DramaDogs Celebrates 30 Years of Community Theater in Santa Barbara

‘HERE! This Moment for Women’ Spotlights Collage of Stories at the Center Stage

‘Montana’ from DramaDogs’ production of HERE! This Moment for Women: A Series of Short Plays and Monologues’ | Photo: Courtesy

DramaDogs, a Theater Company celebrates 30 years of staging their unique theatrical productions for Santa Barbara audiences with their newest offering, HERE! This Moment for Women: A Series of Short Plays and Monologues by contemporary playwrights EM Lewis and James Still. This show is a bespoke dramatic collage of scenes curated by the company’s artistic directors, E. Bonnie Lewis and Ken Gilbert, to carve out the highlights and shadows of the female experience by angling the spotlight just askance.

Lewis and Gilbert credit their long creative partnership to a unified vision. One of their shared passions is prioritizing women’s stories and voices. Lewis references a piece in HERE! titled “My Car Knows the Way to Montana” as she explains: “What happens to a woman who is heartbroken, who has messed it up again, but she still has the will to pick it up and drive to Montana? And who holds her up? Her community of women. These stories lift you, empower you, break your heart. That’s why women’s voices are important.”

HERE! also features EM Lewis’s monologue “The Fig and the Wasp,” a sensual interpretation of the evolution of femininity from childbearing to the archetypal crone, a generally uncelebrated population (in American culture). “The fig is the inverted flower … but it can only be penetrated by the female wasp, which pollinates it. Then the wasp dissolves into the fig,” he says. “But the fig becomes something new,” says Lewis. “Fully realized. The fig represents that transformation.”

HERE! This Moment for Women runs October 17-20, with a small opening night gala celebrating the group’s 30 years of Santa Barbara theatre pre-show on October 18, 6-7 p.m. For friends of the theatre community, DramaDogs is dedicating their show on October 19 to their friend and fellow artist, the late Jerry Oshinsky, with a small tribute. HERE! is directed by Ken Gilbert and E Bonnie Lewis.

See centerstagetheater.org.