Mark Cofta’s theater picks: Philly playwrights are blossoming

Jacqueline Goldfinger, the tireless PlayPenn education director and University of Pennsylvania teacher receiving national attention for her writing, sees the first production of The Arsonists (May 3 through 21) open this week at Azuka Theatre. A National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere, the two-person Southern Gothic mystery inspired by the Greek tragedy Electra will have separate stagings in Ohio, Alaska, and California. Allison Heishman, who directed Goldfinger's the terrible girls and Skin & Bone for Azuka, stages The Arsonists, featuring Sarah Gliko and Steven Rishard. (Hear Goldfinger discuss The Arsonists on the REP Radio podcast.)

Theatre Horizon premieres James Ijames's comedy White (April 27 through May 21), winner of the 2015 Terrence McNally New Play Award. The Barrymore Award-winning actor, director, and playwright recently received a 2017 Whiting Award in Drama. White, directed by Malika Oyetimein, challenges assumptions about race, gender, identity, and art.

Mary Tuomanen's dark comedy Peaceable Kingdom (May 10 through 27) will be an interesting contrast with her political drama Marcus/Emma at InterAct earlier this season (here’s my review), with nine actors plus a 20-person choir. The Orbiter 3 premiere — the fifth of seven by the playwrights' collective — depicts a mythical 17th-century Quaker colony inspired by the famous series by Philadelphia painter Edward Hicks, as well as Tuomanen's love of local history and choral music and longing for utopia.

David Lee White's new play about friendship, mental illness, and facing the truth, Fixed (May 4 through 21), premieres at Passage Theatre Company in Trenton, New Jersey. White, Passage's resident playwright, teaches playwrighting for Drexel University and PlayPenn. Maureen Heffernan directs a cast of four, including Philadelphia actress Maria Konstantinidis.

New to Philadelphia

Significant area premieres include Happy Birthday from 1812 Productions (April 27 through May 21), a farce by late French playwright Marc Camoletti (Boeing-Boeing, Don't Dress for Dinner) receiving long-deserved attention. This comedy about infidelity features three real-life couples: Jennifer Childs and Scott Greer, Susan Riley Stevens and Greg Wood, and Suli Holum and director Trey Lyford.

John Webster's 1612 revenge tragedy The White Devil (May 3 through 20) hasn't been produced professionally in my 30 years here, so the Philadelphia Artists' Collective's production should be a local first for most theatergoers. Director Damon Bonetti's noir-inspired version is PAC's last in the Broad Street Ministry's exquisite meeting room, which PAC has used creatively since its first full production, Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, in 2010.

Irish Heritage Theatre and Plays & Players follow Brian Friel's Molly Sweeney (here’s my review) with the Irish playwright's seldom-produced, never-seen-in-Philadelphia drama Making History (May 25 through June 10). The drama takes place during England's conquest of Gaelic Ireland in the early 1600s, but its political and social issues remain relevant, as does Friel's theme that history, written of course by the victors, is seldom accurate.

At right: Playwright Jacqueline Goldfinger debuts her The Arsonists at Azuka this month. (Photo by Kate Raines, Plate 3 Photography.)