…and now for something a little different.
Summer’s coming on, and that generally means two things for off-off-Broadways theatre: breaks for some, and festivals for everyone else.
Your humble producer is taking a third path, and will be out on a regional theatre gig for five weeks. But never fear: Go See a Show! continues during my hiatus from the city, with a few episodes deviating from the podcast’s usual “here’s an off-off-Broadway show that’s happening, and an interview with the people behind said show” format. Here’s the first!
While we here in NYC might think of ourselves as the center of the theatre universe, there’s lots of great stuff happening outside of the five boroughs. When it’s not being done in a small house within the city limits, the kind of theatre that gets labelled “off-off-Broadway” here is often called “community theatre,” which all-too-often has negative connotations. An excellent example of why “community theatre” does not have to be deadly (in the Peter Brook sense) can be found just a short train ride from our fair city, in the state capital of Albany, with Confetti Stage.
Last year, Confetti produced one of Eugene Ionesco’s short plays, The Lesson, and on the merits of said production, Confetti has brought The Lesson to several festivals already, and areĀ about to take the show to compete in theĀ American Association of Community Theatre national conference. I spoke to the cast of Neilson R. Jones (also the director, and founder of Confetti), Lucy Breyer, and Vivian Hwang via Skype as they’re in the final days of their fundraising campaign to bring the show out to Indiana (help ’em out via IndieGoGo!).
Listen in as Neil, Lucy & Vivian discuss why they’re doing Ionesco’s 63-year-old play now, why Confetti’s tagline is “theatre without limits,” and what it’s like to live with a play for a year and bring it to festival competitions.
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*producer’s note: I reference Homemade Theatre in the podcast, and said it was in Schenectady; of course, I know very well that Homemade is up in Saratoga Springs!