Last week I had the honor of being on book for Suzan-Lori Park's new play, Father Comes Home, at the Public for the final two days of rehearsal and subsequent shows. Just being in the room with Suzan-Lori Parks was so inspiring- she really epitomizes a love for art and a willingness to just go for things. Director Jo Bonney is also incredible, I really wish I had gotten the chance to actually meet her, but what would I have said? Turns out she directed Universes' SLANGUAGE, a play I read in "Social Protest Drama and the Politics of Hip Hop Performance" and looooooved. Father Comes Home Part 1 is a beautiful, intimate piece of theatre, and if you're in New York you should really go see it in it's final week in the Shiva at the Public. I am excited to be in the audience next Saturday so I can actually see Part 8, which happens on two screens on either side of the stage. My favorite part of the show is that Suzan-Lori Parks herself is onstage underscoring the entire piece with guitar. And she bookends the piece with two songs that she wrote. It gives the piece a really beautiful rhythmic base that is used in the text in addition to the live presence that having the playwright onstage, playing music, gives to the show. I also got to be present for the ONLY performance of Father Comes Home Part 9, which is another beautiful piece that Suzan-Lori saw the heart of that night and decided it needed to be entirely re-written. I am excited to see where that finally goes.
Yesterday I went to see the Ensemble Studio Theatre's Marathon Part B, which consisted of five new one-act plays with five completely separate casts and was REALLY well done. The range of material was fantastic, as well as the arrangement of the material, which I've always seen as a very important element of a "one-acts" event. This show went Funny, Moderately Serious, Hilarious, Intermission, Very Serious, Light, and I walked away feeling very satisfied. It was a really exciting place to be, because I felt that all of the work was in progress and yet also polished, and the acting talent was pretty amazing.
In short:
"Carol and Jill" was a piece about two middle-aged women who each imagine themselves with the other in their futures- a cute story with a lot of dry wit.
"Little Duck" was a hilarious slapstick sit-com about a children's TV show studio
"Blood from a Stoner" was a touching piece about a father from Brooklyn and his high-achieving daughter
"Daughter" was a beautiful, sad piece about a mother whose daughter is disfigured in Iraq
"Sundance" was a light Western about the psychology of killing as told by Jesse James, Bill Hickock, The Kid, a barkeep and Sundance.
One thing that really impressed me was the skill with which they pulled off the comedy. It seemed like the creative process was really fun- and I would love to seek out a way to become involved. Of course, the one artistic person I knew of (who had done the curtain speech) wasn't around after the show, but I think I'll e-mail him. The only issue with it is that it's on the very-west side of Manhattan, so I had to take a subway to a bus and still walk 6 street blocks and most of an avenue block to get there. :-P
Time to finish my reader reports then off to The Public for the next EWG reading and then The New Group for Groundswell.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 2009
The ones who stay can find each other in the crowded streets and the guarded parks...
New York may be a city of strangers, but you run into people you know everywhere you look. The day after I moved here I ran into a guy I lived in Columbae and Hammarskjold with in the Times Square subway station. Last weekend I ran into a girl from high school theatre outside of Columbia Teacher's College. Such a very small world.
I'm reinvigorating this blog for the purpose of documenting the theatre I encounter all the time. Because otherwise my thoughts disappear into notebooks in illegible handwriting along with dozens to-do lists, and I'm seeing too much theatre now that I want to talk about.
Here are brief comments about a few of the shows... I will write entries about the Lark and EWG reading series after they end.
Billy Elliot, The Musical (on Broadway)
I really believe that this musical divides the musical theatre snobs from the musical theatre lovers. It is a heart-warming, beautiful show that is satisfying for two and a half hours. There's tap dancing, ballet, modern, economic strife and KIDS! There is something about kids on Broadway that is so inspiring.
Exit the King (on Broadway)
The talent in this piece, with the exception of Susan Sarandon, was phenomenal. I have never really enjoyed Ionesco but seeing it done well is really great. Translated by Goeffrey Rush and director Neil Armfield, the text was accessible and funny. The deterioration of the set was absolutely beautiful, and it was pretty thrilling to be in the front row as Geoffrey Rush sidles by us to get out into the aisle. But when Sarandon says "12 minutes" and she is the only speaking part left on stage, I cringed.
Superhero Celebrity Rehab: The Musical
William Segal, who wrote the rap musical Outflow which I directed a reading of the first scene of at Stanford, goes commercial, and he does it well. A very tuneful piece filled with stunning talent, although the book leaves something to be desired. But I had fun, which was obviously the point. The space, at the Access Theatre in TriBeCa/Chinatown, was a fun little blackbox theatre that would be great to work in. I am excited about the possibility of Will working on a shorter rap piece.
This Side of Paradise at Epic Theatre Ensemble's Sunshine Series
by Nancy Harrow and Will Pomerantz (reading)
A musical about F Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda. This piece was basically Behind the Limelight (produced at New York Stage and Film in the summer of 2005), only about the Fitzgeralds instead of Charlie Chaplin. The music was beautiful and Jenny Powers is ridiculously phenomenal, but it was hard to connect into the piece because you already knew how sad the end was at the very beginning. At the same time, the side by side developments of the past and present were some of the best that I've seen. This reading had a talkback, at which I discovered that New York audiences are much less helpful than San Francisco audiences. "I wanted to see him sing more". "The music wasn't really Jazz... I studied Jazz". Ugh. That audience needed some strict rules. They did not respond well to "We'd like to start off by taking some questions from you". Also, a very awesome space at 13th Street Rep.
So many other shows I need to see, but at the moment I'm trying to pick and choose carefully. Broadway's taking a backseat for the time being, as much as I want to see Hair and Next to Normal. Yay theatre!
I'm reinvigorating this blog for the purpose of documenting the theatre I encounter all the time. Because otherwise my thoughts disappear into notebooks in illegible handwriting along with dozens to-do lists, and I'm seeing too much theatre now that I want to talk about.
Here are brief comments about a few of the shows... I will write entries about the Lark and EWG reading series after they end.
Billy Elliot, The Musical (on Broadway)
I really believe that this musical divides the musical theatre snobs from the musical theatre lovers. It is a heart-warming, beautiful show that is satisfying for two and a half hours. There's tap dancing, ballet, modern, economic strife and KIDS! There is something about kids on Broadway that is so inspiring.
Exit the King (on Broadway)
The talent in this piece, with the exception of Susan Sarandon, was phenomenal. I have never really enjoyed Ionesco but seeing it done well is really great. Translated by Goeffrey Rush and director Neil Armfield, the text was accessible and funny. The deterioration of the set was absolutely beautiful, and it was pretty thrilling to be in the front row as Geoffrey Rush sidles by us to get out into the aisle. But when Sarandon says "12 minutes" and she is the only speaking part left on stage, I cringed.
Superhero Celebrity Rehab: The Musical
William Segal, who wrote the rap musical Outflow which I directed a reading of the first scene of at Stanford, goes commercial, and he does it well. A very tuneful piece filled with stunning talent, although the book leaves something to be desired. But I had fun, which was obviously the point. The space, at the Access Theatre in TriBeCa/Chinatown, was a fun little blackbox theatre that would be great to work in. I am excited about the possibility of Will working on a shorter rap piece.
This Side of Paradise at Epic Theatre Ensemble's Sunshine Series
by Nancy Harrow and Will Pomerantz (reading)
A musical about F Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda. This piece was basically Behind the Limelight (produced at New York Stage and Film in the summer of 2005), only about the Fitzgeralds instead of Charlie Chaplin. The music was beautiful and Jenny Powers is ridiculously phenomenal, but it was hard to connect into the piece because you already knew how sad the end was at the very beginning. At the same time, the side by side developments of the past and present were some of the best that I've seen. This reading had a talkback, at which I discovered that New York audiences are much less helpful than San Francisco audiences. "I wanted to see him sing more". "The music wasn't really Jazz... I studied Jazz". Ugh. That audience needed some strict rules. They did not respond well to "We'd like to start off by taking some questions from you". Also, a very awesome space at 13th Street Rep.
So many other shows I need to see, but at the moment I'm trying to pick and choose carefully. Broadway's taking a backseat for the time being, as much as I want to see Hair and Next to Normal. Yay theatre!
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