Short plays fill festivals

Parenting, partnering, and a meeting between Tennessee Williams and Mother Teresa: All of these topics and more will be explored over the next two weekends in two festivals of short plays, the fifth annual Dragonfly Festival and the ninth annual Boston Theater Marathon.

First up is the Dragonfly Festival, sponsored by Devanaughn Theatre and featuring 17 plays between tonight and May 20.

The response to the call for plays has been phenomenal, according to Devanaughn artistic director Rose Carlson. "We started the festival when we moved into this space at the Piano Factory," she says. "We wanted to reach out to the community of writers, actors, directors, and technical people. That first year we had 80 submissions, and then every year it's grown, until this year we had to whittle down the choices from 225 scripts. It's amazing how much good writing is out there and how hard people are working."

Carlson says her company's mission tends toward darker topics -- "desire, despair, betrayal , and courage." But for the festival, "we loosen up a bit and look for good comedy and tragicomedy and stories with a political edge."

This year, pieces range from "A Member of the Bar" by Theodore Rickard (billed as being about "how to win a verdict and lose the case") to "Surprise" by Mark Harvey Levine (about a psychic who can see only two minutes into the future).

The playwrights come from as far afield as Australia in addition to the Boston area, Carlson says. "I think that speaks to the difficulty of getting a theater company to take a risk with a new work, but it's almost as important to offer an opportunity for a writer and a director who don't know each other to get together. What we've found is that if they hit it off, they often move on and do other projects together."

The Boston Theater Marathon also specializes in putting people together -- playwrights and theater companies.

"We always seem to have a number of repeat offenders," says Kate Snodgrass , artistic director of the Boston Theater Marathon and Boston Playwrights' Theatre. "But this year nearly half of the playwrights are new to us, and we were also struck by the number of theater companies who are new this year, or simply new to the marathon."

This year's lineup of 51 plays, chosen from 364 submissions, will be presented May 20 from noon to 10 p.m. at the Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts.

The playwrights include such familiar names as John Kuntz ("Xanadu," about auditioning for the musical based on the film), Leslie Epstein ("Tennis Club"), Robert Brustein ("Enter William Shakespeare"), and Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro ("Milk"). First-time presenters among the theater companies include the National Theatre of Allston, Way Theatre Artists, Riverside Theatre Works, Salem Theatre Company, and the Boston University School of Theatre.

Snodgrass says the play's subjects are all over the map.

"The trend this year was to write for older actors," she says, "but they're not deathbed scenes. There are also a lot of moody pieces and some really raucous plays about sex. We may have to have an hour of R-rated plays later in the evening."

This year's marathon will be dedicated to the memory of Betsy Carpenter, a director, dramaturge, and mentor who, says Snodgrass, was instrumental in getting the marathon going in its first few years. The marathon is also a benefit for the Theater Benevolent Fund.

Dragonfly Festival, Piano Factory, 791 Tremont St. Tickets: $15 each, $25 for a two-week pass. 866-811-4111 , devtheatre.com . Boston Theater Marathon, Calderwood Pavilion, BCA. Tickets: $40. 617-933-8600 , bostontheatre scene.com .

Zeitgeist Stage will team with the new Way Theatre Artists for "The Kentucky Cycle," a series of nine plays that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, from Oct. 6 to Nov. 16 at the BCA Black Box Theatre. "The Kentucky Cycle" will open both companies' seasons. . . . Teacher, director, and producer James Spruill has been named the 2007 Theater Hero by StageSource, the alliance of theater producers and artists. Founder of the New Africa Theatre Company and longtime professor of acting at Boston University, Spruill is being honored for his role as a mentor to countless performers and playwrights. He will be presented with the award at StageSource's annual fund-raiser, the Party, June 4 at the Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts. Tickets: $17-$25. 617-720-6066 , stagesource.org .

Terry Byrne can be reached at trbyrne@aol.com.