Grafitti Mix One Acts travel to the unknown

If you’re a retired lawyer with a voracious appetite for literature, what do you do in your autumn years? If you’re David Haas, you pick up the pen and start writing plays.

And by all accounts the St. Albert playwright has written seven plays, the latest to be unleashed at the Second Annual Graffiti Mix One-Act Festival on July 12 and 13 at Concordia College.

His Pacific Time is a sci-fi time-travel romance that takes place simultaneously in 1964 Victoria and 2014 Edmonton. Similar in content to a surreal tale from the Twilight Zone, it opens at an unusual café that is a time portal between two different eras.

One day Grant, a young 20-something walks by The Time Machine CafĂ©. He spots a sign that advertises “Sticky buns to die for” and he enters intent on buying one.

In the old-fashioned café, he meets Polly, a young woman destined to write the great Canadian novel. Their friendship develops into a relationship that unfortunately ends in a dark twist.

Haas wrote the 30-minute one-act in response to a Graffiti Mix Arts call for one-act submissions this past March.

“I’d written a few stories in the science fiction genre but never did anything with it. I’ve always enjoyed time travel stories. They were very popular in the ’50s and ’60s and they seem to be coming back,” said Haas.

After working on the basic plot for a month and some big rewrites to polish it up, Pacific Time gelled while Haas collectively worked with director Rachel Whipple.

“It may sound implausible, but it has been built convincingly and it follows the rules of the universe.”

There are a total of four one-act plays that will be shown back-to-back. Three were chosen prior to the call for submissions. Eleven people submitted scripts, however only Haas’ play was selected for performance.

“We liked his dialogue and the premise of the travel cafĂ© was intriguing. It captured the youth arts culture, and I felt that out of all the submissions, he had the most natural dialogue. In the end he was an obvious choice,” said Graffiti Mix Arts Collective’s producer Zach Supina.

As the moniker Graffiti Mix One-Act Festival suggests, the two-day extravaganza is an eclectic grab bag of genres and themes.

Supina has written Sprites, a frothy comedy about a fairy obsessed with video games.

“She hacks into her favourite game and turns the male character into a sentient being. Once he becomes sentient, he thinks reality is like a video game. But it isn’t and he doesn’t want to accept the reality and emotional struggle.”

St. Albert actress Alex Dawkins, a proponent of the Citadel’s Foote Theatre School, plays Lady Chaos, Queen of the Fairies.

Emerging playwright Nicole Companyitsev’s Narrator Syndrome is a science fiction meta-narrative whereby a young man wonders if his girlfriend is a cultist while an invisible person narrating his life pursues him.

Instead Brittini Ann Carey’s Debt is a realistic drama that explores societal frustrations and hidden tragedies after the attempted suicide of a friend pushes two people to confront their own problems.

The Graffiti Mix One Act Festival was started after several graduating theatre students sought to give themselves and other students another way to practice their skills over the summer.

At last year’s inaugural festival, 200 people attended the one-day event. This year organizers hope momentum picks up and attendance doubles.

“It’s been really nice to have David on board. He brings a multi-generational aspect to it.”

Supina encourages theatergoers to check out the program.

“There’s a variety, so if one play doesn’t speak to you, there’s something totally different following it. There’s a good variety of original work and these are plays you wouldn’t see anywhere else.”