Baby Lovin’ With Christen Clifford

First it started with an essay. Then it continued with a solo show that has played Europe and a variety of downtown venues here in New York. Now, actor-writer Christen Clifford tackles the big time with the Off-Broadway premiere of her show, BabyLove, in which she colorfully ruminates on what she calls “the eroticism of motherhood.” The show opened late last month at 45 Bleecker and runs until the first week of June. It is being presented by Hourglass Group, the producers of The Beebo Brinker Chronicles and the forthcoming Frequency Hopping.

With the show successfully up and running (and her son temporarily napping), Christen dropped by the ol’ blog to talk about the show, the Off-Broadway move, and what else she’s been up to since the last time I interviewed her. BabyLove director Julie Kramer (None of the Above, Mother Load) throws in a handy assist from time to time, as well.

When last we spoke, you were getting ready to open BabyLove at the very first FRIGID Festival. How did that run go?

The FRIGID was great for me: I got to work the show for seven performances instead of just of just one or two here and there. The other work in the festival was wild and wonderful. And it’s important to have a truly fringe festival in New York.

What have you been up to since then?
 
Well my son started PreK, only half days, but that’s been a big change since last year. Since I’m a stay at home and working mother (I just work when he’s asleep mostly!) his schedule is what dictates my schedule. Ummm..I got my MFA, won some writing awards (MFA New School Nonfiction Prize and a 2007 NYFA fellowship, woo-hoo!) I was supposed to be working on a book- if my agent is reading this I AM, I AM!!!

How has the show changed since then - or has it?
 
Christen: The show changes with my circumstances.  When I first started doing the show, I was still really caught up in many of the issues, still very confused about sex and motherhood.  Now I feel like I’ve gone over a mountain and am on the other side of it, so it has a different feel to it.  It used to be even more emotionally raw, it’s still pretty raw, but it used to be REALLY raw.  Now I have to act to access some of those emotions, when they used to just be there.
 
So that’s kind of a big difference.  After over two years, I am finally looking at the show as an actor!
 
Julie: The show has changed so much over the years that we’ve worked on it, though it’s probably changed the least between the Frigid Festival and now.  We’ve had the opportunity to do it so much out of town and it’s interesting to me how some things are pretty much exactly the same from when we first did it in Slovenia and other parts we have continued to refine.  Actually we changed some things for Frigid and this time we’ve gone back to how we did it before.  Also we brought Julie Atlas Muz back, and she expanded some of the dances, which is exciting. 
 
Mostly though, I think what’s changed has been Christen.  When we started Felix was two and everything was so raw and uncertain and frightening.  Now, he’s four.  Her marriage is strong and Felix is this really great little person.  So while the show is still unflinchingly honest and emotionally bare, I think we’re both able to achieve more clarity on what it’s about.

BabyLove originally came to life as an essay for Nerve.com. What inspired you to write it, and then turn it into a solo show?
 
I was really confused sexually after having a baby.  I had identified myself sexually, and I felt like that part of my personality was gone, or not accessible.  Like I wanted to be a mother without losing myself, but I WAS fundamentally different.  But also unchanged in my basic desires and neurosis. 
 
So as a reader I turned to books, only to not find very much out there.  As a writer, studying with two great essayists at the time, Vivian Gornick and Phillip Lopate, I wrote from my own experience.  All of my solo work has developed out of a need to express something I didn’t find out in the world, some true bit of my experience that I hope has some universal truth in it.  It started from writing personal essays, on which I then collaborated with the fabulous director Julie Kramer to turn into performance texts.  Julie and I first met when I auditioned for her for a role in something for the American Living Room festival at HERE, a funny play about Elvis and a Russian woman and a pig:  I played the Russian. Julie has devoted a lot of time to my work and I am forever indebted to her.  I was very unhappy about feeling disconnected from my sexuality, and a lot of humor can come out of unhappiness.  Julie really uncovered the humor.
 
I am so grateful and lucky, this show has been supported by so many different companies- New Georges gave us discounted rehearsal space, so did the Interart Theatre.  The first time I did the show in New York was for the terraNOVA soloNova festival in 2006, and we did a lot of rewriting and rethinking during that run.  We’ve taken it on the road. And now this run at 45 Bleecker for Hourglass Group.

Previously, you’ve said that the show is about “the eroticism of motherhood,” and that motherhood changed your ideas about sexuality and your body. How so?
 
Sex and love and intimacy overlap in romantic relationships.  My relationship with my newborn was the most intimate I’d ever had, and it was shocking to me.
 
Sexuality is so commodified these days, and motherhood is so commodified, and now there is the media-ization of the “sexy mommy” as if we have to look like Angelina Jolie when we are pregnant and be a stick six weeks afterward we give birth.
 
This doesn’t recognize the true experiences of many first time mothers: that your body is changed, often injured; that you are often completely in love with your newborns at the same that your relationship with your partners may be floundering, that your hormones are fluctuating.  So I really feel it’s important to talk about motherhood and sexuality together without it being part of a media trend that just makes most women feel badly about themselves. 
 
Principally, I’m interested in exploring the in-between moments, the grey areas between love and sex and intimacy.  Where we are all trying to connect.  And solo performance and storytelling has been a vibrant way to explore this: I love the shared experience of the theatre, to find community with an audience that might be shocked by my admissions.  Though I use sexuality as a way in, the work is always ultimately about love.
 
Maternal sexuality is actually an issue that involves us all, as children and women and men and parents. The director Julie Kramer always says it’s like the opposite of Phillip Roth romanticizing or fantasizing about his mother- now we get to see the mother’s point of view!

Let’s switch gears for a minute and talk about Hourglass Group. How’d you get hooked up with them?
 
I first met artistic director Elyse Singer at a party at our mutual friend Erica Gould’s in the early nineties. Erica had this huge Chinatown loft and always threw big parties that were lots of fun, and I met Elyse and I had seen her production of Love in the Void (alt.fan.c-love)  which was a one woman play in which Carolyn Baeumler did Courtney Love posting online just after Kurt Cobain died.  I was not a big Cobain fan but I fascinated by Courtney, and I LOVED that they had taken her posts and made them into a show.  It was so great.  And this was when the Internet was still fairly new, I remember I went to see it and I tried to get onto these message boards and couldn’t figure it out.
 
I did some readings and workshops with Hourglass.  When Felix was very young we did a two-week workshop of a very interesting play called 800 Words: the transmigration of Phillip K. Dick by Victoria Stewart and it felt so great being able to bring Felix to rehearsals with a babysitter.  Elyse had had her daughter a few months after I had my son, so there was an acknowledgement of motherhood.
 
And then in 2005 Elyse and I were taking about solo work and she had the idea for a Lab devoted to female writer /performers.  The Lab is the first of its kind, which is very cool and also just a super supportive group of creative and diverse women – together we avoid the vacuum of solo performance.
 
And Hourglass Group is all mothers now: in addition to Elyse, Nina Hellman and Carolyn Baeumler both gave birth in the last year.  And Carolyn was just in Beebo Brinker at 37 Arts, and Elyse is opening Frequency Hopping at 3LD, so I’m happy to be a part of this group of mothers making theatre.

How have you enjoyed prepping the show for Off-Broadway?
 
Christen: I loved it.  I was so happy to get back in a rehearsal room with Julie Kramer, who is just so smart and I love working with her.  We had some sessions with the amazing Julie Atlas Muz and re-did some choreography.  She asked me if I wanted to make it dirtier and I said, “YES!”  So we have even more fun with the dance sequences now.  And Elizabeth Rhodes came in to rework some sound.  Costume designer Melissa Schlachtmeyer met me at maternity stores to find the perfect pair of pants, and made me a new belly. I am so lucky to have such generous collaborators who have been helping me work and rework the show over the years; we’re all in this together.  And we brought in Graham Kindred to do our lights, and had a consultation with a great set designer, Lauren Helpern, and added a Mylar rain curtain.  I love shiny things!
 
Julie: It’s always great to be able to revisit something, to have that confidence that it works in front of all kinds of audiences, and just to be able to really hone in on those areas that we want to be perfect.  It’s the best kind of rehearsal situation really, because there are fewer variables in terms of how or whether something is going to work.  And it’s always the best to be able to move forward with a show and bring it to more and more people, especially when you really believe in what the show is about.

Part of the performance schedule includes “Mommy matinees.” What time of day is best for theatergoing mommies?
 
Well, Sunday afternoons are pretty easy to get out get out of the house, you leave the kid(s) with your partner or a friend.  It saves you from having to make a big deal of going to the theatre and getting a babysitter and coming home late and tired.  And the Wednesday matinees are early, at 1pm, so parents can get back to school for 3pm pick up, or see the show on their lunch hour. 

What are some of the challenges (and advantages) you face in balancing motherhood and performing?
 
Well, first of all, I don’t buy into the whole “opting in” and “opting out” of motherhood that makes headlines.  For me, it’s not a choice to work or not.  Personally, I don’t have the option of having a high-powered job and hiring a nanny.  I can’t not be a mother, I can’t not be a writer/performer – these are givens for me. I also just started teaching.  So it’s a challenge for me to make my way in the world and piece it together the only way I know how.
 
When I was getting my MFA I’d be up until 1am writing and still have to get up with my son.  So I stayed sleep deprived long after my son was sleeping through the night in order to do my own work.  It’s definitely a DIY business model.
 
That said, I think coming from downtown theatre makes me scrappy in a way that’s a good influence on being a mother – the whole beg, borrow, or steal mentality makes you flexible and I feel like we can always find fun wherever we are.
 
When Felix was little, he would just travel with me- well partly because I breastfed him for so long!  When Julie and I premiered the show in Ljubljana, the festival there put us all up in an apartment and even arranged childcare for me and paid for it! 
 
I like to bring him to tech rehearsals, he loves the lights and gels, he loves to come to the theatre and explore different spaces.  He loves it and I think it’s important to see me at work, since he can’t see the work.  BabyLove is for adults only; it even came with a warning label in Canada. My son is old enough to really know what theatre is now – I take him to children’s theatre – and he likes to give people the postcards for my show and tell them, “Here’s a postcard for my mommy’s show.  It’s not for children.  It’s only for grown ups.”  It’s so cute!

You’re expecting your second child later this year. Congratulations on that! Might we see BabyLove 2 sometime in the future?
 
Thank you. I’m excited and scared to bring another human being into the world.  I don’t see BabyLove 2 in the works; I’m not fond of sequels in general. But who knows: when the new baby comes everything will change again.
 
I’m actually looking at sex from the perspective of a daughter instead of a mother now.  My new solo is called (What I Know About) My Parents’ Sex Life and it explores elderly sexuality.  I’m looking at everything from my father’s Viagra prescription to my mother’s racy letters, from nursing homes to granny porn.  Daniel Fish will direct it, and it opens June 17th at P.S. 122 as part of terraNOVA’s soloNOVA festival and I got an equipment loan grant from Digital Performance Institute so we’ll be using video and I’m excited that it will be something I’m not used to.  So I have to get to work making a new show.  And it’s scary, because though it is still a solo with personal stories, I’m consciously moving away from the storytelling form that I’ve been working in for the past few years.  I’m excited to see what will happen.

James Comtois Gets Colorful

The superhero genre is about to get re-defined - that is, if James Comtois has anything to say about it. The prolific author of such indie theater hits as The Adventures of Nervous-Boy and Suburban Peepshow returns with a brand new play, Colorful World, that aims to stand the world of caped crusaders on its ear while still getting in some kick-ass fights. The play, produced by Nosedive Productions (the company James co-helms with director Pete Boisvert), opens this week at the 78th Street Theater Lab. Amidst the flurry of pre-opening activity, James generously took some time to stop by the ol’ blog and chat about the play. Here’s what the man himself had to say…

Your new play is about superheroes but doesn’t sound like it’s your average superhero story. What made you go with superheroes this time around and how does differ from (or maybe even subvert) the superhero genre?

Well, I originally wanted to do a “riff” on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal comic Watchmen (which, if you haven’t read it, is a brilliant deconstructionist take on the superhero genre that ended up radically changing the mainstream comic book industry) in the way that Sheila Callaghan wrote Dead City as a riff on James Joyce’s Ulysses.  But of course, as I wrote the script, it slowly and steadily veered onto its own path and became its own story, although fans of Watchmen will definitely see several parallels, similarities and in-jokes.

The premise behind Colorful World is that, in the late-‘80s, a man who’s bulletproof and impervious to pain is revealed to the world.  No one knows why and no one knows how he became this way.  The existence of this invincible man (dubbed “Overman”) changes the world as we know it in both subtle and drastic ways; the biggest of which being a trend of people dressing up in flashy outfits to go beat people up in back alleys.

The bulk of the story takes place about a decade after the costumed crimefighting trend has fizzled, and centers around a few retired crimefighters who look back on their careers with more bitterness and embarrassment than pride. 

So, Colorful World differs from the superhero genre in that it’s more concerned with the cultural and political landscape and the bruised psyches of the retired crimefighters than with guys in tights beating each other up (although Qui Nguyen has made sure there are many ultra kick-ass fight scenes throughout).  I also suppose it’s a little more melancholy than your average superhero story, since it speculates that discovering the existence of a Superman-like being is ultimately depressing once the novelty wears off.

I have nothing against conventional superhero stories; I just don’t think I have it in me to write one.  Once I start writing about a superhero I start wondering what psychological problems he or she has (because, let’s face it, prowling the streets in a cape and mask is a bit…off) or what physical problems he or she would acquire (wouldn’t years of crime-fighting mess up your knees pretty badly?).  I know you’re not supposed to worry about these things when you’re reading a copy of Batman (and I usually don’t), but when I’m writing a story like that on my own, I just can’t help it.

Colorful World takes place in an alternate realty where the Twin Towers are still standing and the Iraq War is ending. Those two things have figured very prominently in the public consciousness for years now. What made you decide to include such a specific take on both?

Probably because those two things have figured very prominently in the public conscious for years now.  The show bombards the audience with a great deal of information in very a short period of time, so Pete [Boisvert, the show's director] and I have been trying to find the right balance of not being too heavy-handed or overwhelming yet not being too obscure or confusing.  The best thing we came up with is to show at least one or two things from the get-go that are right on the nose — in this case, a big title card saying “2005” and an image of the World Trade Center and an advertisement for a “Welcome Home Troops” show — to help the audience find their bearings.  There are definitely other elements in the show that indicate this (and the in-tact WTC and ending of the Iraq War aren’t even the biggest changes, in my mind), but these two elements seemed to be the easiest to convey.

As for what the show’s take on these two events are, well, you’re just going to have to find out for yourself…

You’re a well-known fan of the fantasy, science fiction, and horror genres, all of which are massively popular in comic books, movies, television shows, and books. And yet you write plays which increasingly touch upon - and incorporate - all of these genres. How did first become interested in A) writing plays, and B) bringing these genres to the theater?

Yeah, I admit it.  I am very much a fan of those genres you’ve mentioned.  I grew up on Star Wars, Doctor Who, The Amazing Spider-Man, Isaac Asimov, and Stephen King.  I never outgrew them.  I know.  A real highbrow am I. 

I suppose it’s only natural that these genres have shaped my writing.  I actually started writing comic book scripts and screenplays in high school and college before moving on to playwriting.  Since I couldn’t — and can’t — draw, and couldn’t convince any of my artist friends to finish illustrating any of my scripts (mainly because I never understood how much faster and easier it was to write a 20-page comic than it was to pencil, ink, and letter one, so I’d scare away my artist friends by sending them five scripts when they were halfway through drawing the first page of issue #1), I gave up on writing comics.  The same problem went with movies, only worse (reasonably-priced high-definition digital video cameras weren’t immediately accessible in 1996).  So, I became interested in writing plays in college when I realized that writing scripts for comics or movies would never get any further than the printed page.

I guess I bring these genres to the theatre because, well, I like these genres, and I try to write plays that I would want to go see.  To be honest, very few of my creative influences are theatrical; most of them are from comics, movies, and prose fiction.  So yeah, it just makes sense that my scripts bear a closer resemblance to stories that are often found within those media than from other plays (which isn’t to say that I’m completely uninfluenced by other plays).

You and Colorful World director Pete Boisvert started Nosedive Productions in order for you to get your plays produced and for him to work as a director. Has it gotten easier over the years to be your own producers? And how has the indie theater landscape changed (if at all) since you guys started up?

In some ways, it’s become easier, since many of the nuts-and-bolts tasks and chores inherent to producing a play (finding a space, conducting rehearsals, sending out the press releases, filling out the insurance paperwork) have become second nature to us at this point.  But of course, it’s also become harder in some ways, since we always feel compelled to “step up” our game every time we produce a new show in some way or another.  You’re competing with a hell of a lot of options for how someone’s going to spend their night out, and that’s not really gotten any easier.  I don’t think it ever will. 

I have no idea how the indie theatre scene has changed; I only know how Nosedive’s involvement with the scene has changed.  We definitely feel more integrated within it, but that may be because we weren’t really integrated within it at all the first couple years we were producing (we didn’t really know anyone or interact with any other companies, aside from maybe a very small handful).  So that’s changed, but I’m not sure if that’s so much a reflection of the scene itself or Nosedive.

You and Pete have been collaborators for a long time now. What’s the connection between you two? What do you like about working together?

Yeah, it’s been about eight years now.  Good Lord! 

Oddly enough, we’re very different people with very different personalities and sensibilities, so that disparity may be a big contributing factor.  We also know each other’s styles pretty damn well (hell, after eight years, we better!), so if I give Pete a particularly oddball script, he’s not lost in the tall grass; he has a pretty decent idea of where it’s (I’m) coming from, if that makes any sense. 

He also comes up with pretty neat ideas for the stage that I could never come up with on my own.  That scene in The Adventures of Nervous-Boy where Nervous-Boy buys a bottle of rum and this giant monster paw comes from offstage to hand it to him?  Yeah, that’s all Pete.  There’s nothing in the script to indicate that the liquor store clerk is some monster/demon.  But it’s a really nice effect that worked like gangbusters with audiences.  So, stuff like that. 

Also, having Patrick Shearer on board since 2001 as actor, director, and/or sound designer (depending on what we need him to do; in the case of Colorful World, he’s acting and sound designing) has been pretty crucial in creating Nosedive’s aesthetic.  (Holy crap; did I seriously write the words “Nosedive’s aesthetic?”  I’m ashamed of me.)  For the most part, we all leave each other alone and trust each other to do our jobs. 

As for what Pete and Patrick like about working with me, you’d probably have to ask them.  I’m under the impression they’ve been politely putting up with me and my shenanigans and I’m slowly and steadily sapping them of their wills to live.

Dude, you’re a pretty prolific writer - how do you do it? And what have you got in store for us after Colorful World?

Well, heh, thank you for saying so, Michael, that’s very flattering.  I don’t think I am, since I only see all the projects I drop the ball on or complete substantially later than I was supposed to (i.e. I only see what I eff up), but that’s very nice of you to say so. 

How do I do it?  I’m not sure.  I mean…what else am I gonna do, man? There are a few possibilities for follow-ups.  We’re pretty sure there’ll be another Blood Brothers horror anthology show in October.  Then, Nosedive may either stage a full-length version of Pinkie, the serial western-noir play we staged for Vampire Cowboys’ “Saturday Night Saloon,” or I may work on this idea Qui gave me that sounds just too good to pass up (though I’m far from ready to reveal any details about that).  And although we can’t do it this summer, the ship hasn’t completely sailed on the idea of touring/remounting The Adventures of Nervous-Boy.  We shall see.

Jeff Lewonczyk Goes Babylonian

Last month, I wrote the following blog post about my current theatrical endeavor, Babylon Babylon, the latest extravaganza from Piper McKenzie Productions. Writer, director, and co-star, Jeff Lewonczyk, responded on the show’s official blog with tongue firmly in cheek. With the show’s opening weekend firmly under his belt, Jeff finally dropped by the ol’ blog to talk about his much-talked-about  opus and to refute those salacious claims he talked about.

Okay, let’s get the basics out of the way: what the hell is this show?

To state it in layman’s terms, it’s 31 actors onstage recreating events in the Babylonian Temple of Ishtar in the year 539 B. C. as the Persians prepare to invade the city. To put it in a more technical vein, it’s f%#$-ing nuts.

You’ve apparently been wanting to do this show for years. How’d you come up with the idea and what took you so long?

The original idea came from Herodotus – I was fascinated by his description of the practice of ritual prostitution in the Temple of Ishtar , and how pervasive he claimed it was. According to The Histories, every woman in Babylon had to visit there at one point in their lives and have sex with a stranger. This claim seems to be pretty well debunked (Herodotus is called both the Father of History and the Father of Lies, after all), but it set my mind in motion imagining a world in which such an activity would be seen as normal. Of course, I was reading Herodotus on the subway during the weeks leading up to 9/11, and so his description of the Persian sneak attack on the oblivious city of Babylon carried great resonance, and allowed me to sort of expand the vision into a meditation on the joys and dangers of the urban experience. As time went on, I drew from sources as diverse as The Bible, D. W. Griffith ’s Intolerance, Robert Altman’s Nashville, and the oeuvre of Kenneth Anger for inspiration and material.

You’ve used a lot of improvisation to help develop and write the script. Tell us a little bit more about that process and what it means exactly.

Well, I had always conceived of this is as a large-scale show with a sizable cast. I’ve never written a play for 30-plus characters before, and so I never actually sat down to write a script during the whole time I was thinking about it – the prospect was just too daunting. Piper McKenzie’s work in recent years on the Bizarre Science Fantasy dance-theater series helped to pave the way, because the pieces were wordless, and so it taught me a lot about how a piece can be developed in the absence of a written text with actors in the room. Of course, I’d never worked with 30-plus actors, and never used dialogue in those projects, so needless to say there was a bevy of novel challenges when we started work on Babylon Babylon. But the gist was that I had a long list of characters and incidents that I wanted to see. I wrote down character descriptions on index cards and passed them to the group – randomly at first, but with more careful selectivity as we proceeded – and then had everyone get up and do improv exercises as these characters, with a few simple rules to try to keep chaos at bay (the jury’s out on how well we succeeded at that last part). This led directly to casting, after which we did more exercises in character and made recordings, some of which became the basis for certain scenes in the script. Between and around all this work I was also building other scenes and text, and we ended up combining everything into a huge script that got whittled down throughout rehearsals to its current state.

The show is being done with a cast of 30-plus and environmental staging. What made you go with both?

Well, in the first place, I don’t think 30-plus actors would even have fit in The Brick’s proscenium setup, so it was partly practical. More than anything, though, for me the visual hook of the show had always been a grid of mats, or “stations” as we call them, on which the women in the show wait for their co-worshipers to choose them and take them out to the Holy Ground where, well, you know. To me the grid was a symbol of our own city – I’ve always been inspired by the variation and creativity that occurs within the tight geometric frame of Manhattan . And like Manhattan , you can never see the whole thing at once – you have a section, a home territory, that you call your own, and even if it changes (by the day, hour, minute, whatever) you look out at the rest of the city from that vantage. That’s the audience experience I wanted to provide – I wanted the audience to feel that they were somehow part of this world, implicated in it, rather than holding it off at arm’s length.

How did you initially go about casting such a large group?

At first, back in November, I sent out an APB to a large group of actor friends describing the project and asking who wanted to get involved. We had a preliminary rehearsal/meeting in November, and most of the people who attended are still with us. When I realized I wanted the cast to top 30 I started reaching further afield, to people I had barely met or whose work I had enjoyed in a show. I received a few personal recommendations from friends along the way, and trusted them even when I didn’t know the person’s work. In general, my rule was no auditioning – I wanted to meet and talk with people and make sure there was a personal connection at all times. Despite the various places everyone came from, a project like this would never work if everyone didn’t have some sort of common ground, no matter how tenuous.

In addition to writing and directing Babylon Babylon, you’re also in it. Are you nuts?

You’re in the show too, you tell me.

So far, so good. Now tell everyone who you’re playing.

My character is named Logios – he’s sort of the narrator/storyteller who sets the whole thing in motion.  He’s based on Herodotus, but a young Herodotus, who’s still trying to earn his chops regaling audiences with outlandish stories. The depiction is in no way autobiographical.

Your wife, Hope Cartelli, is also in the show. You two have worked together frequently for a long time now. How have you both managed to successfully balance your lives together on stage and off?

Well, if she wasn’t my partner I wouldn’t even HAVE a life on stage – she’s essential to everything that I do, and without her support, imagination, talent, and madness I’d be lurching around half empty. As for the offstage life, well, doing shows together means that we never run out of anything to talk about. Casting her as the High Priestess of Ishtar was no accident – she holds the action together much the way she holds the show and our lives together.

Do you mind telling us a little bit about the history of your theater company, Piper McKenzie Productions - for instance, where’d you get that name?

When we graduated from Bard in winter 1998 we stuck around to put together a show with some friends during the break. It was actually our first – and for many years last – attempt at creating something improvisationally with a group, and as such we were still figuring out what the hell the show was about when the producer of the space asked us to come up with a title for the press release. We sat around for fifteen minutes trying to devise the dumbest name we could come up with, which ended up being Piper McKenzie Presents the Tinklepack Kids in the Great Yo-Yo Caper. When we did a production of The Tempest in the same theatre that fall, we decided, what the hell, let’s keep the “Piper McKenzie Presents,” and after that it just stuck. We moved to the city in 1999 and have been churning out a show or two every year since then, getting ever more hubristic as time goes on.

How the hell can you possibly follow this show up?

I’m hoping to do our next show on a Russian space ship, for a select audience of thrill-seeking millionaires. It will integrate most of the major works of the Western Canon and run for forty-seven hours straight, with a full orchestra and live animals (bears, mostly, but also a shark), all performed in zero gravity.

Are you already thinking about the next show or are you going on a long vacation after this?

Oh, I’m thinking. Always thinking. If I stopped thinking my molecules would unravel. We have The Film Festival: A Theater Festival coming up at The Brick in June (for which I’ll be directing a staged reading of William Peter Blatty’s new play, Demons Five Exorcists Nothing, which is quite possibly more insane than Babylon Babylon), and in December we’re hoping to mount something called The Granduncle Cycle, a series of linked short plays that take place in a mythical Arctic society. If theatre offered benefits I would be happy to take some vacation, but Piper McKenzie is a cruel taskmaster.

Julie Shavers Bites the Silver Bullet

Actor-writer Julie Shavers has been described as an “indie theater all-star” by nytheatre.com, and her resume reflects that. Her plays have been seen at both the New York International Fringe Festival (Go Robot Go) and the American Globe Theatre (The Secret Life of Plants). On stage, she played the title role in The Flea Theater’s production of Margo Veil by Len Jenkin, and has appeared in Adam Bock’s Three Guys and a Brenda and Julia Lee Barclay’s Word to No One.

Her latest writing and acting endeavor, Silver Bullet Trailer, recently opened at The Ohio Theater to universally positive reviews (click here for an example). With the run finally winding down this weekend, Julie stopped by the ol’ blog to discuss the play, weird dreams she’s had during pregnancy, and what it’s liked to be married to the play’s director, among other things. Here’s what she had to say:

The press release for your show describes it as the story of “an expectant mother and her unborn child travel[ing] through a dreamscape of the American West meeting casualties of American ambition.” Could you expound upon that a little bit?

While Sari (the expectant mother) is trapped in nightmares her unborn child runs off into a desert dreamland of his own. This play is full of hard lucks, bar whores and imaginary things. I like to think of them as more archetypal than specifically American and I’m not sure how ambitious they ever were, but there are casualties.

Where did the idea for the play come from?

When I was pregnant with my son I had dreams that would curl your hair. What if his head fell off? Would I know how to fix that? I saw myself nursing my sister’s chihuahua. It was gnawing on me with it’s sharp little teeth.  My son was born ten days late. By the end I was convinced that he would never be born and that I would die fat. Or that he would consume me slowly and take over where I left off. I was a mess. 

I was also curious about the journey he was taking in utero. If he too had dreams. Or saw mine. I wondered if he was freaked out when I watched violent movies or went to rock shows because I’d feel him thrashing around. I was playing Cavale in Cowboy Mouth in my ninth month of pregnancy. I was wondering what Sam Shepard does to a fetus? I do think they hear things in there.

You are also acting in the show. Who do you play, and what made you decide to pull double duty as both writer and actor?

I play Sari. A pregnant ex-stripper. Because I couldn’t resist.

How does it influence the writing process for you when you know you’re going to be in the show?

I don’t usually write a show thinking that I’m going to be in it. Especially this one. I figured with a one year old in tow I’d never have time. I do tend to write southern female protagonists though. I guess that’s just the voice in my head. I blame my sisters.

I did find myself carving up the monologues once I realized it was going to be me. It’s nice to have the opportunity to live in the character, say the words and feel which ones work and which ones need to be changed.

Your husband, Dan O’Brien, is the director of the show. How do you two manage the balancing act of both living together and working together at the same time?

He sleeps in the bathtub. It works amazingly well. And I have absolutely no desire to direct my own work so I’m really grateful that he wants to do it. His ideas always surprise and delight me.

The show is being produced, in part, by The Present Company, a now legendary organization in the annals of New York indie theater history. How did you first get hooked up with them?

One of my first acting jobs in New York was with The Present Company. They were producing Julia Barclay’s Word to No One, which we performed in New York and in London. We spent nearly a year creating a piece of theatre unlike anything I’d ever done before. I was living in a flat in London with seven other actors. It was one of the best times I ever had. Since then I’ve produced one of my plays in the Fringe and become a part of The Pool, which is a sort of theatre artists collective sponsored by the Present Company. I did a most of my work on Silver Bullet Trailer in that group. Elena Holy has become a great friend and mentor. Thank God. We were pretty clueless when it came to producing so the advice has been invaluable.

How did you first get your start as both a writer and an actor?

The first play I wrote was an adaptation of It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. I was eight. Then I took a break until college where I started writing again. I was working with Blue Moves Modern Dance Company as a dancer/choreographer and we needed something to go between the dances so we could change costumes. I started writing monologues and ten minute plays to fill the space and it just grew from there.

I’ve been acting in plays since high school. I’m pretty sure I did the first one to get out of class. I started dancing very young though, and my parents are musicians so we were always singing somewhere. I guess it was a natural progression.

Do you have a preference between the two?

Depends on the day. I love and hate both.

Are there any particular artists who you think influence you? Or who, at least, inspire you artistically?

I don’t know. Every time I try to make a list like this it starts to feel like a MySpace profile and I want to kill myself. I am inspired by everything. Music, books, plays, movies, conversations I hear on the train.

I think I’m most inspired theatrically when I see something really wonderful. Like a couple of years ago I saw a play called Three Dark Tales by the British troupe Theatre O. I left that show so excited and hopeful. I also think Cynthia Hopkins’s stuff is great. Au Revoir Parapluie, which was recently at BAM, made me want to go get a fork lift and 800 yards of fabric and go to town.

What have you got going on next after this?

Well. I’m about 4 months pregnant so I’ll probably go ahead and get that out of there and then who knows.

Random Friday Babylonians

They say a picture speaks a thousand words. So I’ve decided to make this week’s Random Friday post top heavy with photos for a change. Like the one above - that’s me at Babylon Babylon rehearsal a couple of weeks ago, on the day we got our first script pages. Very exciting. Our official production photographer, Ken Stein, was on hand snapping away.

Here’s another one from our rehearsal on Wednesday night, courtesy of our lighting designer, the ubiquitous Ian W. Hill…

In the foreground, from left to right, are Fred Backus, Michele Carlo (sitting on the floor), assistant director Jessica McVea (standing with her back to the camera), and writer-director-grand poobah Jeff Lewonczyk. (The image here is slightly cropped. You can see the full image - which includes yours truly and fellow cast member Toya Lillard - on Ian’s blog.)

So, if a picture does indeed speak a thousand words, what do these two say to you?

While you ponder your answer, here’s this week’s Random Friday Top 10, courtesy of my trusty iTunes music library

• “Solitaire” - Suzanne Vega (Songs in Red and Grey)
• “Two Against Nature” - Steely Dan (Two Against Nature)
• “Athena” - The Who (It’s Hard)
• “Bad Sneakers” - Steely Dan (Citizen Steely Dan 1972-1980)
• “Harbor Lights” - Bruce Hornsby (Harbor Lights)
• “Up the Junction” - Squeeze (Squeeze: Greatest Hits)
• “The Towering Inferno (Main Title)” - John Williams (Great Composers: John Williams)
• “Pure and Easy” - The Who (Who’s Next)
• “The Phone Call” - The Pretenders (Pretenders)
• “Dripping Dream” - Sonic Youth (Sonic Nurse)

Happy Friday and have a great weekend. Spring is finally upon us, and it already feels like it. Enjoy the coming warmth and renewal. In the meantime, I leave you with one final rehearsal photo from Wednesday, also courtesy of Mr. Hill.

Babylon Babylon

 

So now that 3800 Elizabeth is over, I can focus solely on my next show, which I’ve been rehearsing for about a month now. The show in question is Babylon Babylon, and it’s the latest brainchild from Piper McKenzie Productions, the folks who brought us last summer’s outstanding production of Macbeth Without Words. Piper McKenzie co-artistic director Jeff Lewonczyk writes, directs, and co-stars in this 30-cast member extravaganza.

Well, he kind of writes it. He sort of mostly writes it. Um…we’ll get to that in a minute.

And yes: I did say 30 cast members - including some of indie theaters brightest all-stars…

• Fellow nytheatre.com scribes Gyda Arber, Fred Backus, Maggie Cino, and Robin Reed
• Piper McKenzie co-artistic director Hope Cartelli
• My 3800 Elizabeth co-star Iracel Rivero and director/co-writer Aaron Baker
• The artist formerly known as Carmen Mofungo - none other than Michele Carlo herself
• Brick Theater regulars Danny Bowes, Katie Brack, Marguerite French, Roger Nasser, Robert Pinnock, Adam Swiderski, and Rasha Zamamiri
• Kamran Khan and Elizabeth Hope Williams, co-stars of the FringeNYC 2007 hit musical, John Goldfarb, Please Come Home!
• Eric Bland, writer-director of last summer’s Pretentious Festival hit, The Children of Truffaut.

And if that weren’t enough we’ve also got video design by Jason Robert Bell, one of the masterminds behind the Caveman Robot empire, and fight direction from - who else?! - Vampire Cowboy Qui Nguyen.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, folks.

Now you may ask: what the hell is this show about? Well, I’ll tell you: it’s about the fall of the ancient city of Babylon, and it takes place on the day of the historic invasion by the Persians. You don’t know anything about that, you say? Never fear: you can read up on it here.

Rehearsals have been quite an adventure since we’ve been improvising most of the show thus far.

That’s right: I said improvising.

The first couple of weeks involved structured improvs centered upon a central location - Babylon’s Temple of Ishtar, which is the setting for our show - and everyone playing an assigned role. Jeff devised general backstories for each of the characters, then set us loose in the rehearsal room to interact and riff as we see fit. He’s been good about giving us free reign, but also guiding us in the directions he wants to explore (i.e. “Let’s see what happens if Character A interacts with Character B over there.”) and for the last couple of weeks he’s been writing script pages based on and inspired by the cast improvs. We’ve been incorporating those pages into rehearsals over the past week or so, and are going to have our very first rehearsal with an actual completed draft of the script tonight.

So, why work this way? Jeff told us he was inspired to do so by the loose, freewheeling work of film director Robert Altman, particularly his 1975 opus, Nashville. He was also inspired by an evocative passage in Herodotus’ The Histories about ritual prostitution in the Temple of Ishtar, and thus the idea for Babylon Babylon was born. The finished product promises to be, in the words of our trusty press release, “an unholy mix of Herodotus, Cecil B. DeMille, Kenneth Anger, Richard Schechner, the Bible, Charles Ludlam, Robert Altman, Busby Berkeley, and much more.” You can find out more in the production’s official blog, Babylblog Blogbylon.

Naturally, I’ll have more to report about the show as we move closer to the beginning of previews (April 11th) and our official opening (April 18th). In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a random shot from one of our rehearsals. Check it…

Random Friday Nonsense

 

It’s Friday, which means the end of another long work week. It also means some Random Friday Nonsense. But before I get to that allow me to direct you to the newest “Indie Theater Life” podcast on nytheatre.com, in which I interview actor-director-theatrical Renaissance person, Gita Reddy. Yet another swell conversation, even if I do say so myself, and one that you should all listen to.

Now on to the nonsense portion of the day. No music access today, so I’m totally making this part up. Um, okay…Top 10 Songs Randomly Picked From Albums I Loved In High School. Here we go:

• “Slow Turning” - John Hiatt (Slow Turning)
• “Scarecrow People” XTC (Oranges and Lemons)
• “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” - Public Enemy (It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back)
• “Eye Know” - De La Soul (3 Feet High and Rising)
• “Housequake” - Prince (Sign ‘o’ the Times)
• “We’ll Be Together” - Sting (…Nothing Like the Sun)
• “Tunnel of Love” - Bruce Springsteen (Tunnel of Love)
• “Hotdogs and Hamburgers” - John Cougar Mellencamp (The Lonesome Jubilee)
• “Peter Piper” - Run-DMC (Raising Hell)
• “Paul Revere” - Beastie Boys (Licensed to Ill)

Now that I’ve completely dated myself, let me throw in an 11th song just for shits and giggles:

• “Shakin Shakin Shakes” - Los Lobos (By the Light of the Moon)

LOVED that song back in the day.

And on that nostalgic note, allow me to wish you all a wonderfully fantastic weekend. Keep it real, everybody.

Edward Elefterion Goes Down the Rabbit Hole

 

Director Edward Elefterion has been a mainstay on the New York indie theater scene since the early 1990s, but today’s audiences may know his work from more recent productions like The Night of Nosferatu, Land of the Undead, and The Siblings.

His latest endeavor, A Rope in the Abyss (which he also wrote), is currently playing in a variety of unusual locations including a pair of housing centers, a medical center, and a microbrewery. The production will also run at The Blackbird Theatre in April, and is being produced by Rabbit Hole Ensemble, for whom Edward is the artistic director.

Edward stopped by the ol’ blog to talk about the show, his company, and their signature aesthetic, among other things. Take a read…

A Rope in the Abyss is an original play written by you. But you usually work solely as a director. What compelled you to write this one, too? 

Well, truth be told, it’s not the only play I’ve written.  There was The Siblings which I also directed and which was presented at the Midtown International Theatre Festival in 2006, and there are about a dozen more locked away in a vault.  On my hard drive.  I’ve been writing since the late 90s.  This one came about after several monthly meetings I had with some actors in an empty room playing with the idea of identity.  I’d also been reading a lot of books about neuroscience and how the brain works.  And, since I don’t believe in any sort of afterlife, the idea that one day I’m going to stop existing is pretty powerful.  So, I just sort of played with the idea of how fragile identity really is and tried to share my sense of wonder about it all through making a play.   

What does the title refer to? 

In In Search of Lost Time, Proust describes something universal: waking up.  Not a psychological sort of waking or a spiritual sort…but just waking up from a deep sleep.  There are sometimes a few seconds where you don’t know anything, not where you are or what time it is or even who you are, until something catches your senses like a curtain or a glass of water next to the bed and, effortlessly, everything comes back to you.  We all know this experience.  And it’s quite unremarkable when it happens, because it happens so often.  Proust describes the trigger that restores you to yourself as a “rope let down from heaven” that brings you up out of the abyss of non-being, where you just slumbered for a moment or two.  It’s that rope, that way out of nothing and back to your self that interests me.  Because I don’t think this only happens upon waking up.  I think it happens throughout a life.  People change every second, really.  But no one notices until there’s some event to mark the change: a new job, a birth, a break-up, an accident, a return from afar, a move away, all these big life things…they’re all markers of change.  And a person going through them is just as strange to himself as he is to everyone else.   

Luckily, we have hairstyles and clothes, a myriad of exterior cues that keep us comfortably identified.  We have consistent tastes and preferences that express who we really are, regardless of circumstantial change.  Or at least that’s how it seems.  We assume that our characteristics, preferences and behaviors express who we really are on the inside, but maybe, just as often if not more, we look outside for cues to tell us who we are inside.  For instance, maybe the kind of music you listen to is an expression not of who you are but of who you want to be?  Maybe your taste for mint chocolate chip is an instinctual way back to some otherwise lost version of yourself?  Maybe your 9 to 5 gig is what really shapes your attitude towards life and if your job were different maybe you’d be different?   

There are ropes are all around us gathering us up into a sense of self and maybe without them we’d be as utterly lost as we are those moments of waking up.  It’s fascinating to me because it throws the whole idea of “who I am” into the wind like confetti.  It scatters all the million little bits that make up who I am and rearranges them, and potentially makes me a stranger to myself.  We think we know who we are.  Maybe we need to think so because the true nature of identity is really very slippery and fragile? 

Where does your interest in neuroscience stem from? 

It stems from my interest in what makes us who we are.  Discoveries in neuroscience speak so directly to questions of identity that once I found out about it, I couldn’t read books fast enough.  I suppose that I was introduced to neuroscience by RadioLab on WNYC.  Check it out if you’ve never heard of it.  www.radiolab.org. 

You’ve partnered with the Brain Injury Association of New York State to produce this show. How did that come about? 

A friend of a friend works at a rehabilitation center in Connecticut and when he heard about the subject of this show he told me about the Brain Injury Association in Albany and recommended that I contact them.  They’ve been wonderful.  Really supportive and instrumental in connecting us to several interested venues. 

The show is being performed not only in a traditional theater space, but is also traveling to a pair of housing centers, a medical center, and a microbrewery. Why the non-traditional locales, as well? 

Throughout the month of March we’re doing the show for FREE at various locales in Brooklyn.  Why?  A few reasons. 

• 1.  The folks who live in the medical center don’t have the opportunity to go to the theatre and if they did, they wouldn’t see anything that addresses their situations and/or experiences regarding brain injury.
• 2. The folks in the housing communities don’t exactly get out much either and couldn’t afford even cheap theatre (even I can’t afford going to what’s considered affordable theatre).
• 3. The people who make their homes in these facilities (and their families, who are greatly affected too, don’t forget) know a thing or two first-hand about sudden and severe changes in circumstances and identity…so we hope to communicate with these groups directly and learn something from such an audience.
• 4. We really wanted to open these performances up to the public in the surrounding neighborhoods because, frankly, they are underserved neighborhoods and we wanted to reach out and create an opportunity for people to see some theatre. 

And for the record, we are doing a performance at an assisted living center which we do not advertise since it is intended specifically for the residents of the center and is not open to the public. 

The microbrewery stepped up and offered their space because the owner’s son suffered from a brain injury after a cycling accident that eventually killed him, so he’s got a personal interest.   

Come to think of it, the more people I talk to about the subject of this play, the more I’ve learned that brain injury and/or sudden shifts of identity are not as uncommon as they might sound.  It seems everyone knows someone with a related illness.  My own grandfather did not suffer from a brain injury.  But in the last months of his life, he often forgot what he’d just told you.  I mean entire conversations and stories.  I bet you and your readers all can relate to, if not know someone, who is suffering the effects of old age, or alcoholism (any addiction really), road rage…people change in a heartbeat.   

Tell us a little bit about the background and history of your theater company, Rabbit Hole Ensemble, which is producing A Rope in the Abyss. 

Since I graduated from NYU in 1992, I’ve been self-producing in Manhattan.  Over the years I’ve used different aliases: Lefty, Chimera, and Rabbit Hole, because I didn’t want to come out and say Edward Elefterion produces “Blah” directed by Edward Elefterion.  I was shy or afraid that people would think I was an ego-maniac or that I was a novice…or a combination of both.   

The first time I used Rabbit Hole was back in 1993 with a show called Buried Treasure by Stanton Wood, who is now a resident playwright at Rabbit Hole.  Then I went off to grad school at Indiana University, got my MFA in directing, moved to England for about 18 months where I worked with the Midlands Refugee Council and developed a pair of plays with some Bosnian, Afghan and Albanian refugees (this was during the war in Kosovo).  When I returned to NYC in 2000, I got a job at Hofstra University, and I’d resumed self-producing theatre in the city.  Finally, in 2005 I brought some of my colleagues together, namely Paul Daily (and actor whom I’d met in Indiana) and Emily Hartford (one of my very talented former students at Hofstra), to form a theatre company.  We all liked the name Rabbit Hole Ensemble, so that’s what we called it.  Of course, the name is a reference to the portal that takes Alice to Wonderland.   

Your press release refers to Rabbit Hole’s “signature minimalist aesthetic.” What is that, exactly?  And how did you go about developing it? 

Rabbit Hole’s mission is to emphasize the communal nature of theatre through a distinctly minimalist aesthetic that focuses on space, audience, and the performer (especially the basic tools of physicality and voice) to produce a uniquely direct and candid experience.   

Our basic working method is “if it’s not absolutely necessary, cut it”.  That applies to text, design, gesture, blocking, everything that is part of the performance.  I challenge the actor to do as much as possible and work to emphasize the immediacy of the performance by stripping it down to its essentials.  It’s our emphasis on ensemble-creation that really invites and stimulates audiences’ imaginations.   

People constantly tell me that they’re amazed at how much we do with so very little.  That’s the amazing thing right there: it’s not how much we do, but how much they experience.  We just use our skills to create what we need, to suggest enough to each other and the audience so that the production actually happens in the shared imagination of the actors and the audience.  That’s what I think “experience” really means. 

Also, I got into theatre because I like creating something with other people, not waiting in a blackout for the scene to change or the historical accuracy of a hat or buckle on a shoe.  There’s a place for that kind of historically-oriented, design-oriented, spectacle-engineered theatre, but it’s not what I’m interested in.  I want to go to an intimate space and take part in something playful and serious that challenges me to use my imagination and that provokes my mind and body into emotional and intellectual action.  I want something to remember not because it was visually stunning, but because I took part in it, I was involved with it and I’m going to re-experience it to varying extents in the course of time.   

To me, the success of a production cannot be judged by the performance as much as by the re-experiencing some aspect of it the next day or the next week or ten years later.  I want to be a part of people’s lives, and I feel that the more distractions you put in front of an audience, the more you’ll distract them…and why would I want to distract you while I’m trying to commune with you? 

What are your plans for Rabbit Hole after A Rope in the Abyss? 

Big Thick Rod by resident playwright Stanton Wood.  It’s a sex farce about exploitation and the cost of narcissistic capitalism.  It’s a riot and if neither FringeNYC nor the Midtown International Theatre Festival picks it up, Rabbit Hole will produce it in September.  But it’s such a hilariously poignant play I sure hope that it gets the benefit from being included in a festival.  It’d be a shame for such a potentially wide audience to miss out on it.   

After that, we’re considering an adaptation of Woyzeck by Matt Olmos and a new play by the internationally acclaimed poet Jay Wright.  There are a lot of irons in the fire.   

I’d like to add that if people would want to get in touch with us, shoot an email to ed@rabbitholeensemble.com.  We’re always looking to meet new artists and especially folks who are just interested in the mission of the company: strong stories, told simply and theatrically, without much technology.  It’s funny where you might find your next General Manager or Producing Director or Fund Raiser.  Since we’re mostly a group of artists, we sure could use that kind of management-collaboration.  Visit us at www.rabbitholeensemble.com.

Random Friday Spielberg Top 10

 

It’s Friday, so let’s get the important things out of the way first, namely: the brand new trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Can you say, “HOLY $#*%?!?!?” Thank you, Jesus!

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, allow me to point you in the direction of some other cool happenings you will surely want to check out.

First among these is the Plays and Playwrights 2008 Book Launch Party at The Red Room & The Kraine Theatres this Sunday afternoon at 3pm. This event is always a cracking good time - Martin and Rochelle Denton know how to mobilize the indie theater scene better than anyone. You can hobnob and schmooze, catch up with old acquaintances, meet new ones, and see some damn good scenes from the published plays. Here’s what they’ll be doing excerpts from on Sunday:

• …and we all wore leather pants by Robert Attenweiler. Performed by Ariana Shore and Joe Stipek.
• Cleansed by Thomas Bradshaw. Performed by Joseph Carusone, Barrett Doss, Siho Ellsmore, Matt Huffman, and Bobby Moreno
• Fall Forward by Daniel Reitz. Performed by Dean Imperial and Julie Kline.
• The Telling Trilogy by Crystal Skillman. Performed by Spencer Aste.
• What Happened When by Daniel Talbott. Performed by Jimmy Davis and Seth Numrich.

Hot stuff, people. You should check it out.

I would be there myself, but, sad to say, I’m going to miss it on account of my afternoon tech rehearsal for Episode 3 of 3800 Elizabeth, which goes up at The Battle Ranch that very night at 8pm.  You should come see it. This week’s episode is going to be particularly funny, I think, and will be a fine showcase for both me and my co-star, Iracel Rivero.

Hell, you could make a whole day of it on Sunday: hit the Plays and Playwrights party in the afternoon, then check out 3800 Elizabeth in the evening. And none of it will cost you a dime, my friend. That’s right: both events are totally and completely FREE. Now do you think you have a good reason to stay home and do housework this weekend? I didn’t think so.

If those aren’t enough for you, you could also take in both of these happening weekend events:

• Notes From Underground: Michael Gardner remounts his stage adaptation of the classic work by Dostoyevsky at The Brick Theater. Starring Robert Honeywell, Heath Kelts, Michael O’Brien, Alyssa Simon, and Moira Stone. I saw this in one of its earlier incarnations, back in the 1999 New York International Fringe Festival, and I guarantee that you have never seen anything like it. Go see this powerhouse cast in action. Opens tonight for a 6-week run.
• Nosedive Productions’ Boxcar Social at The Battle Ranch this Saturday from 7pm to 11pm. This is a fundraiser for Nosedive’s spring production of Colorful World, the new superhero play by James Comtois, which numerous people have told me is pretty frappin’ awesome. The Nosedivers are excellent people and a hell of a lot of fun to party with, so you should do yourself a favor and go hang with them. There will be plenty of entertainment - poetry by actor-writer Brian Silliman, magic tricks by the Amazing Amazini, and the newest of Nosedive’s notoriously funny video comedy sketches - and cheap-ass drinks ($2 beers, $1 Jell-O shots). All for $5 at the door. Tell me how that’s not a deal.
• Happy Endings, Blue Coyote Theater Group’s new evening of short plays about the lives of sex workers. Oh yeah, baby! Featuring new plays by Blair Fell, David Foley, Matthew Freeman, Brian Fuqua, David Johnston, Boo Killebrew, Stan Richardson, Christine Whitley, and John Yearley. The Blue Coyotes are also an awesome bunch that always put on a great show. Knowing them, this one should be no different. Now playing at The Access Theater through March 1st.

Finally, I’d like to wrap things up with this week’s Random Friday Top 10, inspired by Steven Spielberg, director of the new Indiana Jones movie. I hereby give you my Top 10 Favorite Performances From a Spielberg Movie (in chronological order):

• Robert Shaw in Jaws (1975)
• Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
• Henry Thomas in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
• Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple (1985)
• Christian Bale in Empire of the Sun (1987)
• Sean Connery in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
• Dustin Hoffman in Hook (1991)
• Anthony Hopkins in Amistad (1997)
• Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan (199
• Christopher Walken in Catch Me if You Can (2002)

(Honorable mentions to Oprah Winfrey in The Color Purple; the entire cast of Always; Robin Williams in Hook; Djimon Hounsou in Amistad; and Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me if You Can.)

That’s all for now, people. Happy Friday, and enjoy your weekend!

Aaron Baker Feckles the Barnstrum

SONJA: …I just wanted to say that I’m sorry that I wasn’t around when your dad died.

AJ: Don’t worry about it….Sometimes…no, forget it.

SONJA: No, what is it?

AJ: Well, it sounds crazy, but sometimes it’s like I…I still see him, you know?

SONJA: No, that’s not crazy.

AJ: And he says “feckle the barnstrum.” And I say, “what?” And he puts his hand on my shoulder and he says again, “feckle the barnstrum.” Then he takes one of his legs off and tries to hit me with it, but he loses his balance and turns into a bunch of owls…

That’s just a sample of Aaron Baker and Frank Padellaro’s 3800 Elizabeth, a dry and irreverent new stage sitcom that follows the everyday trevails of three thirtysomethings in New York City. The Welding Club presents their 6-episode comedy in weekly installments at The Battle Ranch in Williamsburg starting on Sunday, February 3rd. Co-writer and director Aaron Baker (pictured above) answers some questions about the production, which stars Peter Handy, Iracel Rivero, and yours truly.

Let’s start by talking about what this show actually is. Because it isn’t your everyday, run-of-the-mill theater production, is it?

It’s a sitcom for the stage. We want it to be as much like a television sitcom as possible, but to have that immediacy and interaction between performer and audience that one can only get from live theatre.

Why did you decide to do the show in an episodic serial format instead of the usual full-length, one-time-only format?

Well, that’s the way sitcoms are. I was thinking about the old action serials, when people would go out to the movie theatres regularly to catch the next episode, and I was wishing that one could still do that. And the closest thing we have to that now is what people call appointment television. So I wanted to bring those two concepts together.

Why a sitcom instead of a drama?

Because I’m better at it.

Okay, let’s get more specific: what is 3800 Elizabeth about and who are the main characters?

It’s not - at least in terms of plot - really about anything. It’s just three people who happen to be very funny interacting with each other and sometimes other people in ways that I think are funny. You have AJ, the Germanophile bartender, his hypochondriac ex-girlfriend Sonja, and his childhood friend Mike, who has just moved to the big city from a slightly smaller city.

What does the title refer to, by the way?

It could be the address where Sonja and Mike (and formerly AJ) live; it could be the address of the bar where AJ works and they all hang out; it could be the name of the bar. I leave it up to the audience to draw its own conclusions. Really we just took the name from the title of the theme song, so you’d have to ask Luke Cavagnac, who wrote it.

Do you have any favorite sitcoms?

There was a show called Lookwell that ran once, I believe, that starred Adam West and was written by Conan O’Brien and Robert Smigel; that was brilliant. The first season of What I Like about You (I love Amanda). Sports Night.

So, what are the logistics of producing a show like this? Is each episode standard sitcom length? And will there be a new episode every week?

They are theoretically standard sitcom length (22 minutes, 30 with commercials), but I haven’t timed them at all, and I’m not terribly concerned about making them come out to exactly the right length. There will be new episodes almost every week. I decided to do one rerun for two reasons: A) That’s what TV sitcoms do, and B) I thought that people who missed the pilot might feel like they had missed some important plot element, so we’re doing a rerun of the pilot episode in week four - February 24 - so people can see that they didn’t really miss anything.

Dare I ask if other sitcom conventions - like commercials or opening credits - will be observed?

Yes, all of those things and more. Some of it is probably better as a surprise, so I won’t go into any more detail, but if it’s
something that TV sitcoms do, there’s a good chance that we do as well.

Do people need to come see 3800 Elizabeth from the very first episode to enjoy it fully, or can they drop in at any time?

No. Drop in any time.

What other projects have you got on the horizon after this one?

As a writer-director-producer, I’m trying to focus on 3800 Elizabeth, but I do have some acting gigs, including the next couple of episodes of Third Lows’ Penny Dreadful and Piper McKenzie’s upcoming Babylon Babylon, both at The Brick.