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’s The Hurricane Katrina Comedy Festival directed 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”.

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Read the rest of The Hurricane Katrina Comedy Festival: A Festival Of Brightness In The Eye Of The Storm (Fringe Festival 2010) (763 words)

© Stephen Tortora-Lee for The Happiest Medium, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Batture Productions, Dann Fink, Fringe Festival 2010, Rob Florence, The Hurricane Katrina Comedy Festival, The Soho Playhouse

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 Minutes Deanna 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.

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Read the rest of 23 Feet In 12 Minutes: The Death And Rebirth Of New Orleans (Fringe Festival 2010) (583 words)

© Stephen Tortora-Lee for The Happiest Medium, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 23 Feet In 12 Minutes, David Travis, Deanna Pacelli, Fringe Festival 2010, Hurricane Katrina, Mari Brown, Players Loft

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.

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Read the rest of Insurmountable Simplicities: Philosophers Say The Darndest Things (Fringe Festival 2010) (490 words)

© Stephen Tortora-Lee for The Happiest Medium, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Achille Varzi, Alex Herrald, Alice Winslow, All Gone Theatre Company, Dixon Place, Fringe Festival 2010, Insurmountable Simplicities, Natalie Glick, Plato's The Allegory of the Cave, Richard LaFleur, Roberto Casati, Victoria Pollack

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”.

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Read the rest of The Mad 7: You Are Now Exactly As I Am (Fringe Festival 2010) (624 words)

© Stephen Tortora-Lee for The Happiest Medium, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 4th Street Theatre, Fringe Festival 2010, Mara Isaacs, The Mad 7, Yehuda Hyman

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.

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Read the rest of Eternity In An Hour (And 10 Minutes): Blake 2.0 – (Fringe Festival 2010) (422 words)

© Stephen Tortora-Lee for The Happiest Medium, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: enlightenment, Eric Loren, Eternity in an Hour, Fringe Festival 2010, Monia Giovannangeli, musical, Romantic Age, The New School for Drama Theatre, Theatre of Eternal Values, Tim Bruce, Victor Vertunni, William Blake

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).

Jerry'Chip' Scuderi, Maureen Duke

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Read the rest of The Beátitudes: The Beat Goes On (Fringe Festival 2010) (954 words)

© Stephen Tortora-Lee for The Happiest Medium, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Allen Ginsberg, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Dixon Place, Eidolon Ballet Company, Fringe Festival 2010, Jack Keruoac, Justin Allen, Melanie Cortier, The Beat movement, The Beátitudes

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.

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Read the rest of Gate B23: Getting There Is Half The Fun And Double The Heartache (Fringe Festival 2010) (538 words)

© Stephen Tortora-Lee for The Happiest Medium, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Debbie Slevin, Fringe 2010, Fringe Festival 2010, Gate B23

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 …

You get transported away.  (...)
Read the rest of The Starship Astrov: Best Of Both Worlds (Midtown International Theatre Festival 2010) (924 words)

© Stephen Tortora-Lee for The Happiest Medium, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Anton Chekhov, Duncan Pflaster, Midtown International Theatre Festival, Oberon Theatre Ensemble, The Starship Astrov, theatre row

Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer

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.

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Read the rest of “The Adventures Of Alvin Sputnik, Deep Sea Explorer” – And Multimedia Expert (undergroundzero festival 2010) (264 words)

© Stephen Tortora-Lee for The Happiest Medium, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Alvin Sputnick Deep Sea Explorer, PS 122, Tim Watts, undergroundzero festival

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.

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Read the rest of Smorgasbord – Glorious Food! (Planet Connections 2010) (441 words)

© Stephen Tortora-Lee for The Happiest Medium, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Edward Rosini, Food, J.C. Svec, Lauren Friezo, Nicole Cicchella, planet connections theatre festivity, Rob Gelberg, Sarah Cuneo, SMALL BITES: A SMORGASBORD OF ONE-ACT COMEDIES