As our coveted Santa Cruz summer winds into its third month, we have a lot to be grateful for: late sunsets, movies at the beach—and a weekend of original one-acts performed in the heart of the redwoods.
Mountain Community Theater’s annual New Works Weekend returns to Park Hall Aug. 15–17, offering three nights of script-in-hand staged readings spotlighting local playwrights.
Produced by Ian Dyer, this year’s lineup features new one-act plays by Gail Borkowski, Steve Capasso and Harvey Landa, each sharing deeply personal work coming from their hearts, souls and experiences as Santa Cruz locals.
At the heart of the weekend is Borkowski’s Rain Walk—A Short Play, helmed by Maia Yates, who makes her directorial debut with the project.
“I’ve been part of theater in this valley since I was five—that’s 35 years,” Yates says. “To be directing a piece written by someone from this same community means everything. It’s personal. And it makes the work even more meaningful because it’s rooted in where we live.”
Borkowski premiered Rain Walk as a table read last summer with 36 North, a Santa Cruz playwrights’ collective. The script has since evolved and moved into the hands of a director and a cast, to explore new angles beyond the page.
“Submitting to New Works meant letting go, trusting that someone else would direct the piece with care,” Borkowski says. “That moment of surrender wasn’t easy, but it was freeing. And then meeting Maia made me feel like, yes, this is going to be in good hands.”
Rain Walk doesn’t promise a tidy resolution, but it does offer truth: Even if we get through this, there will always be something else as life moves on, like the wind and rain.
“Rain Walk is about a mother and son navigating their way toward acceptance—of each other, and of who they are right now. They’ve already been through a lot, and now they’re facing something new together. It’s not a ‘happily ever after’ kind of story. It’s messier, more human, and that’s what makes it real,” Borkowski says.
“When the audience walks out of the theater and imagines what happens next, that’s when I know the story did its job. That’s what creativity is. Not answering everything, but opening the door to possibility,” Borkowski adds.
Rain Walk is only one of the three spotlighted works: also included are Neighbors, written by Steve Capasso and directed by Scottie Tsubota, exploring the moral complexities of a crime gone wrong; and Where Imagined Things Belong, written by Harvey Landa and directed by Sue Ann Guildermann, examining the choices that made us who we are.
Each performance will be followed by a talkback session, allowing audiences to discuss the work directly with the writers, directors and cast.
New Works Weekend runs at 8pm on Fri.–Sat., Aug. 15–16, and at 2pm on Sun., Aug. 17, at Park Hall, 9400 Mill St., Ben Lomond. Tickets: $10. mctshows.org
