Danielle Scott, Jack Novak, and Mary Myers in Perfect Arrangement (Teresa Wood Photography)

By DCist contributor Allie Goldstein

As CulturalDC’s Source Festival artistic director Jenny McConnell Frederick explains, “We tell unexpected stories or tell familiar stories in unexpected ways.” The company celebrates the tenth year of this annual showcase with a mix of old favorites and new work, much of which can be sampled in 10-minute increments.

Full-length headliner Perfect Arrangement is back for an encore after premiering at Source in 2013. The play is set in a 1950s Georgetown duplex where two gay couples that are faking it straight during the Lavender Scare, a State Department witch hunt for gay people in government that John Kerry just apologized for this year.

Since its launch at Source, playwright Topher Payne won the Osborn Prize from the American Theatre Critics Association in 2014, and the play went on to an off-Broadway run before returning to a very different political reality in D.C.

“We had so many reasons to be optimistic about the march of progress, but we’ve since been reminded that these things ebb and flow,” Payne wrote, referring to the State Department’s removal of Kerry’s apology from its website.

Director Nick Martin brings a fresh take to the script, but leaves it up to audiences to connect the rather obvious dots to the current moment. Martin was drawn to the play for its crisp dialogue and dark hilarity as much as for its illuminating of a little-known chapter in American history. “It’s so witty, so tight, it clips along so well. And it’s just a gut punch at the end,” he said.

The play has an entirely new cast this go-around, and a glimpse of rehearsal last week revealed that all four main characters have palpable chemistry. Their relationships are also deliciously layered. Millie (Danielle Scott) and Norma (Mary Myers) are lovers but also cackling girlfriends that amp up their saccharine housewife performances in front of their guests. Bob (Jon Reynolds) and Jim (Jack Novak) are secret husbands to each other, but Bob and Norma also have their own relationship as colleagues, and Millie and Jim have the rapport of neighbors that share much more than milk. The best part of Perfect Arrangement may be being on the inside of the inside jokes as the couples shoot each other knowing glances from across the sofa. Turns out a closet big enough for four is quite the party—as long as the ruse lasts.

Perfect Arrangement is just one of more than 250 new works that Source has notched under its belt, and this anniversary festival will also see the revival of popular 10-minute plays from the last decade, like Amenities by Gregory Hischak, The Ferberizing of Coral by Patrick Flynn, and Fugue for Amorous Tornados by Gabriel Jason Dean.

You can also catch a half dozen new 10-minute works under the loose theme of “Covert Catalysts,” which Frederick describes as “something that goes unseen but provides catalytic change for the community.” Under this banner are Threat Level: Cream about a Metro rider that takes the idea of “see something, say something” very seriously and Hot Rod, Ear Hole on 3 — Break!, about two football players with an off-the-field romance.

For more of a pulled-back curtain experience, Source Festival offers the chance to witness readings of three full-length plays hot-off-the-press: Annie Jump and the Library of Heaven by Reina Hardy, F*ck la vie d’artiste by Georgette Kelly, and Frelmetch the Maneater by Matthew Capodicasa.

Produced with minimal staging—for Frelmetch, for instance, it’s important to convey that the play’s characters meet within a puppet—the readings will be followed by a talk-back with the audience. Two “Artistic Blind Dates” that bring together seven artists with varied backgrounds in film, hip hop, and movement will also engage the audience after intimidate showings in Source’s rehearsal room. The hope is that the new works incubated at the festival will soon hatch.

Tickets are $20 per performance or $75 for five and are available here. Source Festival kicks off with Perfect Arrangement on June 9 and runs through July 2. Source is located at 1835 14th St NW.