University of California, San Diego’s Baldwin New Play Festival, affectionately known as BNPF, gets under way tonight, April 14, with four world premiere works by students in the university’s top-notch three-year Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program. The festival runs through April 23.
UCSD MFA graduate Naomi Iizuka, an acclaimed and highly produced playwright, heads the program. In fact, UCSD playwrights are regularly produced around the nation and new plays showcased at BNPF in recent years have gone on to productions and readings in major cities nationwide.
The playwrights themselves select the festival plays. MFA playwrights are guaranteed production of their work during each year of the program, a situation Iizuka considers unique among such programs. At any given time, UCSD has between four and five MFA playwrights.
According to Iizuka, this year’s plays are different from one another in style, but all explore unexpected aspects of love, whether between parent and child, husband and wife or young lovers.
“Some examine the mystery, the dark side, the difficult side or perhaps the more transformative, uplifting sides of love,” she said, touting what she calls inventive stories with striking characters.
What came to be known as BNPF began in a small way in the mid-1990s, according to founder Adele Shank. Ken and Ginger Baldwin came aboard with support in 2000, and the festival was named for them three years later.
This season’s festival features four works fully produced by MFA playwrights. In addition, there is a staged reading of A-lan Holt’s “8Ball,” winner of the fifth annual Dr. Floyd Gaffney Playwriting Competition on the African-American Experience. The late Gaffney was one of the founders of the UCSD department of theatre and dance and was regarded as the father of African American theatre in San Diego. Featured works • “Bodies in the Park,” by Sharif Abu-Hamdeh (MFA ‘13), directed by Jeffery Wienckowski April 15-23 in the Arthur Wagner Theatre In a neighborhood where planes roar overhead and the night is full of dangers visible and unseen, a couple grapples with ghosts from their past and secrets in the present. Can you ever really know another person? Can you trust a world in which the person you love most turns out to be a stranger? • “Salamander Leviathan,” by Krista Knight (MFA ‘11), directed by Anthony Luciano, music by Arkansas band David’s Pegasus April 15-23 in the Mandell Weiss Forum A Casio-pop fable about the price we pay for love set in 1890 Black River Falls, Wis., the loneliest man in the world makes a deal with the devil — a wife and family in exchange for his soul. • “Small Prophecies,” by David Myers (MFA ‘12), directed by Larissa Lury April 14-23 in the Theodore and Adele Shank Theatre A story about the myths we tell ourselves and how they shape the people we become. A first kiss. A prank turned ugly. A moment of truth between father and son. How does a boy become a man? How do you stop your child from becoming something terrifying? • “8 Ball,” by A-Lan Holt 10:30 a.m. on Apr. 23 Lives rise and fall in a searing urban mural of hope and decay. An explosive probe of the world of five individuals caught in Los Angeles during the pain of a 1980s crack epidemic. For full schedule, additional information and script excerpts go to http://www-theatre.ucsd.edu/ • “A Man, His Wife, and His Hat” by Lauren Yee (MFA ‘12), directed by Joshua Kahan Brody April 13-21, Mandell Weiss Forum at UCSD A klezmer-inspired love triangle between a man, his wife and his hat; Hetchman loves his hat and his wife and when both go missing, the retired hat-maker vows to find them — that is, if he can muster the strength to leave his armchair. The arrival of a talking wall and a hungry golem threatens to derail his endeavor.