Carrboro ArtsCenter presents Halloween shorts

Since August, phantom limbs and haunting ghosts have been brewing in the creative cauldrons of six playwrights.

The plays will be performed Sunday in “Halloween Shorts,” a Playwrights Roundtable production at the Carrboro ArtsCenter.

Playwrights Roundtable, a resident theater company at the ArtsCenter, is a creative and collaborative group of local playwrights looking for feedback on their pieces.

The production will feature six short plays and one short film. The pieces portray different facets of Halloween and what the holiday means to the writers.

Mark Cornell, author of the play “Ye Olde Spectre Shoppe” and the film “A House in Los Osos,” said he thinks the evening will have something for everyone.

Cornell’s play is a dark comedy, and his film is a dramatic ghost story — a contrast indicative of the show’s variety of works.

“It runs from spooky to philosophical to humorous,” playwright Debra Kaufman said.

She said her play, “Blue Moon,” is a metaphysical story about two souls who meet in a blue moon’s light.

Throughout the year, the playwrights develop their ideas and scripts individually. They then bring their plays to monthly meetings for feedback from the group.

“I’m also a poet, so a lot of my plays come to me (when) a line, a piece of dialogue or an image floats into my mind, and I see what it’s about,” Kaufman said.

Jeri Lynn Schulke, artistic director at the ArtsCenter, said the center strives “to provide opportunities for theater artists in our community to have a home and to be able to create and explore and to share their work.”

All of the playwrights have directed and chosen the actors for their plays, which Schulke said makes for an all-encompassing creative process.

Estes Tarver, an actor in both of Cornell’s “Halloween Shorts” productions, has acted for Cornell and Playwrights Roundtable before.

“The variety is fun as an actor,” he said.

Schulke said Playwrights Roundtable provides its members with a network of supportive writers, all striving to create new and unique work.

“It’s having intelligent, close readers who know about playwriting looking at your piece with an eye toward making it a better piece,” Kaufman said.

She said that a play is not finished until an audience sees it performed.

“To see the thing you started with as an image or an idea go all the way through to fruition — which means involving other people — it’s really very exciting.”

Contact the Arts Editor at arts@dailytarheel.com.