The Sorrow and the Pithy

Summer shorts are typically made of light, wrinkle-free cotton and are de rigueur in July and August. Less typical and much more entertaining is the Summer Shorts Festival at Theatre Artists Studio. The company, founded just a few years ago by such theater stalwarts as like Judy Rollings and Patti...

By Robrt L. Pela

August 7, 2008

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Summer shorts are typically made of light, wrinkle-free cotton and are de rigueur in July and August. Less typical and much more entertaining is the Summer Shorts Festival at Theatre Artists Studio. The company, founded just a few years ago by such theater stalwarts as like Judy Rollings and Patti Davis Suarez, had such a smash with its June edition of the Shorts Festival that it’s brushed off these eight never-before-seen comedies and dramas for a quick remount.

World-première shorts on the playbill include Kim Porter’s Drifting, in which a mother and daughter are marooned together at sea, and Together Alone by Richard Warren (himself the founder of another popular local “new plays” festival), about a chance encounter between two peculiar people at an art museum. Marriage and dream interpretation get a working over in Les Leiter’s Catty Corner, while the protagonist in Joni Browne Walders’ My Name Is Evie Goldstein tries to snag some real attention by climbing atop a busy freeway bridge.

Fri., Aug. 8, 7:30 p.m.; Sat., Aug. 9, 2 p.m.; Sun., Aug. 10, 2 p.m., 2008

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