Deseret News reporter and Salt Lake City playwright Elaine Jarvik has been interested in self-storage for years, since she covered a story on self-storage for the News in 1997. Now she has written a short play titled "Self Storage." A staged reading of Jarvik's play, which is 30 minutes long, is being presented at 7 p.m. on March 10, at the Plan-B Theatre, in the Meat & Potato Theater Lab of the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center's Studio Theatre, at 138 W. 300 South in Salt Lake City, Utah. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the reading will be directed by Alexandra Harbold. Seating at the Plan-B Theatre is limited, but free; seats can be reserved in advance.
Jarvik and Harbold are both seasoned theatre professionals. Jarvik helped to found Salt Lake City's Senior Theatre Project, and her ten-minute play, "Dead Right," was performed two years ago at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky. Pygmalian Theatre will produce a full length play by Jarvik this coming September. Harbold is a member of the Pinnacle Acting Company in Midvale, Utah, and also does marketing for the Salt Lake Acting Company. She has directed several plays, including Romeo and Juliet, The Rabbit Hole, and Poetry of Interiors, a collaborative dance project. Harbold also has several years of acting experience.
Plan-B Theatre's website says that it "develops and produces unique and socially conscious theatre." It has won many awards from In Utah This Week, the Utah Broadcasters Association, the Salt Lake City Weekly Arty (formerly Slammy) Awards, Q Salt Lake, the Deseret News, and the Salt Lake Tribune.
Jarvik's play is not yet complete. She wrote it for a playwriting lab and still considers it to be a work-in-progress. The play focuses on two characters, Tick and Rosie, who meet because they have re
nted side by side self-storage units. Tick is storing boxes of survival gear after being thrown out of his house by his wife; Rosie's unit contains some kind of secret that is revealed toward the end of the play. "I'm trying to explore self-storage facilities as a window into the things and ideas we can't quite let go of," says Jarvik. "I'm hoping to expand this into a full-length play and would love to talk to people in the industry who can help me better understand how self-storage works, and the heartache, humor and mystery these places undoubtedly contain."
Jarvik is not the first playwright to be fascinated by self-storage units. Another play with the same title (Self Storage) was produced years ago, at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles, and later formed the basis for the movie Tinseltown.
In addition to Jarvik's play, the March 10 production at the Plan-B Theatre will include "Stumped," by Deborah Threedy.