Local play development company plans to expand play festival to attract regional audiences

For 10 years, Theatre 33 has brought newly-written plays to a local stage, helping playwrights hone their work. 

Now, they’re working to bring those plays to a wider audience through a festival to bring theater lovers to Salem from across the region.

“We are trying to build a mini Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Salem,” said Thomas Nabhan, the theater’s executive director.

The company’s annual New Play Summer Festival includes six workshopped original plays based out of Willamette University’s theater facilities. Theatre 33 runs six productions over the summer geared toward local audiences.

But the theater’s founding staff have bigger plans. They hope to launch a regional festival in 2025, aiming to draw a wider audience and eventually, grow to become the biggest new play festival west of the Mississippi.

“The time has come to make the move,” said Nabhan.

The current festival will remain the same with a slight change of moving the start date back to March, freeing up August for the regional patrons. 

In August, Theatre 33 will then bring back all six performances from the season into a fun-filled week of theater so travelers can enjoy all the shows during a short stay. 

The three full productions will be moved from the smaller Putnam studio to the main stage at Willamette University’s Pelton Theatre and they will run six performances a week, alternating each night so each play is performed twice a week. In addition, travelers can see one readout, take a writing workshop and view a world-class visual art exhibit.

Theatre 33 is named as an ode to Oregon being the 33rd state to join the union. It was designed to offer robust play development to Oregon and Northwest playwrights with the sole focus of new play production. 

“There is a void in getting plays produced,” Nabhan said.

Since its start, Theatre 33’s new play summer festival has produced 38 new plays by 28 different playwrights, 20 of whom were Oregonians, and 11 of which featured themes from the Northwest. 

Each summer, theater staff collect submissions from mostly professional playwrights all located in Oregon or the Northwest who have scripts that need work to finish. They do not have restrictions on who is allowed to submit plays. However, each season they work to include plays that have themes related to Oregon and Northwest history. 

Once the six best scripts are selected for the season the playwright is paired with one of the theatre’s three dramaturges, a professional theatre staff who consults authors. They then help to assist in finishing the playwright’s script.

Three of the six plays produced each summer are full productions with actors, lighting, costume, set, sound design, and 60 hours of rehearsal. Three are pop-ups where actors on stage do a full readout of the script on a music stand. At the end of the readout, the audience stays back to give first-hand feedback as the playwright joins the stage in an interactive experience.  

The writers will attend all of the rehearsals and incorporate new changes as the play comes together. It takes four weeks of work before the full productions air, to finish the script and get in the 60 hours of rehearsal. 

The theater since its start has been working with Willamette University to use their facilities while the school year was out of session. Originally an independent organization, Theatre 33 merged with the university in 2021.

In a partnership to further develop plays in their creative liberal arts atmosphere said Nabhan. He hopes this new festival can mutually benefit Willamette by distinguishing them as a hub for theater. 

The theatre’s current 2023 budget for the New Play Summer Festival is $90,000. They estimate it will need to increase to $140,000 for the 2025 regional opening. 

Of the current budget, 75% of it goes to the artists making the productions happen.  

This year, the campaign to expand the festival has begun with the airing of over 114 radio ads on OPB promoting their current summer season. The goal is to gain more name recognition throughout the Northwest and build a foundation to launch the new festival, said Nabhan.

That includes drawing people to their newest full production play debuting this weekend. Titled “Working for Crumbs,” the comedy is about two friends “living for the crumbs of their soul-sucking job.” 

“When calamity strikes and their boss chokes on an oatmeal raisin cookie, it creates a domino effect of destruction that brings down the corporate house,” the play description reads. The show runs July 13-16 at Willamette University’s Putnam Studio.

The full production is by playwright Kate Danley and directed by Susan Coromel. Tickets can be reserved on their website. 

To learn more about the summer play festival and the new regional festival visit the Theatre 33 website. 

Contact reporter Natalie Sharp: [email protected] or 503-522-6493.

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