Top Shows (that I missed) in 2020

In past Decembers, I have come up with a list of the best shows I saw that opened in New York City that year. Well, for 2020, that list would have to be pretty short.

Sure, I could talk about Blessed Unrest's Battle of Angels, and Irish Rep's Lady G, and end with Roundabout's standout production of A Soldier's Play, but for the most part, 2020 was a total loss when it came to live theatre.

Instead, I'm going to write about ten shows I missed, plays I was looking forward to seeing live, but couldn't experience because massive government incompetence turned a completely predictable (and predicted) outbreak into the worst health crisis since the influenza of 1918-1920.

This year was supposed to be one of world travel for me, rather than confinement to mostly just four small rooms. That's why my list is not restricted to just New York City this year. Here are ten shows I should have seen, would have seen, and likely would have loved, had it not been for the dumpster fire of 2020:

10. A Touch of the Poet. Okay, this one is partially my fault, since Irish Rep went ahead and produced this Eugene O'Neill play digitally. I was looking forward to seeing it live, though, and Zoom fatigue combined with the added work of trying to teach classes online meant that I missed the virtual performance. I still blame 2020.

9. Hangmen. Was Martin McDonough's latest play going to be a masterpiece? Maybe. Maybe not. But New York never got to find out, because it was still in previews when COVID-19 shut down theatres. Some shows vowed to reopen once the crisis passed, but as it became clear that the shutdown would last for weeks and then months, producers had to pull the plug on this one.

8. Man of La Mancha. The Astoria Performing Arts Center had planned a revival of this classic musical, to be directed by Dev Bondarin, whose work I've always loved. Fortunately, APAC is still going, though other theatre companies have been forced to fold. Theatre in Queens took a big hit when the Secret Theatre announced its closure this year. The one bright spot is that APAC will be taking over the space they've vacated.

7. As You Like It. The Public Theater has experienced tremendous success with its Public Works productions in Central Park, bringing together professional artists and amateurs in a celebration of all that's great about New York City. Shaina Taub did an excellent job composing music for 2019's production of Twelfth Night, and I was looking forward to hearing her score for As You Like It. It looks like I'll have to wait a bit longer now.

6. Richard II. The Shakespeare in the Park production I was really looking forward to seeing this year, though, was Richard II. Though I've seen multiple filmed versions of the play this is the only one in the Shakespeare canon I've never experienced live. After the shutdown, director Saheem Ali organized a radio version of the piece that aired on WNYC. You can listen to each of the four episodes, which are available as podcasts, though it's certainly not the same thing.

5. The Prince of Egypt. After attending a Shaw conference in Spain this May, I was supposed to spend some time with my sister in London. She had already gotten us tickets to see the stage adaptation of Stephen Schwartz's The Prince of Egypt at the Dominion Theatre. The movie was delightful, and the score does seem to lend itself to a stage transfer, so I was looking forward to seeing how it works on stage, as well as spending some time with my sister. Instead, I've only been able to see her virtually this year.

4. Leopoldstadt. Even more exciting than The Prince of Egypt was the other show my sister had gotten us tickets to see. Tom Stoppard's new play Leopoldstadt opened this January in a production directed by Patrick Marber, who had done such a brilliant job directing Stoppard's Travesties. Of all the shows playing in London this year, this was the one I really, really wanted to see. It tells the stories of members of the Jewish community in Vienna during the first half of the 20th century. We had tickets, but now I don't know if I'll ever have a chance to see it.

3. The Devil's Disciple. Though the Shaw conference in Spain was cancelled due to COVID-19, I briefly entertained hopes of attending another Shaw conference in Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada. Instead, that conference went virtual, and the Shaw Festival decided to postpone its summer season for the summer of 2021. That means I might still get a chance to see the Shaw play they were supposed to do this year, The Devil's Disciple. Incidentally, Gingold Theatrical Group had planned to produce the same play this autumn. Will it be possible in 2021? We're still not sure.

2. Great Expectations. This play isn't an adaptation of the work by Charles Dickens, though I would have been excited about that, too. No, this Great Expectations is a reworking of my own short play The Rainbow, but for two older actors. A friend of mine, Ellen DiStasi, approached me earlier this year about doing The Rainbow with Theater of Light, which brings live drama to communities of older folks here in New York. Ellen asked if I could update the script to be performed by more mature actors, so a woman who had recently had a break-up became a widow, and there were a few other changes as well. The biggest thing, though, was that Ellen wasn't sure that a long monologue about a D.H. Lawrence novel would work for her target audience, so I changed it to a monologue about Great Expectations instead, which naturally changed the title of the play as well. I'd love to be able to do this show in 2021, but a play performed by members of a vulnerable community for other members of a vulnerable community....

1. The Love Songs of Brooklynites. I've been working on a full-length version of my one-act play that was workshopped in 2019 at the Theatre of Western Springs. Meanwhile, the one-act version was accepted for the theatre trail at the Arundel Festival of the Arts in the United Kingdom. The Drip Action Theatre Company in Arundel says they want to do the show this upcoming year. That would be wonderful. Though I've had my work performed in Canada, Australia, and even Japan, I've never had a production in the U.K., and Arundel looks like an amazing place to visit. Perhaps I'll be able to go this August and see it. Whether that happens or not, I'm still holding out hope for the full-length version of The Love Songs of Brooklynites to have a New York production once the theatres reopen. That means we're all going to have to wear masks, limit unnecessary travel, and get vaccinated. It also means that the government needs to get its act together and actually distribute and administer the vaccines being produced. Only then are we going to be able to have great theatre back.

Discover a Great New Play

Tomorrow (Monday) my one-act play The Love Songs of Brooklynites will have a staged reading as a part of Emerging Artists Theatre's New Work Series.

Zach McCoy is playing the part of Chuck, a recent transplant to Brooklyn from Wisconsin. Zach's favorite stage credits include David in Love and Human Remains, Bernard in Boeing, Boeing, and Colin in The Birthday Boys. He also appeared in my play The State of Colorado v. Tennessee Williams. He currently does extensive voiceover work, reviews plays for The Drama League, and runs a sustainable seafood restaurant on the Upper West Side. Zach is a proud graduate of Butler University in Indianapolis, IN.

The role of Chuck's neighbor Abbie is being played by Jessica L. Vera. Her previous credits include Bullet Catchers, The True History of the Tragic Life and Triumphant Death of Julia Pastrana, the Ugliest Woman in the World, and A Snowfall in Berlin. She has also appeared on the Hulu series The Path and is in an independent film, Beyond the Night, which will be premiering at Woodstock Film Festival. I've also had the pleasure of working with Jessica as part of the 36th Street Writers Block, where she read the leading roles in Capital and Bones of the Sea as I was developing them.

The reading is directed by Dev Bondarin, who is the Artistic Director of Astoria Performing Arts Center where she has directed Follies, Raisin, ...Spelling Bee, Astoria Stories, Merrily We Roll Along, and In The Bones. As Associate Artistic Director of Prospect Theater Company, she directs a musical theater lab which has produced over 80 new, short musicals. Her other credits include Elevator Heart, King Lear, and A Home Across The Ocean.

Tickets for the reading (which benefits Emerging Artists Theatre) are $10. That includes admission to readings of two other short plays, The Cruelty of Children by Raymond McAnally and Hamlet Investigations, Inc. by Ellen Abrams.

The theatre is located at 15 West 28th Street on the second floor. Hope you can make it!

LOVE SONGS Next Week!

My one-act play The Love Songs of Brooklynites will have a staged reading next week on Monday, October 8th, at 7:00 pm.

The reading is being directed by Dev Bondarin and stars Jessica Vera and Zach McCoy. Kevin Quinn will be reading stage directions.

Some of you might have seen a reading of the same play last year at the Dramatists Guild. This version has been tightened up a bit and is slightly shorter.

We'll be presenting the piece as a benefit for Emerging Artists Theatre. Tickets are $10 each. In addition to seeing my show, the audience will also get to see The Cruelty of Children by Raymond McAnally and Hamlet Investigations, Inc. by Ellen Abrams.

The reading will be held at TADA, 15 West 28th Street (between Broadway and 5th Avenue) on the second floor. Tickets are available here:

https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3616610

If you can make it, I'd love to see you there!

More Praise for FOLLIES

Congratulations to the Astoria Performing Arts Center, whose production of Follies cleaned up at the New York Innovative Theatre Awards this week.

In addition to winning for Best Ensemble, the revival of the classic Stephen Sondheim/James Goldman musical also picked up awards for choreographer Sara Brians, costume designer Jennifer Jacob, and actress LaDonna Burns.

I had the pleasure of seeing the production, directed by Dev Bondarin, this past May. It was also the last production APAC produced in their former space. For next season, they'll be moving to the Variety Boys & Girls Club of Queens, just down the street from their old place.

Incidentally, Dev will be directing a staged reading of my one-act play The Love Songs of Brooklynites next month, presented by Emerging Artists Theatre. Hope you can make it!

Staged Reading Next Month

My one-act play The Love Songs of Brooklynites will be having a staged reading next month as a part of Emerging Artists Theatre's New Work Series.

The script had a reading last year at the Dramatists Guild with Jessica Vera and Zach McCoy. I'm happy to say that both actors are slated to be reprising their roles in this reading, which will be directed by Dev Bondarin.

We will be presenting the script as a benefit for EAT, so tickets are $10 each. In addition to seeing our show, you'll also get to see The Cruelty of Children by Raymond McAnally and Hamlet Investigations, Inc. by Ellen Abrams.

The fundraiser will be held on Columbus Day, Monday, October 8th, at 7:00 pm. EAT is renting out the theatre at TADA, 15 West 28th Street (between Broadway and 5th Avenue) on the second floor. Hope you can come!

Last Follies

Yesterday, I attended Astoria Performing Arts Center's production of Follies, a musical that takes place in a theatre about to be torn down.

The set design by Ann Beyersdorfer was perfect, and conveyed the dilapidated nature of the play's setting. The production was made all the more poignant, however, by the fact that this was the last day of the last production APAC would ever perform in that theatre.

APAC's theatre space, by the way, is a church gymnasium, which worked perfectly for their production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, but has also been memorably transformed for Merrily We Roll Along and other shows. Both of those productions were directed by Dev Bondarin, who also helmed this wonderful Follies.

What was wonderful about it? Well, let's start with Stephen Sondheim's lyrics being perfectly articulated by a cast of veteran actors. Victoria Bundonis made sure you understood every last syllable of "I'm Still Here," and Greg Horton (who played Karl Lindner in last year's production of Raisin at APAC) gave one of the most insightful performances of "Buddy's Blues" I've ever heard (with help, of course, from younger performers Mandarin Wu and Kathleen LaMagna).

My favorite performance, though, came from Tina Stafford (who was a memorable Mrs. Corney in Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey's Oliver Twist) as Sally Durant Plummer. Her rendition of "Losing My Mind" was heartbreaking. Her younger doppelganger, Andrea Dotto, was a magnificent Young Sally, and clearly has a bright future ahead for herself.

Where is APAC off to next? They haven't announced where they'll be performing next season, but keep your eye out for them. If Follies is any indication, we should be expecting great things from them in the future.

Raisin

The 1974 Tony Award for Best Musical went to Raisin, an adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. Never seen it? Well now is your chance!

Astoria Performing Arts Center--which has revived other overlooked musicals like Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's Merrily We Roll Along--is currently performing the first fully staged New York revival of Raisin since... well... ever!

Dev Bondarin directed the piece, and it has a wonderful cast, including Warren Nolan Jr. as Walter Lee Younger, Ebony Marshall-Oliver as his mother Lena, Brandi Knox as his wife Ruth, and Sarita Amani Nash as his little sister Beneatha.

The musical streamlines the story, eliminating the whole plot line concerning Ruth's pregnancy, and getting rid of Beneath's boyfriend George Murchison. We don't miss him one bit, though, since that gives more time for Beneatha's other love interest, Joseph Asagai, played winningly by Cartreze Tucker. His song "Alaiyo" is one of the highlights of the show.

While the musical strips down the plot of the original, it also expands the cast, giving us a chorus of neighborhood regulars who provide transitional numbers like "Runnin' to Meet the Man" and "Booze." We also get to meet the offstage scoundrel Willie Harris, played in all is dodgey grandeur by Billy Lowrimore. Tony Perry plays a pastor who embodies Lena's deep faith in the number that begins Act II, "He Come Down This Morning."

Finding songs in pre-existing plays can be challenging. Hansberry's classic has one memorable moment with music where Walter Lee dances on a table to the sounds of a record playing traditional African music. As Hansberry describes in the stage directions: "He sees what we cannot, that he is a leader of his people, a great chief, a descendant of Chaka, and that the hour to march has come." In the number "African Dance," Raisin allows the audience to see this, too, with the chorus coming on dressed in traditional African clothes provided by costume designer Jeannipher Pacheco.

The best song in the show, though, is the satirical "Not Anymore" in which Walter, Ruth, and Beneatha recount the visit they received from the "welcoming committee" of the new neighborhood where they hope to move. Alas, the depiction of barely beneath the surface racism is all too topical now in 2017.

If you're interested in seeing the show, get your tickets soon. Raisin runs only through May 27. For more information check out:

Astoria Performing Arts Center

I Hate You Tomorrow!

Tomorrow, January 15th, is the staged reading of my new play I Hate You: A Love Story at 7:00 at IATI Theater, 64 E. 4th Street. Hope you can come!

The play follows the tumultuous relationship of two people who quickly discover they either are soul mates, or want to kill each other. Or quite possibly both. The opening scene of the piece was originally produced under the title The Rainbow and was first directed by Dev Bondarin.

Dev is directing this reading as well, and I am thrilled to be working with her once again. She is also the Artistic Director of Astoria Performing Arts Center where her credits include The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Astoria Stories, and Merrily We Roll Along.

The cast includes Doug Rossi and Sandra Maren Schneider. We're also lucky to have Vanna Richardson stage managing.

This reading is free and open to the public, so if you're available at 7:00 on Sunday, please join us!

And next up is...

Thanks to all who came out to see The January Plays at Urban Stages! It was loverly to work with director Ilanna Satzman and actors Heather Massie, Maria de Vries, and Doug Rossi.

It was also an honor to share the stage with other great theatre artists, including Bara Swain, Daniel Damiano, Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich, Kim Sharp, Dev Bondarin, and Russell Jordan. Here's a picture of the whole gang!

Now that The January Plays are over, I'm moving on to my next project. My play I Hate You: A Love Story will have a staged reading at 7:00 pm on Sunday, January 15th at IATI Theater, 64 E. 4th Street. Dev Bondarin is directing, and the cast includes Doug Rossi and Sandra Maren Schneider.

The reading is free and open to the public, so please come!

I Hate You: A Love Story

Today's announcement has been in the works for a long time, but I am pleased to say that my play I Hate You: A Love Story will have its first staged reading at 7:00 on Sunday, January 15th.

The reading will be free and open to the public. It will be held at IATI Theater 64 E. 4th Street. Dev Bondarin will be directing, and the cast will include Doug Rossi and Sandra Maren Schneider.

Though the reading is not affiliated with IATI, I am happy to be using their space. I was previously a part of the theater's play development group Cimientos, and they produced the first reading of my adaptation of Moby-Dick.

Dev, as it so happens, directed that reading, which featured Doug. Sandra and I have worked together before as well, including on THE STATE OF COLORADO v. TENNESSEE WILLIAMS. That play went on to be published in Canyon Voices.

I Hate You: A Love Story follows the tumultuous relationship of two people who meet in New York and quickly discover that they either are soul mates, or want to kill each other. Or quite possibly both. The opening scene of the play was originally produced under the title The Rainbow and is published in The Best American Short Plays 2012-2013.

Please come if you can!

THE RAINBOW coming to Philadelphia

Mark your calendars! On September 17th and 18th, my short play The Rainbow will be performed by 21st Ward Theater Company in Philadelphia.

The play is set outside in a park, and the production will be site-specific, outside in Philly's Gorgas Park. Nicole Miller Marks, founder of 21st Ward Theater Company, has been inspired in part by New York Classical Theatre, which brings free theater to New York City parks in the summer. Now, Philadelphia audiences will have access to something similar, but 21st Ward's first production will involve contemporary plays rather than classics.

The performance on Saturday, September 17th is scheduled for 6:00 pm. The performance on Sunday, September 18th is scheduled for 2:00 pm. Cast and crew have not been announced. Two other plays will also be performed with The Rainbow. Which ones? Find out later! (The company might still be arranging for the rights to the other plays, but trust me--it sounds like The Rainbow will be in good company.)

By the way, Dev Bondarin directed the original production of The Rainbow at the American Globe in 2012. The play is included in the anthology The Best American Short Plays 2012-2013 published by Applause.

There's another even bigger announcement coming up, but papers aren't signed yet. Keep reading this blog, though, to find out about an upcoming World Premiere next spring!

Spelling Bee in A-S-T-O-R-I-A

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is one of those delightful shows that you just can't see too many times, which is why when I found out that the Astoria Performing Arts Center would be doing the show in Queens, directed by the incomparable Dev Bondarin, I knew I wanted to go.

What I wasn't prepared for, though, was that the play would be even more affecting than it was on Broadway. It isn't that the multiple-Tony-Award-winning production wasn't brilliantly directed by James Lapine when it played at Circle in the Square. It was. Somehow, however, what APAC has managed to do with the piece in a small venue in Queens is truly magical.

Part of the magic is the space. The play takes place in a gymnasium, and APAC's theater really is in a converted gymnasium, which had to be marginally less converted for this production. That didn't mean the company skimped on the set, though, as Tim McMath's set design definitely works some theatrical magic in the second act. Still, the small, intimate setting does a lot to bring home the message of the play.

As do the performers! While all of them are professionals (and most of them Equity members), none of the actors have struck gold on Broadway (yet). Lindsie VanWinkle, who memorably played Eliza Poe in Nevermore Off-Broadway, gives a stand-out performance as spelling bee host Rona Lisa Peretti. She is accompanied by Matt Welsh (seen last year in APAC's Merrily We Roll Along) as Vice Principal Douglas Panch, an assistant administrator in need of anger-management training. Billy Lowrimore also has some hysterical moments at Mitch Mahoney, the "Comfort Counselor" doing community service.

It is the spellers, though, that really break your heart. There's Chip (Stephen Mark), who painfully learns how unfair life can be, the home-schooled Leaf (Lee Slobotkin), who is thrilled just to participate, the overachiever Marcy (Emily Borromeo), who discovers the joy of not living up to expectations, the precocious Logainne (Heslens Estevez), who is president of the LGBT-Straight Alliance at her elementary school, the shy Olive (Becca Andrews), who waits patiently for her absent father to finally arrive, and the magic-footed William (Patrick Halley), who gradually learns to care for a world that never cared much for him.

All of the actors are people to watch in the future. But why wait until then? Head out to see them now in an intimate space in Astoria. APAC's production is running until May 28th. For more information, go to:

Astoria Performing Arts Center

Our Time

When Merrily We Roll Along opened on Broadway in 1981, audiences didn't know what to make of it. The play's structure, moving backward from a cynical and depressing present to a time in the past filled with hope and optimism, must have seemed horribly pessimistic, as if the show's creators only wanted to twist the knife in the gut of America, reminding it of all it could have been and had failed to be.

Seeing the show last night, in the wonderful production Dev Bondarin directed at the Astoria Performing Arts Center, I felt the opposite. This beautifully written play refuses to take away the charm and joy of youth, and the reverse chronological order makes the piece oddly optimistic. That might not have been apparent in 1981, but in a society surfeited on cynicism, wary from experience, but longing for something pure and true, perhaps this play can finally find a home.

Collaborators Stephen Sondheim and George Furth based the musical on a 1934 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. When that show opened, almost 50 years before the premiere of the musical, the Great Depression was still raging. I imagine audiences must have been inclined to think harshly of the play's sell-out protagonist, whose path is traced back to the time he graduated from college, spouting self-confidently, "To thine own self be true."

But the musical adds something vital... music! No matter how the audience might think about the play rationally, the music exerts an emotional force that resists the impulse toward cynicism. Traditionally, a musical will have a bright, happy version of a song in the first act, then a sad, melancholy reprise in the second. Merrily We Roll Along famously reverses this order. For instance, the character Beth (played wonderfully in this production by Rachel Rhodes-Devey) sings a horribly depressing version of "Not a Day Goes By" in Act I as she's going through a nasty divorce. Then in Act II, she sings the same song filled with love and joy on her wedding day.

What is the effect of this device? One might be tempted to laugh at poor Beth, to deride her as a fool for ever having dreams. However, Sondheim's music won't let you. Watching the show at APAC, it wasn't as though I didn't feel the joy of Beth's wedding day. Instead, I felt the joy of her wedding day AND the pain of her divorce at the same time. I couldn't dismiss the joy, but rather wanted to hold on to it all the tighter.

That goes double for the play's final scene, as the three friends who ultimately will tear each other apart share a magical moment on a rooftop watching the world's first satellite fly overhead. A moment in the past is not any less real, any less meaningful for having gone by. The emotions the characters feel, and that we feel, are still valid, even if they are doomed to dissipate and die.

Merrily We Roll Along is playing at APAC until May 23rd, so be sure you get a chance to see it. The central trio of composer Franklin Shepard, lyricist Charley Kringas, and novelist Mary Flynn are portrayed with pathos by Jack Mosbacher, Nicholas Park, and Ally Bonino respectively.

Just be warned: You won't be able to get the score out of your head. In spite of what a certain producer in the play says, this show has plenty you can hum.

For more information, go to:

Astoria Performing Arts Center

Big News!

Now that Keep On Walkin' has completed its run at the University of New Hampshire, I want to announce some very big news: Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre will be premiering my adaptation of Moby-Dick this summer on Cape Cod!

Last year, Dev Bondarin directed two staged readings of the piece, one at IATI and the other at the Abingdon Theatre Company as part of their Sunday Series. Christopher Ostrom will be directing the production at WHAT. Chris is the managing director at the theatre and has extensive experience designing theatre and opera.

We have not cast the play yet, so check back here for cast announcements later. However, the theatre has now officially announced WHAT's 2015 season. Next month, they will present Mark Brown's adaptation of Around the World in 80 Days. They will follow that up with Theresa Rebeck's Seminar in May and June. Moby-Dick will begin performances on June 18th and run through mid-July.

Following Moby-Dick will be Lanie Robertson's Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, which received a spectacular Broadway production last year. Rounding out the season will be Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies and Stephen Dolginoff's Thrill Me.

Needless to say, I'm thrilled to be a part of such an exciting season, and I'm looking forward to visiting Cape Cod for rehearsals. This will be a perfect venue for Melville's classic story. I hope many of you can come see the show!

Meet the Crew

Tomorrow, June 1, my adaptation of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick will be done as a reader's theatre presentation as a part of the Abingdon Theatre Company's Sunday Series.

The show is at 7:00 pm at the Abingdon, 312 W. 36th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues in Manhattan.

You can get tickets here:

Sunday Series

Tickets are $20, but blog readers can use the discount code "BigFish" for $5 off.

The production is directed by Dev Bondarin and stage managed by Jodi M. Witherell. I thought you might want to meet the folks playing the crew of the Pequod. Here they are:

Alex Herrald Theater: Please Continue, Carry the Zero (Ensemble Studio Theatre). Just Right Just Now (Lesser America). Life And Times (Soho Rep/Public Theater). These Seven Sicknesses, The Wundelsteipen, Future Anxiety, Just Cause, and #serials@theflea (Flea Theater). Victor Frange Presents GAS! (Incubator Arts). The Consequences (Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre). Film: The Conservatory (College Emmy Award winner). Webseries: Wiggles (Channel 101/dir. Kris Knight). www.alexherrald.com

Russell Jordan worked with director Dev Bondarin earlier this year in the Manhattan Theatre Works (MTWorks) staged reading of Fengar Gael's The Draper's Eye. Recent Stage: Dig Infinity! (Planet Connections Theatre Festivity), The Messiah Complex (Downtown Urban Theater Festival). Recent Television: Blue Bloods and Black Box. Russell is an MTWorks company actor, co-owner of The Harlem Camerata reading salon, and an adjunct professor at York College/CUNY where he teaches Performance for Television. Member: AEA & SAG-AFTRA. www.russelljordan.com

Doug Rossi has played such classical roles as Tartuffe, Macbeth, Orlando, Friar Lawrence, Caliban, Orsino, Brutus, Ford, Don Pedro, and Hamlet. In NYC, he's appeared in over 70 productions including several at FringeNYC, Planet Connections (Best Featured Actor winner) and MITF (Best Supporting Actor nominee). MFA from Alabama Shakespeare Festival.

Conrad Schott Regional: Our Town (dir. Les Waters, Actors Theatre of Louisville), Remix 38 (ATL Humana Festival), All's Well That Ends Well and The Atheist's Tragedy (in repertory at Academy for Classical Acting). New York: The Collective (Zoo Theater), King Lear (American Bard Theatre Company). Schott was an Actors Theatre of Louisville Acting Apprentice and trained at The National Theatre Institute and BADA Midsummer in Oxford. BA: Vassar College, MFA: Shakespeare Theatre Company's Academy for Classical Acting.

Gordon Stanley Seven original Broadway casts, including Joseph…Dreamcoat, Beauty and the Beast, and Ragtime; also Cabaret (1st Roundabout revival). Off-Broadway: Lies My Father Told Me, Iron Curtain, Flamingo Court, White Woman Street, Take Me Along, many others. Movies /TV: Beauty and the Beast, Pocohontas,  Law and Order: CI.  Best credit/longest run: thirty-four years with Renee.

William Oliver Watkins has guest-starred on Nurse Jackie, Law & Order: SVU and Rescue Me. Stage: Jackie & Me and Ruined (Denver Center), Lombardi (Cleveland Playhouse), The Underside of Jackfruit & Papaya and McRib (Abingdon), BIOLIFE (Nuyorican Poetry Club), Snakeskin Suit and Nodding Off (Ensemble Studio Theatre), A Raisin in the Sun (Studio Arena), To Kill A Mockingbird (Great Plains Theater) and Blues for an Alabama Sky (St. Louis Black Rep). William trained at Webster Conservatory.



And what a crew they are! Come out to the Abingdon at 7:00 on Sunday to set sail on a grand adventure!

We have a cast!

I am happy to officially announce the cast of Fireboat Productions' reader's theater presentation of my adaptation of Moby-Dick.

The cast will include:

Alex Herrald*
Russell Jordan*
Doug Rossi
Conrad Schott
Gordon Stanley*
William Oliver Watkins*

*denotes member of AEA

You can get tickets here:

TICKETS

Tickets are $20, but blog readers can get a $5 discount by using the code: BigFish.

If you're a member of the Theater Development Fund, tickets through TDF are also available for $9.

The performance, which is being directed by the incomparable Dev Bondarin, will be at the Abingdon Theatre Company as part of their Sunday Series at 7:00 on June 1st. Hope to see many of you there!

Moby-Dick... Returns!

It's official! My stage adaptation of Moby-Dick will be coming back, this time for a Reader's Theatre Presentation as part of the Abingdon Theatre Company's Sunday Series.

The performance will be at 7:00 on Sunday, June 1st. For tickets, click here:

Moby-Dick Tickets

Once again, Dev Bondarin directs, and Gordon Stanley and Doug Rossi from the reading at IATI will be reprising their roles. There will also be some new surprises, so come out and see it!

Back from Baltimore

I had a great time at this year's Comparative Drama Conference in Baltimore. This was my first year attending, and I was honored to be a part of a session sponsored by the International Shaw Society.

Thursday morning, Beck Holden from Tufts spoke about Charles Kean's 1858 production of The Merchant of Venice, and David Muller gave a fascinating talk about the effects of weather on theatre attendance at the Comedie Francaise. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Louis Morin took meticulous weather observations in Paris, and Muller compared Morin's weather reports with the ticket receipts at the theatre. Contrary to Muller's expectations, when it got colder outside, theatre attendance actually increased, though it did go down a bit when things got very, very cold. Excessively high temperatures also somewhat lowered theatre attendance, but Muller said he was surprised by how hardy audiences at the time were.

In another session later that morning, Shehzad Ghias of Brooklyn College spoke about women on stage in Pakistan. Some theatre historians claim women did not act in that country until Mary Fenton started appearing in Parsi dramas in the late 19th century. However, Ghias argues this includes only a very narrow vision of theatre. Women always acted in folk dramas, he said, though in those cases, the genders were segregated, with women performing for other women and men performing for other men. During Sufi festivals, women also danced publicly, even in the company of men, but these were religious celebrations, and not eroticized. Of course, erotic dance has also been around in Pakistan since time immemorial, including today in the so-called "Diamond Market," the red-light district of Lahore.

During the same session, Ariel McClanahan Watson of Saint Mary's University spoke about the Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour's provocative piece White Rabbit Red Rabbit. Though Soleimanpour in unable to travel outside of Iran, his plays can, and the piece has been performed all over the world. Elif Bas also came to the session from Bahcesehir University in Istanbul to speak about the state of theatre censorship in Turkey.

That afternoon, Rick DesRochers of Long Island University chaired a session on exceeding boundaries and resisting traditions in U.S. theatre. He spoke about the school plays of the Marx Brothers, many of which had routines that made it into the movie Horsefeathers. Kathryn LeTrent talked about another play that transitioned to being a film, Clare Boothe Luce's The Women. Sound designer Yu-Yun Hsieh also gave a paper on the use of silence in Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation and Suzan Lori-Parks' Topdog/Underdog.

After chatting with Rick for a while, I snuck into the Faust session, where Goethe scholars Downing Cless, Jan Hagens, and Birte Giesler had a very stimulating conversation. Jan made the interesting point that Goethe includes the Prelude in the Theatre with the dramatic poet before he shows the Prologue in Heaven. The effect, he said, was to show that even God is subordinate to the creative mind of the Poet. Now that's truly Romanticism with a capital R!

My own session was not until the late afternoon. I gave my paper on Back to Methuselah and Jesse Hellman gave a fascinating comparison between Lady Hamilton and Eliza Doolittle from Pygmalion. Both, of course, were born in the gutter, then trained and coached to fit in with the highest levels of society. Shaw wrote the part of Eliza for Pat Campbell. Prior to that, we were all interested to learn, Campbell appeared onstage as Lady Hamilton in a play called Nelson's Enchantress. The script for that play mysteriously disappeared, but some of Jesse's friends recently tracked down a misfiled copy at the British Library. I would love to read it!

There were a number of Shavians at the conference, and Jesse and I fielded some great questions from Tony Stafford of the University of Texas at El Paso, Christopher Innes of York University, and Mary Christian of Indiana University. That evening, I got to have dinner with them all, and then we headed over to Center Stage for Gavin Witt's production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. It was delightful.

Unfortunately, I had to head back to New York the next morning for a rehearsal of Moby-Dick. IATI Theater will be doing a staged reading of my adaptation on Tuesday with Montgomery Sutton, Gordon Stanley, Richard Dezmond, and Doug Rossi. Dev Bondarin is directing. Come out to see it if you can!

The Rainbow

I just received news that my short play The Rainbow will be included in The Best American Short Plays: 2012-2013, published by Applause. The Rainbow is actually the first scene of a full-length play, I Hate You: A Love Story, which has yet to be produced, but I have been developing it for a while.

Last year, Dev Bondarin directed a wonderful production of The Rainbow as part of the Turnip Theatre Company & American Globe Theatre's 18th Annual Fifteen Minute Play Festival in New York City. We had a wonderful cast, with Christopher Kloko as Jack and Kathryn Holtkamp as Meg.

Other scenes from the full-length play have been presented elsewhere. The second scene of the piece, Reflection, was produced by Lightyear last fall as part of their evening Smitten & Bitten directed by Syeus Mottel at the Gene Frankel Theatre. That had Emily Duncan as Meg and Kyle Despiegler as Jack. The third scene was done in a slightly different version called Nothing as a part of a Benefit Challenge Series done by the Abingdon Theatre Company. This was a staged reading directed by Amanda Kate Joshi with Ryan Barker as Jack and Debby Brand as Meg.

Another scene, Home, had a staged reading in Philadelphia by Philly's Primary Stages last year right before Thanksgiving. Bernard Glincosky directed, with Megan Eckley as Meg and Jack Buckley as Jack. This year, Golden Fleece did a reading of the beginning of the second act with Doug Rossi as Jack and Sandra Maren Schneider as Meg.

Sensing a trend here? This is a show that's had a lot of development and is ready to be fully staged. Dev and I have been working on this piece since that production at the American Globe Theatre, and we hope to get the full-length play produced sometime next year. Stay tuned!

New York Innovative Theatre Awards

I generally don't follow the New York Innovative Theatre Awards, off-off-Broadway's way-smaller version of the Tonys, but this year they've nominated a number of great shows, so I wanted to blog about it.

First of all, relative newcomer Libra Theater Company has done very well, racking up a host of nominations for Joshua H. Cohen's play The Thirteenth Commandment. These include: Outstanding Set Design for Andy Yanni, Outstanding Lighting Design for Carl Weimann, Outstanding Costume Design for Travis Boatright, and acting nominations for Joe Fellman, Justin Danforth, and Lauren Pennline.

Not to mention Outstanding Production of a New Play, which it definitely deserves to win!

Dev Bondarin's production of King Lear for the American Bard Theater Company also garnered nominations for Montgomery Sutton as the delightfully twisted Edmund and David L. Carson as his unfortunate father Gloucester.

As lovely as Travis's costumes were for The Thirteenth Commandment, they still don't compare to the costumes in Geek!, the Vampire Cowboys production of Crystal Skillman's play about two teenage girls who brave an anime con in order to meet their hero. If Kristina Makowski and Jessica Wegener Shay don't win for those costumes, I will be surprised.

And while we're on the subject of design, Lynda White received a very much deserved nomination for her mask design and construction for the Faux-Real Theatre Company's production of Oedipus XX/XY. (Sample below!)

Congratulations to all the nominees!