Playcrafters creates art in new women’s play
Playcrafters Barn Theatre is just the second place in the country to present the new play, “Paint Night,” opening on Friday, March 15.
In the story by Carey Crim, five long-time best friends, in great need of a girls’ night out, gather for a bachelorette paint-and-sip night at their local art studio. As the wine and paint flow freely, secrets and long-held tensions come to the surface.
Attempting to make contact with their inner artists, they confront buried truths about themselves and their relationships, proving that life, like art, rarely turns out exactly as planned.
The Playcrafters production features Khalia Denise and Ashley Hoskins of Davenport; Emmalee Hilburn of Hillsdale; Kathy Graham of Moline; and Ashley Gomez, Amari Harris, and Bez McMullen of Rock Island.
A review of the October 2023 world premiere production (in Lewiston, Maine) called it “a brilliantly hued feather in the cap of all parties concerned.”
Carey Crim is the gifted playwright (“Morning After Grace,” “Never Not Once” and others) who crafted this play, which “allegorically paints a group portrait of six women who embody many issues and concerns important to womankind,” the review said.
Brushes and booze are the intended focus for this get-together to celebrate the coming nuptials of Lolly, the young, free-spirited and slightly irresponsible daughter of Miriam. Miriam is a noticeably distracted woman of a certain age. The other members of the troupe are all connected by blood and long-term relationships, the one exception being Vera, the owner of the art studio where all the action takes place.
The second intention for the title highlights the playwright’s “bold brush strokes as she creates a canvas of characters that we all either know well or recognize in part in ourselves,” the review said. “And she chooses a daring palette of issues that are some of the most human, and most often shared by women. This colors the characters as they are set in motion.”
Crim is an East Coast-based playwright and resident artist at the Purple Rose Theatre Company in Michigan. Her play Never Not Once was the winner of the 2017 Jane Chambers award and a finalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. It opened to critical acclaim at The Purple Rose Theater and went on to Theatre Aquarius in Ontario, Rubicon Theatre in Los Angeles and then on to The Park Theatre in London.
For Playcrafters, the director is Madelyn Dorta of Davenport.
A feminist focus
She is an audio storyteller and producer. Some of Dorta’s audio works include “Meteor City,” “Feminist Fairytales,” “Vox Elysium,” and more. She runs a multimedia production studio called Wrightwood Studios.
Last July, she directed “Little Women” at Playcrafters and in 2022, Agatha Christie’s “A Murder Is Announced.”
“I like the stage. I like the intimacy of it,” Dorta said Monday of the Barn Theatre. “I think it gives you a closeness to the actors and to the story that’s a little bit different than you would experience in a non-barn theater. I love the people. I love the talent, but I really love the space as well.”
She loves directing stories about women.
“It’s something that I’m passionate in both my work here at Playcrafters, but also in my other creative work,” Dorta said, noting she’s co-producer of a fiction podcast called Feminist Fairytales. “We do retelling of fairy tales told through a feminist lens and we’ve worked with 40 storytellers rewriting and crafting them and hundreds of voice actors.”
You can hear the “Feminist Fairytales” podcast episodes HERE.
“It’s been quite the journey. I get to work with a lot of amazing audio storytellers and I absolutely love it,” Dorta said, adding she works with writers from around the world.
“Paint Night” fits nicely within her feminist framework and the Moline theater’s setting (with the audience on three sides).
“It’s a minimal set. It’s a really great story and we’re the second theater in the country to produce it, which is really cool,” Dorta said. “I think it’s perfect for both our stage and our audience as well.”
The story includes two mother-daughter pairs (Fern/Bree and Miriam/Lolly). “They’re both stubborn in their own right, and they both kind of have to overcome some of their issues and you all kind of see it during this paint night,” the director said. “The wine is flowing and secrets are told. Some things come to light and you have to navigate them.”
Dorta has done one of these paint nights locally, but it was among a group of strangers.
“And they’re really fun and so I, experiencing them, it’s fun when you’re in a group,” she said. “One of the reasons I like this show so much because I’ve done it before and it was kind of fun because usually you’re in a big group of strangers. Where this is, there’s already established relationships and dynamics and you’re kind of thrown in the middle of that, which I thought was really fun just for the audience’s sake.”
Showcasing QC artists
Not only are the actors painting over the course of the play, “Paint Night” will display artworks from established QC artists on stage, and in the lobby. Playcrafters put out a call for local artists to show off some pieces and put some up for sale, Dorta said.
“We’ve already had so many incredible artists now, I have more art than I know what to do with,” she said. “We have such an abundance of so many incredible artists here in the QC and they’ve lent their paintings for the set and we have so much of it. We’re also going to do a gallery downstairs in our lobby so that um patrons who come to see the show can look at it during intermission and also buy a few pieces if they’re interested.
“It’s just a really cool way of how it kind of came about,” Dorta said. “I was like, oh shoot, I need art. And thankfully the creative community is so connected. We were like, hey, artists, bring me your art and I’ve had people every day dropping off art that I can use for the set. And it’s been really amazing to see everyone just support each other.”
“Paint Night” also has been a very collaborative, bonding experience for the director and her all-female cast.
“Every one of them are just incredible storytellers and we’ve all come to like have really, really great conversations after rehearsal on how we could make things better or, you know, how do you feel like this person would walk into a room and things like that,” Dorta said. “It really feels like each of us own a piece of the show in a way because we’ve all worked hard to bring it to life.”
Some of the character challenges are specific to mothers. For example, Gwen is in her 40s and wants to re-enter the workforce.
“She took time off to be a mom and now she’s re-entering it and she has all these skills that she doesn’t know where to put them,” Dorta said. “So a lot of the issues don’t have to do with male relationships but just society.”
“There’s a lot of other issues that come up, which I feel like in some ways every woman will relate to it,” she added.
“It’s a really great show, a perfect girls’ night out,” Dorta said.
It’s also been exciting to be in contact with the playwright through the process.
“That has been really cool and sharing our ideas and sharing the set photos and stuff like that,” Dorta said. “So it’s been really cool to help her tell her story. It is exciting to know that this is probably gonna be the first introduction for people in the area to the show and hopefully more and more other theaters pick it up because it’s a really great story.
“It’s been fun. It’s been a little nerve-wracking,” the director said. “Mostly just because a lot of people do like to see shows that they’ve heard of before.”
Performances (at 4950 35th Ave., Moline) will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and a 3 p.m. matinee on Sundays.
Tickets (general admission is $15, and $13 for military and seniors) are available on the Playcrafters website HERE or by calling 309-762-0330. Tickets will also be for sale at the door (while available), and the show runs this weekend and next.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WHBF - OurQuadCities.com.
