By Carrie Chapter, Philadelphia Theatre Company

We are tossing our hats in the air here because we just ended our much-anticipated PTC@Play Festival here at Philadelphia Theatre Company! Our festival this year brought together unprecedented amounts of artists and audiences; the entirety of this fantastic outcome could not have been possible without the generous support of the Knight Foundation, so, on behalf of the PTC family, allow me to blog to you our heartfelt thanks!

Like most new play festivals often do, PTC@Play flew by in an instant. Our festival unofficially began on February 29th with our Education department’s Drama Contact program, Philly Reality, in which students write, direct, design, and perform in scenes built around the social realities/histories of the city of Philadelphia. Our official kick-off event commenced on March 5th. During the day, playwright Michael Hollinger and director Aaron Posner rehearsed a brand new draft of his play-in-progress, HOPE & GRAVITY, a series of interconnected stories playing with the notion of fate. That evening, Festival Director Jacqueline Goldfinger and Producing Artistic Director Sara Garonzik welcomed a rapt audience to the first night of our PTC@Play readings, and announced the first recipient of the Terrence McNally Award, the playwright Bill Cain. Both Terrence McNally and Bill Cain delivered eloquent, beautiful speeches about the transformative power of art and the role of the playwright in conveying that power. HOPE & GRAVITY followed the award announcement, and its staged reading provoked peals of laughter from the audience, an inarguable crowd-pleaser! We held a lovely reception for our guests in the Upper Lobby, where we enjoyed comingling with an assortment of guests.

On March 7th, PTC welcomed playwright Jennifer Haley, who recently won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for the play she presented at PTC@Play, a techno-morality play about the essence of being and personal identity entitled, THE NETHER. She and the director Steve Cosson worked together to stage a reading of an abstracted, suggestive world; needless to say, our audience’s curiosity was piqued to the hilt. The next day saw the arrival of our musical-in-development, STARS OF DAVID, a song cycle that explores the tenets of faith through the testimonials of Jewish public figures. Our reading was preceded by an incredible panel moderated by Gershman Y Artistic Coordinator, Warren Hoffman, which included the STARS OF DAVID creators: director Gordon Greenberg, source author/co-conceiver Abigail Pogrebin, and adapter/librettist Charles Busch. The musical features original compositions from such famed composer/lyricists as Sheldon Harnick, Marvin Hamilsch, William Finn, among others. March 9th brought in Samuel D. Hunter and his newest work, WHEN YOU’RE HERE, a sprawling family drama that draws a line between attachment and detachment. Director Kent Nicholson took on our largest cast in the PTC@Play festival, and it was such an amazing treat to see a play on this scale breathe on its own. As the weekend crept up on us, playwright Dominique Morrisseau breezed in to Philadelphia with her play, DETROIT 67, which puts a family at the center of the imminent Detroit riots in 1967. The emotional heft of the reading was beautifully orchestrated by director Patricia McGregor.

Everyone knows you need a slam-bang closer, and PTC@Play was no exception. Our final night featured a collection of short plays written by Philadelphia playwrights called, FUTUREPHILLY@PLAY. Helmed by local director David O’Connor, the shorts were punctuated onstage by the musical stylings of the West Philly Orchestra, who play out interludes in between each short play. We would be joined by the orchestra again in the lobby after the reading when we danced the night away to Balkan music while imbibing local beer, and munching on local Philly pretzels and cupcakes. What a night in the theatre – unforgettable! I don’t know how we can top it next year – three-ring circus?