Region's Culture to be Highlighted at Annual Playwriting Festival

The Blue Yodeler by Doug Pote, a play about Jimmie Rodgers, will be read on Friday, August 4 at 2 p.m. as part of the Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights.

The Sixth Annual Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights (AFPP), including six readings and two mini-productions, will take to Barter Stage II in historic Abingdon, Va., July 31-August 13. Barter’s AFPP was founded in order to cultivate new plays and playwrights with a distinctly Appalachian voice.

Unlike any other festival, Barter’s AFPP provides a direct route for development of new plays through competition. Barter Theatre now fully produces plays each season that have been developed in the festival. Many well-loved writers have new presentations this year including Keep on the Sunny Side and Man of Constant Sorrow’s Doug Pote and The Other Side of the Mountain and I’ll Never Be Hungry Again’s Catherine Bush. Bush will have one play presented as a mini-production and two plays, including one about NASCAR, in a staged reading by Barter’s Resident Acting Company. Pote will unveil The Blue Yodeler, focusing on the life and music of the legendary Jimmy Rodgers.

This year’s festival, which runs during the Virginia Highlands Festival, will showcase two plays that won praise in last year’s festival in a mini-production format, with minimal props and costuming, during the festival.

The first mini-production, The Quiltmaker, is the second play in The Other Side of the Mountain trilogy by Catherine Bush. In this part of the story, Jackson Bennett is married, reformed and made a deputy on the newly formed drug task force. Ida May Combs, his new grandmother-in-law, is dead set against it. Starring Mary Lucy Bivins, Gwen Edwards, and Michael Poisson, this play brings the characters from Mud Creek, Kentucky back to life. The characters, twists and witty dialogue will keep audiences laughing and wanting more. The Quiltmaker will open July 31 and will be shown eight times during the Festival.

The second mini-production this year, Kentucky Wings written by Robert Leland Taylor, tells the story of 21 year-old Eileen Clavor who is trying to escape from her parents home. Her struggles with an increasingly erratic mother and an angry, bitter father lead her on a quest to find out the truth about her family. The play stars Amelia Ampuero, John Hedges, Seana Hollingsworth and Tom Angland. Kentucky Wings will open August 1 and will be shown six times during the Festival.

The winners from this year’s AFPP will be presented to audiences as readings. These readings are free and following performances audience members are invited to participate in an open discussion and take an active role in the development of these brand new plays and have a voice in programming choices. Audience favorites have the chance to move on to mini-productions in future Festivals, and then later, full productions at Barter Theatre.

Barter’s 2006 AFPP readings include The Blue Yodeler by Doug Pote, which will be read on Friday, August 4 at 2 p.m. Monday, August 7 two plays will be read. Pow’r in the Blood by T. Cat Ford will be read at 1 p.m., and at 4 p.m., Peter Keith Turner’s The Dillsboro Pickle Queen of 1955 will be read. Comin’ Up a Storm by Catherine Bush will be read Tuesday, August 8 at 1 p.m. followed by Frank Higgins’ Black Pearl Sings at 4 p.m. The last reading of the festival, Catherine Bush’s Tradin’ Paint, a play about NASCAR fans, will be read Friday, August 11 at 2 p.m.