By LAWSON TAITTE / The Dallas Morning News ltaitte@dallasnews.com
Politics in the Obama era on stage already: Talk about scripts that are hot off the press.
TeCo Theatrical Productions opened its seventh annual New Play Competition Thursday in its snazzy new quarters in Oak Cliff. Six short works by local playwrights constitute the bill. Audience members will vote for a winner over the course of the run.
Most of the contestants this year are established writers, and all their pieces have a political edge. The scripts aren't polished, the productions frequently rudimentary. Fortunately, an ad hoc repertory ensemble of talented actors helps the audience overlook the problems.
Not only does our new President's name come up frequently over the course of the evening, he's actually a character in one entry, Richard Carter's I Only Need a Few – a failed attempt at a Saturday Night Live skit in which Dallas women try to persuade the President and Hillary Clinton to lend them some Marines. It's not good, but it works better than it ought to because of Selma Pinkard's zesty portrait of the feisty older Dallasite.
Lynuslynell's The Assassination of Nathaniel Isaiah Gary Gamarcus Anderson also barely rises above the level of improv in depicting the slapstick funeral of a symbolic figure – but the actors'
shenanigans turn it into a real crowd pleaser. Barbara Macchia's The Special Schedule and Paula J. Sanders' The Valiant Never Taste of Death But Once are equally schematic and tendentious, but purposefully no fun at all. Sanders' play, though, benefits from two of the strongest performances of the evening, from JuNene K as a young woman in a doctor's office and Brandon Christle as a mysterious predator. 
The most effective writing is in Willie Holmes' Change and Philip Morales' Son of a Immigrant. Morales shapes his story around a confrontation between an activist son and his formerly illegal father. An experienced filmmaker, he uses video effectively here and as director gets lovely line readings from his actors – but they look clunky because he doesn't block them well.
Change can get overly talky, but Holmes' dialogue frequently proves entertaining anyway. Once again, the playwright himself directed and got forceful, charming performances from Akron Watson as a black man with scruples about dating white women and Heather Pratt as a co-worker who wants to overcome them.
An oddity running through many of these plays is that characters break into unaccompanied song at odd moments and without provocation. Maybe next year TeCo should hire a pianist and make it a musical theater contest.
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Through Feb. 28 at Bishop Arts Theater Center. Runs 115 mins. $15 in advance, $20 at door. 214-948-0716, www.tecotheater.org.
Through Feb. 28 at Bishop Arts Theater Center. Runs 115 mins. $15 in advance, $20 at door. 214-948-0716, www.tecotheater.org.
