by Geoffrey Paddy Johnson on February 25, 2012
Suzen Murakoshi‘s self-authored, one-woman performance, Breathe, Love, Repeat, presently playing at Under St. Marks as part of this year’s Frigid New York Festival, is an autobiographical recounting of her last days with her mother. For anybody this might represent a daunting theme, vast, self-examining, possibly too much. But Murakoshi has an imaginary alter ego to call upon in the face of such a challenge – a samurai super daughter – and unhesitatingly she jumps in and grabs the bull by the horns. Why or whence came this super daughter is never made clear, she just magically appears in the form of Murakoshi heroically brandishing an invisible sword above her head in full spotlight. She is the pluck, the resistance, and later the resilience that help carry the author through the ordeal of watching her mother gradually sicken and decline. She is some sort of Asian folkloric warrior princess, alive to the existence of a spirit realm, knowledgeable of the proper respects and tributes owed the demons that haunt us.
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by The Happiest Medium on February 20, 2012
Five Questions. Five Answers. And One Big Decision: Rock, Paper, Or Scissors?
‘Til Love Do Us Part
High Frequency Theatre
A graveyard. Two funerals. Two strangers. Grief. An escape. And a mysterious young girl. Oddities of darkness and light come alive through intense emotion and intimacy.
Show Times:
- Wed 2/22 @6:00pm
- Fri 2/24 @ 10:30pm
- Sun 2/26 @ 5:30pm
- Thu 3/1 @ 9:00pm
- Sat 3/3 @ 4:00pm
Answers by Andrew Hall
(Playwright)
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
That’s some title. How did you come up with it – and what does it mean?
Andrew: The title, ‘Til Love Do Us Part, comes from the legendary phrase commonly used in marriage ceremonies: ‘Til Death Do Us Part. A friend of mine read the play, which at the time was entitled The Eulogy of an Endless Marriage. She hated the title. She began to make countless suggestions. And then she said it. She meant to say it should be retitled ‘Til Death Do Us Part, but she accidentally said “Love” instead of “Death.” And it made so much sense to me. The play on words has become a dark symbol of the love/hate relationship the audience watches develop over time.
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by The Happiest Medium on February 18, 2012
Five Questions. Five Answers. And One Big Decision: Rock, Paper, Or Scissors?
Drowning Ophelia: A New Rock Musical
Company: The RIFF Collective
In Drowning Ophelia, we see one girl with a microphone and the story of Hamlet told through an exciting theatrical concert of sex, drowning, and rock ‘n’ roll.
Show Times:
- Sat 2/25 @ 7pm
- Sun 2/26 @ 2:30pm
- Mon 2/27 @ 10:30pm
- Thu 3/1 @ 6pm
- Fri 3/2 @ 9pm
- Sun 3/4 @ 1pm
Answers by JD Cannady
(Director and Book Writer)
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
That’s some title. How did you come up with it – and what does it mean?
JD: Drowning Ophelia is an homage and riff off of the classic Hamlet story. After her self-proclaimed “tragic” drowning, Ophelia finds herself in purgatory with nothing to do. When the story comes back to her, four hundred years later, will she drown in the details over again or rise above?
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by The Happiest Medium on February 14, 2012
Five Questions. Five Answers. And One Big Decision: Rock, Paper, Or Scissors?
Big Plastic Heroes
Company: Plastic Thunder
What happens when you try to be your idol? Award-winning PBS special storyteller, Slash Coleman, and SexyNurd writer and performer, auGi, share the answer in their comical and painfully true double feature, Big Plastic Heroes.
Show Times:
- Fri 2/24 @ 6:00pm
- Sat 2/25 @ 2:30pm
- Wed 2/29 @ 10:30pm
- Thu 3/1 @ 10:30pm
- Sat 3/3 @ 5:30pm
- Sun 3/4 @ 2:30pm
Answers by Slash Coleman
(Writer/Performer)
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
That’s some title. How did you come up with it – and what does it mean?
Slash: I think most of us Gen X-ers have reached a nostalgic point in our lives. Now, instead of being embarrassed by the things that populated our childhood worlds, we’ve come to accept them as cool (probably because the rest of the world has embraced these things too). With my little miniature Evel Knievel figurine and his plastic motorcycle I spent hours alone in my room emulating my real-life hero. Hence the title – Big Plastic Heroes.
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by The Happiest Medium on February 9, 2012
Five Questions. Five Answers. And One Big Decision: Rock, Paper, Or Scissors?
The Terrible Manpain of Umberto MacDougal
Written by and starring Emleigh Wolf
Directed by Bricken Sparacino
Also starring Mike Ogletree
Umberto MacDougal allows you to look through the window of his tragic manpain. With a beard full of tears and a melancholy guitarist playing a sorrowful tune, Umberto reveals the pain that men feel.
Show Times:
- Thu 2/23 @ 9:00pm
- Sun 2/26 @ 7:00pm
- Mon 2/27 @ 6:00pm
- Fri 3/2 @ 7:30pm
- Sat 3/3 @ 2:30pm
Answers by Emleigh Wolf
(Writer / Performer)
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
That’s some title. How did you come up with it – and what does it mean?
Emleigh: Umberto MacDougal’s mission in life is to educate people about manpain, the pain that men feel. To do this, he must relate his own personal manpain to the audience, and it is, indeed, terrible.
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by The Happiest Medium on February 8, 2012
Five Questions. Five Answers. And One Big Decision: Rock, Paper, Or Scissors?
BLIND TO HAPPINESS
Company: Better to Burn Out Productions
BLIND TO HAPPINESS is a drama/comedy about Couks, a quirky and socially awkward dishwasher, who is struggling to get by. He is helped by his co-workers Mike, a Psychology PhD student, and Bliss, a hapless lovelorn poet. Couks is also helped by his cat, some beer, S Club 7, and (perhaps) life’s most important question – is happiness a choice?
Show Times:
- Wed 2/22 @ 7:30pm
- Fri 2/24 @ 9:00pm
- Sat 2/25 @ 5:30pm
- Tue 2/28 @ 6:00pm
- Wed 2/29 @ 7:30pm
- Sat 3/3 @ 10:00pm
Answers by Tim C. Murphy
(Creator/Performer)
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
That’s some title. How did you come up with it – and what does it mean?
Tim: The title was inspired by a visual experiment in Daniel Gilbert’s book Stumbling on Happiness that one of my characters, Mike (PhD. Positive Psychology student), performs in the play. My play explores the question “Is happiness a choice?” through the three different characters, each struggling to find their own way towards happiness.
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by The Happiest Medium on February 4, 2012
Five Questions. Five Answers. And One Big Decision: Rock, Paper, Or Scissors?
Death, It Happens (Photo by Cathryn Lynne) Pictured from left to right; Maureen Van Trease, Lori Kee, Bricken Sparacino and Rebecca Chiappone)
Death, it happens: A girl’s guide to death
Company: Bricken and Birch Productions
Directed by: Lori Kee
4 different women lost 4 different fathers. Hear their true, diverse, moving and sometimes funny stories. Learn what happened, what they did to cope (or not cope) with death and what to wear to a funeral.
Show Times:
- Sat 2/25 @ 8:30pm
- Mon 2/27 @ 9pm
- Tues 2/28 @ 7:30pm
- Sat 3/3 @ 1:30pm
- Sun 3/4 @ 4pm
Answers by Bricken Sparacino
(conceiver, producer, performer and co-writer)
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
That’s some title. How did you come up with it – and what does it mean?
Bricken: Well, our show is about Death, I didn’t want to sugar coat it, but I also wanted there to be a little humor in it as well. Our show is honest, sometimes sad – but we also use a lot of gallows humor. I hoped to reflect that in the title. I wanted the word “Death” to stand out and the rest to follow a little smaller. Almost as if to say “Do I have your attention now?”
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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 31, 2012
Five Questions. Five Answers. And one big decision: Rock, Paper, or Scissors?
Nicole Pandolfo
Love In The Time Of Chlamydia
Company: Hard Sparks
Love In The Time Of Chlamydia is one woman’s search for love in a world full of absent dads, dirtbag boyfriends, and premature ejaculators. Your first time wasn’t weirder – and your best time wasn’t wilder – than writer-performer Nicole Pandolfo’s.
Show Times:
- Thur. 2/23 @ 10:30 PM
- Sat. 2/25 @ 4:00 PM
- Sun. 2/26 @ 4:00 PM
- Wed. 2/29 @ 6:00 PM
- Sun 3/4 @ 5:30 PM
Answers by Nicole Pandolfo
(Writer, Performer)
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
That’s some title. How did you come up with it – and what does it mean?
Nicole: Well, it started out originally as monologues from the perspective of prostitutes who had seen really weird stuff go down on the job, and it was called Five Fucked Up Fetishes. Then I realized I was using a lot of back story from my own real life – God that sounds bad – and then I was like ‘ok, this is actually going to be a one person show based on my life.’ And then, because there is a vignette with venereal disease, I came up with Sex in the Time of Chlamydia. I came up with that very quickly and it was obviously inspired in its form by the title Love in the Time of Cholera. And then when I was really getting into writing the first draft I realized that even though there was a lot of sex in the piece it was really about love. And it took me a minute for that to sink in. But once it did I decided to stick with Love In The Time Of Chlamydia, and it made it even closer to Marquez’s title, but it just felt right so that’s how it came to be. I think it hints at the way sex is presented in this piece specifically, which is kind of funny, and kind of weird, and it’s sexy but not in a conventional way.
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by The Happiest Medium on January 30, 2012
Five Questions. Five Answers. And one big decision: Rock, Paper, or Scissors?
Suzen Murakoshi
BREATHE LOVE REPEAT:a near-life experience
Produced by: The Mustique Projects
A samurai super daughter struggles with her mother at the crossroads between east and west to affirm life between this world and the next.
Show Times:
- Wed. 2/22 @ 10:30pm
- Fri. 2/24 @ 7:30pm
- Mon. 2/27 @ 7:30pm
- Fri. 3/2 @ 10:30pm
- Sun. 3/4 @ 7:00pm
Answers by Suzen Murakoshi
(Playwright, Performer)
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
That’s some title. How did you come up with it – and what does it mean?
Suzen: THANKS! It’s the mantra I was wrestling with at one of the lowest points in my life. The ‘repeat’ part is the hardest, because it’s like, “you mean, I have to do it again? And, again?”
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