By Arnold Saltzman
Tucked away in a small shopping center on Colesville Road in Maryland is Silver Spring Stage. Now in its 59th year, this important Silver Spring, Maryland, cultural theater offers excellent productions to professional standards and opportunities for regional actors, directors, and writers to develop their craft, including presenting new works and works in progress.
We were fortunate to attend the second weekend of Silver Spring Stage’s 2026 One-Act Festival, offering four new works in one evening. Overall, we were impressed by the individual plays, direction, and staging, including lighting design, costumes, and movement. It is a fine achievement given the company’s limited budget. It makes the point that expensive production values are not what makes good theater.
Here we have a great example that should be shared on a larger scale: fine acting, writing, and direction, all thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining. Four new plays were presented, and what follows are brief summaries of these works.
Hope Trapped Inside by Robin Berl
Directed by Mari Fluegeman
Pandora: Kat Binney
Hope: Mani Yangilmau
This two-character play on the classical theme of Pandora’s Box has the characters flirting with the idea of opening the door to see what is on the outside. The two characters represent extreme emotions, with Hope ironically portrayed as desperate and cynical, while Pandora seductively and repeatedly approaches the door seeking what is on the other side. The play captures the anxiety of being in a locked room, until the two characters find each other and resolve their tension in a friendly dance and, perhaps unwittingly, find what is on the other side of the door.
Wormwood by Barbara Blatner
Directed by Jacob Haythorrn
Lillya: Melanie Gordon
Mykol: Eric Henry
Anton: Wesley Brown
Set in contemporary Ukraine, this three-character play packs a lot of emotional punch, with impressive performances. Lillya acts as a kind of emotional fulcrum, maintaining the balance in an impossible situation. She is able to speak calmly by cell phone to her husband Anton as he experiences the real dangers of the battlefield. Nevertheless, Lillya only reveals her anxiety and desperation in the last moments as she waits for and hopes for the return of Anton. Mykol, an uncle who has been like a father, speaks as a ghost from the battlefield, explaining that Lillya should not tell Anton that he, Mykol, is dead until Anton returns home. Convincing performances, with emotional impact in this fine play, with excellent acting and direction. (Among the many uses of wormwood are medicinal, fragrance, and bitter-tasting yet protective. The Ukrainian city Chornobyl, which had a nuclear disaster in 1986, is named from one of the Ukrainian words for wormwood.
Mama’s Boys by Raymond J. Ingram
Directed by Cainan Asher Grier
Ruben aka Rue: Lenox Kamara
M.C. aka Malik: Matthew J. Murray
Isaac aka Star Child: Drew Okoye
This comedy based on the recent death of Mama, who asserted ownership of the Pepsi, and that now the opened Pepsi bottle on the coffee table in front of the sofa, acts like A candle of remembrance. No one was ever allowed to touch her Pepsi bottle. In a home with three boys, three young men, it is totally believable that there would be nothing left in to eat or drink for anyone else. Therefore, the Pepsi became Mama’s last stand. Mama, as an unseen character, is so strong that her ghost rattles her sons once one of them drinks out of the Pepsi bottle. This one-act is filled with humor, and lots of adult language.
Anne Sexton Had a Band by Anne Valentino
Directed by Sarah Baczewski
Anne Sexton: Pilar Bruyere
Robert Lowell: Tom Wenz
Kayo: Robert Vainshtein
Female Ensemble: Sue Struve
Male Ensemble: Eric Henry
In this play set in a poetry seminar, Anne Sexton is irate that poetry as taught by Kayo is male-dominated in sentiment, while her own poems are denigrated and not understood. Even the presence of poet Robert Lowell and his poems does not comfort her or assuage her sense that poetry by women, their expressions and experience, are devalued as crass and inappropriate. Her therapist does nothing to address this and even exacerbates the situation. Finally, she appears with sunglasses and her punk rock band singing her own lyrics, affirming herself, her poetic expression, and genuine experience.
This was a very enjoyable evening of theater, and we look forward to other productions at the Silver Spring Stage.
Running Time: 90 minutes.
The 2026 One-Act Festival played August 14 to 23, 2026, with a different bill of one-acts each weekend, at Silver Spring Stage, 10145 Colesville Rd, Silver Spring, MD. For information about future shows in 2026/27, click here.
PRODUCTION TEAM
Producers: Tristan Poje & Angela Whittaker
Stage Manager (week 1): Asha Ashanti Turner
Stage Manager (week 2): Christopher Yeung
Lighting Designer: Jim Robertson
Sound Engineer: Caro Dubberly
Costume Designer: Dawn Chapman
Playbill Editor: Tom Flagg
PLAY READERS
Alex Aspiazu, Alan Gonzalez Bisnes, Thomas Campbell, Angela Cava, Juan-Carlos Cortes, Melanie Farmer, Mari Fleugeman, Morgan Fuller, Debra Hartmann, Mary Beth Hatem, Imaan Kahn, Marcia Kolko, Em Lancaster, Jillian McGuffey, Nnenna Onwukwe, Jalice Ortiz-Corral, Marjorie J Paoletti, Caitlin Partridge, Mark Regini, James Robertson, Seth Rose, Brenda S. Ryan, El Strickland, and Jung West
Arnold Saltzman — Brooklyn-born Rabbi/Cantor Emeritus in Washington, DC, and composer of symphonies and operas (and libretti) — is currently working on an opera commission, Dona Gracia Mendes, with author/librettist Naomi Ragen, directed by Jeffrey Silberschlag and Nick Olcott, to premiere June 2027 at American University’s Greenberg Theater. His reviews, commentary, and interviews have appeared in Opera Wire, The Washington Jewish Week, DC Theater Arts, the Journal of Synagogue Music, and The National Catholic Reporter. His symphonic compositions and operas have received multiple awards and prizes.
