Left: Julia Izumi, author of “A Re-Enactment of the Trial of Daisy the Cow, Who (Allegedly) Caused the Great Chicago Fire,” at the JAW New Play Festival. Right: Brett Ashley Robinson, author of the festival’s “Good Person (A One-Woman Bouffon Show).” Photos courtesy Portland Center Stage.

It’s been a quarter-century of newness for the JAW New Play Festival, Portland Center Stage’s annual summer festival of new plays in progress, and here it is again this weekend, July 26-28: readings of five new plays-in-the-works (one of the readings a gathering of short plays by teenage writers), plus a little dance, a little music, and a workshop or two — and it’s all free.

Unlike a lot of other new-works projects in Oregon, JAW is open to writers from around the nation rather than being focused on local playwrights, although at least one Oregon writer often makes the cut.

Since its beginning in 1999 the festival has featured works by the likes of Kate Hamill, Constance Congdon, Itamar Moses, Will Eno, Adam Bock, Liz Duffy Adams, Yussef El Guindi, Lauren Weedman, and Jordan Harrison, plus such current or former Oregon playwrights as Susan Mach, Sharon Whitney, Marc Acito, the singer Storm Large, Joseph Fisher, and the late and dearly missed William S. (Sam) Gregory — 95 plays by 92 playwrights.

This year, playwrights, actors, designers, stagehands, dramaturgs and others involved in the process have been hard at work all week, digging into the scripts and preparing for the public readings Friday through Sunday.

A lot’s at stake, and JAW has a good track record of preparing shows for future success: Of its 95 plays over the years, 80 have gone on to full productions at professional companies across the country. What you’ll see in this weekend’s festival of free readings are genuine works-in-progress, with the actors performing script in hand, and that’s part of the allure: You’re seeing the shows from the inside, while they’re still being formed.

JAW’s four featured shows and one teen showcase are:

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• Julia Izumi‘s A Re-Enactment of the Trial of Daisy the Cow, Who (Allegedly) Caused the Great Chicago Fire, 7:30 p.m. Friday (and before seeing any of the shows my favorite based on title alone, although of course that’s like judging a book by its cover).
• Brett Robinson‘s Good Person (A One-Woman Bouffon Show), 4 p.m. Saturday.
• Beth Hyland‘s Fires, Ohio, 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
• Teen Playwrights Showcase, a reading of four short plays by young writers Bee Peronne, Vi Pappe, Mabel Seyler, and Sureika Shore, all commissioned by Portland Center Stage; 1 p.m. Sunday.
• Rob Smith‘s comedy The Sunnyview Elementary Art Show, 4 p.m. Sunday.

For complete information on the readings plus dance performances, music, workshops and other details, look here.

High hopes for “Hoops”

Speaking of new plays, Profile Theatre is continuing its “American Generation” season of shows with the world premiere of Reggie Hoops, by Kristoffer Díaz, who’s doing a two-year residency with Profile and is very hot right now as the Tony-nominated writer of the Broadway hit Hell’s Kitchen. Profile produced his play The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in drama, last fall (see Marty Hughley’s review for ArtsWatch here).

Reggie Hoops is a family-and-basketball comedy/drama about Reggie, a promising young executive in the NBA who finds herself unemployed, readjusting to family life, and suddenly with an unexpected and unbelievable job offer dangling in front of her. The promising cast is led by Treasure Lunan as Reggie, with La’Tevin Alexander, John San Nicolas, Ashley Song, Julane Torres, and Setareki Wainiqolo.

The show begins previews at Imago Theatre on Thursday, Aug. 1, opens Aug. 3, and has a short run only through Aug. 11, so if you’re interested you might want to get your ticket soon.

My Fair Musicals

Summertime and musical theater go together like iced tea and a slice of lemon: They just seem made for each other, and why say no to a syncronicity like that? Linda Ferguson has reviewed a couple of good current ones for ArtsWatch — the jukebox musical Jersey Boys at Lakewood Theatre, and Beautiful: The Carole King Musical at Broadway Rose. (Both shows continue through Aug. 18.)

Now, make room for one of the biggies: Lerner & Loewe’s 1956 classic My Fair Lady, based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 stage comedy Pygmalion and its 1938 movie adaptation. Alan Jay Lerner’s book and lyrics capture Shaw’s crisp and caustic wit and add a dash of none-too-sappy romance, and Frederick Loewe’s songs are brilliant and endlessly hummable: It’s the sort of musical that makes “Why can’t they make ’em like that anymore?” seem an utterly reasonable query.

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In other words: Familiarity, in this case, absolutely does not breed contempt. In fact, it breeds an almost irresistible urge to sing along with the actors — but leave that to the cast at Clackamas Repertory Theatre, who are better equipped for the task. Clackamas Rep’s My Fair Lady opens Aug. 3, with a preview Aug. 1, at its comfortable and intimate home space on the Clackamas Community College campus, and continues through Aug. 25.

The cast includes a lot of familiar faces, with the promising pairing of Leif Norby as the imperiously tongue-twisting Professor Henry Higgins and Voni Kengla as the Cockney guttersnipe Eliza Doolittle, with support from the likes of Todd Hermanson as Alfred Doolittle, Cyndy Smith-English as Mrs. Higgins, and Michael Streeter as the phonetics professor Zoltan Karpathy, who whisks Eliza around the dance floor and announces that he’s uncovered a fraud. Karpathy does not, however, resolve the show’s enduring and perplexing question: Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?

New plays in an old place

But enough about the classics: Let’s get back to the new stuff. Portland’s Northwest Theatre Workshop — a hive of activity for Northwest playwrights — and rural Salem’s Hopewell Hub — a century-old country store refashioned into a contemporary store and arts center — are getting together this weekend for a walk-through series of six new short site-specific plays, each presented in a different corner of the store and its grounds. The event, called Fragments, happens Saturday and Sunday, July 27-28, and ArtsWatch’s Brett Campbell has the whole scoop: Get his inside report here.

Farewell to Sam Mowry

Sam A. Mowry, a brilliant and well-loved Portland actor, director, and advocate of radio theater whose career spanned more than 40 years, died Saturday, July 20, of cardiac arrest. He was 64. A theater giant known for his distinctive voice and personal warmth and generosity, he is memorialized for his personal and professional impact on people’s lives in this appreciation from ArtsWatch.