Boxfest Detroit 2011

The spotlight once again turns to the woman director for BoxFest Detroit 2011, a mixture of the familiar and the new. Artistic director Molly McMahon and executive director Kelly Rossi return to the festival, once again making the most of the Furniture Factory space and its limitless permutations of rolling blue flats. Ten new plays, some helmed by BoxFest Detroit veterans and some by first-time directors, bring opportunities and challenges for playwrights, directors, and performers alike, and the festival’s festive atmosphere again prevails.

The short plays are a little longer this year; although the basic “box” system of programming blocks remains intact, the pacing has changed. Whereas last year’s boxes were mostly populated with a triptych of lightning-fast one-acts, this year finds the majority of boxes with just two plays. It’s a more than acceptable variation, as the longer fifteen- to twenty-minute intermissions between boxes are well met by a supply of donations-encouraged beer, wine, and concessions, and the pressure feels ever so slightly loosened for stage manager Meghan Lynch and assistant stage manager Jon Pigott to keep things running on time. If there’s any melee, it’s occurring behind the scenes — the spacious lobby has a welcoming and jovial atmosphere, great for engaging conversations with the directors and performers and retrospection on this year’s ten offerings.

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BoxFest Detroit 2010

BoxFest Detroit 2010 is the latest installment in an ever-growing enterprise to support and encourage women directors in the metro Detroit theater community. This year's festival is marked by the promotion of longtime collaborator Molly McMahon to artistic director, accompanied by Kelly Rossi's return as executive director. Both are omnipresent at the Furniture Factory performance space, swapping shifts at the box office with other festival directors. The participants' eagerness to help events run smoothly is evident — among the volunteers manning the concessions counter is Frannie Shepherd-Bates, artistic director of Magenta Giraffe Theatre, which is playing host to the festival. The prevailing sense is one of overlap between the people actively involved in the plays and the people making the machine run, as well as joy in what they've brought to fruition.

Over the years, the BoxFest Detroit franchise has grown from a single evening of short plays to a three-week festival with a complicated schedule of six individual programming blocks. It has become literally too much theater to see in a single day — I know, because I tried. Short plays are fascinating and fun to dissect because they can create strange, special worlds without having to sustain them; the seventeen of this year's festival are no exception, but the sheer number limits my capacity to describe each as fully as it deserves.

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