Seven wonders: Fusion brings 'Uninvited Guests' contest winners to the stage

A play about sticky notes, Scrabble and a Bach composition has won top honors in the Fusion Theatre Company’s short works festival.

Durango playwright Joyce Fontana submitted one of more than 580 scripts about the theme of “uninvited guests.” She has won the Bradford Gromelski Jury Award with “Sticky Notes.” The top seven jury-scoring scripts will receive full productions with seven directors and a professional ensemble from Thursday, June 6, through Sunday, June 9. The second seven winners will receive staged readings on Monday, June 10.

With “Sticky Notes,” “This ‘uninvited guest’ comes from somewhere deep in the past,” said Dennis Gromelski, Fusion executive director. “It’s very moving.”

“It’s interesting the ways people interpreted that,” he added.

Three of the top seven writers hail from international locations: Singapore, Canada and New Zealand. Most of the winners are new to “The Seven.”

“Every year, the quality of the scripts improves, as do the cast, directors and production team,” Gromelski said. “It has to be based on the theme; it’s not like ‘clean out your closet.’ It seems like we’re attracting new talent. We really try to celebrate the playwrights.”

The winner are:

“The Unexpected Delight of Snowbirds” by Lisa Dellagiarino Feriend, The Woodlands, Singapore. Claire and Brian were supposed to go away for Christmas. They’re not. Brian tries to make it up to Claire with a gift he thinks she’ll appreciate. She doesn’t.

“A Flicker” by Guy Newsham, Ontario, Canada. Where there’s light, there’s hope, even if it’s intermittent. Two strangers battle over a flickering streetlight. One is throwing stones at it because it’s disrupting their sleep. For the other, the light represents their recently-deceased spouse.

“Speed Bumps” by Anne Valentino, Rockville, Maryland. During her early morning commute to work, she never expected to run into a speed bump vigilante on a mission. And he never expected that his self-initiated road project would garner quite this much attention.

“The Name of Action” by Rex McGregor, Auckland, New Zealand. An itinerant couple encourage the manager of a trailer park to live his dream of playing “Hamlet.”

“Fair Play” by Cherielyn Ferguson, Piedmont, California. Romeo, Juliet and Will Shakespeare are shot through time and space — trading the familiar Globe Theatre for a modern marriage bureau. Do all the old rules apply, or is this a whole new world?

“Speed Dating” by Curt Strickland, Stoughton, Massachusetts. A widow and a widower — each deeply affected by loss — reluctantly attend a dating meet-up in a hotel conference room, their back-and-forth banter leads somewhere different than they expected.

And the bonus eighth play:

“The Visitation” by Jen Silverman. Dana has been alone in her home for a bit too long. Either she is losing it or she is having an increasingly intimate relationship with a ghost.