact. And then he hands her a script to cold read with him, and the lines of the scripts are exactly the conversation we’d watched since the beginning of the show. Naturally, the actress, (and the audience) is confused and a little put off, things are not going as expected. After threatening to go, Jenny finally decides to stay and read more of the script. As she does so, there is a part that is blank, and Jack says it’s her duty to improvise what the character would say based on her own life experiences.

Directed by Wendy Radford, “Improvisation” was a show that kept me guessing until the very end. I won’t give away the slight twist at the end of the play, because it was something I really enjoyed discovering throughout the show. Just know that this play is compelling, because as it continues, its layers fall away and we see what’s really going on at the center of this story.

As an actress living in Los Angeles, I feel as though I have experienced many of the motions of this play before in my own personal life. I am given an audition, with a location and a name and a time, and I most likely know no one at the location, and I am probably walking into a room blind with my guard up. And when I watched this happening on stage, I of course thought that this man was some sort of pervert (which happens way more than people like to admit to actors in LA). I don’t know if I would’ve stayed through the audition like she did, even though I do know that I’ve stayed and waited for auditions that did end up being a waste of my time.

What I really appreciate about this show was how it knew its audience. I don’t know if this is a play that would succeed in other parts of the United States, because it is about the conventions of an audition, and an audience needs to have that context in order to fully understand some of the behavior that happens. But this is Los Angeles (note that it would work in other “acting” towns as well like New York) a town that is filled with actors, casting directors, and every other person trying to break into the entertainment industry. We are the appropriate demographic for this piece, something that needs to be considered when producing theater or any type of art.

Hurricane Season, like any other play festival, will include pieces that are rough and need more work. But there will also be a few gems throughout that are exciting works of theater. By no means was “Improvisation” a perfect play, but its premise and character development was strong and compelling, and I believe it has the potential to be fleshed out a little more. And that’s what these festivals are all about…giving playwrights an opportunity to see different audiences reactions to their new works.

The Eclectic Company Theatre’s production of Hurricane Season runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00pm and Sundays at 2:00pm through August 18 at 5312 Laurel Canyon Blvd., North Hollywood, California 91607. Call (818) 508 – 3003 for more information, or visit The Eclectic Company Theatre online at http://www.eclecticcompanytheatre.org.