Tag Archive for: Shepherdstown

THE CATF TREK

/by

The Contemporary American Theater Festival attracts theater fans, theater tourists and adventure seekers who travel short and long distances to see and experience our work…they follow us…they take to the road to see contemporary theater. We have created a sub-culture of audience members who participate in the entire experience.

Where else can you spend two days seeing and experiencing five new plays in a beautiful, rural, historic American town?

Where else can you meet other theater lovers and form a kinship and bond over art and culture?

Where else can you have total access to the makers of art and engage in a living conversation?

Where in America can you join a community of art travelers from across the nation and world and form relationships with people like yourself…who feel competent and free to question our contemporary world?

Where else can you shop, dine, relax, walk and talk-theater…talk  about real life issues, concerns and fears by listening to live theatrical stories?

Every July our audience takes to the road and joins a community of thrill seekers…truth seekers…beauty seekers…knowledge seekers…interesting and engaging human beings who form kinship’s with other human beings. This is an annual community made up of friends, traveling companions and strangers who all share a common (spiritual) bond. Many of you have been attending the Festival for years! I think that is REMARKABLE! You reunite in Shepherdstown with the same folks each season. You make the annual CATF TREK. You are a part of the CATF ODYSSEY…a unique theater adventure to be shared with friends…old friends…new friends etc…

Our loyal fans know what I am talking about when I describe the CATF TREK and the close bonds that a shared Festival experience brings. New relationships are quickly developed, as strangers become friends in the supportive environment of the Festival. We provide an opportunity for “random encounters” every summer. The random Festival encounter is perfect, cosmic, generating reunions and the warm glow of artistic and intellectual curiosity.

The Contemporary American Theater Festival is sort-of a secret society of people checking out great contemporary theater while escaping from everyday life to encounter a sense of belonging. Each person defines the festival experience a little differently. Sure the plays, the programming, the artists are the main attraction. But the audience is YOU. The audience is US!

I believe that our audience feels a special connection, brotherhood and kinship that you just can’t replicate at other theater venues…because we offer an entire experience that is about more than just seeing a play. Our geography…our location…our destination is truly unique.

How do you define your Festival experience? Please share with me a story about a “random CATF encounter”. Please share a personal CATF story. Tell me a remarkable CATF experience. I look forward to hearing from you on this Blog or via facebook etc…I want to hear from you.

Ed Herendeen, Producing Director

Fall 2010: Another Beginning

/by

The 2010 Festival is history and the work speaks for itself. Now it is time to re-invent a new repertory. Nothing compares to the feeling that I have when I begin to plan a new season. It is Fall in Shepherdstown and that means reading scripts. I have been traveling back and forth to New York and Chicago where I have been meeting with playwrights and Literary agents…taking “pitches” and attending readings and workshops. My Kindle is loaded with new scripts. Beginning a new season is thrilling, exhilarating and frightening. I am ferociously devoted to finding provocative scripts with good stories and new ideas…new works that express the beauty, wonder, and dirty truth of the human spirit.

Our Odyssey continues…

For two decades the Contemporary American Theater Festival has invited brave artists and adventurous audience members to join us on an extraordinary odyssey to discover and create the future of the American Theater. It has been an exhilarating voyage in search of new American plays. Over the years we have explored and produced new works by some of the best playwrights in America, as well as discovering a new generation of emerging writers. Our quest for innovative new plays and new ideas has earned us a reputation as one of America’s most important producers of new work. Our long strange trip has been an artistic endeavor of collaboration between the artists, the work and our followers. This eventful journey began on a wing and prayer AND a burning passion to make art. Our passion, creative spirit, imagination and industrious commitment to discover truth and beauty in our turbulent world–guides us on our next odyssey.

I am looking forward to sharing with you my thoughts on our upcoming 2011 Theater Festival. I also look forward to hearing from you. Please send me your comments, reactions, impressions and testimonials from our 2010 Season. Let’s start a digital conversation. Let’s TALK THEATER!

Ed Herendeen, Producing Director

MAX BAKER IN SHEPHERDSTOWN

/by

Max Baker Playwright /Director THE EELWAX JESUS 3-D POP MUSIC SHOW

Playwright and Director Max Baker was in Shepherdstown over the weekend. He was meeting with the CATF Design team for our up-coming World Premiere of THE EELWAX JESUS 3-D POP MUSIC SHOW. Max wrote the book and lyrics and is directing the premiere at the 2010 Contemporary American Theater Festival July 7th-August 1st.

     “So great to come down and meet Bob Klingelhoefer (set designer) and to nail down the set-design (which we did). Bob is a great guy and I am really impressed with his designs. I am happy with the final EELWAX design and can’t wait to see it operational…it was immensely useful for me to see the theater in its’ raw state…”  Max Baker

     “The concept for the show is…that it comes OUT OF THE TV! The band and Ignatz and Mr. Shine appear 3-Dimensionally in the Day Room…the focus should be on the band and Mr. Shine. They become the TV… My hope is to blow the walls off the theater and really feed the audience with EXCITEMENT and BUZZ!”  Max Baker

THE EELWAX JESUS 3-D POP MUSIC SHOW is a performance art/theater piece set in the eclectically-furnished, highly sanitized Group Home Day Room. The Residents (each with their own set of anxieties, compulsions, hunger and clothes to iron) are fed a daily dose of Corporate-controlled entertainment in the form of a 3-Dimensional Music Show hosted by the charismatic, character-shifting Mr. Shine who literally pops out of the TV. The outside world is plagued by Swine Flu, there are cameras in the sky, and the intrusion of a seemingly scruffy old man who lives down the hall is greeted by the Residents with fear and animosity.

     “My overall thoughts at the moment are that the theater audience members are an extension of the Resident’s. After all, we are all Residents…”  Max Baker

We had a very productive weekend of design meetings. I am impressed with Max’s creative energy and imagination. THE EELWAX JESUS 3-D POP MUSIC SHOW is a collaboration between Max Baker who wrote the book and lyrics and CATF actor, Lee Sellars who composed the music. You can hear some of their music and songs at www.eelwaxjesus.com. So go to their web site and listen…send me a comment. I am interested in hearing from you. Please forward this posting to your friends and invite them to join you at this ALTERNATIVE THEATRICAL EVENT! This show will help you bend your mind…think… “the bastard love-child” of  Bowie…think… The Breeders…think… William S. Burroughs…thinktheater. This summer get saved by EELWAX JESUS!

Ed Herendeen