I want to thank all the people involved with The Actors Theater of Orcas Island’s recent festival of locally written plays. This year we presented seven short plays. Written by local playwrights, acted by local actors and directed by local directors. True hometown entertainment.  This year 15 plays were submitted.  Each play was reviewed by a committee of five people and the submitted plays were narrowed down to the seven you saw.  Besides the review committee, it took 23 actors, nine playwrights, five directors, seven stage crew, and two in the tech booth for a total of 50 people. Keeping a group this large moving in the same direction takes a lot of work and Ron Herman deserves special thanks for all of his coordinating work.

Most of all we want to thank our great audiences. This year you set records for opening night attendance (77) and average attendance per performance (83).  Many said it was the best playfest ever. Others said the playfest just keeps getting better.

We’ll be back next year with our seventh annual festival. See you then. In the meantime, we have lots of theater coming up. Next up is the wonderful play “Southern Comforts” by Kathleen Clark, starring Suzanne Gropper and Ron Herman.  Performances are June 3 through 12.

Doug Bechtel

Orcas Island