Reading the Rabbit Goddess

I've been working together with the playwright Mark Levine to develop his new play Evicting the Rabbit Goddess, which is a great deal of fun.

So far, we've had a couple of readings of scenes from the play at the weekly workshop of the American Renaissance Theater Company. Later this month, I will be directing a reading of the play in its entirely.

The piece stars Pëtra Denison as an Irish-Puerto-Rican single mom who is about to be evicted from her apartment by her landlady's son, played by Nick Walther. It takes place in Washington Heights in the 1990s, just as gentrification is starting to uproot many long-term residents of the area.

If you saw the festival in January that included a one-act play I directed, you might have seen Mark's short play Mutual Bond. This full-length work is much more ambitious, though, taking place in multiple realities as we see the fantasies and nightmares of both characters come to life on the stage.

The reading will be held on Tuesday, October 27th at 6:30pm at A.R.T./NY, 520 Eighth Avenue, 3rd Floor, in Studio B. An ID is required to enter the building.

Should you be interested in attending, contact me, and I'll put you on the list.

New Comedies Festival Semifinalist (Again!)

I just received word that my new play After an Earlier Incident has been named a semifinalist in the B Street Theatre's 2026 New Comedies Festival in Sacramento.

The theatre is scheduled to select four finalists by June 2nd. Chosen plays will receive readings July 12th through 19th, and at least one of those plays will be fully produced for the theatre's upcoming season.

In March, I previously announced that After an Earlier Incident had advanced to Round 2 of B Street Theatre's process. Last year, my play The Love Songs of Brooklynites made it to the semifinals, but unfortunately was not invited out for the New Comedies Festival.

The first scene of After an Earlier Incident had a workshop at Theatre of Western Springs outside of Chicago. I continued to develop the piece with Caryn Osofsky and Nick Walthers, two actors I met through the American Renaissance Theater Company (ARTC), and they performed a public reading of the full play in December at Theater for the New City.

In the play, a recently widowed woman meets a perpetually awkward man for their first date, only to discover that they both have more baggage than they are willing to admit. The play asks how two people can relate to one another when the technology we use to communicate keeps getting in the way, and how we can move forward with life even when a recent death remains ever present. It's a comedy about trying to live and love when tragedy lies just below the surface.

Perhaps this July the people of Sacramento will get a chance to hear this piece, which is very near and dear to my heart.

The Grim Game

Harry Houdini is known for being a great performer, but in addition to doing magic and escape acts, he was also a fine actor.

Houdini made several films, and tonight I was able to see one of the ones that survived: the 1919 silent The Grim Game. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts held a screening of the restored film with Makia Matsumura providing live piano accompaniment.

In addition to showing Houdini in action as the fictional Harvey Hanford, the film features a mid-air plane crash which was unscripted. Fortunately, no one was hurt! Incidentally, Houdini did not do his own aerial stunts, though he can be seen escaping from handcuffs, a straight jacket, and other jams, as he was famous for doing on stage.

Houdini has appeared on stage as a character as well, perhaps most notably in the musical Ragtime, currently running right next to the library at Lincoln Center. He's also depicted in a new play Joe Sutton has been developing at American Renaissance Theater Company. I had the privilege to play Houdini in a developmental reading from the piece at an ARTC Workshop earlier this year.

If you want to see Houdini's acting yourself, the restored print of The Grim Game is now owned by Turner Classic Movies, so you might be able to catch it there.

Revolutionary Drama

Tonight, I'm having a private reading of my play Combustion with American Renaissance Theater Company.

The play tells the story of Marie-Anne and Antoine Lavoisier, who revolutionized chemistry around the same time a political revolution was happening in France.

Megan Greener will be reading the part of Marie-Anne, who figured out the mechanics of how to perform experiments that changed the way we think about matter. Frank Hankey will be playing her husband, Antoine, who was more focused on theory than the actual experiments.

A third character in the play, being read by Eric Percival, is the ghost of Jean-Paul Marat, a key figure in the French Revolution who sparred with the Lavoisiers and ended up getting assassinated in his own bathtub. (This later became the subject of a famous painting by Jacques-Louis David.)

The French Revolution has always inspired great drama. In fact, re-enactments of the storming of the Bastille were staged soon after that event took place. Throughout the revolution, playwrights like Olympe de Gouges wrote about current events for the stage. The Bastille and the Terror later had important roles in the play The Black Doctor which became a star vehicle for Ira Aldridge.

Perhaps the most memorable depiction of the French Revolution is in A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens's novel which was first adapted for the stage in 1860 by Tom Taylor. The events of the revolution keep resurfacing though, such as in the 21st-century playwright David Adjmi's Marie Antoinette, which I recently saw at Marymount Manhattan College.

My own play adds to this tradition, but also brings focus to the unique partnership of two scientists who tried to change the world, but got caught up in the world changing without them. I hope to be able to share this piece with the public soon in a full production.

Advancing

Sometimes being a playwright means making small advances, little by little, hoping that something will finally stick.

That's how I've been feeling lately, as many small things have been dripping in, such as my play Combustion being named a semifinalist for Broken Arts Entertainment's Loved Ones series.

Combustion re-imagines the life and death of Marie-Anne and Antoine Lavoisier, who revolutionized chemistry around the same time a political revolution was happening in France. I've also been trying to get a reading of the play scheduled with American Renaissance Theater Company.

After an Earlier Incident, a play I previously developed with ARTC, has moved on to Round 2 of the selection process for the B Street Theater's New Comedies Festival in Sacramento. The festival had more than 400 submissions this year, so competition has been fierce.

So things continue to crawl along. I just hope that something sticks soon.

Into the Light

Marc Castle's new play Into the Light (which I'm directing) opens tonight, so get your tickets while you can!

In addition to writing the play, Marc Castle is starring as Sol, a newly departed soul who arrives in the hereafter only to find that none of the people waiting for him there are the ones he expected. Marc's previous plays have been done at EST, the Neighborhood Playhouse, and La Mama. In another age, he toured as a child actor in the first national company of the musical Camelot. He later wrote about it in his one-man show One Brief Shining Moment.

Acting opposite Marc is Terri Campion, who also wrote My Girl, one of the one-acts going up together with Into the Light. She's perhaps best known for her novel, Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow, but she also has a long list of acting credits, including Hetty in Alice Gerstenberg's Overtones at Metropolitan Playhouse and Clytemnestra in Euripides's Iphigenia in Aulis with Greeks & Company.

Ralph Pachoda appears in the play as Jake, an old acquaintance of Sol's. Ralph is a regular at ARTC's weekly developmental workshop, but he also has had a long career as a classical actor. He appeared Off-Broadway as Creon opposite James Earl Jones in Oedipus by Sophocles. He also did a national tour of Lanford Wilson's Talley's Folly with Maryanne Plunkett.

Rounding out the cast is Jeannie Dalton, who plays Sol's mother Goldie. She's a brilliant comic actress who has played everything from Dunyasha in Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard to Raina in Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man to Puck in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream to Fanny in Eric Overmyer's On the Verge to Elmire in Moliere's Tartuffe. 

After tonight, we have only three more performances as part of the Two by Four festival playing at HB Studio's 124 Bank Street Theater. We're on again tomorrow, January 24th at 7pm, Sunday the 25th at 3pm, and then our final performance is on Tuesday the 27th at 7pm. I hope to see you there!

Coming in January

January is one of those months that seems to always feel longer than it really is, though this January I have so many things going on that I'm afraid it will fly by this year.

First up is the annual convention of the Modern Language Association, which begins tomorrow. I will not be traveling to Toronto this year, but I will be chairing an online panel on Shavian Family Resemblances.

The online session will apply the MLA Presidential Theme of Family Resemblances to the plays and critical writings of the dramatist Bernard Shaw. It will examine the fictional families in Shaw’s plays as well as the larger Anglo-Irish literary family of writers Shaw belonged to and resembled, even as he clashed with them.

In “‘People with unimproved minds’: Shavian Fathers and Resistance to the Ideal Paterfamilias,” Dibasi Roy will look at the early comedies of Shaw to examine the discursive construction of Late Victorian fatherhood, including how multidimensional aspects of masculinities intersect in varied and complex ways. 

Alice Clapie will examine resemblances among Shaw’s family of Irish writers in “Eugenic Laughter, Universal Laughter: Shaw’s Physiological Dramaturgy.” The paper will explore the uncomfortable notion of “eugenic laughter” in Shaw’s physiological dramaturgy, acknowledging the popularity of eugenics for social progress at the turn of the 20th century, when it was an important crux in the discussion of familial issues.

In the third paper, Dan Stuart will analyze the controversies behind Shaw’s most infamous family drama in “Reconsidering the Unpleasant: Victorian Morality and the Censorship of Mrs. Warren’s Profession.” The play, among Shaw’s most socially significant works, dealt with the then-controversial subject of prostitution, foregrounding the mitigating factors underlying the trade’s proliferation while exploring conflicting attitudes about gender roles and social mobility in Late Victorian society.

Later this month, American Renaissance Theater Company will be presenting Two by Four, two presentations of one-act plays at 124 Bank Street Theater. (If you're looking for the address of 124 Bank Street Theater, it is, in fact, 124 Bank Street.) Presentation A will include Mutual Bond by Mark Levine, Choose! by Bara Swain, Gators by Linda Kampley, and My Handiwork by Robert Kerr. Presentation B will include My Girl by Terri Campion, Eye of the Beholder by Kathryn Grant, The New Pasteur by Michael McGoldrick, and Into the Light by Marc Castle.

I'm directing Into the Light, which stars the author, Marc Castle, as a dead man who meets other departed souls in the afterlife, but not the ones he expected to find. It also features Terri Campion, Jeannie Dalton, and Ralph Pachoda. Today, I had a chance to check out the theater, which is run by HB Studio. It's a great space, and I look forward to having my directorial work there.

Presentation B will be going up January 23rd at 7pm, January 24th at 7pm, January 25th at 3pm, and January 27th at 7pm. Tickets are $25 for general admission. I hope you can come!

Two Shows Left!

I'm out in Illinois right now for a workshop of my play After an Earlier Incident. The piece is being done at the Theatre of Western Springs, and there are two more performances on Sunday, one at 2:30 and the other at 7:30.

Edward M. Pinkowski did an excellent job directing the piece, which features Katarina Creedon as Jen and Mark MacLean as Elliot. I've also been developing the piece with American Renaissance Theater Company in New York.

After an Earlier Incident is being performed with two other one-act plays, The Voodoo Man by Carl Maronich and Yalu River by Nan Gatewood Satter. Yalu River has a particularly good cast, including Danny Parrott, who previously appeared in my play The Love Songs of Brooklynites, also at the Theatre of Western Springs.

If you're in the Chicago area, please come out to one of our final two performances!

Coming Soon!

I have lots of events coming up over the next several months related--in various ways--to the theatre, both past and present.

Today, February 7th, is the birthday of Charles Dickens, and the Friends of Dickens New York will be having a special luncheon tomorrow, including a reading from Dickens's novella The Chimes. That story has been frequently adapted for the stage, including at the Adelphi Theatre the very year it was first published.

Later this month, I'll be directing a reading of scenes from Mark Levine's play Evicting the Rabbit Goddess for American Renaissance Theatre Company. This will just be a private reading, and not even of the whole play, but Mark has expressed a desire for getting the full play read in the future. We have a great cast, with Nick Walther and Pëtra Denison both performing.

Then, next month, I'll have my own work performed in Clifton Park, New York by Bunbury Players. Today, I met with the director, Ro Dell'Acqua. Ro will be staging as a 10-minute play the beginning of After an Earlier Incident. I've been developing the piece as a full-length play, but the first scene can also be performed on its own. It will be presented as part of Bunbury Players' Festival of One-Acts at Clifton Park-Halfmoon Public Library, March 28-30.

Later this year, I plan on going to Boston for the 2025 Dickens Symposium, where I am slated to deliver a paper called "'Dirt and Discomfort': Theatrical Audiences in Dickens." Much attention has been given to Dickens’s representations of actors in novels, but this talk will examine the author’s portrayal of audiences.

That's quite a bit happening soon, so perhaps I will get to see you, dear reader, at one of these upcoming events!

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, the short play by Bara Swain that I directed for an evening of her work called The Boob Tube Plays, is closed now, but I just got photos that were taken of my wonderful actors.

That's Megan Greener looking oh-so-chic as her character (Olivia) snores and dreams she's on the television show Law & Order: SVU. Tomorrow is her wedding day, and she's so excited that she went to sleep in her veil!

Here's Lloyd, her husband-to-be, played by Nick Walther. Getting up at 3 a.m. to discover your fiancée sleepwalks and just might want to kill you isn't a very pleasant situation to find yourself in, and please do not ask me if I know this from personal experience.

Thanks to everyone at American Renaissance Theater Company for putting together this evening of short work, and especially to Bara for trusting me with her play!

Coming Soon!

Tomorrow night, November 2nd, Bara Swain's The Boob Tube Plays opens at The Tank, featuring a short play that I'm directing, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.

The Boob Tube Plays consists of five short works, all by Swain, all inspired in one way or another by television. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt features Megan Greener as a woman who's watched way too much Law & Order: SVU, and Nick Walther as her terrified husband-to-be.

If you miss the show on Saturday, you'll have two more chances to see it: on Thursday, November 7th and on Friday, November 8th. All shows are at 7:00pm and tickets are $22. The evening is produced by American Renaissance Theater Company (ARTC) and includes work by directors Kim T. Sharp and Vincent Scott, in addition to one play directed by Swain herself.

Next month, we will be entering the season of A Christmas Carol, and I'll be appearing on a virtual program hosted by the Rosenbach Library, speaking about the legacy of Charles Dickens's beloved novella. There have been countless stage adaptations of the classic, including my own, which was produced by the Epiphany Theater Company in New York and Passage Theatre Company in New Jersey.

And if you happen to be in Brazil in December, the short film The Rainbow, for which I wrote the screenplay, has been chosen as an official selection for FINTCH - Festival Internacional de Cinema de Humor in Rio de Janeiro. More information on that coming soon!

Tickets on Sale!

Tickets are now on sale for The Boob Tube Plays by Bara Swain. No, I didn't write any of these short plays inspired by television shows, but I am directing one of them.

The evening of short work will be playing at The Tank on West 36th Street at 7pm on November 2nd, 7th, and 8th. It will be in the same space as my own play Foggy Bottom was many years ago.

Each of the five short pieces, I Love Lucy, Folded, Wasted, If You See a Hyena, and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, takes a different television show as its jumping-off point, but the themes of intimacy and loss are universal and shine through whether you know the TV show or not.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, the play I'm directing, stars Megan Greener and Nick Walther as two soon-to-be newlyweds on the night before their marriage. They end up having pre-wedding jitters triggered by too much Law & Order: SVU.

The evening is being produced by American Renaissance Theater Company. Tickets are $22. I hope you can make it out to see these fun and emotional new plays.

American Renaissance

I recently became a member of American Renaissance Theater Company. Last week, they did a reading of the beginning of my new play After an Earlier Incident, and now I'll be directing for them a short play by Bara Swain that will be performed in November.

The Tank will be hosting us as ARTC presents The Boob Tube Plays, five short pieces by Swain all related to television. The evening will begin with I Love Lucy, about two women who meet in the lobby of an OBGYN's office. It will be followed by Folded about a young man's search to know his father, Wasted about a family torn apart by Covid, and If You See a Hyena, a spoof on reality television. I'll be directing the last show of the evening, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.

We have a great cast, company members Megan Greener and Nick Walther as a soon-to-be married couple on the eve of their wedding night. Nick read the part of Elliot for me in After an Earlier Incident, so I know he's delightful, and I'm equally excited to be working with Megan. Both have wonderful comic sensibilities that are perfect for the play.

We open on November 2nd, and have two more performances on November 7th and 8th. I hope you can come out to see it!