Where, in this season of seemingly endless political division, can a thoughtful person seek meaningful dialogue? The answer lies only as far away as the bucolic Besant Hill School in Ojai. That’s where the bulk of Across the Divide, the 19th annual Ojai Playwrights Conference, will take place Sunday, August 7-Sunday, August 14. Across the Divide is also the title of the first event of the conference, a roundtable discussion on August 7 designed to prepare the ground for what will follow — readings of eight new plays plus a reading/performance of the new musical Blue House about the artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
As has been true throughout the history of the conference, the playwrights are a mix of the up-and-coming (David Jacobi, Aziza Barnes) and the top of the heap (Jon Robin Baitz, Robert Askins). The work begins well before the public arrives, with the actors and playwrights conducting table readings and workshopping the scripts for a full week on their own. The excitement builds as writers, directors, and performers develop interpretations and imagine new solutions in anticipation of facing an enthusiastic and knowledgeable audience during the second half of the conference in what is known as the new works festival. Here are some of this year’s highlights from that schedule, which begins on Thursday, August 11.
Thursday's opening night sees the conference take over the larger Matilija Auditorium space for Blue House, a new musical with songs and lyrics by Perla Batalla and David Batteau and a book by Oliver Mayer. The piece began as a commission from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to Batalla for a series of five songs that were performed there as part of In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States. Five years have passed since then, and Batalla and Batteau have written another dozen songs that playwright Mayer is weaving into a two-act narrative about the tempestuous relationship between Mexico’s most famous artists.