Ten Questions. Ten Answers. And one Big Surprise in the audience …

The BYU/Berkeley Plot

“Brigham Young University and UC Berkeley couldn’t be more different. They’re the crispy ends of the higher education banana, and Ben Abbott went to both. But while trading Book of Mormon classes for angry protest rallies, he may have stumbled upon a shocking conspiracy linking the two! (Spoiler: It’s aliens.)”

Show  Info:

• Mon Feb 22, 2016 | 5:30PM
• Thu Feb 25, 2016 | 10:30PM
• Sat Feb 27, 2016 | 7:10PM
• Wed Mar 02, 2016 | 7:10PM
• Fri Mar 04, 2016 | 5:30PM
• Sun Mar 06, 2016 | 12:10PM

Under St. Marks New York, NY $10/$15

Answers by Ben Abbott
(writer and performer)

1. Forget the PR version. When you’re talking to your friends, how do you explain this show to them?
Ben: I started school at BYU, but finished at UC Berkeley. They are both just such amazingly weird places that are so different from each other but with surprising similarities. I’ve always known I wanted to write a show about that transition from one kind of crazy to another. Also there’s a thing about aliens and how the two schools are caught up in a conspiracy to fool the public and protect the world from invasion, so I guess I can only say the show is semi-autobiographical.

2. Here’s a scenario: After the show some audience members go have a drink.  What’s the part of the show you hope they’re discussing?
Ben: I want them to not know what was true and what wasn’t. There are some things that will be obvious but I’d love for them to be trying to dissect when exactly it went off the rails. And laughing!

3. What drives your show – character, theme or plot?
Ben: Well, “plot” is in the title, but I think it’s at least a combination of plot and character. There are some great stories, but you wouldn’t care about the crazy things happening (both real and imagined) if you weren’t invested in the character.

4. In rehearsals, read-thrus, or prior incarnations, what’s the one thing someone said about the show so far that made you (or the team) the most proud?
Ben: I think “you actually had me convinced about the fake conspiracy” is the best. Also, someone said “there are parts of this that remind of stand-up,” which is a huge compliment for me because I admire good stand-up comedians to the moon.

5. If money and resources (and even reality) were no object what is the most lavish, luxurious, pointless prop, costume, effect – anything – that you would spend money on for this show?
Ben: Well, I think special effects to take the audience through the inter-dimensional vortex would be vital. I also think the aliens should make an appearance, flying saucer and all.

6. What’s the one thing you’re looking forward to regarding the FRIGID Festival itself?
Ben: This is my third time at FRIGID, and second as a performer. Without a doubt, the most exciting thing to me is the people. Being around so much active creative energy is hugely inspiring. I always not only get ideas for shows I want to write while I’m around them but this huge boost of excitement to make them happen.

7. Is there a scene, a moment, a gesture … anything at all in the show that you anticipate may get a completely different reaction depending on the audience that night?
Ben: Anyone who’s gone to either of these schools will have a particularly unique experience. Talking about (and maybe making a little fun of) BYU or Berkeley to people who don’t know anything about it is totally different from reminiscing about a shared experience. Either way it’ll be fun.

8. What’s your favorite line from the show?
Ben: “It was intimate! It was passionate! We never kissed with tongue.”

9. What’s the last thing you usually do before the beginning of a show?
Ben: Review the whole thing in my head as fast as I can. Getting lost in your own one-man show is a special kind of hell.

10. You scan the audience and you see a face that stops you dead in your tracks – who is it? And why are you shocked?
Ben: The ex-girlfriend I talk about in the show. I haven’t seen her in 10 years, but that would be paralyzing because I’d only be able to hear it through her ears. Also that whole section is only like, 85% factual, so I’m not sure how that would go.

You’re not the first to say that, Ben!  Seems like a lot of FRIGID folks are either hoping like heck that their exes are NOT there, or kinda hoping they are.  Maybe it should be a  theme one year, “bring back the exes”.  But for your sake, and the sake of your show, I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you that she doesn’t show up.

Thanks so much for answering our questions, Ben!

The rest of you – don’t forget to check out The BYU/Berkeley Plot.

 -*-*-

Horse Trade Theater Group will present the 10th Annual FRIGID New York Festival at The Kraine Theater (85 East 4^th Street between 2^nd Avenue and Bowery) and UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1^st Avenue and Avenue A) February 16-March 6. All shows run 60 minutes, or less. Tickets are available for purchase in advance at http://www.horsetrade.info/  

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There are a plethora of End of the World movies, television shows and now even off-off Broadway productions.  This can be evidenced in a special  insert in the program of The Apocalypse of John to “collect items from all five of the end of the world shows in Fringe” (Snow White: Zombie Apocalypse, Below, The End of Days, May 21st – Judgement Day, The Apocalypse of John, and they even forgot …And Then She Die At the End! where our hero Nicholas Sparks is constantly striving to fight against the world’s destruction by making people cry).  But none of these shows  (nor any I can think of off the top of my head) has dealt with the various possibilities of Apocalypse so thoroughly or entertainingly as the Apocalypse of John (though possibly the Evil Dead movies come close in terms of hilarity).

But with so many ways for the world to end, people have gotten a bit blasé about it all. The Apocalypse of John begins with a group of friends who have gotten together on the night that “all the experts” are saying will likely be the end of the world.  One of them is even an aspiring television reporter, Maggie (Erin Salm), getting ready to tape people’s reactions as a human interest story, hopefully successfully because this is her first big break.   And if anything is going to be  possibly,  perhaps maybe sorta happening in 15 minutes, she’ll be on the scene!

Her boyfriend John (Michael Mraz) backed by The Upstairs House Band (Ari Kessler on piano, Will Kitchin on drums, and Andrew Hollis on guitar) welcomes the audience and cast to sing along to a rousing tavern song of “Kiss My Ass Good Bye”.  The whole gang is there to commemorate the likely non-event of another badly called end of the world: Gary the bartender (Jacob Callie Moore) with his gritty barroom wisdom, John with his goofy charm, Maggie with her camera, Maude the waitress (Kacie Laforest) with her angelic sweetness, and Chris D’Amato playing Stinky Dan … well he’s just rude and stinky, but a long-time part of the band of regulars anyway.

According to bartender Gary in his televised interview (which seems to represent the consensus of the bar as a whole) if the End is going to happen it will probably be a mixtures of the following classic scenarios:

• Aliens
• Natural Disaster
• Zombies
• Nuclear War (“We call it the old fashioned”)
• The Devil and other supernatural causes
• Annihilation of all life by a deadly virus

With the seconds clicking down, John (our hero who is both a germophobe as well as an advertising guy), a little wasted out of his mind and fearing the end, asks his long time girlfriend Maggie to marry him at the worst possible time — when she’s on the air for the first time!  She immediately says no to him, crying on national television as she is signing off the air, then fleeing the bar in even bigger sobs.

Soon John falls into a fitful sleep, set upon by prophetic dreams of Apocalyptic Spectors riding little horsies warning that the end is nigh.  Terrified out of his mind  he awakes in the bar to find himself late for his yearly review to be conducted by the charismatic, yet megalomaniacal trickster Damien Blackstock, head of one of the mos successful ad agencies on the planet.

Damien sets John down, in a friendly yet somewhat creepy way and explains he really needs John to “wow him” by taking an account that is failing terribly (Gordon’s Flashlights) and bringing some really “outside the box thinking” to make it wildly successful, in one week’s time.  From there John is quickly swept along to meet his new team.  There’s the desperate-to-succeed junior project manager assistant Charlene (played by Kymm Walker) and slacker Creative “Director” Robert (Zach Sciranka) who seems to always have  glassy look in his eye (from being fixated on his smartphone).  They meet the “clients from hell” – who just happen to look a lot like they’re …  Aliens!  But the weird thing is it seems like he’s the only one feeling uncomfortable about working for clients who would like to enslave/eat the human race.

To sum up the various, hilarious charades and indirect explanations (and some direct explanations from Stinky Dan who turns out to be Satan himself), this is what the deal is:

The Apocalyptic things are only really happening to John for now.

• Other people will see more and be more effected if they believe John or they are in some sort of altered state of consciousness.
• Each day will feature a different apocalypse (ie zombies, natural disasters, aliens, etc.) until the big finale at the End.
• If John doesn’t manage to convince everybody in the entire world that Armageddon is at hand by the end of the week, it becomes real for everyone and goodbye cruel world.
• It’s all Gary’s fault because he’s secretly been in love with Maggie and sold his soul to Stinky Dan in order to get rid of John, never reading the small print that said he could use Armageddon to do it.

We then see John and the gang fighting against the end of the world in every way including using product samples from John’s old client Steel Shotguns (“They practically sell themselves.”), and using the full global mass marketing of an apocalypse (“This Time It’s Real”) for the sake of selling Gordon’s flashlights.  Of course there’s also the good old fashioned hand to hand in the final confrontation with Satan … I mean Stinky Dan.

This show is great for several different reasons.  The pacing moves an awful lot of plot quickly in an hour and half.  The great script created collaboratively by the Serious Theatre Collective  really hangs together.  Both the expert lighting  (Benjamin Danielowski) and sound (Nathaniel Chambers) can almost be counted as characters in and of themselves.  Norman and Ursala Stuby provide not quite menacing, yet convincing costumes and masks for the apocalypse, and the entire cast gels with great chemistry throughout the entirety of this production as a whole which is no doubt a credit to expert direction by Lizz Leiser.

Definitely recommend you try to get your tickets now,  before the end of the festival … or the end of the world!

~~~

The Apocalypse of John
Serious Theatre Collective
Writer: Serious Theatre Collective
Director: Lizz Leiser
John Darrian is charged with saving the world from aliens, super-viruses, earthquakes, and Satan himself in a comedy about the tragic end of all life on Earth. An absurd look at coming to terms with your worst fears. And zombies.
1h 35m   Local   Brooklyn, New York
Comedy   Puppetry
Staycation: Sci-Fi Tech SuperHero Camp   Fantasy Island Excursion
www.theserioustheatrecollective.com
VENUE #10: The Players Theatre
Sat 11 @ 5  Tue 14 @ 9:30  Fri 17 @ 9:30  Sun 19 @ 12  Tue 21 @ 4:30

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• The BYU/Berkeley Plot: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2016 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)
• Songs Of Love: A Theatrical Mixtape (Fringe Festival 2012)
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• Contrasts (Fringe Festival 2012)
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