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Steamboat Magazine

Finessing the Plays

06/11/2018 04:05PM ● By Alesha Damerville

Image from Colorado New Play Festival

Written by Alesha Damerville

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS- Yearly, artists from all over the country venture to Steamboat Springs to share in creative expression. The Colorado New Play Festival, formerly the 20-year-long running old the Perry-Mansfield New Works Festival, has new name and prerogative. 

“We’re like a 21-year-old startup,” jokes festival organizer, Jim Steinberg. “We’ve outgrown the space at Perry-Mansfield.

The Colorado New Play Festival brings five theater companies throughout the country to Steamboat Springs for a week. Each company will bring a playwright, a director, a dramaturg and a cast of actors to work on a brand-new play that is being written in Steamboat Springs.

“We choose theater companies from all over the country, who represent different points of view and encompass a great diversity of writing and styles,”  Steinberg says.

The companies rehearse afternoons daily throughout the week at Colorado Mountain College, from 1-6 p.m. “These rehearsals are open to the public, which is a very unique thing,” says Steinberg says. “Each night the writers go off into a room and make changes they’ve found from earlier in the day. The next morning, we put together all of the rewrites, they go back to the rehearsal room and they work on the play again all day.”

The theater companies do this for five days, during the weekend. After five days of rehearsals and refinement, the companies they offer public readings of each of the plays on the weekend.

Immerse yourself in the combined artistic stylings of the Curious Theater Company from Denver, Alley Theater from Houston, Primary Stages from New York, Actors Theater of Louisville and Victory Gardens Theater, during the Colorado New Play Festival, this weekend at the Chief Theater.

The community is invited to participate in the Colorado Mountain College activities at no cost. 

For more information, visit http://www.cnpfsteamboat.org