Key Changes

Key Changes

Blue Theater, through April 12

Running time: 2 hrs

Austin Script Works has long promoted the cause of playwrights, especially younger and more struggling playwrights, and this is one of the ways they do that: by staging a showcase of short works created by their members. That might be enough for those concerned – playwrights and audience – but, for the annual Out of Ink Festival, ASW goes one better – in the name of inspiration, in the name of stretching authorial muscles, in the name of, basically, fun.

In the fall of each year, a bunch – or maybe one would say a Pinter of playwrights, perhaps a Beckettful? – of local scripters are invited to a private retreat, what they call a Weekend Fling. At this Fling, they're given three ingredients that must be included in a narrative; this year, it's 1) a character who's trying to hide a secret; 2) a piece of music, some of which may have been forgotten; and 3) a radical physical transformation (of person, place, or thing). Then those playwrights are given 48 hours for the crafting of a 10-minute script, after which a panel of judges chooses the best eight plays for staging in the spring. It's a mixed bag, always, but usually one that makes us think that the ASW knows (at the very least) what the hell it's doing.

This year's show – Key Changes, the 10th anniversary Out of Ink Festival – is no different, offering a diversity of tales and tones for your interest and delight. Tom Sime offers a domestic scene of father/daughter interaction that would make a fine Afterschool Special; Chronicle contributor Katherine Catmull mines Greek mythology to build an oblique commentary on identity; Sarah Saltwick provides a personal monologue of mermaidenhood; Marshall Ryan Maresca turns back the clock to reveal an old woman's sexual transgression; Meg Haley gives us a glimpse of grieving and its aftermath; and Chronicle contributor Elizabeth Cobbe seems to have had the late Andy Kaufman in mind while penning her farce about an extraterrestrial's run-in with the Transportation Security Administration.

The highest points of the evening, though, were Aimee Gonzalez's funny and oddly touching "Crushed," which seemed as if the surrealist poet Russell Edson had been hired to write a sketch for Hee Haw, and Vicki Caroline Cheatwood's "For the Fourteenth Time," in which the Christian Second Coming story turns out to be not only real but – with huge consequences – repetitive. Cheatwood's wise and snarky playlet, especially, deserves expansion into a full-length production.

The performers and directors for these pieces help, of course, to translate the playwrights' work toward vibrant, staged life, and all do a job sufficient (and often better) to allow the goodness of the words to shine through. We reckon it's a light worth sitting in the darkness for.