The Happiest Medium » dark comedy

The Golden Smile: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2016 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)

Karen Tortora-Lee — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 21:58:08 +0000

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

The Golden Smile

While struggling to write a play, five mental patients battle their demons with theater through vulgarity, sarcasm, and song.

Show Info:

Thu Feb 18, 2016 | 8:50PM
Sun Feb 21, 2016 | 6:50PM
Wed Feb 24, 2016 | 10:30PM
Wed Mar 02, 2016 | 7:10PM
Sat Mar 05, 2016 | 8:20PM

Kraine Theater New York, NY $15

Answers by Yaakov Bressler (Playwright)
[with an assist from Joey Stamp (Director)]

1. Forget the PR version. When you’re talking to your friends, how do you explain this show to them?
Yaakov: The Golden Smile is a story of mental patients struggling to collaborate on a theater project. Imagine the characters of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest mashed up with The Mechanicals from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, now imagine they get into trouble for something stupid – so they make a play to solve their problems, except it only deepens their issues. How they creep out of their mess is heartwarming and laughable.

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?
Yaakov: First, when my audience goes for drinks, they better buy me one. Second, I hope they discuss the relevancy of the collaborative struggle brought up in the show. We all face difficult working partners, hopefully The Golden Smile shares some laughs but also insight into these relationships.

3. What drives your show – character, theme or plot?
Yaakov: This question is really for the Director Joey Stamp – so I had him answer it.

Joey: What drives The Golden Smile is simple: Character. Our play starts with all the characters on stage, before the audience even arrives, and they stay there until the last audience members leaves. The point of that is to illustrate that everything that happens in that room happens because of each of these characters. Much like a train without breaks, our show is recklessly steered and controlled by the passionate motivations of our characters, which may or may not make any sense at all.

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?
Yaakov: As a writer, I have incredible pride is seeing the staff of The Golden Smile forgetting about life beyond the artwork during our scenes. Seeing each moment become real is such a privilege. I’m proud of my work but also proud of our team for being awesome (thanks guys!).

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?
Yaakov: Oh my! A truly startling question… Our set is pretty simple and takes place in a very “real” place so we wouldn’t have such crazy dreams. However, we do use an antique radio which the characters are violent towards. It would be cool if they’d be able throw it around and be real rough. Those things are expensive…

Joey: I would have a wall to wall period set with linoleum tiles and green ceramic tiled walls. The play is set in the 1950′s, post WWII, and my dream would be to have everything, every prop, set, and costume piece be period. Unfortunately we don’t yet have the budget to raid all of NYC’s antique shops, but someday soon!

6. What’s the one thing you’re looking forward to regarding the FRIGID Festival itself?
Yaakov: My team and I are looking forward to participating in NYC’s Fringe Theater world. Networking, seeing other shows, and learning about indie theatre in NYC are all elements we’re looking forward to at FRIGID.

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?
Yaakov: There are a couple “real” moments in The Golden Smile where people might feel uncomfortable. In this discomfort, depending on the audience, is insight but also dark-comedy. It’ll be interesting to see how the audience reacts.

8. What’s your favorite line from the show?
Yaakov: That’s an easy one! “But teeth are teeth, not gold.”

9. What’s the last thing you usually do before the beginning of a show?
Yaakov: Use the restroom… Actually.

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?
Yaakov: I would be shocked to see one of my Rabbis at the show. I tell my Rabbis that I write plays but that they shouldn’t see this one because it’s vulgar (very vulgar). I’d be shocked that they’d come for the same reasons anyone would be shocked to see a Rabbi there.

I’m glad you said “rabbis” instead of “rabbits” because I can vouch for the fact that a bunny in the audience tends to be the opposite of shocking. In fact, if you can find a rabbit before your show, I suggest you get one. They are fluffy, soothing and very quiet throughout the performance. Unlike, say — a shocked Rabbi who might exclaim during a vulgar moment and bring your show to a screeching halt which may not be what you’re going for. So yeah – Rabbits. NOT Rabbis.

Well, Yaakov (and Joey!) thanks so much for answering our questions.

The rest of you – don’t forget to check out The Golden Smile!

-*-*-

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/

Almost A Genius (2014 Frigid New York Festival)

Geoffrey Paddy Johnson — Wed, 05 Mar 2014 02:17:25 +0000

Mental disorder is a prickly theme for a comedian, at once courting a humane sympathetic response all but extinguishing of levity, while summoning a degraded, inhumane call for ridicule – an entirely viler form of laughter. As a chosen topic it is demanding, requiring skillful handling, but there are some who seem qualified to do so, much the way there are some who can juggle chainsaws. Maria Wojciechowski is one of those artful jugglers. In her self authored comedic monologue, Almost A Genius, playing at this year’s Frigid Festival, she offers an account of her fairly recent diagnosis as a bi-polar personality. A devastating label to be handed at any stage of one’s life, with presently no known “cure”, the knowledge carries a heavy burden of responsibility. It provides, however, a framework with which to look back on past experiences and reappraise them. It seems Wojciechowski is presently at this point in her young life, but it doesn’t stop her from finding comedy in reflection. And perhaps it opens up understanding in larger, freer ways.

Witness, for instance, her opening act here as slowly, painfully almost, she inches from behind a curtain wearing a head-to-toe banana suit, her face a riven mask of angst. She closes on the microphone and haltingly commences in a cringing voice a sequence of bad to very bad banana puns and humorisms. It’s agonizing. And darkly, deeply funny. Everything is up for the cut: the performer, the audience, humor itself, and the banana – most maligned of fruits. This is clever stuff. Mercifully the lights go down, the banana suit comes off, and she stands before us as herself, launching into the story of her recent real life diagnosis. She has a soft, gentle voice and a slight and graceful physical presence. There is something mild and vulnerable about her, altogether at odds with the evident sharpness of her intelligence and the gritty humor she conjures in this clear-eyed, slightly self-mocking account of her harsh situation.

Punctuating her affecting confessional monologue are a series of sketches and performances that crank up the laugh factor and deepen the investigation. Away from herself, in character, she is a bold and brassy performer, committed to her creations with a vitality that is almost scary – that banana is really quite alarming. We get some singing, some dancing, and a bunch of impersonations shedding various degrees of light on her personal story – some hilariously on point (an earnest nun singing How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?) – and some more vaguely so (a chatty Whitechapel prostitute who quips her way through a near fatal encounter with Jack the Ripper). Breezily she moves from act to act, effortlessly shifting gears, but the break in continuity and character sometimes damages the rhythm of the whole, and the proximity between scathing take-downs and heartfelt confession is an awkward one. What are we to make, for example, of her plaintive pronouncement concerning a cherished family pet -”sometimes I wonder if I loved that dog more than some of my family”? Does she mean it, or is she being funny again, sending up the trite sadness of the situation? Both, most likely. And really that’s the fine steel hook she can catch you with in this piece. She can use the comforting language familiar to support groups in a way that plays at once as sincere and as ridiculous. Many will be lulled by her soft ingenuous-seeming voice, the tender reality of her plight, but this is only half the story. Even though there are some broadly comical moments few could resist, by and large she’s a sly one.

With direction by Natalie Sullivan Shipman, as a piece it could use a little tightening up to improve pace, a little polish, perhaps even a little squaring up as to where the humor is contained and the real self prevails. But that might be tampering with a rare and delicate concoction from a distinctive performer. In its current form Wojciechowski has given us something already suffused with a vivid comedic sensibility and a brave creative reach. It’s almost a work of genius.

~~~
Almost A Genius
Directed by: Natalie Sullivan

Remaining Performance:
Mar 07, 5:30PM

Click HERE for tickets

Running time: 0 h 45 min
Price: $10.00 – $15.00
Seating: General Admission

UNDER St Marks
94 St Marks Place
New York , New York 10009
1st Ave and Ave A

Horse Trade Theater Group will present the 8th 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 19-March 9. Tickets are available for purchase in advance at www.FRIGIDnewyork.info or by calling 212-868-4444.

Charlotte The Destroyer (2014 Frigid New York Festival)

Geoffrey Paddy Johnson — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 17:53:05 +0000

Gretchen Knapp, Shawn Patrick Murphy, Megan O’Leary
(photo Credit: DFXDEN)

The idea behind Megan O’Leary‘s play Charlotte the Destroyer is at once intellectually brilliant and artistically fecund. An author of a series of successful children’s stories featuring the character of a a young girl, Charlotte, elects to write a novel in which her youthful star will grow up. She chooses to do so, however, at a point of singular mental fragility in her own life, and as her world slides out of control, her heroine evolves into a powerful agent of destruction in the process. The created character who overtakes the creator is, of course, a shadow tale that has been around since Pygmalion was found outside the Garden of Eden. But what a compelling twist O’Leary gives the story in this new suit of clothes.

The play opens on a truly squalid apartment interior, and you don’t need to have a PhD in psychology to know that all is not well in the world of the occupant. At the rear of the stage loom three large two dimensional storybook illustrations; a woman, a man, and a cat. Huddled amidst them is a live figure, ponytailed and knee-socked, still as a statue for the moment – the eponymous Charlotte (Gretchen Knapp). Already she is more real, larger than the frame that tries to contain her. In the foreground Charlotte’s creator and her boyfriend go at it in a bitter round of morning, post alcoholic dejection. Nothing, really, is working in these people’s lives and we are set up to wonder if, by story’s end, it ever will. Between bouts of sulky drinking and trenchant bickering the author works at her typewriter, and her creation takes the stage as the new story unfolds. Much as we could wish to escape the author’s bleak and bruised world, Charlotte’s new scenarios become only more horrible at every turn. Each novel episode burrows away at the author’s own plausibly repressed history, but only digs us deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole. There is no way out for the writer and, indeed, for us. Charlotte proves to be a feelingless sociopath, infecting each moment with an uncomprehending cruelty even as her world rises up to abuse and victimize her. As jaggedly desperate as her creator is, the creation is even more alienating. The only reason you might wish to laugh here is because otherwise you would think to cry.

Like much that is designated dark comedy – and here the accent falls very gravely on the dark – Charlotte the Destroyer is almost entirely cerebral as an exercise, and distrustful of feeling. The writing repels empathy. And here is the rub for this production. In the dire battle of wills between author and creation, who is to prevail? As O’Leary herself demonstrates little to no sympathy for her characters, it is well nigh impossible for an audience to really care. Which sadly - in this otherwise excellent production - goes a long way to diminishing the overall impact.

Reprising their roles from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival of 2006, playwright Megan O’Leary takes the part of the sketchily named author character, and Gretchen Knapp that of Charlotte. Both are effective, Knapp - hosting more than a spoonful of whiskey in those girlish tones (another quietly thoughtful and startling detail) - especially absorbing as the wan faced, perverse destroyer. The production is by The Playhouse Creatures Theatre Company. Joseph W. Rodriguez, Emily Dahlke, Shawn Patrick Murphy, and Alex Carmine flesh out the cast, and all deliver under the watchful direction of Janet Bobcean. Some steely and assured theatre awaits; you’re sure to be appalled.

~~~

Charlotte the Destroyer
Company: Playhouse Creatures Theatre
Directed by: Anais Koivisto

Remaining Performance:
Feb 26, 7:05PM
Mar 03, 5:30PM
Mar 08, 2:05PM

Click HERE for tickets

Running time: 0 h 55 min
Price: $10.00 – $16.00
Seating: General Admission

The Kraine Theater
85 E. 4th Street
New York , New York 10003
2nd and 3rd Ave

Silent At The Irish Arts Center

Geoffrey Paddy Johnson — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 16:56:25 +0000

There’s not too much that’s quiet about Pat Kinevane’s performance in his self-authored, one man play, Silent, now playing at the Donaghy Theatre in the Irish Arts Center. This is a piece that has shown some legs since it’s development through 2010 and performances in 2011, when it won prizes at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Brighton’s Argus Angel Awards, and accolades around Ireland. Energized by an electrifying performance from Kinevane, and a richly theatrical dramatization from both performer/author and his director Jim Culleton, it’s not difficult to see why it works so successfully as fine entertainment with a dark twist.

It emerges against a background of contemporary Irish theatre works that show a marked inclination toward the dramatically dark comedy. Stifling social mores work hand in hand with smothering familial circumstances, producing situations so bad that – well, you’ve got to laugh, haven’t you? In this bleak tale our narrator, Tino McGoldrig, a homeless wino on the Dublin streets, recounts his sorry history and the story of his tragic older brother, Pearse. Set in the present, as Tino tells it, there was a sustained small-town roughness, a narrow-mindedness to their upbringing in the picturesque town of Cobh, Co. Cork. We’re back in the world of Brinsley MacNamara’s Valley of the Squinting Windows, where the residents have little to do but shame and one-up each other, ever watchful for anything that might not conform to a coveted normalcy. Pearse, alas, is recognizably light in the loafers from an early age, and soon attracts the scorn and ridicule of his community. He is, however, surpassingly beautiful, and wins the attentions of a merchant seaman. Discovery and public disgrace follow soon after and from then on he is hounded, suffering threats of humiliation and physical violence at every turn. Young Tino observes all fretfully, but silently, happy in his own evasion of attention or accusation. Isolated and hectored, Pearse gives up in his teen years and commences a series of suicide attempts as coarsely comical as they are pitilessly unsuccessful. Stigma and shame attaches to the family and even though Tino struggles towards a blameless normal existence – marriage, and a child, and denial – guilt and depression overtake him and he succumbs to alcoholism and a downward spiral. He is thrown out of his home, debarred, and eventually institutionalized, ending up on the streets of the capital.

It’s baroque stuff, with a whiff of melodrama, but all retold in a caustic, unsentimental manner, swinging from the anecdotally ridiculous to the inflatedly operatic. The lost romance of the silent movie era is given some play – Tino and his father having been named in honor of Rudolf Valentino – and there are arresting sequences of old-school actorly projecting – smoldering dumb shows with opulent lighting effects and text placards. These passages are nicely foiled by Tino’s more natural, direct stage address, comprising elements of contemporary stand-up, satirical impersonation, and loquacious bar stool Blarney. Everything is punctuated by the recorded tinkle of a coin dropping into Tino’s pavement begging bowl, recalling us to the here and now, and Tino to his present predicament – the need to ‘perform’ for his supper.

Kinevane as Tino is mesmerizing, both to watch and to listen to. This is a performer as fully adept with traditions of physical theatre – mime, dance, voguing – as he is with vocal modulation – pitch, expression, mimicry. He even works in some audience interaction, relaxing the dramatic tension, just as easily as he can sharpen it, never losing control. This is a considerable asset, as in the final analysis, there is something over-long in the telling – a tendency to meander off on a riff that proves as compelling as the main narrative itself. If it’s possible for the teller to upstage his tale, then perhaps Kinevane is a bit guilty here. Tino’s life has been devoured by Pearse’s story, but Kinevane’s performance, in some measure, overwhelms his narrative. Whether you agree or not, it’s something to see.

In dramatic visualization, director and co-developer, Jim Culleton, displays insight and authority. Along with Kinevane, Culleton devised the lighting design. One wonderful scene – at a moment of high drama - deploys shadows thrown up on a backdrop as separate stage presences, heightening mood and tension. This high degree of imaginative thoughtfulness is consistent in Catherine Condell‘s simple, but supple costuming, and in the evocative sound design by Denis Clohessy. Taking a compelling lead from Kinevane, this condensed company have produced a work of elaborate theatricality, sounding a bold and refreshing note for theatre as theatre.

~~~

Silent

Written and Performed by Pat Kinevane

Directed by Jim Culleton

Composed and Sound Design by Denis Clohessy

Irish Arts Center / The Donaghy Theater553 W. 51st Street
New York, NY 10019
Located between 10th and 11th Avenues

in association with Georganne Aldrich Heller

September 6 – 23

Wednesday – Saturday | 8pm

Sunday | 3pm

Running Time: 80 minutes

Admission: $30 non-members / $24 members

Click Here for tickets

Hot Steams – Understanding The Misunderstood (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)

Stephen Tortora-Lee — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 18:11:24 +0000

What if you had done something not necessarily evil, but very disturbing? Enough to make you an outcast in society? Hot Steams explores the lives of two imprisoned men who are mentally brilliant but socially inept.

We first meet The Man Awake (played by Zach Wegner), who has been in his cell awhile, as he writes in chalk upon the floor, only to erase it, rewrite it … over and over again. On the other side of the cell is The Sleeping Man in a Santa suit, passed out with a pool of vomit beside him, which (according to Man Awake) is apparently from a night of heavy drinking by the smell of things.

When the Sleeping Man (Braeson Herold) finally awakes The Man Awake tells his story: The long-time prisoner has an obsession with collecting (and caring for) the skulls of the deceased, starting from when his parents had died. He was much young when they died, and with no one checking in on him, he was left to let them decompose for some time. Eventually the act of detaching, cleaning, and caring for his parents’ skulls gave him the sense of closure he hadn’t been able to get elsewhere. After that it became an obsession which haunted him — driving him to find more skulls to add to his collection which now reside in his suitcase.

A twist involving grave-robbing, an unsolved murder, and wrong-place-wrong time leads The Man Awake to be imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. This sets into motion one of the largest bits of dramatic tension in this play: did The Man Awake do something evil? Or just distasteful? And should we sympathize with him? Of course there is also the question of the other man being kept in his prison cell, but there is one more wrinkle to unfold.

We meet the Officer (played by Timothy Weinert) who (at times roughly) interrogates the formerly Sleeping Man and almost always is too personal as he works to find out what SM has learned about his cellmate, MA. But often it is just rhetoric which creates a narrative for the other prisoner rather than incriminating evidence. Weinert gives a very convincing performance as a brutish guard-cum-inquisitor who has all the power, but still has a shade of something else brewing beneath the surface which makes him lash out even more viciously when confronted with his lack of knowledge about the criminals under his “care”.

Immediately a feeling of “why” fills the room like a miasma which only gets thicker as time goes on. What playwright Zach Wegner does in Hot Steams is help us understand that sometimes a prison is often just the outward manifestation of the walls that can hold back people who are misunderstood by society. The fact that some of the thoughts that the characters have are disturbing only helps us remember a time when maybe we have harshly judged someone or been harshly judged, just for being different.

The set design is very basic- simply a door and then the stage itself outlined in various configurations. Books are in stacks and passed throughout the show. There is a box on one side and a chair which only shows up when illuminated by a single spotlight – representing the inquisition chamber where the second prisoner is questioned.

The writing (by Zachary Wegner) and direction (by Jaclyn Biskup) work hand in hand to create a well timed play that keeps you spellbound throughout. Numerous dramatic pauses and silences are exquisitely painful; this style of play is a treat for someone who likes to think and wants to see others doing the same. The costumes by Deirdre Wegner give a beautiful Noir flair, that helps suck you into this world.

Throughout the play, there are numerous literary references and other interesting and elaborate wordplay. From poetry by Yeats or William Blake, to the corny detective story of “Joey Tonsillitis, Private Dick”, many fun and beautiful words are worked into this piece. At times profound, at times laugh-out-loud gallows humor – even moments of subversive nonsense – the Man Awake shows us the appeal of living in a dream-world made of random books and paper. As he tells his favorite stories and ideas, he illuminates his view of the world as a lonely and often hostile place, one which doesn’t understand where he’s coming from. His hope of salvation from a pen pal of sorts, “Anita Kiss”, shows us in stages the depths of his misunderstanding of the world at large. Perhaps the prison is actually a good place of nurturing quiet contemplation, and his second cellmate provides more social interaction than he has had in years…

But what does the title mean? What are the Hot Steams that are behind the pressure cooker of this drama?

In part it may come from a southern folklore legend popularized by its mention in To Kill a Mockingbird, quoted toward the end of the play.

“What’s a Hot Steam?” asked Dill.

“Haven’t you ever walked along a lonesome road at night and passed by a hot place?” Jem asked Dill. “A Hot Steam’s somebody who can’t get to heaven, just wallows around on lonesome roads an’ if you walk through him, when you die you’ll be one too, an’ you’ll go around at night suckin’ people’s breath -”

Are one or more of the characters actual spirits, with the ability to inflict the type of damnation that is described above? As you watch, it seems that regardless of whether the supernatural is involved you definitely feel the seductive pull of Wegner’s words which make you want to understand – even empathize - with the three characters in this play who are all trapped by various layers of social restraint. Finally the simple and innocent prison of being different in the lonely world of The Man Awake makes him one of the strangest tragic heroes in a long time, with his prison of hope that grips him until the very end.

The biting social commentary of how the misunderstood are often imprisoned while the State works to find a charge that will keep them isolated from society is fit both within as well as inbetween the lines of this play. The fact that most in a similar situation such as this do not get the chance to tell their story makes the charity that this play supports, the Innocence Project very fitting. A small organization reviewing the many cases they receive each year of the often poor and forgotten by society, The Innnocence Project supports a limited number of cases who have used up all other legal avenues. Their hope is that DNA evidence could shed enough light on their case for an appeal for their innocence. Find out more here: http://www.innocenceproject.org/.

Hot Steams is a perfect example of classic absurdist theatre that I hope some day might become a classic itself. I certainly hope we get to see more of this play in the future.

~~~

Hot Steams played as part of 2012 Planet Connections Theatre Festivity.

The Happiest Medium » dark comedy

The Golden Smile: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2016 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)

The Golden Smile

Answers by Yaakov Bressler (Playwright)
[with an assist from Joey Stamp (Director)]

Related Posts:

Almost A Genius (2014 Frigid New York Festival)

Related Posts:

Charlotte The Destroyer (2014 Frigid New York Festival)

Related Posts:

Silent At The Irish Arts Center

Related Posts:

Hot Steams – Understanding The Misunderstood (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)

Related Posts:

The Happiest Medium » dark comedy

The Golden Smile: 10 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2016 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)

The Golden Smile

Answers by Yaakov Bressler (Playwright) [with an assist from Joey Stamp (Director)]

Related Posts:

Almost A Genius (2014 Frigid New York Festival)

Related Posts:

Charlotte The Destroyer (2014 Frigid New York Festival)

Related Posts:

Silent At The Irish Arts Center

Related Posts:

Hot Steams – Understanding The Misunderstood (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)

Related Posts:

Answers by Yaakov Bressler (Playwright)
[with an assist from Joey Stamp (Director)]