The Dreamer of Oyster Bay

media release: Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts looks forward to the fourth year of the Alley Stage Reading Series. This season’s playwrights include Cass Erickson of Saint Paul, and Fran Zell and DC Cathro, both of Chicago, with talented actors from Mineral Point to Madison. 

Under the artistic direction of playwright Marcia Jablonski, the Alley Stage Reading Series highlights the voices of Midwestern writers, focusing on the creative ecosystem of the Driftless Area, and provides a unique opportunity for playwrights to share their works-in-progress and receive valuable feedback with a staged reading and talkback session at the intimate outdoor theater Alley Stage. Besides being fun to watch, a staged reading is an important way a playwright can get important feedback from an audience and determine what their next steps are with the script. This helps Shake Rag Alley fulfill a key part of its mission: cultivating the creativity that thrives in our rural community. More information at https://shakeragalley.org/alley-stage/

June 8: The Dreamer of Oyster Bay by Cass Erickson

The Dreamer of Oyster Bay, a full-length tragicomedy, tells the story of Winston Wentworth and his wife Winnie, who are trapped in an upper class lifestyle, but are faced with diminishing possibilities when an inheritance falls through. After a series of betrayals and Winston’s failed attempt to invent something, he reaches a breaking point and undergoes an existential crisis. He rejects his upper class values and family tradition to pursue a lifelong dream of sailing around the world, leaving his wife Winnie and a boarder, Pearse, to fend for themselves.

Cass Erickson is a poet and an award-winning playwright and short story writer currently residing in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her ten-minute play Alpha Dogs was produced off-Broadway by Love Creek Productions in New York and had a staged reading at Chicago Dramatists. The play was invited for a staged reading at the Last Frontier (Edward Albee) Theatre Conference in Valdez, Alaska. Insomnia, a ten-minute play, was produced by Flying Leap Players in Grand Marais, Minnesota. Every Shiny Object had a reading in the Ten-Minute Play Festival at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Zigs and Zags, a one-minute memoir written for radio, was a finalist in the Brevity: The Podcast of a Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction competition.  Forks of Ivy, a full length play, was a finalist in Trustus Theatre’s Playwrights’ Festival in Columbia, SC. Sponsored by Lex-Ham Community Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Cass directed a staged reading of Forks of Ivy at the Lowry Lab Theater. “Ennui,” a monologue, was published in Mother/Daughter Monologues: Volume 4: Urgent Maturity by International Centre for Women Playwrights (ICWP) Press. Her short story, “Diamonds in the Sky,” was a finalist in the E.L. Doctorow short story contest sponsored by the Writers Workshop in Asheville, North Carolina. Her poetry has been published in The Poet Magazine, Poetry for Mental Health (Norwich, England), and Unwashed: A Bay View Art & Literary Magazine (Milwaukee, WI). Cass is a member of the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the International Centre for Women Playwrights.