On Saturday, Jan. 13, two hours after the Ravens were booted out of the playoffs, the party is just beginning. On the third story of Load of Fun Studios on North Avenue, a diverse crowd of about 100 or so playwrights, artists, and curiosity seekers mill around with cold beer in animated conversation. And, believe it or not, many of them are here to talk about theater.
Run of the Mill Theater's Variations on Justice party is one of Baltimore's nascent traditions. Three years ago, Run of the Mill founder Jim Knipple decided that, for local playwrights, getting them out of their garrets and giving them a few beers might start creative energies flowing.
So the theater company provides the free beer, the space, and the basic theme; the amorphous crowd offers the creative input. In 2005, Variations on Desire--10 plays taking different tacks on desire, sexual and otherwise--came out of these efforts. In 2006, the Variations theme was fear, which also gave birth to 10 one-acts.
This year, the theme is justice. After a brief acknowledgment of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s upcoming birthday and his own thoughts on justice, current Run of the Mill director Jenny Tibbels offers the basic guidelines. Partygoers schmooze and scribble away. They write their impressions of what the word "justice" means on a wall provided. They fill out a brief form handed out by Tibbels. They talk, they connect, and they think. Then they submit.
Tibbels makes it clear that this isn't a call for playwrights to dust off old scripts. "We really want to keep it local," she tells the assembled crowd. "We want people to use the source material they're provided for inspiration. We want to keep it relevant to what we're doing here."
After collecting artists' responses to the theme, Tibbels says that Run of the Mill will post guidelines and source materials at RunoftheMillTheater.org. The deadline is March 1, and the theater company accepts submissions at variationsproject@gmail.com. After choosing 15 short plays for staged readings, the company will choose 10 for production. About four months from now, the process ends with the Variations production at Theatre Project.
Tibbels says she hopes this approach expands and motivates the current pool of local playwrights. "It's really encouraging to see this," she says of the turnout. "I haven't seen a room in Baltimore with this diverse a range of people in a long time. It's very exciting."
Meanwhile, partygoers are encouraged to scribble their impressions and associations on a 20-foot strip of drawing paper pasted to one of the gallery's walls. The anonymous notes pile up over the course of the evening. "Justice is the result of the human attempt to force an incoherent set of nonobjective facts into a coherent truth--an impossibility!" one reads.
Kenneth Norris, a retired court reporter for the Baltimore City Circuit Court, says that he'd like to contribute something. Pondering the theme, he wonders aloud whether justice is really something people fight for anymore. "I'm from the '60s," he says. "So I'm comparing it to the present. Justice had a lot to do with social problems then. Now, I wonder if younger people can really carry on the torch of the civil-rights movement. In the '60s, it was `We Shall Overcome.' Now, it's `What You Looking At?'"
As a court reporter, Norris wonders if the legal system is creating divisions among African-Americans. "Now when people are suing about discrimination, they're usually reverse discrimination lawsuits against black people," he says. "I don't know why we've become so negative in our actions against one another."
Christopher-Rashee Stevenson, a senior at Baltimore School for the Arts, drops by the Variations party immediately after a reading of his own play, "Way of Rain," at Red Emma's. The 17-year-old's latest play explores the fates of a couple during the French Resistance.
Meanwhile, the phrases continue to cover the sheets of paper pinned to the wall: "A fair day's pay for a fair day's work." "Justice or revenge?" "Justice means justice. Wattaya think?" "Impartiality." "Something exclusive . . . A feeling of gratification and satisfaction!" "Richard Justice. Sportswriter for the Houston Chronicle." "Justice is exPENsive."
Dwight Cook, production manager at Morgan State University's Murphy Fine Arts Center, also mulls over ideas for a play. The word "justice," he says, has an economic dimension. "What's funny is no one's been talking about the poor," he says. "People don't have a lot to say about them now."
Louise Harmony says she isn't a playwright but came to the party after finding it on a web site. For her, the theme "justice" is frustrating to deal with. "I'm 59," she says. "I went to one or two anti-Iraq war marches. It's a whole new ball game now. We're acting like the people [who] we say are our enemies."
Playwright Gavin Heck participated in the Variations on Desire festival two years ago. He currently works with kinetic sculpture, but he's also ruminating on this year's theme. "There's no static definition for justice," he says. "Now our president is trying to assign the terminology. With the word `justice,' there's got to be an ebb and flow. It's just my experience that injustice wears away your persona."
Rob Hatch, an artist who works with Baltimore's community dance-theater group Fluid Movement, has a more succinct analysis: "Justice is a balance of mercy and severity."
Samifu Mikinanchi disagrees. "It's not even real, it doesn't even exist," he says, sitting at a table nursing a drink. But he sees a glimmer of hope in what Run of the Mill is doing--particularly with its recent South African Play Festival. "I was surprised to see that kind of theater performed in Baltimore," he says. "I didn't even know it existed."
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