January 30 - February 2 Thursday-Saturday 7pm, Sunday 3pm
San Miguel Playhouse, Av. Independencia 82
$200

SM Playwrights Showcase, 7 plays - theater

The characters in the seven new short plays in the San Miguel Playwrights Winter Showcase for 2020 range from Neptune, Sovereign of the Seven Seas, to the neglected middle child in a Tennessee family. Their stories are set in locales as diverse as a Boca Grande apartment, a laundromat, and a car en route to a hospital.

An annual audience favorite, the Playwrights Showcase features original work by seven local authors. The plays are consistently sharp-edged, directed with brio, and performed by more than a dozen of San Miguel's best actors.

There will be four performances of the Showcase, Thursday through Saturday, January 30 to February 1, at 7pm; and a 3 pm Sunday matinee on February 2. The Showcase is presented at the San Miguel Playhouse, Avenida Independencia 82. The Playhouse features secured free parking and taxi concierge service.

In David Temple's Boca Grande, Neptune suspects that another god is subverting his authority. He summons his niece Diana, Goddess of the Hunt, to help ferret out his adversary, but discovers too late who the culprit is. Temple is a well-known writer in San Miguel; his play Trade Secrets was voted Audience Favorite at the 2017 Diez Minutos Festival, and subsequently published in The Best Ten-Minute Plays of 2019, by Smith and Kraus, New York. His play The Purple House on Page Street was a finalist in the National Playwrights Festival.

The multi-talented Tasha Paley, a creative arts therapist who also acts, writes, and paints, performs in the only one-person play in this year's Showcase, her self-penned Sarah and Man-Man, about a middle child who goes to extraordinary lengths to gain acceptance.

Greg Diamant and Mick Diener star in Dennis Lanson's The Complication, in which two strangers, a hitchhiker and the driver who picks him up, discover they are headed for the same destination. Lanson is a documentary filmmaker and a former university professor of cinema.

Two estranged sisters, one rich and one poor, make a life-altering discovery in the laundromat basement of a Brooklyn high-rise, in Anne Campbell's Dirty Laundry, which features Lee Duberman, Richard Fink, Gina Giampaoli, and Lauren Orsonio.

The Handyman's Dream, by Marilyn Bullivant, is set in a beautifully renovated home that, for some strange reason, is not selling. It stars Rick Daley, Anne Campbell, Richard Fink, and the author.

In Downshifting, by novelist and newspaper columnist Sharon Steeber, three generations of a family squabble over ownership of the car in the garage. The play is directed by Marthe Fraser, and features Ben Brill, Catherine Byrne, and Lois Read.

Retired psychologist Bruce Sarbit's play, Chameleon, concerns an inmate in a high-security mental hospital who claims he's been framed. Why is he there, and who is he really?

Reserved-seat tickets are 200 pesos for all seats in all sections. (Seven partial view seats, which provide a slightly obstructed view of the stage, are available for 100 pesos each.)

Tickets are available at Boleto City, Mercado Sano, Monday through Saturday, 11am to 5pm; and online at boletocity.com, or by clicking either of the "Buy Tickets Online" buttons in this email bulletin.

Tickets