by The Happiest Medium on January 31, 2012
Five Questions. Five Answers. And One Big Decision: Rock, Paper, Or Scissors?
I MARRIED A NUN! Dyan Forest
I Married A Nun!
A one-woman show that dramatically depicts D’yan’s search for love and meaning in life, finding the answers—at age 77—in the smoldering cabarets and demimonde of Paris. With humor, art and her ukulele, she reveals the truth that’s valid for all of us.
Show Times:
- Wed. 2/22 @ 9:00 PM
- Thurs. 2/23 @ 6:00 PM
- Sun. 2/26 @ 1:00 PM
- Thurs. 3/1 @ 7:30 PM
- Sat. 3/3 @ 8:30 PM
Answers by D’yan Forest
(Playwright & Performer)
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
That’s some title. How did you come up with it – and what does it mean?
D’yan: It’s the truth, and the reason I wrote the show.
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by The Happiest Medium on January 17, 2012
GARBO
Writer: Joe Gulla
Director: Brian Rardin
This short comedy/drama tells the story of Joe, a gay New Yorker enjoying an extended holiday in Rome, Italy. Like any foreigner who visits the Eternal City, Joe’s daily life is filled with ever-changing sensorial delights – culture shock at its best! But, it is not until he happens upon the tiny, candle-lit GARBO BAR – hidden on a small cobblestoned street in the ancient quarter of Trastevere – that his emotional adventure TRULY begins! Funny and heartfelt, GARBO explores why life and love may be better lived outside the closet… even (or especially) in the shadow of the Vatican!
Show Times:
- Fri 1/20 @ 6pm
- Sat 1/21 @ 8pm
Answers by Joe Gulla (Playwright, Producer, Performer)
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
This is an international festival. What part of the world are you coming from … and will your show tantalize the NYC audience with a taste of your nation’s culture?
Joe Gulla: Roma! My play is set in a small, sexy bar hidden on a cobblestoned street in the ancient quarter of Trastevere… Rome! The name of the bar is GARBO. Experiencing GARBO is like being handed a First Class ticket to Rome’s Fiumicino Airport where a handsome Italian man greets you at baggage claim, tosses you on his vespa and drives you to the Eternal City’s coolest cocktail party!
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by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on December 5, 2011
Does being a “fan” always mean that in some sense you are intrinsically a “fanatic”? There is ample, and shocking evidence at this point in the twenty-first century to suggest that there is, well, to some degree, a measure of being “touched” in our adoration of public and performing figures, aka “celebrities”. Some performers, of course, have a more invasive reach than others, and in this regard Judy Garland emerges as singular in her ability to stir the more extreme emotions of her devotees. Mark it down to a singularity of presence and performative intensity in her case – in so many ways a relentlessly raw nerve of emotion projecting powerfully beyond the simple melodic lyrics she could sing. Several generations have been passing the torch for Judy now, and in the gay male community she has been deified many times over. “Friends of Dorothy” have given way to worshippers of the later Garland – the obviously wounded, out-of-control spitfire who could turn it on at performance and Deliver. So when a gay male performer undertakes a role invoking Miss Judy Garland, there is an immediate and heavy-breathing audience that can be relied upon. But beware, there’s a lot of it out there so you’d better be good. And really, at this point, there better be a reason.
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by Stephen Tortora-Lee on November 16, 2011
15 months ago I had the opportunity to review 23 Feet In 12 Minutes as it premiered in the 2010 NYC Fringe Festival. Since then this show has made it to New Orleans and back with some wonderful work-shopping in the Cape Cod Theatre Project along the way. It came back to New York as part of the All For One Festival and I was lucky enough to see the newly evolved work. While the show only had a 2 day run I thought I’d do an in-depth exploration of the piece highlighting the evolution from the version I saw 15 months ago. I hope 23 Feet In 12 Minutes will continue to be performed and developed in the future, and continue to have a wider and wider audience, because while it gives gripping stories of many of the tragic human consequences that happened following the touchdown of Hurricane Katrina, it also shows us the best of humanity.
Written by Mari Brown, performed by Deanna Pacelli, and directed by Pamela Berlin and David Travis this new revision moves from the free-flowing stream of conciousness writing and performing in the premiere version, to a well thought out piece where every action (or inaction) seems carefully weighted and balanced to tell a story with a beginning, a middle, and a NOW. At the end I think anyone who sees this will want to do whatever they can to help prevent disasters – wherever they happen in the world – from getting this out of control again by emulating the people they’ve seen represented in this show. Last time I wrote a review, I compared everyone to heroes. This time I think it is more apt to compare them to saints both because the Saints are the New Orleans team, but also because I hope that these stories can help others learn to live by the examples given by Saints in the spiritual sense. The fact that all of these characters in 23 Feet In 12 Minutes came from interviews of real people makes it even more inspiring — and akin to the history of what elevates a person to sainthood.
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by Stephen Tortora-Lee on August 24, 2011
As we get closer and closer to the futuristic realm of cyberpunk, that has been active in our collective imaginations since we first started understanding what computing was or what it could be, one has to ask the questions:
What about the people it could hurt? Would we even know what it meant to feel that way? Would dysfunction be the first glimpse into a greater ability to truly live on or beyond “the net”? If the first person in this new space were alone, would he make friends with virtual projections of himself?
Virtual Solitaire written and performed by Dawson Nichols is a fast paced drama which does an amazing job of exploring these themes in a very real and human way — in an artificial world.
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by Stephen Tortora-Lee on August 20, 2011
Meet Anna. In Anna & The Annadroids: Memoirs of a Robot Girl - an interesting combination of modern dance, techno music, social commentary, science fiction, multimedia, and a bit of burlesque – Anna is an android who is made of ”pure synthetic organic flesh”. So instead of being made only of metal with a “mind full of microchips” she’s got a heart filled with “…love…passion…confusion…pure sexuality”. The dancing and aerial acrobatics of Anna Sullivan (Anna), are accompanied with ambient, driving techno beats created by various artists which she performs while wearing beautiful costumes created by Elizabeth Harzoff. The acrobatics seem to correspond to times of dreams (whether regular or daydreams) as something seems to be making her concentrate on something other than reality.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 19, 2011
The mother/daughter dynamic is a convoluted one – speaking myself as a daughter who has both benefited from the advice of a strong willed woman while at the same time fought to get out from under the weight of Mother’s somewhat (shall we say) “insistent” personality. So, for me, Mary-Beth Manning’s Mother she’s with you wherever you go was a show that I knew was going to bring up a lot of issues before it even started. The wonderful thing about this solo-show, however, is that while Mary-Beth’s mother Joanie is one hundred percent a unique character unto herself, Manning manages to hit upon the universal themes we all struggle with when dealing with a person who is both our constant source of inspiration and comfort as well as our constant source of agitation, depending on the day.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 17, 2011
Sure, I knew that the star of Bette Davis Ain’t For Sissies was going to be a woman. But there was still a part of me that gave a little stutter when I saw Jessica Sherr walk onto the stage, about to embark on her journey to embody this legendary actress. There’s a reason why Bette Davis is a favorite of drag performers, a la Cher, Judy and Liza. Because legends like these have enormous shoes to fill and sometimes the dainty feet of a woman just slosh around in those heels. However, I wasn’t here to see a drag show. I was here to see why Bette Davis Ain’t For Sissies. Unfortunately this “comedy solo show” (which had very little comedy) never really clarified that for me.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 14, 2011
Oh, you’ll love walking into the theatre at Dixon Place to watch I Light Up My Life: The Mark Sam Celebrity Autobiography – Mark Sam Rosenthal’s (Celebrity!) solo show. The music is cranking with such anthems as The Pussycat Dolls “When I Grow Up”, Katy Perry’s “Firework” and Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” and the walls are glowing with projections of Mark in his candid, semi (one assumes) nude “oops, you caught me being cute!” poses. You’ll just love walking in, almost as much as Mark Sam Rosenthal himself does.
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by The Happiest Medium on August 14, 2011
The Happiest Medium Review by guest contributors Anjali Koppal and Saurabh Paranjape
Craving, writer/performer Delphine Brooker’s one-act, one-woman play about her own battle with anorexia and bulimia, is a unique animal. Rather than indulging in the kind of pedantic damnation of outside societal influences that one expects, Brooker chooses to frame her narrative as a view into the inner thoughts of a bulimic girl after she has already made peace with the idea that being thin is what real beauty is all about. Thus we get some rather poignant, yet funny, anecdotes about the practical difficulties of maintaining a bulimic lifestyle in shared bathroom living situations and the bothersome battles with hunger pangs triggered by a stroll past a Parisian bakery.
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