Local actors performed in The Sauk’s short plays this past week.
Courtesy | Trinity Bird
An evening of ten 10-minute plays, the Sauk Shorts showcases local acting talent and the work of four playwrights from across the state as well as five additional shows chosen from hundreds of national submissions.
Spurned lovers crashed a wedding party in “Put Asunder,” Chuck the exterminator battled a cockroach in human form in “Thanksgiving with the Exterminator,” and Sprinkles the elf took the witness stand in “You’d Better Be Good” as the Sauk Theatre presented their 10th annual Sauk Shorts this weekend.
“It’s sort of like a theatrical episode of ‘Saturday Night Live,’” Executive Director Trinity Bird said. “It’s a bunch of little short plays that all tell their own stories.”
Each year, Jonesville’s theater pulls from a vibrant community of local artists to bring the Shorts to life on stage. Playwright and director Josh Lightner from Springport, Michigan first got involved with the Sauk Theatre through Sauk Shorts as an actor in 2019. Lightner has since returned to participate in the Shorts at all levels of the artistic process as an actor, director, and playwright.
“The fun of watching something you wrote happen is you get to see all of the actors put their different spins on the characters,” Lightner said. “When you’re writing something, you’ve got the voices in your head as you’re writing, and you’re like, ‘This is how this person will say the line.’ But you don’t say that to the other person, and so they just do what they think it sounds like.”
This year, Lightner wrote “Plain Salad,” a short comedy about a guy who goes to a diner with his friends because he has a crush on the waitress. Unbeknownst to him, his friends have secretly set him up on a double date with a different girl.
“The entire play is him trying to ask this waitress out, and they’re trying to get him to just stay on this date with this one girl, and shenanigans ensue.” Lightner said.
Lightner said he was inspired by the TV show “Hello Ladies” and a variety of his own awkward social interactions.
In her third year playwriting for Sauk Shorts, Sarah Gray from Jonesville, Michigan, wrote two of the evening’s 10 plays, “You’d Better be Good” and “A Tale of Two Oversharers.”
In “You’d Better Be Good,” two elf attorneys took the stage to argue cases in front of Santa (Anne Conners) and keep kids on or off of the naughty list. Jangles the elf (Jacob Isiminger) tried his first case out of Sugarplum Law School, and Sprinkles the Elf-on-the-Shelf (Travis Blatchley) testified.
“I just thought, what if the naughty and nice list isn’t always so clear?” Gray said.
In “A Tale of Two Oversharers,” Karen and Lisa (Jennifer Yokell and Denise McCosh) made friends in a dressing room while dress shopping with their teenage daughters.
“That may or may not have been based on something that may or may not have happened to me or my children may or may not have experienced,” Gray said.
In his 10th consecutive year writing for Sauk Shorts, G.M. “Bud” Thompson from Grand Rapids wrote “The Envelope,” in which a man named Mort (Michael Krebill) received a birthday present from his friend Timothy (Jacob Weldon): an envelope containing his entire future.
“‘The Envelope’ was simply to pose a question. It’s 10 minutes of getting you to talk about it when you go home: would you open the envelope?” Thompson said. “You have to make a decision as to whether you think the future is changeable, and based on where you stand with that, discuss the question of ‘would you open the envelope?’”
Meaghan Bryant from North Adams, Michigan made her debut as a playwright with “The Challenge,” in which a mother proposes a new healthy eating challenge to her family. Bryant said she wrote the play based on a real experience with her family and worked on it over the summer during the Sauk’s Plays-in-Development Workshop.
“I’d written blogs, and I’d written academically, but I’d never written a play,” Bryant said. “So one of the hardest parts for me was dialogue– how do we make this actually sound like people talking?”
The other five plays, “Thanksgiving with the Exterminator,” “Put Asunder,” “Press Pray,” “Hero Day,” and “Angels and Pastrami,” were selected from about 700 national submissions, which Bird narrowed down to 50 before presenting to his play selection committee to pick only five to produce.
Putting together an evening of ten separate shows is not without its challenges, Bird said. With ten shows in rehearsal at the same time, it’s difficult to find rehearsal space.
“We’ve had people rehearse in churches, in people’s living rooms, a couple of restaurants,” Bird said. “But when we need something, the community pulls through.”
Despite the difficulties, the Sauk has found the support they need and continued to present the Shorts every year. Bird credits Joella Hendrickson, who has stage managed the production every year, and the community of actors, donors, and production team members with the continued success of Sauk Shorts.
According to Bird, Sauk Shorts has become an integral part of their season and a means for new people to discover all that the Sauk Theatre has to offer.
“A lot of people come, and they’ll go, ‘I only have the time to do Sauk Shorts,’” Bird said. “But then they’ll get the bug, and they’ll come back. Somehow, suddenly their schedules clear, and they have time for theater.”
