The BPP is in its 36th season this year, and they continue to be the only professional theater in the state of Indiana that focuses solely on new plays, Sheehan said.
Every show is selected by Chad Rabinovitz, the BPP artistic director. BPP runs two contests each year: one for the best new comedy and one for the best new drama.
“We receive about a thousand submissions total, and our literary team reads every single one of them.” Sheehan said.
The BPP attracts many fans in the Bloomington community with their BPP subscriber option, through which fans can buy a set of tickets for the entire season in advance at a discounted price.
Jocelyn Bowie is in her third year as a subscriber, and she said what she enjoys the most about the BPP is their focus on new plays.
“Seeing a play produced for the first time ever, anywhere, is an unusual privilege.” Bowie said.
She said many of the plays and stories we know today were first written hundreds and even thousands of years ago.
“I like to imagine some of the new plays you see at BPP being produced three hundred years from now,” she said. “Not all will remain relevant, and some will be lost to history, but some will travel down through the ages, and that is kind of exciting.”
Bowie said she is particularly interested in the first show of the season, “The Bull, the Moon and the Coronet of the Stars,” because of her love of Greek Mythology.
In past seasons, one of her favorite shows was “Ugly Lies the Bone,” which she said was produced and performed in a beautiful manner.
“Today the play has gone on to be produced in New York City, opening this month, with Mamie Gummer in the lead,” she said.
Sheehan said there are all sorts of efforts that go into putting on a BPP show.
“All in all, it’s an incredible amount of work,” he said. “Really fun work.”
This season will offer shows such as an electronic musical called “Toast” and one-man show “Everything in its place: The Life and Slimes of Marc Summers” starring Marc Summers, the host of Nickolodeon’s “Double Dare” and Food Network’s “Unwrapped,” Sheehan said.
“Needless to say we are very excited about this season,” Sheehan said.
Student tickets are $10 and can be purchased from the Buskirk-Chumley Theater box office.
