What: OC-centric, Orange County’s New Play Festival
When: August 18-28, 2016
Where: Moulton Hall Studio Theatre
Chapman University
300 E. Palm Ave., Orange, CA 92866

Tickets: $20, $12 for Chapman University students, staff & faculty
Reservations & Information: (714) 902-5716
Website: www.oc-centric.com

OC-centric – recently named Orange County’s “Best New Play Festival” by the OC WEEKLY – returns August 18-28 with fully staged productions of four new works. Now in its sixth year, OC-centric is the only OC new play festival that fully produces new work specifically from playwrights residing in or hailing from Orange County.

From light comedy to intense drama, this year’s edition of OC-centric presents the “cream of the crop” from among several dozen scripts submitted for consideration. Actors and directors from across Southern California collaborate with Chapman University theatre students to bring these works to life in this destination new play event.

Full-Length Plays

Love All by Lojo Simon – After 14 years of marriage, a husband and father reveals a secret: he is not who his family thinks he is. In a story of myth and myth-making, inquiry and deception intertwine with memory and forgetting as a family tries to stitch itself together after the life they thought they knew comes unraveled. Directed by Travis Donnelly.

Performances: August 18-19 @ 8pm, August 27 @ 2pm, August 28 @ 7pm

Night Moths on the Wing by Kimberly Kalaja – Civilization has broken down; everything is scarce, thousands have disappeared, and rebel factions fight the national army. When rebel General Victor Maylor is arrested and secretly delivered to an unofficial prison camp, he expects to be executed…but chief interrogator Michael Shaw does not want him dead–not yet. Shaw wants information and will do whatever he needs to get it. But while the men relentlessly engage in a battle of wills, are they blind to a more elusive enemy that could destroy them both? Directed by Michael Serna.

Performances: August 20 @ 8pm, August 21 @ 2pm, August 25-26 @ 8pm

One-Act Plays

Kill a Better Mousetrap by Scott K. Ratner – Miles Merbinoe has a reason – in his own mind, at least – to shut down the world’s longest-running play, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. And, as Christie was the “Queen of Crime,” what more fitting way to do this than… murder? Merbinoe’s frustrations, wild theories, and ruminations on the contrariness of success set the stage for hilarity in this comedy. Directed by Tamiko Washington.

Left Behind, Waiting by Joshua David Vega – A socially awkward little boy named Davey finds a pair of friends in Melina and John, the young newlyweds next door. One day, they aren’t there anymore. Fifteen years later, twenty-something David meets Melina again; she now knows the feeling of being abandoned herself. What they don’t know is what will happen between them next. Directed by Clayton Guiltner.

Performance times for both one-acts: August 20 @ 2pm, August 21 @ 7pm, August 27 @ 8pm, August 28 @ 2pm

Ticket reservations will be accepted beginning July 15.

More information is on the way. Visit oc-centric.com in the coming weeks for playwright interviews, director and cast biographies and more.

OC-centric is produced by Actors Circle Ensemble and Eric Eberwein and sponsored by the Department of Theatre and Dance at Chapman University.