nytheatre mike Moves to 3800 Elizabeth

The past week or so has been challenging here at the ol’ blog. There are a lot of things I’ve been wanting to write about, but time has been tight. Between rehearsals for the new show, two reviewing assignments, and increased workload at the day job, it’s been difficult finding a moment or two to even write this much. I even missed my first Random Friday Top 10 - ARGH! So, I’m going to finally get a little caught up here.

First things first: the conclusion of Merry Mount. We finished the run on the afternoon of Sunday, January 27th with what I thought was our best performance yet. Everyone was focused yet relaxed, confident that we finally had the show under our belts and could just go out there and have some fun, which we did. I know I felt that way. I wasn’t worrying about my lines or my costume or anything else, I was just playing the part as totally and completely as possible. It was great. Add to that our biggest audience of the run (about two thirds full, including this very friendly face in the front row), and it was a surefire recipe for success.

Then, that very afternoon, it was over to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts to rehearse a reading of Joshua William Gelb’s play, The Tragedie of Bour IV, for that evening’s installment of the hotINK Festival 2008. An interesting and challenging piece in which I tried my best to channel the spirit of Orson Welles giving the title character’s stump speech in Citizen Kane (strictly a judgment call on what I thought the role called for). We had a strong cast, made up mostly of current NYU students (for once I was the oldster of the group - cry me a river), that performed for an enthusiastic audience of about 40-50 people (also made up mostly of current NYU students, it looked like). And, it wasn’t until I read Joshua’s bio that I realized why his name sounded so familiar to me: he’s the author and co-lyricist of Tully (In No Particular Order), which played at last year’s New York Musical Theatre Festival. Nice!

Now it’s on to 3800 Elizabeth, my latest show which opened this past weekend (on Super Bowl Sunday, no less: my thanks to all seven audience members who attended opening night). This one is quite different from anything else I’ve ever worked on before: it’s a 6-episode sitcom, written for the stage, about the ups and downs of three thirtysomething urbanites in Nueva York. This opus is the brainchild of my friend, writer-director Aaron Baker, and is being performed once a week on Sunday nights for the next six weeks at The Battle Ranch. There will be a new episode each week, just like on TV, except for the week we re-run the pilot (for those of you who missed it because you opted for the Super Bowl instead). It’s more Seinfeld-ian than plot-driven, and is pretty ridiculous and funny.

We’ve got a terrific cast that features Peter Handy and Iracel Rivero (pictured above, from left to right, along with yours truly), and guest stars galore including Gyda Arber, Alexis Black, Bryan Enk, Ian W. Hill, and Christiaan Koop. We’ve even got a theme song, opening credits, commercials, the whole shebang. To top it all off, each episode is roughly a half hour long and they’re all free.

Let me repeat that: FREE.

As in: no admission price.

You cannot beat that, people.

Seriously, you should come check us out: you know you like to laugh.

I think I owe you all a Random Top 10, but it’ll have to wait until I’m sitting at a computer with music-playing capabilities. You don’t really want a Top 10 featuring everything I’m humming in my head, do you?

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.