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AwareFest: A Green World

AwareFest

Instead of gradually easing into its 2010-2011 season, the Bloomington Playwrights Project has marshaled a community-wide initiative for eco-friendly art. They're calling it AwareFest.

Included in AwareFest are activities in schools, led by Joe La Mantia, efforts by local organizations and businesses, and the assembling of eight short, eco-friendly plays at the theater itself.

Eight Plays In Eighty Minutes

Artistic Director Chad Rabinovitz is excited about the project." We've pulled together some of the best playwrights in the country, along with talented local playwrights, to show that art can have a powerful impact on society."

AwareFest is a taut, rapid production. Rabinovitz's cast of BPP regulars is disciplined. The actors work in close harmony with the onscreen visuals and sound design. Each of the pieces is quite different; when theatergoers compare notes, there are sure to be some lively arguments.

The Plays

Included in the production is Everyone Knows, Emmy nominee Craig Wright's disquieting vignette set in a break room at a chicken factory. Then there is Public Relations Disaster, the material for which concerns the BP oil spill, which writer Wendy MacLeod said "fell into her lap." She clearly had a lot of fun writing the dialogue of the executives who try to spin the story. And no one who sees AwareFest will forget the costumes of America and Canada in Michael Healey's Lady with a Lapdog.

Fast-talking TV car salesmen get a creative and funny retread in National winner Trace Crawford's Time to Change the Pitch. Local high school prize winner Erdin Schultz-Bever's Rocks is a neatly put-together paean to nature and family as one generation educates another.

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