One year after Hurricane Katrina struck, the mayor of New Orleans wanted to put on The Hurricane Katrina Comedy Hour. Public outrage stopped it from ever airing, but here is another attempt.
Rob Florence’sThe Hurricane Katrina Comedy Festivaldirected by Dann Fink gives us a positive story of 5 people who experienced Katrina and made a difference. This difference is either to themselves, to their family, to their neighbors (in the normal sense of people who lived next door as well as the classic Biblical sense of whoever needs help), and to the city itself. Their “comedy” is not making light of what happened, but rather about not being beat by a situation which so many of the people in this play recalled as “post-apocalyptic”.
6 Characters Based On 60 Interviews in 60 Minutes Equals Countless Emotions
Deanna Pacelli is a hero. Or several of them actually, and also a victim, and often enough some observers. In 23 Feet in 12 MinutesDeanna puts on many characters and pulls stories from many moving moments as she recounts the events starting with Hurricane Katrina from the eyes of 6 characters drawn from more than 60 accounts of what happened after the storm hit, the water rose, and chaos spread.
Are you who you think you are or just who others say you are? Are you a combination somewhere in the middle – or none of the above? How do you get caught in a rectilinear paradox? Can’t you just do what the sign says no matter where it’s saying it?
Insurmountable Simplicities (written by Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi, adapted and directed by Natalie Glick) is a very fast paced play with witty dialogue and superb acting which helps us pull apart various layers of philosophical conundrums.
After beginning a normal day at work, in the middle of his most fulfilling time (morning coffee) Elliott (Yehuda Hyman) is approached by a blind man wearing headphones and knocking his stick in rhythm to an unknown beat. He hands Elliott his headphones and out of curiosity, Elliott accepts and is prepared to listen to … Nothing, there was nothing on the headphones. He leaves the old man to his delusions and goes about his way.
As he gets back to his cubicle and on his way to deliver the report he was rushing the entire morning to get to his supervisor he runs into a flamboyantly deaf woman who points and tells him that his answers are leaving him right down the street. Suddenly in a rush of some sort of compulsion as well as the joy of curiosity and interest in his life he doesn’t remember feeling for as long as he remembers, Elliott is guided by the the rest of the Mad 7 out the door, through the city off on a bus, to a strange old hotel with a funny little room, and cozy little bed with a mysterious suitcase that appeared when he wasn’t looking. Later, after walking for days through lands both real and imaginary and still not having a morsel to eat, Elliott is tempted again by the forces of darkness to eat the forbidden food of the Cafe Toledo where not only do they take American Express “they take everything”.
To see a World in a grain of sand,
And Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
William Blake
William Blake belongs on Off-Off-Broadway. Or at least he would have appreciated it, because of his belief that Art should be about Imagination rather than style and fashion of what people expect a work to be like just so that it can become more commercially acceptable. He said in response to his contemporaries, “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s.” He had strong beliefs in trying to touch the mind of God through soaring visions of what he believed beauty really was. By doing this, he was fundamental in the creation of Romanticism – which was the genesis of many other more modern movements in philosophy and the arts . . . either directly or by inspiration.
What’s Beat? The Beat is Beat? Do you dig? (snap,snap).
The story we have is the story we were, twirling and twisting about in a blur whose end and beginning is a boy and a girl. That story – two ends – are tender and sweet . . . But what we got in the middle is what we call the Beat. (roll of tom-toms).
What do you do when you’re waiting….And waiting….AND WAITING….
At Gate B23 (written and directed by Debbie Slevin) we watch as 7 people try to figure out what to do when they are forced to look more deeply into their lives – because this time they’re not allowed to just gloss over all the situations as they normally would. The escalating tension turns to transformation again and again, as being forced to actually talk with those you’re with pushes everyone to make decisions they never would have otherwise. Whether new bonds are forged, burst asunder or reinforced to stay the same, the play is always moving along as it focuses on the different people who are waiting – so it’s really like several small plays wrapped into one.
I’m sure it happens to you sometimes … You’re walking down the street, pondering the inevitability of change and the hardship it’s apt to cause when you fail to adapt, and other foibles of the human condition…
Then suddenly you realize that the person beside you is reading your mind, and doesn’t like what they see, and is leveling their blaster at you to fire, when …
Generally there are many people who put together a show and run it, but in the case of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer most of the credit goes to just one multitalented individual who does the acting, the entertaining puppetry, controls the lighting and all together makes a wonderful illusion of a world both precious and tragic; Tim Watts is “performer, deviser, director, producer, puppeterr and animator” and he’s equally adept at all these roles. He does get some help from a great supporting team – Arielle Gray who collaborated on the show, Anthony Watts who created the sets and gadgets, and Mat Cheethum who put it all against a great wallpaper of sound design.
There are many rites of Food in the world, and the vibrancy of our young nation’s reverence toward the the appreciation of food and the veneration of all things nutritious and/or tasty is woven into the very fabric of our collective psyche. In SMALL BITES: A SMORGASBORD OF ONE-ACT COMEDIES (written and directed by J.C. Svec) homage is paid to the ideals brought forth from the hallowed preparation and consumption of the victuals which sustain us through nearly all of our most cherished traditions of American Culture. The fact they are all excellent comedies that really make you laugh – hard – is even better.
