New Wichita theater group debuts its first show (+video)

Wichita playwright Lisa Sillaway has won writing competitions from Washington D.C., to London, where her works have been publicly produced. But she got so frustrated with the paucity of showcases close to home that she started her own.

“Wichita Community Theatre works with new playwrights and there is one contest associated with the University of Kansas, but that’s about it,” says Sillaway, a former community college English instructor who is working as a marketing manager while finishing her doctorate to return to teaching playwrighting.

“Wichita State has an annual new playwrights contest, but it is only for college students,” Sillaway says. “I worked with it back when it started in the 1990s, and it was such a wonderful experience for me as a playwright that I wanted to open ours up to everyone.”

Called Guinea Pig Lab Theatre, the all-volunteer group’s mission is to showcase Kansas playwrights by holding competitions to annually select one new monologue and one new full-length play for public readings and, perhaps later, full-blown productions.

Since November 2014, the group has conducted readings of original pieces on Final Fridays at Delano Barbeque Co. and at a couple of churches.

“When I started writing plays, I discovered you had to get ‘street cred’ before anybody would produce your work. But to do that, you had to go away to New York or London. We wanted to know why we couldn’t do that here,” Sillaway says.

The group’s first production will be the world premiere of Sillaway’s own “F*sh,” a black comedy about a dysfunctional family from Mulvane as three fortysomething children come home to help their parents celebrate their 50th anniversary and find themselves fighting old battles.

The title, Sillaway says, is a reference to an old joke: “What do you call a fish with no eyes (I’s)?” and it is a metaphor for the various family members not being able to see each other as they really are.

The parents, Burt and Wanda, are played by Paul Savage and Crystal Meek. Their oldest child, Victoria, a chic, successful professional who can seemingly do no wrong in Daddy’s eyes, is Larissa Briley. Middle child Beau, whose career choice as a high school drama teacher provokes Daddy’s ridicule as unmanly, is Mark Heidrick. And the youngest, Diana, a quiet, reserved academic through whose eyes most of the play is seen, is Jessica Heidrick.

Others in the cast are Dustin Little as Tom, Diane’s old high school boyfriend who comes back into her life, and Charlene Grinsell as Grammy, the eccentric, unfiltered 95-year-old matriarch of the family.

Darian Leatherman, who directed the regional premiere of “Heathers: The Musical” last year and “Spring Awakening” before that at Crown Uptown, is director for this premiere.

Sillaway says she and her half-dozen board members wanted to use one of their own plays to launch Guinea Pig Lab Theatre as a test to prime the pump, so to speak.

“If we fail, we want it to be an internal failure. We didn’t want to ruin the experience for a new playwright,” says Sillaway, whose “The Peacock’s War” was staged after winning the 2014 National Civil War Monologue Competition in Washington D.C., and whose drama “Blank,” debuted in a showcase at The Hen and Chickens Theatre in London through the BBC Film Club.

“What has surprised me is the range of playwrights we’ve attracted, from students to two professors to published writers who just want to hone their skills,” Sillaway says. The winner to be the next staged production will be announced during the run of “F*sh.”

For the moment, Guinea Pig Lab Theatre is a “money-neutral” zone.

“We wanted to keep it small at first. We are totally volunteer. The ticket fees go totally to Crown Uptown to pay for their facilities. We want to see how far we need to go to remain true to focusing on playwrights. That is our mission, our bread and butter,” Sillaway says.

While some elements of “F*sh” are drawn from her own experiences, Sillaway says that the dysfunctional family in it isn’t autobiographical.

“Unfortunately, or fortunately, I was an only child. I didn’t grow up in a family like I wrote about. I used some inspiration from real life, like my dad’s fishing stories. But my dad is a nice guy while the father-character is not,” she says.

Sillaway is both producer and playwright for this show. She has been observing rehearsals quietly from a distance and not interfering with the director and actors. That’s on purpose, she says.

“As a playwright, when you finally hear people speaking the words you wrote, it’s almost surreal. Sometimes, what they say is exactly what I heard in my head and it validates me. Sometimes, it comes out completely different from what I expected. But when it doesn’t match up, I feel that I learn more as a writer about how others see things.”

This story was originally published January 28, 2016 at 1:35 PM with the headline "New Wichita theater group debuts its first show (+video)."