Category Archives: Directors

Jonathan Warman, Rosemary Howard, and Rob Skolits of “Quit the Road, Jack”

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Quit the Road Jack, written by Jerry Polner, directed by Jonathan WarmanAh, the angst of the angry young man. “His fist in the air, and his head in the sand,” as a Long Island poet once said.

The titular character of Jerry Polner’s Quit the Road, Jack is just such a young man, but instead of staying at home with his back to the wall, he’s on the lam across the continent, with his hapless, divorced, bickering parents two steps behind.

GSAS! spoke with the show’s director Jonathan Warman, as well as actors Rosemary Howard and Rob Skolits—listen in as they discuss quirkiness and outsiders, balancing truth & comedy, surreal vs. more than real, drawing inspiration from political cartoons & Mexican street art, and inspiring conversations outside the theater.

“The more truthful and real it is…it actually is more funny.”

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Tara Ahmadinejad and Elliot B. Quick of Piehole’s “Old Paper Houses”

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Piehole presents Old Paper Houses, directed by Tara AhmadinejadI’m not particularly stoic, but having grown up in the Northeast, I start to get a little annoyed when all the usual complaints about snow and cold start piling up during the winter—it’s winter, it’s supposed to be snowy and cold.

But, with this winter season having felt particularly rough on New York (at least, if you can believe all those Facebook posts and Gothamist articles…hey, at least we didn’t have it as bad as Boston, right?), it was likely the perfect season for Piehole‘s Old Paper Houses, which grew from the ensemble’s frustration with winter a couple years back, then passed through poetry about New England, transcendentalist communes, Nathaniel Hawthorne, nostalgia…and more.

Sound wild? It is, in the best of ways.

Listen in as director Tara Ahmadinejad and dramaturg (and returning podcast guest) Elliot B. Quick discuss collective creation in Piehole, dioramas, starting a book club to figure out what you want to do next, shifting perspectives, and physical research to get the appropriate action of shoveling show onstage.

(and seriously, there’s more entertainment awaiting you after the show, so be sure to budget some time to stick around and hang!)

“The piece is a meditation on New England, and utopian longing, and the weather, and it cycles through these different perspectives…”

“…it started from us being artists in New York in a winter two years ago, and feeling a lot of utopian longing…”

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Jeremy Duncan Pape, Megan Lee, and Matthew Kreiner of No Win Productions’ “Woyzeck, FJF”

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No Win Productions presents Woyzeck, FJF at The New OhioEver come across a script that speaks to you so strongly, you just have to produce it?

I know that sort of thing has certainly happened to me (you’ll be among the first to know when I actually produce it, dear listeners), and it’s pretty-much what happened to director Jeremy Duncan Pape with Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck.

After a university production, Pape wanted to get his adaptation, Woyzeck, FJF, out to the world—so he formed a company with collaborators Megan Lee and Matthew Kreiner. The three of them are the beating heart of No Win Productions, and their premiere production is currently running at The New Ohio.

Listen in as Jeremy, Megan, and Matthew discuss moving chronologies, understanding a piece of art’s history, insanity, making the transition to producing, and why these cats founded a new company.

“Part of our mission statement is looking at people, and humanity in general, in circumstances that cannot be overcome…”

“I hope that our audience members are given the opportunity to look at these things and relate to an impossible situation…’what if I were in that kind of situation?’…and hopefully, dare I say it, we can all be a little more compassionate through that kind of understanding…”

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Jon Stancato & Kiran Rikhye of “Kill Me Like You Mean It”

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Stolen Chair Theatre Company presents Kill Me Like You Mean It, written by Kiran Rikhye and directed by Jon StancatoTough detectives. Tougher dames. Double-crosses. Cigarettes. Shadows. Fedoras. All the hallmarks of film noir.

With their show Kill Me Like You Mean It, playwright Kiran Rikhye and director Jon Stancato (no strangers to the podcast—definitely check out their interviews from past Stolen Chair shows The Man Who Laughs and Potion) transfer all those classic film noir elements to the stage.

Then, they add in a healthy dose of theatre of the absurd.

What comes out is an absurdly fun & tightly executed piece of drama.

Listen in as Jon & Kiran discuss re-mounting (and revamping) a show from their past, audience placement as camera angles, abandoning tetralogies, having your actors create their own vocal musical score, and honing the rhythmic and sonic nature of your show.

“There’s something really unsettling about it…even though it is fun, and even though it is a comedy, it sort of is a deeply unnerving world…”

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Karim Muasher, Carrie Brown, Becca Bernard, and Melinda Jean Ferraraccio of “Dog Show”

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Animal Engine presents Dog Show at FRIGID NEW YORKEveryone loves dogs.

And theatre-goers love a good farce.

So, why not do a show with dogs acting out a farce?

It may sound like a unique starting place—but you’d be surprised how many points of contact there are. Animal Engine is the company making those connections in their new, appropriately titled Dog Show, based on Sauce for the Goose by Georges Feydeau, and running as part of Frigid New York.

Come dressed as a dog, and your ticket’s just $10. Seriously.

Listen in as the team behind Animal Engine, director Karim Muasher & Carrie Brown, and their fabulous collaborators Becca Bernard and Melinda Jean Ferraraccio, discuss base instincts, refining a comedy, working from disparate source material, and, of course, dogs.

“The idea with farce is that the characters are all really led by their base instincts…sex, hunger, lust, all of those things…and that’s sort kind of like the dog brain, they don’t really stop to think, they just kinda go for it…that’s sort of the idea of using dogs…”

“We’re trying to find those meeting points…where do the dogs and the humans intersect in a way that’s funny and interesting…”

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Nat Cassidy, Matthew Trumbull, and Arthur Aulisi of “The Temple, or, Lebensraum”

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The Temple, or, Lebensraum, written and directed by Nat Cassidy, at The Brick TheaterIt surprised me to hear that Nat Cassidy‘s new work The Temple, or, Lebensraum, currently running at The Brick, was based on a story by godfather of horror H. P. Lovecraft, because in all my collections of the man’s writings, I hadn’t read it.

It’s an early piece of his, available for free online, so I breezed through it on my way to the theatre. But where the original is a small (and, truth be told, somewhat weak) tale from 1920 set on a German submarine in World War I, Cassidy’s adaptation moves that submarine to 1943 (and is anything but weak).

While it’s completely unnecessary to read the story in advance, if you’re familiar with it, you’ll see a lot that’s familiar (dolphins!); but you’ll also quickly realize this isn’t just a stage adaptation. This is full adaptation, pulling the undersea dread of Lovecraft’s short story from simply a fear of the unknown into a complex play simultaneously weaving in fear of a well-known terror that humanity constantly struggles with: the fight amongst ourselves for power, and self-preservation.

Now that’s horror.

Listen in as Nat, along with two of the show’s actors, Arthur Aulisi and Matthew Trumbull, discuss why this particular Lovecraft story and why it’s set in WWII, “terrible things,” finding authentic costumes for your show, I am Providence, and dealing with things that are way too huge for the human mind.

“I try to parse out what it is in our souls, or in our psyches…why it is that we find chaos so terrifying. What does it make us ask, what does it force us to confront about ourselves…to find the humanity in horror…”

“There’s a very strong…you can’t even call it an undercurrent, it’s the main current of the show, is joking, and humor…one of the many reasons for that is horror and humor are hand in hand, they’re so intricately related…”

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Maurice Decaul, Alex Mallory, and the cast of “Dijla Wal Furat: Between the Tigris and the Euphrates”

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Poetic Theater Productions presents Dijla Wal Furat: Between the Tigris and the Euphrates, by Maurice Decaul, irected by Alex MalloryPoetic License is back—GSAS! was there for the first installment way back in 2012, and though sadly I’ve missed the last two, Poetic Theater Productions‘ Alex Mallory and Jeffrey Karafin are now presenting their fourth year of new poetic theater.

One of the two full-length plays anchoring this year’s festival is Dijla Wal Furat: Between the Tigris and the Euphrates, directed by Mallory and written by Maurice Decaul, who has the unique perspective to write about the early days of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, because he was actually there, serving in the Marine Corps. The play follows four distinct perspectives over a couple weeks in 2003, weaving a tale that shows not just the hell of war, but also the humanity of each person involved.

The festival only has a couple more days from the posting of this episode, so head on over to the Poetic Theater Productions’ website to check out what you can still see; it’ll be worth it.

And, be sure to listen in to this episode as Alex, Maurice, and cast members Ali Andre Ali, Katie Zaffrann, Victory Chappotin, Nabil Viñas, Ankur Rathee, Fahim Hamid, and Perri Yaniv discuss drawing upon personal experience, drawing a diverse audience, learning about and seeing the Iraqi perspective, and bringing humanity to all sides of a conflict.

“For me, the reason I act in anything is to try to bring humanity to a story, and I feel like war is the kind of thing that happens when you forget about the humanity of people. So it’s an honor to be able to get onstage and help tell a story that’s written by a Marine, and tell these stories that we won’t hear, we won’t see the humanity of unless we get it on a stage…”

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James Rutherford, Laura Butler Rivera, and Jon Froehlich of “All That Dies and Rises”

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M-34 and Cloud of Fools present All That Dies and RisesWhat do you do when, almost a year into development of a play, the play disappears?

You could cut and run. Or, you could rally the team you’ve assembled, and make something else. Something grounded in the work you’ve done up to that point—but also, something beautifully unique.

That’s just what happened to the team behind M-34 and Cloud of Fools Theater Company‘s All That Dies and Rises; listen in as director James Rutherford, choreographer Laura Butler Rivera, and performer Jon Froehlich discuss making rorschach blots, why we’re here, focusing on the excitement, and the wisdom of Peter Brook.

“…if it’s too abstract, it doesn’t work. It needs to look enough like something that your mind tries to figure it out, but not enough like anything that your mind is able to succeed…”

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Heather Cohn, Rachel Hip-Flores, and Brian Silliman of “Once Upon a Bride There Was a Forest”

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Flux Theatre Ensemble presents Once Upon a Bride There Was a ForestRegular listeners to the podcast have probably noticed that, if Flux Theatre Ensemble is presenting a show, GSAS! is going to be there. Great people, great productions, and great conversation always ensues.

In this episode, about Flux’s new show Once Upon a Bride There Was a Forest, the conversation isn’t just about the work onstage; it takes a turn toward how the artists were able to get that work onstage.

See, the show’s director (and Flux Producing Director) Heather Cohn, and Flux Artistic Director August Schulenburg, are partners in life as well as in art—and they recently welcomed a daughter into the world, which is certainly a big (and wonderful!) change in their lives. It doesn’t, however, have to keep them from making theatre; in fact, it can inform the process in a lovely way, as it sounds like it did here.

Listen in as Heather, along with actors Rachel Hip-Flores and Brian Silliman, discuss balancing parenthood with your theatre career, how you get both a house and a forest onstage at the same time, and when you know the play is the right one.

 “…those are the only two things you ever, ever need to do: look at babies and learn the lines.”

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Brad Raimondo, director, and Spencer Davis Milford, actor, of “In Fields Where They Lay”

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The Dreamscape Theatre presents In Fields Where They Lay at The New OhioAs director Brad Raimondo notes at the top of this interview, there are stories from history that just seem to stick with you. It was because the story of the Christmas Truce of 1914 wouldn’t leave him or playwright Ricardo Pérez González alone that The Dreamscape Theatre developed In Fields Where They Lay, currently playing at The New Ohio.

But you’re definitely not going to the theatre for a history lesson—this is a beautifully-told story that resonates in a powerful way, especially at the holiday season of this particular moment in time (one hundred years on from the Christmas depicted in the play).

Listen in as Brad & actor Spencer Davis Milford discuss starting at the ending and building the play from there, propaganda, a long incubation, and how to tell an epic story on a human scale.

Oh, and your interviewer has a moment of realization about the origin of Tom & Jerry.

“I think all of us have, at one point or another, had a moment where we’ve really felt like ‘this is the right time to be working on telling a story about a group of armed men in uniforms, deciding to put their guns down for a little while, and think about who the people are on the other side’…”

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