ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — The Different Strokes! Performing Arts Collective is currently performing the third rendition of the 369 Monologue and Short Play Festival, “Hell and High Water.”
The festival, annually comprised of three weekends of six short plays and nine monologues under a unified theme, began this year on May 1 and will conclude on Sunday, May 18.
On Thursday, May 15, actors performed one of their short plays and four of the monologues at the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Asheville.
The Thursday show concluded with the best piece of the night: “Friendly Fire,” a monologue written by Damian Arteaga and performed by actor Zak Hamrick.
Hamrick, armed with only a lawn chair, two beers and tragic charisma, stole the show with his sincere, aching delivery of Arteaga’s piece, a confessional about male loneliness and border crossing. The actor was like a tractor beam, drawing in the audience with his sad smile and keeping them on their toes with his sharp reflexes, like when a phone went off and Hamrick worked the flub seamlessly into his performance.
“Friendly Fire” was the most effective segment of the evening because it felt most fully formed.
The four other pieces in the Thursday night set were each flawed but ambitious, featuring big swings and misses alike, often inside of the same segment.
Those four included:
- The monologue “Being Wendy Wasserstein” by Karen Fix Curry and performed by Simone Snook
- The monologue “Making a Community” by Joan Lipkin and performed by Sharvis Smith
- The monologue “Who Voted For This” written and performed by Chesney Goodson
- The short play “Reap the Reparations: Blackest of the Day” by Alric Davis and performed by Hamrick, Smith, Snook, Mikhale Sherrill and Quinn Terry
In “Making a Community,” for instance, Smith wielded a powerful, lived-in physicality from the seat of their chair. The actor’s facial expressions were heartbreaking and transporting.
However, the Southern accent the actor chose for the piece was inconsistent at best, creating a distracting disconnect between the words spoken and the character speaking them.
Or, consider Goodson’s triptych performance piece, “Who Voted For This.” The actor has a background in stand-up comedy, which came across brilliantly when he presented himself with charming aplomb. This was before launching into the meat of the show, a depiction of three Trump-voting caricatures.
Though admirably daring and funny in its audacity — Goodson affects a Black voter, a Latin-accented lothario and a blonde-wigged trad wife — the message of the piece fell flat. Goodson was given an opportunity to touch on something deeper about what led his characters to vote differently than he did, even through a comic lens, but he settled for stereotyping jabs instead. It felt more superficial than insightful for a piece attempting to reckon with “Who Voted For This.”
The biggest swing of the night was undoubtedly the sole short play of the evening. “Reap the Reparations: Blackest of the Day,” could be summarized as a faux-game show with more ideas than it had time to buzz in for, though Sherrill’s fiercely committed performance was a standout.
Even if every one of the Different Strokes! selections weren’t a smash success, however, the evening was a daring, scrappy night of local theater. It’s nice to watch a show that wants to be about something, even if some things don’t come together.
Sunday afternoon will be the final show of this 369 season, comprised of the best of the fest as determined by the audience of each previous performance. If the final collection is as good as “Friendly Fire,” it won’t be an event to miss.
Find tickets and more information about Different Strokes! and 369 Festival here.
