Accomplished local playwright’s work to see first Merced showing

After seeing his works presented on stages far from home, Merced’s own prize-winning playwright Shawn Overton is about to see two of his plays performed in his hometown.

The 1992 graduate of Mariposa High is glad to see his writing come to life on the local stage.

“It feels good,” he told the Sun-Star. “It’s kind of nice to have something here locally.”

Two original plays, “Fibonacci Ascending” and “The Battle of Musca Domesticus” are offered during a free show at 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 11, at the Merced Multicultural Arts Center, 645 W. Main St.

Overton, 41, earned a master of fine arts from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 2003, after stops at Merced College and California State University, Stanislaus. He said he’s penned about a dozen full-length plays.

In Las Vegas, he also worked with the Cockroach Theater, which opened the year before he finished college and where the two works being performed Friday also were staged.

“They have a serious side to them, but they’re meant to be fun,” he said of the one-actor plays.

“Fibonacci” tells the story of a physicist obsessed with the concept of trying to capture light. It borrows its name from the Italian mathematician whose work explored a sequence often found in nature that is popularly known as the golden ratio.

“Mucsa Domesticus” also borrows its name, this time from the scientific name of a housefly. “It’s about a bad poet trying to kill a fly,” Overton said.

Both plays, he said, are pieces he’s picked and put down through several rewrites. He said they are also in his wheelhouse as they balance drama and comedy.

“I’ve always had a fondness for the absurdist writers,” he said.

Overton is not a Merced native per se. He split his formative years on the opposite ends of Merced, in Turlock and Mariposa. So, by his estimation, he’s a Merced native “on average.”

While Overton said he was always interested in writing, plays were off in the distance somewhere and he fell into the world of theater by chance.

He said he had a number of creative writing pieces under his belt in high school when his writing teacher gave him the choice between another creative piece or a play. He said he figured he’d try something new.

“It kind of hooked me,” he said. “Really, it was accidental if anything. Then I just went with it.”

The accident seemed to work out for him. He was awarded the Nevada Arts Council Artist Fellowship for developing new works, and had plays produced by various theater companies across the country and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Overton moved back to Merced in late 2011 for personal reasons, and ended up sticking around.

He continues to work as a story specialist and screenplay analyst.

The performances are free. “The Battle of Musca Domesticus” is directed by Bryan Hurd and performed by Greg Ruelas. “Fibonacci Ascending” is directed by Dawn Trook and performed by Theresa Miller.

This story was originally published December 10, 2015 at 1:59 PM with the headline "Accomplished local playwright’s work to see first Merced showing."