Artem Yatsunov, director, and Stacie Lents, playwright, of “Enchanted Arms”

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StrangeDog Theatre Company presents Enchanted ArmsRemember your classic fairy tales?

Well, StrangeDog Theatre Company is taking the characters from those stories, and setting them up in low-rent apartments in a run-down building named, appropriately, Enchanted Arms.

And while the four tales presented here have a familiar ring…these are not the fairy tales your Grandma told you.

Listen in as director Artem Yatsunov, and one of the four playwrights featured in the evening, Stacie Lents, discuss taking the magic out of fairy-tales, throwing money around to the sounds of Whitney Houston, shit-talking Ayn Rand, and plays & stories that are actually…fun.

“No happy endings.”

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Kiran Rikhye, playwright, and Jon Stancato, director, of “Potion: A Play in Three Cocktails”

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Stolen Chair Theater Company presents "Potion: A Play in Three Cocktails"Regular listeners know very well by now that I love to enjoy a drink while I’m at a show. But I don’t think I’ve been to a performance that integrates imbibing as well as this one.

In Potion: A Play in Three Cocktails, playwright Kiran Rikhye, director Jon Stancato, and the lovely troupe at Stolen Chair Theatre Company have not only created a show in a bar with booze readily available for consumption, but they grab a big swizzle stick and mix the cocktails into the drama. The very act of drinking the custom “potions” served throughout the play serves the narrative, and its premise, in a brilliant and beautiful way.

This is a fun night at the theatre, y’all. A fun night of theatre at the bar. With delicious custom cocktails. What more could you want?

Listen in as Jon & Kiran discuss crazy ways to write plays, “potion” as metaphor for the transformation of the actor, how opera is like a great night out at a bar, and scratching your play like it’s on a turntable.

“…I think it was a series of remixes…”

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Brian Gillespie, director, and actors Gina LeMoine and Luke Wise, of “Virus Attacks Heart”

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Pull Together Productions presents Virus Attacks Heart, directed by Brian GillespieSummer’s almost here, which means festival season is getting underway. This is a great time to catch brand-new OOB plays, and GSAS! got started at Planet Connections Theatre Festivity with the world premiere of Virus Attacks Heart, written by Shannon Murdoch and directed by Brian Gillespie.

In this two-hander, we see the complexities of a one-night-stand between the lonely, word-loving 18-year-old Jamie (Luke Wise) and the lonely, almost-twice-his-age “12-drink” Beatrice (Gina LeMoine), both of whom are “running away from things in their lives, and then they run into each other and, though meeting, have to face those things, whether they though that was going to happen or not.”

Listen in as Brian, Gina, and Luke discuss “drunken fever-dreams,” taking the time to search text through movement, and finding the right interesting, challenging play in a stack of open submissions.

“…it’s theatre, and the audience should be engaging their imaginations…[they have] to lean in, and do a little work of filling in the gaps…”

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Mike Inwood, lighting designer of “The Essential Straight & Narrow”

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The Mad Ones present The Essential Straight and NarrowSo this is one of those episodes that got recorded when the show was (first) presented, but I missed my window to get the podcast up before closing.

Thankfully, though, it was a show in development by The Mad Ones, and the full production is set to open this weekend at The New Ohio.

When lighting designer Mike Inwood & I first chatted during its workshop run in The Ice Factory last summer, it was called the Untitled Biopic Project, a show that crosses the genres of film, theatre, and music — in this interview, we talk a bit about the development process that went into the project, which is now called The Essential Straight & Narrow.

Listen in as Mike and I discuss how a lighting designer can inform the development of work with a group like The Mad Ones, writing & working in layers, and how to properly pronounce the word “biopic.” Continue reading →

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August Schulenburg, Kelly O’Donnell, Will Lowry, & the cast of “Jane the Plain”

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Flux Theatre Ensemble presents "Jane the Plain"The great folks of Flux Theatre Ensemble are no strangers to the podcast (see their three past episodes for more great stuff), with each unique production linked by the ensemble’s players and production team, and the high quality that marks a Flux show.

That said, I was a bit surprised when I heard the company’s latest offering would be set in high school, and feature characters with names like “Scotty the Hotty” and “Betty the Pretty” — but, of course, this isn’t your typical high school dramedy. It’s like John Hughes meets…well, you should listen to the interview. Gus tells that joke way better than I could.

Listen in as director Kelly O’Donnell, scenic designer Will Lowry, playwright August Schulenburg, and the cast discuss tightening your aesthetic vocabulary, transformation, and getting in touch with your teenage emotions, where moments of magnitude are ever-present.

“We didn’t quite know what the genre was completely, but in the rehearsal room we really worked as a team to develop it together, really devising a lot of the movement and a lot of the rules and the vocabulary of the stage…”

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Michael Sladek, director of “Below the Belt”

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Black Lodge Theater presents "Below the Belt"Sometimes, as a director, you run into those scripts that you know you just have to do.

For Michael Sladek, that script was Richard Dresser’s Below the Belt, an absurdist take on life and work in the corporate environment — and “absurdist,” in this case, means pretty dead-on, as both Michael and I attest to in this interview.

Listen in as Michael & I discuss putting up a show in the former boiler room of Bell Laboratories, avoiding curse words in verbal battles, wrangling in the corporate workplace, and finding the funny in the dark material.

“…it’s the whole world over, we are all apparently corporate beings now…it’s so funny how often we’re fighting for jobs that, once we have the jobs, we hate them…it’s a lot about that sort of wrangling to get up that ladder, even though you hate the ladder, but you do it anyway, because it’s what you do to survive, and it’s what you do to avoid the harder things in life…”

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DeLisa White, director, and Heather Cunningham, actor, of “An Appeal to the Woman of the House”

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Retro Productions presents "An Appeal to the Woman of the House"Retro Productions makes theatre about where we came from, and how far we’ve come — and it’s theatre that reminds us that sometimes, we’ve still got a ways to go.

For director DeLisa White and actress/Retro Artistic Director Heather Cunningham, the personal stories from the past that we tell, live, in the theater, can be the kinds of stories that have a real impact on the way we live in the world today. Christie Perfetti Williams’ An Appeal to the Woman of the House is that kind of story.

Listen in as DeLisa, Heather and I discuss how to make change in your community, vigilance through theatre and storytelling, and how complex even the smallest impacts can be.

“…it’s not just the big actions that impact change, it’s the people who are either invested in, or complicit with, the change that occurs. It’s not just the person on the bus, but all the reactions around them…”

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Nolan Kennedy, playwright/actor, and Welland H. Scripps, actor, of “Bully Me Down”

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Letter of Marque Theater Company presents Bully Me DownYo ho ho, and a bottle of rum…

…and a whistleblower, a high-school anti-bullying activist, an assassin, a Scottish sea captain, a U.S. president, Barbara Walters…

All these characters (and more) collide in various bars across the borough of Brooklyn as part of Letter of Marque Theater Company‘s traveling play Bully Me Down, written by Nolan Kennedy and performed by Welland H. Scripps, Jason Tottenham, Scarlet Rivera, and Kennedy himself.

Listen in as Nolan, Welland and I hang out on the street-corner outside Hank’s Saloon after a performance to discuss putting theatre in a bar, a play as your company’s “self-titled album,” bullying, and shooting for the stars.

“We kind of wanted to do a ‘self-titled-album’ kind of show, so it’s trying on these piratical, privateer stories and ideas, and it also is dealing with what’s happening around us…this idea of what’s private and what’s not private…”

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Boo Killebrew & Geoffrey Decas O’Donnell, playwrights/performers of “Family Play (1979 to present)”

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Collaboration Town presents Family Play (1979 to present)Over the past several decades, the fundamental definition of “family” has changed — and the collaborators of Collaboration Town have come of age through some 30-odd of those years.

In their new show Family Play (1979 to present), previously titled Help Me to Make It and part of their two-year participation in The Archive Alliance Residency, CTown co-artistic directors, actors, and playwrights on the project Boo Killebrew and Geoffrey Decas O’Donnell (fellow playwright Jordan Seavey spoke about the project on an earlier episode of the podcast, during the show’s workshop last summer) explore the changing nature of the family through a series of 116 moments — many of which will be familiar to…well, anyone who’s grown up.

Listen in as Boo and Geoffrey discuss what makes a family, “a lot of Google Docs,” the deconstruction of the traditional nuclear family in traditional American drama, and how you define a person based on moments.

“…if we’re going to explore how family is changing, then we need to explore traditional structure in plays…we wanted to just break everything down as much as possible…take away definitions of people…everyone is everyone is everyone…”

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Christopher Loar, adaptor/director of “The Complete & Condensed Stage Directions of Eugene O’Neill, Volume 2”

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The Complete & Condensed Stage Directions of Eugene O'Neill, Volume 2, directed/adapted by Christopher LoarA few years back, director, accidental Eugene O’Neill enthusiast, and TMLMTBGB actor Christopher Loar thought up a fun little sketch for that long-running, long-titled New York Neo-Futurists show (if you don’t know it from the acronym, click this link, then go see the show this weekend, or any weekend!) — strip away O’Neill’s dialogue, brilliant as it is, and just say and perform what was meant to be performed and not said: the stage directions.

If you’ve ever read an O’Neill, you probably know that such a drastic cut would still leave you with a whole lot of text. The exercise of turning that text into a staged event unto itself proved successful in TMLMTBGB, so Loar’s next step? Make an evening out of it with The Complete & Condensed Stage Directions of Eugene O’Neill, Volume 1: Early Plays/Lost Plays, which received a Drama Desk nomination for “Unique Theatrical Experience.”

Now Loar and the Neo-Futurists are back with The Complete & Condensed Stage Directions of Eugene O’Neill, Volume 2 — because why mess with a good thing, right?

Listen in as Christopher and I discuss the utility of stage directions, staying out of the way of your performers/collaborators/interpreters, and O’Neill’s moment vs. this 2014 moment in downtown theatre.

“I think in the stage directions there’s the intention of what the writer wants to happen onstage or happen with that character…but I guess that’s what I like so much about this…I too come from a background where I was trained to ignore all of the stage directions…”

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