Running the annual Waukegan Theatre Festival is like putting on a full season in one month, said Josh Beadle, executive director and founder of Three Brothers Theatre.
It’s hard work — and he loves it.
“It’s for the sake of the show,” said Beadle. “We don’t care if we lose money. We want people to be there to see the show, but it’s also about developing the play and helping the playwright.”
The festival begins Aug. 5 and continues for three more weekends, featuring new plays chosen to be produced by Three Brothers Theatre out of more than 300 submissions. A different play is featured each weekend, one written by a Northwestern University professor, another from California and two others from Chicago.
Beadle, a playwright himself, said he started the festival four years ago because it gives other playwrights an opportunity to show their work and refine their plays.
Playwright Laura Scaruggs’ one-person play, “Punk Grandpa,” began at a previous festival as a one-person show. Scaruggs then rewrote it to include more characters. Three Brothers Theatre produced it last season and it just got published, meaning other production houses will review it as a potential show, Beadle said.
The playwrights can get as involved as they want with the festival — and they stay after the show to talk to the audience along with the director and cast members.
“We put a call out for directors and then we play matchmaker and match directors and playwrights. We have a great big audition call for the festival. This year, we had more submissions than any other year. I think it’s because of consistency. We’ve done it four years in a row,” Beadle said.
One of the four chosen playwrights is Joe Janes, a Northwestern University faculty member, who wrote for “Saturday Night Live,” Beadle said.
The play, “Our Christian Nation,” was brought back from last year’s festival.
“It’s really cool,” Beadle said. “His show is a comedy. It’s like an over-the-top parody farce of everything in America. He twists all the different elements that are in our melting pot and puts them on our head and makes the audience laugh so hard that they leave the theater trying to figure out what they heard and then realizing it’s been a documentary of all our lives.
“Joe is great. He’s extremely fun to work with. It’s a hilarious show.”
“Our Christian Nation,” will be staged Aug. 26-27.
The opening show, “The Creator,” will be shown Aug. 5-6.
It’s a tragic comedy about what happens when a little girl decides she’s grown up enough that she no longer needs her imaginary friend. What’s creative about the show is how the imaginary friend ends up in a type of purgatory, Beadle said.
The playwright, J.S. Fuller, takes a childlike theme and gives a serious element to it, he said.
The following weekend, Aug. 12-13, features, “Restore,” written by Jordan Ramirez Puckett from California.
“‘Restore’ is our mega drama of the festival,” Beadle said. “It’s our very serious piece.”
The play is about a high school couple who is breaking up at graduation time, and one of them gets shot by the other.
“The show is about both families handling that loss and figuring out how to cope with a tragedy of the worst accident imaginable,” Beadle said. “Obviously this is incredibly topical given the amount of gun violence we’ve witnessed in the last few years.”
The third weekend of the festival, Aug. 19-20, features “The Death of Captain Hero,” by Amy Crider.
“This show is equal parts fun and equal parts serious,” Beadle said. It’s about a fictitious superhero on a television show. The actor dies and the writer and producer must decide how to move forward with the show while dealing with demanding sponsors.
Sheryl DeVore is a freelance writer.
Waukegan Theatre Festival 2016
When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, Aug. 5-27
Where: Three Brothers Theatre, 115 North Genesee St., Waukegan
$10; $25 for all four shows
Information: 224-419-4325; www.3brostheatre.com
