The Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) has been going strong for 19 years. Fifty Words, one of five plays offered during the summer of 2009, was first produced by the MCC Theater company at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, NY in October, 2008. Ed Herendeen, founder of the Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University directed it there in the summer of 2009.
This article provides a synopsis of the play, some information about the playwright, and a brief description of the CATF production.
Fifty Words: The Play
Architect Adam and his wife, small-business entrepreneur Jan are alone at home for the first time in nine years. Their only son, Greg, is away at a sleepover for the first time. Adam wants to make love with Jan. He does everything he can to make it happen, but she’s distracted by her work, spending more time peering into her laptop computer than into his eyes. She’s also distracted by what she considers Greg’s peculiar behavior at school.
Things deteriorate from there, and the fight is on, both funny and furious. More information tumbles out that anyone really wants to know, and oversharing leads to ultimatums.
The play ends on a question mark, but the evening’s events hit home to anyone involved in a long-term monogamous relationship. Most audiences with any experience of cohabitation will recognize themselves in this emotional battleground of contemporary relationships. Love hurts. It’s not necessarily pretty, but sometimes it’s funny as hell.
Fifty Words: The Playwright
Michael Weller’s best known plays are Moonchildren, Fishing, Loose Ends, Spoils of War, and What the Night Is For, which had a production in the West End starring Gillian Anderson. Last fall, his latest play, Beast, was produced by New York Theatre Workshop, and Fifty Words, featuring Liz Marvel and Norbert Leo Butz, premiered with MCC.
Weller designed and served as supervising mentor of the Obie-winning “Mentor Project” of the Cherry Lane Theatre. With the generous participation of Edward Albee, the Project brings the most gifted new writers in the country together with established mentors each year to develop and produce three new works, then helps guide them towards a professional career. Over thirty new playwrights have been produced by the project, many of them now the most prominent emerging playwrights of their generation.
Weller has won an Academy Award nomination, an N.A.A.C.P. Outstanding Contribution Award, a Critics Outer Circle Award, a Rockefeller Foundation Grant, and a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award. A playhouse has been named in his honor, and he is on the counsel of the Writers Guild of America Foundation and the Dramatists Guild of America.
Weller’s most recent play, Side Effects, will be produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club in 2010. The musical of Dr. Zhivago, for which he wrote the book, will premiere in Australia in early 2010. A second musical, Rumors, based on the lives and music of the legendary rock superband Fleetwood Mac, is scheduled for production in 2010–2011.
He was a writer/producer on the television series Once and Again and developed a series for CBS-Regency TV called Just Like Home. He is currently writing a screenplay about the recent Nebraska Safe Haven Law.
Fifty Words: The CATF Production
Adrienne Lawrence of the Frederick (MD) News-Post described the set in a review of the play on July 16, 2009: “Robert Klingelhoefer's set is clearly a kitchen, modern and sleek, but it is reminiscent of a boxing ring. Hanging over the stage, what would be the ceiling of the kitchen, is a four-sided box that flashes the new time of the night as Adam and Jan have a drag out, no-holds-barred, six-hour fight.”
Fifty Words runs about one hour and 45 minutes, with a 10-minute intermission.
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