5 Plays from the Contemporary American Theater Festival Reviewed by Grace Cavalieri

The inimitable Grace Cavalieri, a dramatist herself, returned from the 28th season of the Contemporary American Theater Festival with a lot to chew on. The plays this year moved through an astounding breadth of topics from race, gender, and water politics in a post-apocalyptic world (Thirst), to ruminations on history featuring a soviet spy with an eidetic memory (Memoirs of a Forgotten Man). For the very fact that the plays were so strong this year and varied so much, The Contemporary American Theater Festival has proven once again that great theater is thriving in this country far from the heat lamp of Broadway (it takes place in Virginia, after all), it is only that we must search with due care, under every rock, at the rim of every quay, in the coffers of every working independent publisher, in the   books section of Alan Squire Publishing *wink wink*.

Grace, as she is wont, has put together a lovely review and breakdown of 5 of the 6 plays produced this year at the CATF. You can read her full review here

Grace Cavalieri’s newest book is Other Voices, Other Lives which contains the highlights from a lifetime of poetry, drama, and journalism.

Read grace’s interviews with 3 American Poet Laureates, Robert Pinsky, Donald Hall, and Rita Dove

Listen to Grace interview ASP’s very own Rose Solari and James J Patterson Grace, Rose, Jimmy