The Somerville Theatre Festival’s first outing brought thought provoking theatre to local audiences this past weekend at the Art at the Armory in Somerville.

By Erica Scharn

In 10 minutes or less, each play at the Somerville Theatre Festival delved into issues ranging from gender roles and sexuality to race and relationships to the thoughts of dogs. The plays raised questions like: Who should take out the trash – the man or the woman? Is God a woman? What would a restaurant serving human meat look like?

Performing Fusion Theatre held its first annual Somerville Theatre Festival at The Somerville Center for Arts at the Armory Friday, Jan. 24, and Saturday, Jan. 25. The festival featured 10 short plays under the broad umbrella theme of equality and multicultural entertainment, including Curry College’s M.O.T.I.O.N. Steppers. Performing Fusion Theatre, which aims to promote multiculturalism and encourage intercultural dialogue, chose the 10 plays out of more than 50 submissions to its contest in the fall.

“We had a great turnout, especially being a new theatre company on the scene,” said Ayshia Stephenson, executive director of Performing Fusion Theatre. Stephenson co-founded Performing Fusion Theatre with Brian Moore-Ward in the summer of 2013. Moore-Ward said that they had to add extra rows of chairs Saturday as the number of attendees approached 160.

Live music played as the audience members settled into their seats or mingled and bought food and drinks at the bar. The Festival kicked off with a screening of the trailer for The Stoop, an independent full-length feature film starring Moore-Ward and Stephenson. Due out in late summer or early fall 2014, Ion Spire Pictures’ film centers on an interracial relationship.

Jason York, producer of Ion Spire Pictures, was in the audience both nights of the show and noticed that the audience reaction differed. “Tonight, the audience was a little more in touch with the humor,” York said. “Last night, they were more taken aback by Caliban’s [a play about human meat] – some of the audience was shocked.”

Stephenson and Moore-Ward said that they think their introduction to the festival for Saturday’s show – which included a warning that some of the material would push boundaries – helped prepare the audience. The plays often dealt with serious issues, including bullying and suicide, the death of a loved one, and uncertainty about religion and what comes after death. But they also used slapstick and jokes to portray some of the serious issues.

“It’s like a slice of life,” said Joe Lemieux, who was in the audience Saturday night and produced The Stoop. “It shows how life today is…it’s like a roller coaster ride.”

Although the plays highlighted the particular challenges faced by people of different races, ethnicities, cultures and sexualities, Stephenson said that audience members she spoke to found the plays very easy to relate to. One attendee told her that the “plays had something for everyone,” said Stephenson. “[They could] draw bridges between people.” Stephenson and Moore-Ward said that they were told by several audience members that they had never seen anything like the festival before, and both the audience members and the actors asked them about what will come next.

Performing Fusion Theatre’s next show will be held in the summer of 2014, and the second annual Somerville Theatre Festival (which will have a different theme but the same process) is planned for the winter of 2015. Stephenson is currently writing a play titled Boston Bedroom, which is about a Bostonian’s interracial love interest and research that turns dangerous. And Stephenson and Moore-Ward are in discussions with Barbara Lewis from the William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black History and Culture at University of Massachusetts Boston, who is working on a piece about Trayvon Martin.

Stephenson said that they “tried to create an atmosphere of collaboration…and family,” and that the actors became very close. Consistent with this, some of the festival’s actors are carrying the themes of inclusion and community to their other projects: audience members only pay what they can afford at the upcoming performance of Artists’ Theater of Boston.

To stay updated on what comes next, see Performing Fusion Theatre’s Facebook page or email performingfusiontheatre@gmail.com.

– Photos by  Erica Scharn