Review: REVIEW: NEW SUMMER SHORTS – CELEBRATING THE CREATIVE SPIRIT at Theatre Artists Studio

For more than two decades, Theatre Artists Studio has been a home for new work and local artists. That commitment is on full display in this year's NEW SUMMER SHORTS, an entertaining collection of eight original ten-minute plays that ranges from broad comedy and satire to moments of genuine reflection.

I've been attending and reviewing this annual festival for a decade, and what continues to impress is the company's seemingly endless reservoir of creativity. The format remains simple but effective: short plays written, directed, and performed by Studio members, each offering a distinct perspective and voice.

The program opens with one of its strongest entries, Al Benneian's Left to Their Own Devices. Directed by Tom Koelbel, the comedy takes aim at smartphone culture as an older couple (Jeff Martini and Vicki Ronan) observes two younger patrons (Dhan Kumar and Gabriella Chavez) seemingly incapable of looking up from their screens. What begins as a familiar generational clash leads to a clever and unexpected payoff.

Judith Eisenberg contributes two sharply contrasting works. The Paleolithic Claim to Fame, directed by Richard Hardt, pits an ambitious scientist (Talia Jones) against an academic ego of considerable proportions (David Sussman). In Nothing to Lose Your Head About, directed by Aaron Seever, Eisenberg trades contemporary satire for historical whimsy, imagining Katherine Howard, the fifth wife of King Henry VIII (Paige Duhon), confronting her fate with wit and determination.

Sally Jane Kerschen-Sheppard's Coming to Account, directed by Sue Back, turns a bureaucratic nightmare into an engaging comedy. When Mrs. Rose Sherman (Pamela Fields) is denied access to her "dead" husband's accounts for lack of a death certificate, a banker (Iris Huey) offers an imaginative solution that leaves everyone questioning who is playing whom.

Jay Weston Jones's Her*Him, directed by Ben Rojek, shifts the mood, exploring the hidden truths and emotional complexities that surface when a long-term relationship between Tracy Burns and Martini’s characters is forced into honest self-examination.

Comedy returns with Debra Rich Gettleman's Slings and Arrows, a spirited send-up of political correctness and the ever-shifting boundaries of acceptable language. A game ensemble (Rojek, Huey, Shannon Noelle Green, Ronan, and Sussman) portrays support-group participants whose efforts to say the right thing repeatedly go hilariously wrong. More laughs arrive with Nora Louise Syran's The Devil and the DMV, imagining that even the “Princess of Darkness” (Burns) is no match for the frustrations of government bureaucracy.

The festival concludes with Tim Ashby's The Black Mamba, directed by Lesley Tutnick Machbitz, a delightfully meta-theatrical piece in which actors (Alexandra Victoria and Javier Santiago) struggle to satisfy a playwright's (Susan Sindelar) intentions while questioning the logic of a story that places one of Africa's deadliest snakes in Phoenix.

As with any collection of short plays, some entries land more successfully than others. Yet the cumulative effect is less about any single play than the collective spirit they embody. NEW SUMMER SHORTS serves as a reminder that Theatre Artists Studio remains one of the Valley's most reliable incubators of imagination, providing artists with a space to experiment, entertain, and occasionally surprise.

That creative vitality is what has sustained this festival over the years and what continues to make it one of the most enjoyable traditions of the Valley's summer theatre season.

NEW SUMMER SHORTS runs through June 28th at:

Theatre Artists Studio -- https://www.thestudiophx.org/ -- 12406 N. Paradise Village Parkway E, Scottsdale, AZ -- 602-765-0120

Graphic credit to TAS

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