Tag Archive for: www.catf.org

OUR ODYSSEY CONTINUES…

The passion that we share for the Contemporary American Theater Festival acts like jet fuel and ignites the passion in our artists and audiences. This mutual passion helps us achieve critical success. And our passion and love for the work helps us overcome the financial barriers and obstacles that we face with each new season. Because doing what we love not only increases our odds at success, but it dramatically increases our happiness.

People spend more than fifty percent of their waking adult life working, so we might as well do what we love: Producing and developing new American theater in Shepherdstown, WV.

“An artist has to keep one ear to the ground and one to the heart.”–Bruce Springsteen

We have created an experience unlike any other theater. Each and every CATF Season is unique and different and stands alone and apart from other seasons. We treat our fans and artists to a different experience each and every season. No two Festival Seasons are the same…because we are pioneers in new play development. We differentiate ourselves from our competition by providing a total Festival experience. We have a reputation for nurturing a shared common experience. The Festival creates an instant kinship with our artists and our audience base. How do we do this?

We encourage independent behavior in our artists.

We innovate and don’t follow.

We stand-out.

We create our own landscape.

Our work is memorable.

Our work is remarkable.

We are willing to experiment.

We create a profound and ever evolving relationship between the audience and the work.

Our diverse group of playwrights provides a powerful combination of established and emerging voices: A mix of unique backgrounds unencumbered by conventional wisdom. This proves to be an extraordinary combination of innovative writing and provocative ideas. Our work, our plays, our Festival is authentic. And this authenticity endears us to our artists and fans. We will continue to keep a certain intimacy between ourselves and our patrons. We will continue to facilitate the culture of openness and availability that we have cultivated over the past two decades by enhancing the live theater experience. We will bring the Festival audience together in a vibrant community of conversation. Our Festival offers “all access.” Our patrons are participants…not just spectators. They assist us in our creative work: the development of new American plays. The CATF audience expects to be part of the Festival’s unique collective experience.

Ed Herendeen, Producing Director

Fall 2010: Another Beginning

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

FESTIVAL TIME

It is FESTIVAL TIME in Shepherdstown WV. Shepherdstown is the oldest town in West Virginia doing the newest plays in America. Visitors from across America are descending on this historic semi-rural town nestled in the foothills of the BlueRidge Mountains to experience Five new American plays in rotating Repertory. Our small town is alive with aggressive storytelling and creative rebellion. The pubs, restaurants, and shops are filled with conversation. People are talking-theater. Everywhere you go you hear the buzz of radical innovation. The tsunami of creative energy is thriving throughout the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. Shepherdstown is the cultural gateway into West Virginia. And the people are talking…Theater critics are talking…

                    “A gas-masked figure tossing moon pies. A stuffed dachshund named Sarah Palin. A tap-dancing vagina. Those are just a few of the hallucinatory images that swim out of THE EELWAX JESUS 3-D POP MUSIC SHOW, the most memorable, if not the most satisfying, production at the 2010 Contemporary American Theater Festival. —THE WASHINGTON POST  Wednesday, July 14, 2010

                   “If you long for the curious likes of Samuel Beckett’s WAITING FOR GODOT, or Tom Stoppard’s ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, you’re in for a treat…you’ll get an eye-popping evening with CATF’s world premiere offering of THE EELWAX JESUS 3-D POP MUSIC SHOW.”—THE HERALD MAIL July 13, 2010

                    “The 20th Anniversary of CATF appears to be the finest yet of the five play summer series.”—Bob Anthony, allartsreview4u.com

                    “INANA…Michele Lowe has written a well made thing. It’s a pleasure to watch a play go beyond what is expected.”—THE MONSTERRAT REVIEW

Yes people are talking…more later… I am looking forward to your comments.

Ed Herendeen

REHEARSAL JOURNAL # 4 TECH

We moved into the theaters this week and today we begin our first Tech Rehearsals for LIDLESS and THE EELWAX JESUS 3-D POP MUSIC SHOW. On Friday we tech INANA, BREADCRUMBS and WHITE PEOPLE. It is an exciting time. I love this part of the process. This is the time when all the elements of a theatrical production come together. The collaboration among so many diverse artist is intense and exhilarating. Tech is when we blend all these diverse art forms into an organic whole. This is the time when we create unity and harmony in art…live art. This is the time when we create truth and belief on-stage. I get very jazzed during this part of the process.

Here’s a quote from the American Playwright Thornton Wilder:

                    “I regard the theater as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share  with another the sense of what it is to be a human being. The supremacy of the theater derives from the fact that it is always “now” on the stage.” 

Our previews begin next week and we open the 2010 REPERTORY on Friday July 9th. I’ll see you at the Festival.

Ed Herendeen