AwareFest
The Bloomington Playwrights Project presents AwareFest: A Green World.
The BPP's artistic director Chad Rabinovitz explains what the festival is meant to be. "We've pulled together some of the top playwrights in the country, along with talented local playwrights, to show that art can have a powerful impact on society." WFIU's George Walker interviews two of the playwrights to talk about their pieces.
Highlights From The Interviews
Jon Marans has experience in drama, film and musicals – and he's a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His piece is titled A Girl Scout World. An innocent title? "Well, it does seem so," Marans admits, "but there is a darker aspect that fits with the theme. My main character, the precocious Adrienne, is thoroughly angry at the Girl Scouts. The focus of her rage is those ever-popular cookies. You see, she knows in every sweet bite labeled 'partially hydrogenated,' there's really transfat. There is of course a twist in the plot, which hangs on Adrienne's boyfriend's taste for the little morsels."
Marans' A Girl Scout World focuses on nutrition; BPP fans may remember Wendy MacCleod from her play School Girl Figure, about high school bulimics and anorexics. With her current piece, Public Relations Nightmare, MacLeod attacks the media's efforts to spin the BP oil spill.
Like Marans, MacCleod's experience is varied. Her credits include writing on the 1997 film The House of Yes, which starred Parker Posey. Of Public Relations Nightmare, she says,
"It was just such a great target and so well suited to the themes of the AwareFest project. I just couldn't resist. Some of the things that the executives actually said and did were even funnier than things I came up with. I mean, really, this is a record 4.9 million spilled barrels of crude oil, and the number 400 for endangered species is apparently a small number. Still, this is a play, not a tirade and I did write it for people to enjoy."