Dana Oland: ‘8 in 48’ play festival helps launch Meridian’s bid for more arts
Meridian’s arts scene is growing in strength and intensity with new groups starting up each year that want to serve their community. Now, many of those artists, led by Autumn Kersey’s Treasure Valley Children’s Theater, are digging deeper into the community to help create a performing arts venue in West Ada County.
“We were looking for an interesting way to bring awareness to the needs of arts groups in Meridian,” she says. “We need a place to perform.”
Kersey and company will kick off the effort with “8 in 48 Idaho: A Short Play Festival” that will put eight original 10-minute plays on stage in just 48 hours.
Actors audition at 4 p.m. Sept. 25 (no appointment necessary). Come ready to work and with a good attitude, Kersey says. If you’re cast, rehearsals will start around 8 p.m. that evening, go until late and begin again at 8 a.m. on Sept. 26, with the performances that night. And while the project is lead by a children’s theater, this fundraiser is geared to adults.
The pre-and post-receptions will be at Meridian’s Generations Plaza with food from Lucky Fins, music, silent auction and a no-host beer and wine bar.
The goal is to draw attention to Meridian’s arts groups and their potential to enliven the city, Kersey says. Proceeds benefit the Meridian Arts Foundation building fund, a new capital campaign to construct a center for performing and visual arts in the Meridian area.
The festival idea started with TVCT’s company manager Julia Pachoud Bennett. She and Kersey put out an international call to playwrights for original short plays written for young audiences. They received 120 submissions from around the globe. A committee of Treasure Valley theater artists blind-read all the plays. The winning eight come from New Zealand, Washington, Arizona, California, Pennsylvania, New York and two from Ohio.
The festival also will bring the Treasure Valley theater community together, using actors and directors that regularly work elsewhere, including DreamWeaver Musical Theatre’s Annie Cerda, Idaho Shakespeare Festival company member Lynn Allison, Boise Little Theater and Chaotic Acts of Theatre’s Kim Sherman Labrum and Jordan Peterson of Daisy’s Madhouse.
They want to shine a light on the growing arts scene in Meridian. Kersey has worked in Boise community theater for several years, helping Boise Little Theater create its summer youth theater program (in partnership with Boise Parks and Recreation). That program, which Kersey continues to oversee, brings together kids from across the valley to produce a musical in the summer.
But when it came time for Kersey to start her own company, she chose Meridian because that’s where many of the families of the kids in her summer program lived.
“The community in Meridian was hungry for the kind of theater we do,” she says. “It was easy to convince the community and businesses of our value.”
Kersey produces plays that tell classic and contemporary children’s stories, with adult actors, and teaches theater workshops and ongoing classes —from Shakespeare to improv — for young performers. That first year she had 100 students. The next year she had 700, and it has stayed steady since.
Now, the reality is that to grow, Kersey’s Treasure Valley Children’s Theater and a host of other groups — including Meridian Symphony, Idaho Regional Ballet, Meridian Music and Art and the fledgling WineGlass Development — need a space in which to perform and teach, do business and create.
The success of the call and interest in Meridian is heartening, and Kersey would like to make this a biennial event, she says.
“There’s a real need for plays for young audiences that are smart, imaginative and take you on a journey,” she says. “If we can be part of the conversation to make that happen that would be awesome.”
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This story was originally published September 25, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Dana Oland: ‘8 in 48’ play festival helps launch Meridian’s bid for more arts."