Eastern Shore Writers Pen Plays, Book

By DONNA BOZZA
Special to the Cape Charles Wave

April 22, 2013

The month of April spotlights Eastern Shore writers.

Playwright, poet, publisher, and author Robert P. Arthur is a Shore native best known for the musical play “Hymn to the Chesapeake,” a tribute to the watermen of the Chesapeake Bay, performed on the East Coast and internationally St. Petersburg, Russia.

Now Arthur has started an experimental theater based at ESO Arts Center in Belle Haven called the Edge Theater.

The Edge Theater is being launched April 26-27 with “An Evening of One-Acts, Five World Premieres.”

The original plays run the gamut from a comedy based on reality TV and wife swapping, to a dramatic poem set to music that explores the effects of war on a once idyllic life.

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The actors include a combination of local performers as well as an ensemble of visiting actors from Hampton Roads.

According to Arthur, the cabaret-style theater will be a 60-seat intimate experience, minimalistic with small casts and few or even no sets.

“We’ll do original plays, never produced before, or other plays and musicals that are artsy, edgy stuff, postmodern, avant-garde, experimental, absurdist, off-the-wall, written by Shore men and women –- as well as others,” said Arthur.

Shore audiences will be the first to experience many plays the Edge Theater performs with local actors — some known and some new to the stage — and at times regional actors.

This is a product of Arthur’s extensive theatrical network from his part-time Writer in Residence at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania and his years as a director for several theaters including Tidewater Community College and Norfolk’s 42nd Street Theatre.

Arthur combines his gifts as a poet and playwright in “Vija’s War.” This drama, a poem play with music, focuses on the idyllic life of Vija in her native Latvia before World War II and the horror of Latvian life during the war.

“Stealing Cars,” by Cape Charles resident Wayne Creed, is a drama of regret and lessons half learned. The protagonist is a thief, drunk, bisexual, and an accessory to manslaughter who tries to work out the drift in his life in a dramatic monologue.

“Life Swap” is by Jean Klein, a Hampton Roads playwright and founding editor of HaveScripts, a national play publishing company. Based on a television program, the comedy demonstrates the horror that ensues when a suburban housewife is “swapped” to an Appalachian family.

“Automated” is by New York playwright Bonnie Culver, best known for her play “Sniper.” In a play which modern audiences can relate to, it attempts to answer the question: Will Mr. John Q. Public make it through demonic automated telephone answering services to pay his bill?

“The Novelist” by Robert Arthur and William Heyen, is an absurdist comedy-drama. The play’s heroine, a writer of romances, is in love with the nasty South American bot fly that has embedded itself in her arm, causing jealousy in the two men who love her.

The director is Christa Jones, and the actors are Candy Dennis, Cliff Hoffman, and Wade Brinkley.

“ESO educates and entertains, as well as provides opportunities and direction for both adults and children,” Arthur said. “Talent can thrive here and develop, an actuality that didn’t exist when I was a boy.”

After playing at the arts center, Arthur hopes to take some shows to Norfolk, Virginia Beach, and elsewhere.

“We will be quite sensitive not to trod the ground of other excellent theaters on the Shore, both in regard to play dates and material,” said Arthur. “We will offer an addition, not competition. There will be a niche for us, we hope.”

Showtimes for “An Evening of One-Acts, Five World Premieres” are 8 p.m. April 26 and 27. The production stars Wayne Creed, Ty Cardaci, Cliff Murden, Donna Custis, Frances Williams, Robert P. Arthur, Richie Williams, and Rachel Creed. Managing Director is Richard Williams. Contact ESO Arts Center, 15293 King St., Belle Haven, VA (757)442-3226, www.esoartscenter.org.

Meanwhile, on April 2, Nassawadox author and sailor David Poyer released his latest book, The Whiteness of the Whale.

After a tragic accident maims her laboratory assistant, Dr. Sara Pollard’s career as a primate behaviorist lies in ruins. With nothing left to lose, Pollard – descendant of a Nantucket captain whose ship was sunk by a rogue whale – accepts an offer to join anti-whaling activists on a round-the-world racing yacht as the resident scientist.

The plan is to sail from Argentina to the stormy Antarctic Sea.  There they’ll shadow, harass, and expose the Japanese fleet, which continues to kill and process endangered whales in internationally declared sanctuaries.

But everyone aboard Black Anemone has a secret, or something to live down.  Her crew — including a beautiful but narcissistic film celebrity, an Afghan War veteran in search of the buzz of combat, and an enigmatic, obsessive captain — will confront hostile whalers, brutal weather, dangerous ice, near-mutiny, and romantic conflict.

Yet no one aboard is prepared for what Nature herself has in store  — when they’re targeted by a massive creature with a murderous agenda of its own.

Filled with violence, beauty, and magical evocations of life in the most remote waters on Earth, The Whiteness of the Whale is a powerful adventure by a master novelist.

Publisher’s Weekly says, “Poyer’s intense, fast-paced prose creates palpable suspense as he vividly describes the miserable close quarters, the terrifying sea and weather conditions, and the gruesome, wasteful destruction of the sea’s largest mammals.”

The Whiteness of the Whale is available in hardcover and ebook formats, and locally at The Book Bin and Rayfield’s Pharmacy.