On October 9th, 2017, Play on Words was fortunate enough to be given the space to perform on a stage, with lights, sounds, microphones, everything by the Dragon Theatre located in the Redwood City’s downtown theater district neighborhood. Leaving San Jose is hard to do, but the good folks at the Dragon made it all possible with Monday Night Play Space, when they make the theatre available to local artists like us to do cool stuff.

The night was titled “Leading Women,” and you can watch it all on our YouTube page!

Let’s talk about all three segments:

1) “Exposure,” by Julia Halprin Jackson. Read by April Culver.

It begins with breasts, and ends with a camera. What happens in between is a picture of a place, Spain, at a time, the George W. Bush era, that shows us the experience familiar to Americans in college abroad at a crossroads of culture, sex, work, and life.

2) “The New Life,” a translation and adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s La Vita Nuova by Melinda Marks. Read by Melinda Marks.

This translation rules! For real, it puts this Dante fellow in the time and place of the artists and poets and people that hang around artists and poets talking about those things that artists and poets always invariably talk about: death, sex, and love. Sprinkle in some obsessive impulses (does Dante really move away to some other place NOT because of the woman that also moved to that place?) and you got yourself some good old fashioned Dante angst. Check it out.

3) “Unigirl,” by Leah Griesmann. Read by Ivette Deltoro.

Ivette reads this gem by Leah Griesmann, one of the first writers featured by Play on Words, where we walk in the shoes of an unicycle riding escort who is getting their doctorate and needs to make some money in between teaching gigs over a summer. Want more, click the link and tell us what you think!