The 3rd Annual Long Beach Poppin’ Play Festival continued this past weekend with more of Alive Theatre’s unique plays.
The festival is a showcase of the company’s one-of-a-kind productions,
This year, the festival, held in Lafayette Ballroom in Long Beach, spans Aug. 19 to Sept. 11, presenting a separate lineup of plays three nights a week over those four weeks.
This year’s event consist of 11 new plays, all radically variant from one another and never before seen .
The type of shows being presented range from expressionist pieces, original musicals, commedia dell’arte pieces, and everything in between.
“Each play was really entertaining, and I found myself still thinking about them hours after I left,” said Jaime Agredano, a Cerritos College graduate, after attending a Friday night show on Aug. 27.
“I’ve never seen anything like the plays I just saw,” he added.
Januarry 2008 marked the creation of the company, brought on by CSULB graduates and artistic standouts, danielle Dauphinee and Jeremy Alumam along with a wealth of help from their peers.
The company has since amassed a profound number of aspiring artists from Long Beach’s art scene, forming a coalition of performers, writers, and directors.
These young artists independently produce these plays for the public’s appreciation, without gaining a penny of profit.
“The actors here are doing it for free. They’re just doing this because they love the art,” Alive Theatre’s artistic director, Scott Lennard, said.
Lennard heads the company’s current board of executive members and has been working with Alive Theatre since the company’s inception.
“I’ve been working for the company going on three years now, and this has been the best experience I’ve ever had,” said Lennard.
He notes that a lot of people striving to break into the industry today do it for the wrong reasons, “Sometimes you see people just trying to get into this business to become an actor or something, and [they] forget about the art.”
Everyone here cares about the art and the quality of what we put up, and that’s been really fun to watch.”
The Long Beach Poppin’ Play Festival progresses on Thursday, Sept. 2, at 8 p.m. in the Lafayette Ballroom with a fres new array of plays for audiences to enjoy.
