What The F* Is Going On? F*It Club’s Spring Fling!

Karen Tortora-Lee — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 15:44:08 +0000

When you think about it, we’re all part of the F*It Club. Oh yes we are! When was the last time you said to yourself, “Fuck it, I’m not waiting around for this to just happen on its own! I’m going to MAKE IT HAPPEN!” You know, in true Laverne and Shirley “Doin’ it our way!” spirit – that’s when you joined the F*It Club. But, you know, there’s a REAL F*It Club too. And that’s the one I’m going to tell you a little bit more about today.

It started the same way, really – Allyson Morgan was having a lot of conversations with friends of every artistic flavor who were tired of waiting for permission to get on with their careers. F*It! “We wanted to create an incubator for both theater AND film,” says Allyson. “So often in NYC, particularly, they’re seen as mutually exclusive skill sets, and we wanted to create a more accessible Sundance-like/workshop environment for creators working in both mediums on a smaller level.”

So they created a club. Not a stodgey company or a even an exclusive group. But a club where “the hope is that the audiences will find themselves enjoying the work more”. And not one of those red-velvet rope clubs however, where only the rich and attractive can get in. But a place that can serve as a home for artists. ALL artists.

Okay – can you say “fuck it” and not have a plan? “Part of the idea is just being audacious in spite of not quite knowing the exact path”, says Allyson. However, one thing F*It does do is make sure to create a new piece of programming each year. The successful ones become repeat programming, but it’s also okay if something goes away after one try. “That’s just the nature of experimentation in the arts”.

Spring Fling has become one of those repeat programs. It’s the most widely covered event – with the idea being to take the theme of “spring fling” – love and romance – and focus on just one area. This year’s theme is “Crush”.

“Playwrights take that theme and turn it on its head,” says Allyson. “I can’t wait for audiences to see how we’re playing with the theme in 2016!”

Rather than simply six 10-minute plays that are short romantic comedies, there will be everything from drama to comedy to abstract language and timelines. ”Every play is very different – and in between each play this year, instead of just standard boring transitions, we have a seventh *surprise* play running inside of the other six.”

While the playwrights are always curated by Allyson and the company they’ll come to the F*It Club in all sorts of ways. The Club has also started a fall retreat where they bring writers to the Berkshires to work with them, and for the last 3 years have been able to incorporate plays developed at that retreat.

Here’s what this year’s Spring Fling - CRUSH – holds in store for you:

Kevin Artigue – BAGEL MEETS DOOR

Give us some background about the title of your show. How did you come up with Bagel Meets Door? And does the meaning change to the audience as your play progresses?
Kevin: If you’re familiar with dating sites, you probably know “Coffee Meets Bagel”? The play is about two people who meet online and have a date that does not go according to plan. Thus the door.
For Spring Fling you’ve got 10 minutes to wow an audience, make a statement, leave an impression. How does that compare to the work you usually write?
Kevin: With short pieces, it’s hard to say too much. So I just keep it simple and playful.
This year’s Spring Fling theme is “Crush”. Great word with so many meanings! Of course we don’t want you to give away your plot but tell us … Does Bagel Meets Door deliver a crush?
Kevin: Yup. It’s about two people who fall in love, despite absurd wooden obstacles, (insert cliche here).

Stephanie Del Rosso – HE LIGHTS UP MY

Give us some background about the title of your show. How did you come up with He Lights Up My? And does the meaning change to the audience as your play progresses? 
Stephanie: I always avoid titles until the last minute. The pressure to summarize stresses me out, I think. But my general rules are: keep it simple and don’t quote a specific line from the piece. Without giving too much away, yes, the meaning evolves slightly as the play progresses.
If He Lights Up My was a real life scenario, how real would it be?
Stephanie: I’m interested in theater that is intimate and vulnerable but also strange and off-kilter in a way that surprises and invites spectacle. I always set out to tell stories earnestly, but I also always aim to necessitate why a particular story is a play and not, say, a novel. For me, the supposedly too-incredible-to-really-happen theater often ends up feeling the most true.
This year’s Spring Fling Theme is “Crush”. In terms of your writing style, how hard was it to work with this theme?
Stephanie: All of my plays explore disconnect, loneliness, and how relationships fluctuate. So “Crush” felt like a natural continuation of the things that excite and bother me most.

Catya McMullen - EPIC LIFE OF SAM WHEELER

Give us some background about the title of your show. How did you come up with Epic Life Of Sam Wheeler? And does the meaning change to the audience as your play progresses?
Catya: This one’s a bit of a personal one (I mean they are all personal, but this comes directly from my own experience and loss). I had a friend who always wanted to do a show about his adventures entitled “The Epic Life of___” (I’m keeping his name out of this interview) that was a mashup of his radical adventures and his lifelong struggle with epilepsy. He passed away unexpectedly a few years ago from epilepsy and I’ve always wanted to write the show. This short is a first attempt at wrapping my head around it and also him as a character. He’s a difficult man to stage-he was larger than life in almost every way. A sensitive, hilarious, ridiculous, loving and impulsive neanderthal who you might die on the side of a mountain with or build an ice couch with etc. He was one of the first people to believe in me as a playwright, as well. He also helped teaching me how to drive by letting me drive his family’s Benz from the NJ Turnpike in Elizabeth to Vermont one night.
And, I think the meaning of the play does transform over the course of the ten minutes-but that’s all I’ll say.
For Spring Fling you’ve got 10 minutes to wow an audience, make a statement, leave an impression. How does that compare to the work you usually write?
Catya: I write a lot of short plays. Writing ten minute plays was the first piece of professional advice I got-and I fell in love with the form. it’s a different animal than a full length-in a lot of ways it’s trickier. Part of my mission as a playwright is to write plays that maintain an equilibrium of being both funny and poignant. I want you to laugh and get punched in the gut or be faced with your own humanity in some way. In recent years as I’ve started to also write sketch comedy and also perform comedic hip hop as my rap alias “MC Chihuahua Fancy,” my short plays have become a lot funnier and almost sketch based. Initially for the prompt of “crush” I wrote a play about rapping, adolescent cockroaches discovering sexuality which ended up being produced at EST/Youngblood. The team at The F*it Club encouraged me to write something less grounded in sketch comedy and more grounded in storytelling which prompted me to revisit a story that ties into the theme of “crush” in a few different ways and is something that moves and challenges me. In many ways it is like my full lengths, it goes back and forth in time, is funny and moving (I hope) and in the blink of ten minutes shows four people grappling with their own grief, sexuality, loneliness and humanity.
This year’s Spring Fling theme is “Crush”. Great word with so many meanings! Of course we don’t want you to give away your plot but tell us … Does Epic Life of Sam Wheeler deliver a crush?
Catya: It’s “crush” a few ways. People get crushed by grief, they get literally crushed, have a cute crush and also grapple with giving up on love-being done with “crushes.”

Seth Moore – A CONVERSATION I NEVER HAD

Give us some background about the title of your show. How did you come up with A Conversation I Never Had? And does the meaning change to the audience as your play progresses?
Seth:The play has a lot to do with memory, how we perceive our own stories and alter them as time marches forward. The conversation that is had in the play is more of a device, in which a character guides another through a story, but is not necessarily real all the time. I think it’s certainly an interpretive title, can be as literal or figurative as you like, but for me has to do with the deceptiveness of memory, and the conversations that we continue – even if the other person isn’t there – because they’re not finished.

If A Conversation I Never Had was a real life scenario, how real would it be? In other words: slice of life, or too-incredible-to-really-happen?
Seth: The play is many slices of life, Sampled, chopped up and rearranged. In a way it’s all real. In a way it’s all filtered through a rambling mind. So … both?

This year’s Spring Fling Theme is “Crush”. In terms of your writing style, how hard was it to work with this theme?
Seth: Not hard at all! I think crushing lends itself well to this kind of piece.

Gregory S. Moss - CRUSH

Give us some background about the title of your show. How did you come up with Crush? And does the meaning change to the audience as your play progresses?

Gregory: The secret title (“THE NOT-CREEPY DATING EVENT FOR SIGNLES THAT WANT TO FALL IN LOVE.”) comes from a real life event a friend of mine attended in Seattle. I added the misspelling. I like the implicit hopefulness of the title – tonight might be the night! – and also the implicit desperation. The multiple meanings of crush – “a short-lived intense infatuation,” “to pulverize,” or (my favorite) “to force inwards by compressing forcefully” – all apply to the wonky cracked romanticism of the characters that attend the event in my play.

For Spring Fling you’ve got 10 minutes to wow an audience, make a statement, leave an impression. How does that compare to the work you usually write?
Gregory: A 10 minute play is the perfect form for a crush! The life of a crush is like that of a mosquito – you can fall in love, have an entire relationship, and part ways all in complete silence, while waiting in line at Starbucks.I tend to write A LOT and then winnow down – that’s how I get to know my characters. So the compression involved in the ten minute play is rough … but I find the challenges of the short form – brevity, compression, simplicity – are also quite liberating. There’s permission to try something different structurally, to zoom in on a single simple moment – or to try to complicate the brevity, to make the ten minutes feel intense and full.
This year’s Spring Fling theme is “Crush”. Great word with so many meanings! Of course we don’t want you to give away your plot but tell us … Does Crush deliver a crush?
Gregory: There’s a couple of crushes, of a couple different kinds. I’m hoping the audience feels included – crushed on and crushing – in the course of the play, too.

Ariel Stess – YOU WERE CRUSHED

Give us some background about the title of your show. How did you come up with You Were Crushed? And does the meaning change to the audience as your play progresses?
Ariel: The title of the play came from a piece of dialogue. Funny you ask that because the meaning of You Were Crushed changes within a single monologue. The play is about a patient who is struggling with a dream she had. The therapist reminds her the reason she is in therapy, which involves being “crushed” by a series of events, events both in the physical and the emotional world.
If You Were Crushed was a real life scenario, how real would it be?
Ariel: I think my play is a mix of both. The setting and the crises are slice of life, but the way the crises manifest in the space are kind of “too incredible to really happen”.
This year’s Spring Fling Theme is “Crush”. In terms of your writing style, how hard was it to work with this theme?
Ariel: Often my writing is associative. So, starting with the idea of “being crushed” helped me to generate material.

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F*IT CLUB
SPRING FLING
“CRUSH”

PERFORMANCES
Thurs Apr 28th – Sun May 8th
Wednesdays – Saturdays @ 8pm / Sundays @ 2pm

IRT THEATER
154 Christopher Street
3rd Floor

Tickets are $18 and are available HERE and at the door.

For more information, CLICK HERE.

The Happiest Medium » Catya McMullen