Round Two of 2009 Theatre Festival Kicks Off

As the 2009 Blue Ridge Summer Theatre Festival wraps up an encore run of “The Bluest Water,” the talented, gung-ho cast and crew of the Endstation Theatre Co. are feverishly racing toward the second and main leg of the event hosted by Sweet Briar College.

So, too, is chef Glenton Goodwill of the Elston Inn, which is working to create an extra culinary incentive for playgoers. On specific dates, guests can purchase tickets and dinner for two for $60, plus tax. Or they may choose Sunday brunch on July 12 for the 2 p.m. premiere of “My Brother’s Knife: A Madison Heights Odyssey,” Endstation’s original “Southern gothic” play.

The dinner menus vary, but each offers a choice of meat entrée, such as a baked chicken breast stuffed with spinach and Boursin cheese or pork picatta served with capers and lemon-roasted garlic jus. Dessert, salad course, coffee, tea and wine also are included.

The Sunday brunch includes beverages, a fresh omelet station with cheese assortment, salad and dessert stations. The entrée station includes apple wood-smoked bacon, gourmet sausages and ham glazed with maple sugar and Dijon mustard, potatoes O’Brien and a vegetable medley of zucchini, yellow squash and carrots.

The time — and place — couldn’t be better to kick off director Ryan Clark’s mercurial take on William Shakespeare’s romantic comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

The play will be performed on the grassy dell between Babcock Fine Arts Center and Sweet Briar House. The first show time is 7 p.m. July 7 — when the evening sky and darkening shadows of nearby Guion Woods set the stage for mischievous forest fairies who prey upon four young lovers.

If you prefer a picnic to a sit-down dinner, pack a food basket along with your blankets and chairs. There’s plenty of room to spread out, and for all Saturday shows, Rebec Vineyards will offer wine tastings one hour before and after the performances. Tastings are $3, including the glass.

Although the idea for “My Brother’s Knife” came to playwright Joshua Mikel two years ago, while he was acting in Endstation productions at Live Arts in Charlottesville, he hadn’t planned to set the story in Virginia. He intended the protagonist, Wayne, to be a Cherokee Indian from his home state of Georgia.

Mikel changed the script for Endstation founder and artistic director Geoff Kershner, who wanted to produce “MBK” for the 2009 summer festival. But part of the company’s modus operandi is to produce original works where its Central Virginia home is integral to the action. So Wayne became a Monacan, a tribe native to Amherst County.

Kershner liked the story and believed it works for a Monacan character. Being native Virginian is part of Wayne’s narrative, but the play is not about the experience of his people, he said — although the Monacans will be the subject of a project he is already working on for the 2011 festival.

In the play, Wayne is talked out of jumping from a bridge over the James River by a dysfunctional police officer, sending him on a journey during which he must address his dark past.

The role was inspired by the Mikel’s admiration for a well-known Native American writer. “I am a big fan of the author Sherman Alexie, and like many of his characters, I wanted Wayne to have an attachment to a heritage that he was, on the whole, wildly unfamiliar with,” the playwright said.

Mikel visited Sweet Briar for a few weeks in June to finish the play, an experience he blogs about on Endstation’s Web site. He also workshopped the script with Kershner, the cast, and technical and artistic designers.

In his blog entry, he said the work was “funny, but that’s about the extent of it” until he and Kershner had a revelation. He also recalled, with some humor, his friend’s forceful directorial ways and insistence on the audience knowing what the characters want.

“We were making huge huge changes,” he wrote, and many of them came as a result of readings and technical meetings with people he called a mother load of talent.

“It’s a different play,” he concluded. “Completely different. And it’s not just funny.”

IF YOU GO: Ticket information
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” will be presented at 7 p.m. on July 7, 9, 11, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25 and 26 on the dell near Babcock Fine Arts Center, where parking is available.

“My Brother’s Knife” will be performed at 2 p.m. Sunday, July 12 and at 7 p.m. on July 14, 15, 17, 22 and 24 in Murchison Lane Auditorium at Babcock Fine Arts Center.

Tickets for the Blue Ridge Summer Theatre Festival are $12 each, or $35 for all three plays, and can be purchased via www.lynchburgtickets.com. For more information, visit Endstation Theatre’s Web site at http://www.endstationtheatre.org/.

IF YOU GO: Dinner package details
Packages, which include play tickets and dinner or brunch for two, are $60 per performance.

Prefix menus including salad, entrée, dessert, wine, tea and coffee will be served at 5:30 p.m. for all evening shows. A brunch will be served at 11:30 a.m. for the 2 p.m. showing of “My Brother’s Knife” on Sunday, July 12.

“My Brother’s Knife” packages are available for Sunday, July 12; Tuesday, July 14; and Wednesday, July 15. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” packages are available for Sunday, July 19 and Sunday, July 26.

Reservations are requested by Monday, July 6. Availability cannot be guaranteed for reservations made after July 6. For information or reservations, please visit the Web site at http://www.elstoninn.com/ or call (434) 381-6207.