From April 28 through May 8, Maine's Portland Stage Company will present the 10th annual Little Festival of the Unexpected, a series of readings and staged presentations, free of charge, highlighting new works.
This year, The Festival will consist of six staged readings and one solo performance, as well as other area companies presenting their latest works. Performances from the locals include: The RAM Island Dances Company will present Alive and Well, an ongoing series of performances by local choreographers. A Company of Girls is developing I'm Sticky like a Frog, a Girl's-Eye View, an oral history project using the accounts of the girls themselves, their mothers and grandmothers. The Children's Theatre of Maine will present Rapunzel Repenciled, a children's production. Students from Bowdoin College will appear in Gertrude Stein's Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters.
Featured Plays include:
€ A Girl's Guide to the Divine Comedy by Shelley Berc is a fanciful paraphrase of Dante's greatest poem that illustrates a descent into a pit where Dante is a woman, Beatrice a small girl, and Virgil is the Devil.
€ First Lady by Erica Christ is an evening with Eva Peron -- not the Evita of the musical, but the poor girl from the slums, friend of the descamisados and champion of the people. This new work is a celebration of the former First Lady, wife of the populist and dictatorial President Juan Peron.
€ Three short plays by Joseph Goodrich will be presented. In Captain 11 - Chapter 11, "Man of the Future" is fired from his day job as a small-time TV presenter. In Goodrich's Terminal Exit, one man muses on money, words and bullets, and Quasi Un Fantasia features two men, a lyrical encounter and a piano. € In Terrance Vorwald's Looking for Love, Belle's pig farm has a visitor: Jim, the love of Belle's life -- or maybe, her obsession.
€ In Craig Wright's Pavilion, two high school sweethearts meet again at their high school's twentieth reunion. Kari is unhappily married to Hans, yet none-too-pleased to see her old flame, Peter, back in town.
For reservations or more information, call (207) 774-0465.
-- By Sean McGrath
