Fringe First: Angry Young Theatre Company and Skywriter

June 30, 1:57 PMDC Theater ExaminerClare Johnson

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Image Courtesy Angry Young Theatre Company

Hunter Styles is a graduate of Georgetown University's Theater and Performance Studies program. Over the past year he's served as the assistant director for Theodore Bikel's Sholom Aleichem: Laughter Through Tears (Theater J),Lysistrata (Georgetown University, in collaboration with Synetic Theater), and 1001  (Rorschach Theatre). He's a staff member at The Studio Theatre, a reviewer for DC Theatre Scene, and a founding member of the Angry Young Theatre Company.

 
Is this your first Fringe Experience?
I've reviewed Fringe shows for DC Theatre Scene, but this is the first time I'm featuring work in the festival. It's an impressive thing, this festival... allowing such a wide variety of shows the creative room to breathe while ensuring that the calendar runs like clockwork! Honestly, I don't know how they do it.

What drew you to this piece?
It was early in the life of AYTC that my co-founder Seamus expressed interest in writing a piece about the DC public school system*. The project that evolved intoSkywriter was a nice fit for our company and our founding criteria -- that we cultivate new and politically stimulating work from emerging DC playwrights. I've always been drawn to Seamus as a playwright for his snappy, aerodynamic writing style, as well as the unusual and irreverent ways he engages complicated social/political issues. (As with Skywriter, a hero-teacher vigilante who fights the system directly)... On a personal note, I'm also working my way toward a career in teaching college over the next few years, so the topic of how to inspire, be a hero, affect change, stand up for a group, etc. is fascinating to me.

*AYTC has four founding members, for the record; the other two are actors Sarah Taurchini (currently in Rorschach's Living Dead In Denmark) and Matt MacNelly (currently in Studio Theatre'sFucking A).

Tell us a little about the concept for the show.
Fringe shows demand a certain economy of design given the portable, quick-in-and-out nature of the festival... you pretty much have to be able to carry the show on your back... so we're readily embracing it by using only a few props, and our set is made up of two chairs and two larger structures, the uses for which transform from scene to scene. We're doing this visibly, transparently, hiding virtually nothing from the audience. I've found it to be a real blessing in disguise, because we've quickly discovered this to be a show that not only has costumes but is all about costumes... Chris plays both Frank Fletcher and his alter-ego Skywriter, but Genevieve, Lynn, and Ricardo each play secondary characters as well, with interesting overlaps and ambiguities. Double identities abound. It's a lot of fun.

Why Should Fringe Patrons see your show?
Well, first of all, it's a political opportunity. The character of Skywriter can serve as a lens through which a group of theatergoers and citizens might consider and discuss possible improvements to the DC public school system. But that didn't seem like enough for an AYTC theater event, so we've made sure that the show's hilarious. Comedy can be a tremendous tool for hitting straight at the nerves of critical, serious issues. Come to laugh and have your brain tickled.

What's next for you and/or for the company?
The company is shooting for one or several staged readings of new local works in the late autumn and winter, as well as another show for next year's Fringe. Seamus has quite a few playwriting pots on the stove (his play Harlan At The Rockpile just premiered in Arena Stage's Downstairs series this spring, and he is a recurring writer of Rorschach's Myth-App skits) so watch for more from him. I've been doing a fair amount of writing myself, so it's likely that readings later in the year will feature some new ideas I'm testing out. Our company has a nice working relationship with DC playwright Karen Zacarias, who's been very helpful in editing and discussing new work.

Anything else you'd like to add? 
We're putting on a free preview of Skywriter (selected scenes, with a talkback) at Big Monkey Comics on the afternoon of July 5. Check out our blog as we finalize details.

Performances of Skywriter are as follows (All performances are at The Shop @ Fort Fringe;  610 L Street NW:

Jul 11th 1:30 pm
Jul 12th 3:15 pm
Jul 18th 9:30 pm
Jul 25th 9 pm
Jul 26th 4:45 pm

Fringe venues are small so purchase tickets now to avoid disappointment.