Grace Exhibition Space on Broadway. — Photo courtesy of the venue

As script readings go, both edges of the street tend to be perilous: often, these events end up being overly author-friendly, or overly audience-friendly.  The playwright (or screenwriter, or novelist) wants a substantial portion of his work performed, justly at that, wants it to be taken seriously, and wants feedback afterwards.  The audience, in my experience, has come mostly to drink.

The middle of the road, then, seems most effective – a sociable atmosphere, informal, adequately-hydrated, but carefully avoiding raucous.  Keeping in mind our geography, this is harder than it might seem, and so it is in this context that the people of Centrifuge deserve praise and, if you are a writer, your attention.

Friday night was the latest in their monthly "Fresh Ground Pepper" reading series, this time at the Grace Space on Broadway – a cavernous white loft of a venue, one of those spacious suites that can act as a performance space, a gallery, and a make-shift club (or, in the case of Friday night, all three).  I am fortunate enough to have had a screenplay included in this month’s "Pepper," so I write this not to review the event, but to report on the experience.  Mine was one of four screenplay excerpts presented (along with works by Shal Ngo, Michael Lister, and Jaclyn Backhaus, who is also a co-founder of Centrifuge), in a format they’ve called "Reelplay."  It was a traditional reading in the sense of having chairs onstage, loose direction, and actors reading from scripts, but Centrifuge chose to experiment with the form a bit.  Working with Room404 Media, the performances were filmed by three video cameras, and broadcast live onto a large screen above the actors.  Each director set up his or her shots beforehand, and were able to cut amongst the cameras during the reading.

Not only did this serve the artistic intent of more wholly realizing the visions of scripts written for screen, but it opened the door to that Aristotelian element of drama that rarely finds its way into the room of a staged reading: spectacle.  There were aerial shots, close-ups, silhouettes behind the screen, an array of inventive techniques that were employed to evoke a sense of the respective scripts, and surely this gets to the point of a reading.  There was the expected loss of signal here and there, and some set-up time that could have been shortened, but surveying the night on the whole, it’s an impressive technical feat that came off not only smoothly but, in serving the purpose of spectacle, quite effectively.

And what a good and generous crowd showed up!  The chairs and couch filled up, the bar was busy most of the night, and after the readings they turned up the music and the stage became a dance floor.  This is a reading workshop as an event, not just a performance, and the response seems to indicate that in that sense Centrifuge has tapped into something quite fruitful.

A call to writers: if you’re looking to workshop a script, keep your eyes out for the next "Fresh Ground Pepper," as yet unannounced.  You’ll be in trustworthy hands.  And to prospective attendees: did I mention yet how good the beer was?