Interview: Robert Cooperman of STAGE RIGHT THEATRICS SHORT PLAY FESTIVAL at Abbey Theatre Of Dublin

As he gears up for the Stage Right Theatrics Short Play Festival, director Robert Cooperman doesn’t have to look far to see how far the 10th annual event has come.

He just has to look back at the original poster from the 2015 showcase that hangs in his office.

When Cooperman decided to have a theater festival to present viewpoints often absent from mainstream theater, the showcase, then dubbed The Conservative Theater Festival, lasted only one evening and drew a crowd of 80-90 curious theatergoers to the Columbus Performing Arts Center.

This year the festival will present four original works during its three-performance run at the Abbey Theater of Dublin (5600 Post Rd in Dublin),  7:30 p.m. Jan. 30-31 and 1:30 p.m. Feb. 1.

“(In 2015), we had 30 submissions of work … which was about 29 more than I thought I’d get,” Cooperman said with a laugh. “We had to do it in one night because that was all I could afford. One of the pieces of feedback I got was ‘You should do this every year.’”

Now the late January event has become a hallmark of what Stage Right Theatrics does.

For this year’s festival, Cooperman sifted through over 100 scripts to find the four short plays that will be presented at each performance.

This year’s production drew writers from California, Florida, Connecticut, and Tennessee. The four plays are:

• ALL PACKED (written by Curtis Miller and directed by Veronica Heer).  A couple prepares for the coming pandemic.
• (NOT THE) METAMORPHOSIS (written by Mary Poindexter McLaughlin and directed by A.J. Howell). The work draws its inspiration from two sources: Franz Kafka’s novel THE METAMORPHOSIS and a 1920s New York Times article about the first woman to undergo plastic surgery.
• THE ONE (Written by Stuart Brown and directed by Stacy Zuberi). The play envisions a world in which artificial intelligence has taken over the educational system. Parents Adrian and Maddie are concerned about the effect AI-generated lesson plans are having on their son.

• SAFE SPACE (written  by Matthew Greene and directed by Alyssa Ryan). A Human Resources director and a college professor battle in an educational frontier created to protect students from “unwanted thoughts and ideas.”

Cooperman often uses social media to enlist works from playwrights from around the country and occasionally will go back to writers who have submitted work in the past to see if they have written any new works for this year’s festival.

This year, Cooperman first narrowed the field of 100 submissions to 10. The festival has some strict criteria for the event. Plays must have minimal sets and props, no more than five characters, and must be able to be performed in 10-15 minutes. Scripts of 45 pages or more are cast aside.

Cooperman weeds out the ones that can’t be produced because of finances or the limitations of the Abbey Theater.

“Some scripts are an immediate yes; others you have to weigh the pros and cons,” Cooperman said. “I'm looking for the plays that are the most producible. If there is a work that I wholeheartedly agree with (the message), but the play stinks or I don't think it's producible, I'm not going to choose it.”

Ryan became involved with the festival when she was cast in two short plays for the 2020 festival and has since worked as an actor or a director at the event. She said directing a short play presents its own set of obstacles.

 “One of the challenges is making sure you are conveying the themes of the play in 10 minutes,” Ryan said. “Another challenge is giving the viewer time to connect with the characters in such a short time. Just like a full-length play, I want the audience to come away still thinking about the show.”

Tickets for the event are $20 per person (for in-person) or per device (for live stream performances). The festival offers $5 discounts for seniors (60+), students, first responders, and veterans. Additionally, theatergoers who bring food donations for the Dublin Food Pantry receive tickets at half price. Cooperman estimates his festival has collected “hundreds of pounds” of food for the pantry.

“The ironic thing is I'm complaining we don't make much money from it and yet I'm happy to let people in for practically nothing,” Cooperman said. “I care more about the arts and people's seeing theater than I do about putting money in our bank account.

“The best kind of response I get is when somebody comes to me at the end of any show I do, and says, ‘You know, I'm not on your side. But I really appreciate hearing this point of view because I never hear it anywhere else.’ That, to me, is the biggest compliment.”