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Magic Theatre
For 10 glorious days this summer, the 2006 Bay Area Playwrights Festival electrifies the Magic Theatre stage with outstanding new work by emerging writers and dramatists. In its 29th year, the festival is a longtime project of the Playwrights Foundation, a group dedicated to developing provocative new plays by unique theatrical voices.
 Sheila Callaghan’s Lascivious Something is among the plays selected for 2006. Based in New York, Callaghan sets her full-length drama on a Greek island in the Reagan years of the 1980s. Wine and wild women supply the action. Eugenie Chan’s Kitchen Table is also part of the 2006 lineup. Chan’s plays frequently provide Chinese American perspectives on contemporary life. In Kitchen Table, a patriarch and his son struggle over the meaning of manhood in their multigenerational family.
The global petroleum-based economy is the unlikely star of Sherry Kramer’s When Something Wonderful Ends. A dynamic new collaboration trio created The Kepler Project: When Religion Lost Its Mind Or When Science Lost Its Soul. The trio is Ralph Abraham, Nina Wise, and D.W. Jacobs, author of the hit play R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (And Mystery) Of the Universe.
 In addition to lots of drama every day from July 28 to August 6, the festival also offers receptions, forums, a conference, and many chances to interact with theater professionals. Also featured are four short plays selected for the BASH (Bay Area Shorts) segment of the festival. Tim Bauer, Molly Rhodes, A.P. Saito, and Christopher Tong contributed work for the 2006 BASH.
The Bay Area Playwrights Festival supplies plenty of thought-provoking entertainment. Refer to July 28 and www.playwrightsfoundation.org for details.
— Claudia Willen
Photos: Enrique Urueta, Ken Prestininzi, Sheila Callaghan, and Eugenie Chan
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Bay Area Playwrights Festival Turns 29 
