Kennedy Center: Page-to-Stage New Play Festival

The Kennedy Center recently hosted its annual new play festival, Page-to-Stage.  The event is free and features new works by student and professional playwrights presented in staged readings.  The event occurs over three days and features dozens of new plays in many locations at the Kennedy Center.  

We attended a new play written, directed and acted by students from the nearby University of Maryland.  The play, Lost Sons, tells the tragic story of a typical family in a predominantly African-American neighborhood somewhere in the U.S.  Themes of systemic oppression and hopelessness anchor the story of a fatherless teenage boy killed in a turf war over drugs.    

What made the play especially interesting was the use of alternate reality.  The play includes "what if" scenes depicting what might have happened if the boy's father were not missing. The father appears almost like a Shakespearean ghost warning against dangers to come.  

The play also used another interesting technique--rap-style monologues.  Throughout the play, different characters would step out of the action into a spotlight and share their inner thoughts in a rap soliloquy with rhyming phrases.  Greg guesses Shakespeare would admire the technique.   

Cast members of Lost Sons

Thanks for joining us at the Kennedy Center's Page-to-Stage play festival.