Claudia McGarry has been writing a play a year for almost a decade. Inspired by the annual Ojai Playwrights Conference New Works Festival, McGarry will be producing a mini festival of her own works at Center Stage Theater on November 24. The line-up will feature staged readings of three of the Santa Barbara–based artist’s original works: A Coma Kind of Love (previously produced as I Can Hear You, Dammit!); Dance Me to the End (previously produced as Breaking the Code); and a brand new work, Sisters, a family-based drama dealing with the wounds left between siblings after their parents have passed away.
“Sisters deals with four age levels,” McGarry says, explaining that the two actresses who play the sisters will portray the characters at every scripted stage of their life. “It starts with them at 92 and 94 and follows them backward in time to unveil where their issues began. … The big conflict happens in their 20s. They play all the different ages — they are reunited in their 40s, and we see them again in their 70s and in their 90s.” The other shows, A Coma Kind of Love and Dance Me to the End, have earned new titles by undergoing writing transformations. Both are about the obstacles that get in the way of romance, whether cross-cultural hiccups or jealousy from beyond the grave. Coma is about a comatose patient who can absolutely hear her friends and family (and an amorous nurse) who confide to her seemingly vegetative body; Dance Me is about a spring/fall relationship between a middle-aged white woman and a young Pakistani American man.
Catch local artists in these three staged readings on November 24 at Center Stage Theater: Sisters runs at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m.; A Coma Kind of Love runs at 12:30 p.m.; and Dance Me to the End runs at 4:30 pm.
