SIDE DISHES is the second production by Eagle & Beaver Ensemble, following on from the sellout show TINY SHORTS, at the wonderful, award winning Union Theatre in Southwark, London.
We continue our mission to provide a platform for new writing and talent from North America - from playwrights to actors and everyone in between.
All the fantastic plays below were submitted to our call for works that had a theme of "Thanksgiving" or "thanks" to coincide with our performances on November 4th and 5th, which fall between Canadian (October 8th) and American (November 22) Thanksgivings.
More than 80 plays were submitted and 7 made the cut.
Read all about the playwrights below.
WAR/GAMES
by Jaisey Bates
The Peoplehood of the Traveling Plays
Jaisey Bates, a misplaced Indigenous-heritaged Maine-iac in LA, writes and performs with her nomadic multicultural theater company, The Peoplehood (the-peoplehood.com).
Her plays include The Day We Were Born (finalist, Princess Grace Award and O'Neill National Playwrights Conference; honorable mention, Kilroys List; awarded Marin Theatre Company’s David Calicchio Emerging American Playwright Prize; Judge’s Choice/Featured Play, Oklahoma City Theatre Company’s Native American New Play Festival) and Real Time, her fancydance variation on Whitman's Leaves of Grass, an ever-evolving multitude of mix-and-match one-act/mini plays and spoken word pieces including WAR/GAMES.
Current/recent journeys include The Protest Plays Project's 'Heal The Divide' online playwright residency and #TheatreActionImmigration; the #AfterOrlandoPlays international theater action and forthcoming publication; and Arizona State University’s RED INK Initiative: Indigenous Cultural Series for Teens. Jaisey gives thanks to Eagle and Beaver for their courage to include WAR/GAMES in their Thanksgiving Shorts.
WAR: A town where there was a massacre of Natives. A town where the government paid bounties for Native captives, or scalps: Man. Woman. Or child.
GAMES: A town with a school with a Native mascot. A town with a chamber of commerce whose leadership set up “The First Annual Hunt for the Indian!” treasure hunt aiming to encourage shoppers to Shop Local during the holidays.
A Peoplehood REAL TIME short spoken word ensemble poem play by Jaisey Bates, written for THE HEAL THE DIVIDE Protest Plays Initiative.
https://www.the-peoplehood.com/
Special thanks to Mr. Martin Neptune, Penobscot Elder, for his permission to share his eloquent and powerful words with all who read this play.
Here's the link to the play on the Protest Plays Project, in case folks wish to read others' plays, or participate:
http://www.protestplays.org/2017/12/11/heal-the-divide-to-historytwo-by-jaisey-bates/
October
by Greg Lam
Greg Lam is a playwright, screenwriter, and board game designer who lives in the Greater Boston area. He is the creator of the "Boston Podcast Players" podcast (bostonpodcastplayers.com) which presents excerpted readings of new full length plays by and interviews with Boston playwrights. He is the co-founder of the Asian-American Playwright Collective. His full-length play REPOSSESSED received its world premiere at Theatre Conspiracy in Fort Myers, FL in 2018 after readings in Boston, Seattle, and Connecticut. Greg was a member of the 2016 Company One PlayLab for the development of Boston area playwrights. His works have been produced by Company One, Fresh Ink Theatre, Pork Filled Productions, The Depot, The Boston Theatre Marathon, The Pulp Stage, Ixion Theatre Ensemble, Eagle and Beaver Ensemble, 4th Street Theatre, Midwest Dramatists Conference, The Best of All Possible Podcast, Aching Dogs Theatre Company, Shadow Boxing Theatre, and others. You can see works of his that have been filmed at https://tinyurl.com/greglam. For more about Greg, see http://www.pair-of-dice.com.
In Memory of Rhonda
Hollingsworth
by Paul Braverman
Paul Braverman is a Bay Area playwright, actor, and improviser, whose plays have received dozens of productions and readings in Bay Area venues, nationally, and internationally. His noir trilogy of Frankie Payne plays were produced over a six year period, to great reviews and sold out houses. His short play The Alpha Bindleman was a finalist for Heideman Award, in 2009, and had three plays presented at The Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, AK. Paul is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America, Theatre Bay Area, and the Pear Improv Troupe, and is a founding member of The Pear Playwrights Guild.
In Thanksgiving
by Katherine Kerman
"What does it mean to be betrayed by your own body? When two women find themselves alone in a bar, they find it difficult to avoid the elephant in the room."
Katherine Kerman is an American actor and writer currently based in London. After earning her BFA in Acting at The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago, she was offered a casting and literary internship at A Red Orchid Theatre also located in the Chicago area. Whilst pursuing her acting career, she used her opportunity as a literary assistant to try and find the key to a good play – she is still working on her theory. She re-located to London in 2015 to pursue her MA in Classical Acting at LAMDA and has remained in London since graduating. When not on stage, she is an avid writer. She is currently writing a dark comedy short she is hoping will be produced before the year ends, and is also working to finish a pilot script for a sitcom based on her experiences as an American in the UK.
“Two brothers, Aaron and Ben, stand in their backyard cooking a garbage can turkey. Aaron’s girlfriend, Sasha, may not be who she says she is.”
Wisconsin
by Charlotte Lang
Charlotte Lang is a New York based playwright whose work has been seen at the Tank, Naked Angels, the Clurman Theater, Brooklyn Winery, Jimmy's No. 43 and the Staten Island Shakespearean Theater Festival. She has been a finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, and the Amoralists Theater Company's 'Wright Club. She was a member of the Fall 2016 Writers Lab with Exquisite Corpse Theater Company, the Spring 2017 Rhapsody Collective, and the Fall 2018 Rule of 7x7 series. Most recently she was a 2018 Sewanee Writers' Conference Tennessee Williams Scholar. She has volunteered or interned for Clubbed Thumb, Second Stage, Double Edge, and Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company. BFA: NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
UnThanksgiving
by Díana Bermudez
and Riley Madincea
"A woman is forced to confront her Native American heritage as Thanksgiving approaches"
Díana Bermudez is a British theatre and screen actor of Colombian/Native American heritage. Her theatre work has taken her across the globe and includes 5* political play Valiant, which debuted at Edinburgh Fringe. Her TV credits include guest lead roles in Doctors (BBC), Shakespeare & Hathaway (BBC), Karen Carpenter: Goodbye to Love (ITV) and was the face of the Humans 2 (Channel 4, AMC) TV campaign.
Díana recently finished filming in Rambo V and Danny Boyle’s latest feature film. She can be seen opposite Natalie Portman in Xavier Dolan’s upcoming feature The Death and Life of John F. Donavon.
Riley Madincea is a British-American actor and writer trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. His writing has been featured at Oscar-qualifying film festivals around the world and won him the 2016 IMDb New Filmmaker of the Year Award. Jury’s still out on the acting.
Talking Points
by Steven Hayet
Steven Hayet is a New Jersey playwright whose work has been performed from Los Angeles to London and New York to New Zealand. His short plays include Talking Points (Ten Minute Short Play Winner, Red Barn Theater), George Orwell’s 1989: A “Swift” 10 Minute Adaptation (Week 1 People’s Choice Winner, Short+Sweet Hollywood), Everlasting Chocolate Therapy (Audience Choice Runner Up, The Oakville Players TOP 10 Festival), and The Wrong Jen Harper. He also co-wrote the short film Frame of Reference (Bronze Remi Award for Best Romantic Comedy, Worldfest Houston). He is a graduate of the College of William & Mary and Rutgers University. www.stevenhayet.com