Midnight Mutterings | PlayFest 2025

||| MIDNIGHT MUTTERINGS by JACKIE BATES |||

You still have a chance to see PlayFest 2025 at the Grange. (Or even see it again, as I will have done by the time you’re reading this.) Last performances are Friday, and Saturday April 18 and 19, 2025. 7:00 PM at the Grange. Tickets $15 at the door.

I went last Saturday with a friend visiting from Seattle and I admit I laughed out loud many times during the show. Six approximately ten-minute plays chosen from past Orcas PlayFests made up this year’s lineup.

Actually, I cried a bit at the first play, written by Adia Dolan when she was in high school, and you might, too, so bring your hanky. This play is really lovely, as are the others, even though they were written by actual adults who are always a little sillier.

Last Saturday’s audience wasn’t huge, but was definitely enthusiastic and we weren’t ALL claques.* I’ve seen a lot of plays, especially when it was part of my marital responsibilities when we moved around the country following the theater. My wusband** just won a lifetime achievement for his theater work in New Hampshire, sort of a local Oscar. He’s still a working actor doing a play at Barnstormers Theater in New Hampshire this summer. (Whew, I’m getting awfully personal here.) I wasn’t even marginally interested in anything theater myself during that time, and it wasn’t until I was well into my sixties that I wrote my first ten minute play for Orcas PlayFest. I didn’t even see that one as I was off island for a family medical emergency. I did, however, see a video of the plays, and was impressed with the talent and dedication that is right here on Orcas Island.

Speaking of personal, my little play On the Road to Tranquility is in this year’s Play Fest. It’s the last one in this year’s line up, I even laughed a little bit at my play because the cast and director have done such a magnificent job of bringing it to life. Very hard to do in what is basically a ten minute monologue, with props, some unseen. But you will see a wonderful car, made by Tom Fiscus for an earlier play and dragged out of the prop room for one more drive in the foggy limelight. Tom (who may be your attorney in another of his Orcas Island’s roles) wrote the play just before mine in this year’s lineup which might bring a tear to your eye as well laughs. So keep your hanky in your fist. Tom also directed one of the other plays. It’s worth going to PlayFest just for the last curtain call. It’s the cleverest I’ve ever seen.

Seems like almost every person you meet on Orcas Island is an artist of one or another art form. There is so much talent on this island. And so much opportunity. I can’t imagine that I would have written a play in the big outside world, much less had something produced. Nor would I have a chance to write a column like this one. Which I actually do like to do, even though the effort is painful beyond words to do so. Sigh.

So go to PlayFest. Last chance. Last performances Friday and Saturday nights, April 18 and 19, 7:00 at the Grange. Tickets $15 at the door. A bargain and you support your local theater.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claque

**affectionate word for former male spouse