Shorts

Reviewers of  varied backgrounds and political stripes have responded enthusiastically with words like "stunning," "powerful," "so well presented," "fairy tales...with their slightly scary archetypes," "filled with the intense emotion we ALL should feel about the ongoing destruction of the planet," "an important contribution to the evolving of a new form for digital."

And in May 2022, The Warning was selected by the Independent Shorts Awards Festival as a finalist in three categories: Best Experimental Short Film, Best Ensemble Cast, and Best Original Story!

Environmentalist/playwright Lee Roscoe brings her lifelong passions to the virtual stage in this cycle of four plays. In a newly filmed version of Water Spirits Colloquy—a play Roscoe wrote and first presented in 2019—the Earth’s waters rise up to punish humans for their destructive behavior. This dramatic depiction of the planet’s beauty and terrifying power is followed by The Cage. Here Roscoe satirizes the myopic self-interest of the Earth’s most dangerous creatures in what might best be described as "a class war in ten minutes." In Part III of the cycle, titled Reprieve, we encounter a man in utter despair about the world around him who decides to pause en route to suicide thanks to a small act of human kindness. Finally, The Warning is 17 minutes of sheer absurdity and chaos—a cartoon in which kleptocrats and their puppets gratify themselves at the expense of the world. In this finale, Roscoe herself takes to the virtual stage opposite the caricatured politicians and their malevolent fat cat puppeteer. As Woman/Earth, Roscoe channels the agony and rage of the wounded Earth and implicitly calls us all to awake and to act.

 

The four shorts are based on plays written by Lee Roscoe between 1987 and 2019. The plays themselves are works of experimental theater; they are non traditional and non representational. Furthermore, the works are presented in the experimental medium of "virtual" or "hybrid" theater, with elements of live theater, film, and TV. Water Spirits Colloquy is a lyric dream, where three demigods meet to share their torment over humans' ravaging of the Earth's waters and ultimately conspire to exact revenge. Spectacular imagery of natural settings is integrated with the stage action through the use of green screen technology. The Cage features three stylized characters—a boss, a middle manager, and a worker—who hurl rapid-fire gripes and insults at one another for ten minutes as they stare into the camera, as if to challenge the audience and draw it into the play as a fourth character. The highly stylized acting is mirrored by a stark, mainly black-and-white setting and minimal music and sound effects. Reprieve plays on two senses of the word "reprieve." Its raw humanity and ultimate sweetness bring a moment of relief from the intensity of the prior pieces; and the main character escapes death at the last moment thanks to the kindness of a woman and her grandson. The only realistic play of the four, Reprieve was filmed on site on Cape Cod. In The Warning the cycle ends with an explosion of imagery and over-the-top theatrics. In this hyperbolized cartoon, playwright Lee Roscoe, an Equity actress earlier in her career, takes on the role of Woman/Earth. The demigods of Water Spirits have been dispatched and the writer herself speaks for the Earth, exhorting and ultimately threatening humans to change their destructive ways.

 

FOUR PLAYS FOR A PLANET IN PERIL features an ensemble of ten actors: Le Vane Harrington, Karen McPherson, Geof Newton, Rod Owens, Judith Partelow, Olivia Thompson, Constance Wilkinson, Tom Wolfson, and Cleo Zani, as well as environmentalist/playwright Lee Roscoe.

 

The presentation of these works is made possible in part by the generous support of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Towns of Brewster and Dennis.

 

 

At Cape Cod Museum of Art, artist/Curator Shawn Dahlstrom teamed painters with fabric artists to bring to life the lyrics of America the Beautiful:

Run time 2:02

 

Pianist Donald Enos holds the Wesley DeLacy Chair in Perpetuity with the Cape Symphony Orchestra and he is also the founder and artistic director of the region's longest-running music festival:

Run time 1:47

 

A small cadre of exceptional musicians perform throughout the region under the banner of "I Musicisti:"

Run time 3:27

 

Pianist/scholar/raconteur Robert Wyatt delights and educates audiences around the country:

Run time 10:06

 

Cathy Walsman gives homage to the natural language of flowers through floral arrangements, photographs, note cards, and tiny creations known as "tussle-mussies:"

Run time 1:07

 

Pianist Anne Franciose Perrault performs as a soloist, collaborates with "I Musicisti," and gives private lessons to a select number of top-flight piano students:

Run time 0:36

 

Artist Bonnie Brewer employs vibrant colors and fluid shapes in both abstract and representational paintings:

 Run time 0:42

 

In an arguable example of the art of athletics, or the music of motion, five non Olympic athletes brave one of the toughest stages in the Tour de France.

Run time 12:50