Falconara in California

It's official! The Conservatory Theater Ensemble at Tam High School in Mill Valley, California will be putting on my short play with a long title The Mysteries of the Castle of the Monk of Falconara.

The play will go up next month as part of the organization's winter one-act festival. The piece is generally popular with student directors (and student audiences), so I hope they have a fun time with it.

Originally produced as a part of a Halloween festival, the play depicts three real-life writers of Gothic fiction: Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, and Matthew G. Lewis. In real life, the three probably never met in person. In this play, however, all three of them are summoned to a mysterious Italian castle on the eve of All Hallow's... where much comedy ensues.

The play was published in the anthology The Best American Short Plays: 2005-2006, and so gets periodically performed, mainly by high schools and colleges. Ken Kaissar directed the original production more than ten years ago.

I will have some other events to announce soon, but I'm mentioning this one now because the production agreement got delivered to my apartment on Christmas Eve. It's always a great Christmas present to find out that a production is official!

Book Release One Week From Today!

Next Wednesday, December 3rd, Applause Books will be celebrating the release of Best Monologues from Best American Short Plays. Come out at 6:00 to the Nuyorican Poets Cafe for readings of some of the monologues, including a selection from my own play The True Author... Revealed.

Ken Kaissar directed The True Author... Revealed back in 2009 starring Katherine Harte-DeCoux. Applause subsequently anthologized it in The Best American Short Plays: 2008-2009. It is inspired by the life of the nineteenth-century scholar, author, and complete basket case Delia Bacon.

Unfortunately, Kate won't be able to perform the monologue next week, but Alex Sunderhaus, who was recently seen in my play The State of Colorado v. Tennessee Williams, will be on hand to do the honors. Rumor has it that Maja Wampuszyc, fresh from her successful run in pool (no water) will be reading a monologue as well.

Some of the other authors whose work will be presented include Liliana Almendarez, Dano Madden, and Pamela Sneed. Admission is $5, but you'll get in for free if you order a copy of the anthology here:

Best Monologues from Best American Short Plays

It should be a good time, and hopefully we'll pack the house!

Last Chance to See "Grass" Menagerie

This Saturday will be your last chance to see THE STATE OF COLORADO v. TENNESSEE WILLIAMS at the Bad Theater Fest.

What happens when a cast of actors in Colorado decides to perform Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie while all stoned on pot? Find out at 5:00 this Saturday at the Treehouse Theater, 154 W. 29th Street in Manhattan.

Director Ken Kaissar has assembled a great cast, including Daniil Krimer, Zach McCoy, Doug Rossi, Sandra Maren Schneider, and Alex Sunderhaus. They gave a great performance last week, and I'm looking forward to seeing the show again on Saturday.

Come on out to see not only this short play, but other examples of "Bad" theater, including The History of DNA Exchange, which chronicles the two-billion-year history of sexual reproduction, Nano jardin, which shows life through the eyes of two garden gnomes, an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, and a piece called Awkward Fornication Leading to Immaculate Conception.

So if you're looking for a high-class evening of tasteful theater, go someplace else. But if you want to have a good laugh and a good time, head on over to the Treehouse Theater at five this Saturday. For more information and tickets, go here:

Bad Theater Fest

A Menagerie of Actors

This Saturday, my short play THE STATE OF COLORADO v. TENNESSEE WILLIAMS opens at the Treehouse Theater as part of the Bad Theater Fest. Fortunately, we have a brilliant cast of good actors who can make bad acting absolutely hysterical. I'd like to introduce you to them now.

Daniil Krimer is playing the part of Jim. Daniil a recent graduate of the BFA program at Montclair State University. He is happy to have been given the opportunity to work on this wacky play and sends a shout out to his family for always supporting him... and an apology to Mr. Williams!

As Jim, Daniil plays a very serious actor taking on an important role in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. He plays the role with an almost painful earnestness that contrasts with the rest of the cast. Why? Well, our play takes place in a certain state... where a certain substance has recently become legal....

Zach McCoy plays the role of the Stage Manager in the play. Zach was last seen this summer as David in the off-Broadway revival of Love and Human Remains at The Peter J. Sharp Theatre at Playwrights Horizons.  Other favorite New York credits include Jitter (Arclight Theatre) and The Birthday Boys (Access Theatre).  In Pennsylvania, Zach has performed many times at Millbrook Playhouse in roles such as Bernard in Boeing-Boeing, David in The Foreigner, and Stanley in Run for Your Wife.  Zach has been featured on the AMC original series Film Fakers, and his short film Kidnapping Carl recently premiered at the Manhattan Film Festival.

Doug Rossi, who plays Tom in the play, once won an award for playing Tom in a real production of The Glass Menagerie. His major classical roles include Macbeth, Tartuffe, Orlando, Friar Lawrence, Caliban, Orsino, Launce, Brutus, Ford, and Hamlet. He has appeared in more than 75 NYC productions including FringeNYC, Planet Connections (Winner: Best Featured Actor) and MITF (Nominated: Best Supporting Actor). He also has more than 50 on-camera credits including the title role in the indie feature Recruiter. Currently, he is re-teaming with Empire Tales director David Toth to co-write and star in a thriller entitled Blind Spot.

Sandra Maren Schneider is playing Amanda. Other recent credits include a reading of I Hate You: A Love Story directed by Dev Bondarin (Abingdon Theatre), Blue Moon written and directed by Bryan Quick (Shapiro Theater), Faust - A Tragedy (Staged Reading at the Signature Theatre), Andromache (Winner of NYC Ancient Drama Festival), Tango Fever (Teatro LaTea),  Helen Of Troy (La MaMa), Les Blancs directed by Pat Golden (Staged Reading at the New School), Spoon River Anthology directed by Jimmy Maize (Columbia Stages), Happy End directed by Jérôme Savary & Ulrich Waller (St. Pauli Theater, Germany), and Upon A Time (Workshop of a new musical written by Hayley Annette Green and music by Thomas Auger).

Alex Sunderhaus, who plays Laura, is a Brooklyn-based actress originally from Cincinnati, Ohio. Her BFA  is from Wright State University. Recent stage credits for Alex include: Seminar (Kitchen Theatre Co.), The Lucky Ladies and The Red Cat (The Lark, NYC), and Boeing Boeing (Millbrook Playhouse). Alex has also been a part of several NYC short films and is an improviser at Upright Citizens Brigade.

So there you have it, the amazing cast of THE STATE OF COLORADO v. TENNESSEE WILLIAMS. Ken Kaissar is directing and doing a wonderful job. If you want to see the show, it is playing Saturday, October 25th at 5:00 and the following Saturday, November 1st, also at 5:00.

Both shows are at the Treehouse Theater. For more information, go here:

Bad Theater Fest

One Week From Today!

One week from today, my 10-minute play THE STATE OF COLORADO v. TENNESSEE WILLIAMS will open as part of the Bad Theater Fest at the Treehouse Theater!

And yes, this is a cringe-inducing satire that hopes to have the distinguished Mr. Williams rolling over in his grave. Fortunately, we have a wonderful cast of good actors who know precisely how brilliant bad acting can be.

Daniil Krimer, Zach McCoy, Doug Rossi, Sandra Maren Schneider, and Alex Sunderhaus star as a troupe of actors desperately trying to put on a production of The Glass Menagerie at a small theater in Colorado in spite of local laws restricting performances. Ken Kaissar directs.

Our opening performance will be at 5:00 on Saturday, October 25th, at the Treehouse Theater, 154 W. 29th Street in Manhattan. There will be a second performance the following week, at 5:00 on Saturday, November 1st.

Go here for tickets:

Bad Theater Fest

Hope to see you there, for a really good bad time!

Coming Next Month...

I am pleased to announce that next month the Treehouse Theater will host the premiere of my short play The State of Colorado v. Tennessee Williams. The play will be performed as a part of the 3rd annual "Bad Theater Fest."

Did you know that the Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act bans all smoking--not just real smoking, but also the smoking of fake, non-addictive cigarettes--from ALL public places, including stages? Since the ban took effect in 2006, the de facto consequence has been the banning of any and all classic plays that require onstage smoking. Which includes pretty much the entire canon of Tennessee Williams.

But since January 1st of this year, Colorado has been known for another smoking law... the one that makes it legal to smoke all the marijuana you want (provided you're not onstage, of course.)

The State of Colorado v. Tennessee Williams puts these two real-life facts together and portrays a fictional theater company that decides to put on The Glass Menagerie without the smoking... but only after getting stoned out of their minds backstage first. Needless to say, the results make this play immensely qualified for the "Bad Theater Fest."

Ken Kaissar is directing the production, which will be performed at 5:00 on Saturday, October 25th, and then again at 5:00 on Saturday, November 1st. We hope to announce the cast shortly.

For more information, visit the Bad Theater Fest here:

Bad Theater Fest

Best Monologues

I recently received in the mail my contributor's copy of Best Monologues From the Best American Short Plays, which is part of the Applause Acting Series. Volume One includes my one-woman play The True Author of the Plays Formerly Attributed to Mister William Shakespeare Revealed to the World for the First Time by Miss Delia Bacon.

Dawn Cardinale produced the play in New York in 2009 starring Katherine Harte-DeCoux as Delia Bacon. Ken Kaissar directed the piece. More recently, Kate reprised her role at the Looking Glass Theatre as part of the evening of short work Broadside!

I was very fortunate to have the piece included in The Best American Short Plays: 2008-2009, and last year William Demastes, who currently edits the series, asked me if he could include it in the Best Monologues book. You can imagine how long I took to think about that one. (What do you call a tenth of a nanosecond again?)

The play tells the story of Delia Bacon, a Connecticut woman who was the first to popularize the idea that Shakespeare's plays were written by someone other than that man from Stratford. (For the record, I do not share Miss Bacon's opinions.) She gained the attention of a number of prominent intellectuals, including the author Nathaniel Hawthorne, who at the time was American consul to the city of Liverpool. I condense a great deal of Miss Bacon's life, to show her excited research, frenzied revelations, and slow descent into madness all in one speech at the American consulate.

In reality, it took a lot longer than that for her to go insane, but sadly she did end up in an institution writing sheer jibberish. (Not that her initial writings were the most coherent, anyway.)

Needless to say, I'm honored to be included in the monologue anthology, which also has pieces by Adam Kraar, Julia Jarcho, Liliana Almendarez, and Neil LaBute. If you're interested in buying it, here's the link on Amazon:

Best Monologues From the Best American Short Plays

http://www.amazon.com/Monologues-American-Volume-Applause-Acting/dp/1480331554