by Antonio Miniño on July 9, 2010
The Gospel According To Josh
In case you haven’t noticed, it’s pretty hot outside… summer, yeah… summertime! What that also means is it’s theatre festival season. If you live on the motto that “life is like a box of chocolates,” you can easily apply the same to the festival circuit. Festivals hold lovely truffles covered with exquisite themes, filled with yummy character developments that leave you with a thought provoking aftertaste. They also have strange, oversweetened eerie stuff.
Out of the Midtown International Theatre Festival box –a festival running from July 12th through August 1st in the Big Apple– I’ve chosen a couple of possibly lovely truffles. We start our first Q&A with Joshua Rivedal, writer/performer for The Gospel According To Josh.
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by Antonio Miniño on July 6, 2010
When Shea Elmore talks about his upcoming project, This Is Storybox, his face lights up and you can’t help but listen and be intoxicated with his excitement and sincerity. What he brings us is an interactive approach to performance, where audience members choose to be part of the action or plainly be a viewer.
The project is reminiscent of the 60s movement of the Theatre of the Opressed and Brazilian Augusto Boal, yet Elmore’s contemporary take was inspired and emerged from his collaboration with a professor from the University of Central Florida.
In our Q&A you will find out what makes Storybox different and why you should step in.
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by Antonio Miniño on July 1, 2010
A professor once told me –”If you want to be cast in the kind of plays that you really believe in, if you want to do work that is meaningful to you, with actors trained in the same way as you, and have the same aesthetic… create your own theatre company together, the most important thing in this business is networking, and that starts NOW, in this classroom”– great advice from a very wise man. Seems to be that Rachel McPhee and Jackie LaVanway, cofounders of On The Square Productions, received the same words of wisdom.
Their company strives in non-traditional casting, and community outreach, which might give us a clue as to why their production of William Shakespeare’s A MidSummer Night’s Dream takes place in a garden in Astoria.
Here’s a Q&A with both ladies regarding their upcoming venture.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on June 30, 2010
People go to shrinks for lots of different reasons – from those who go simply to download their gripes, thoughts, disappointments and vexations on a weekly basis to a nonjudgmental party, to those who are grappling with some serious disorders such as acute stress, obsessive-compulsive disorder, addictions of all sorts, panic attacks . . . the list goes on and on. When we meet Tom Blander (Ryan Tramont) we find that his reasons for coming to Dr. Fine (Brad Fryman) are a little different. Tom is convinced he’s possessed by a demon – and please don’t confuse this for the hallucinations of schizophrenia or the multiple personalities of a Dissociative. No . . . Tom is convinced he has a real, living, fulling autonomous demon egging him on to do Bad Things. So begins Christopher Stetson Boal’s Order (directed by Austin Pendleton) now playing at The Kirk @ Theatre Row.
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by Antonio Miniño on June 30, 2010
The other day I was walking by myself, minding my own business down Riverside Park, trying to have some me time with . . . well . . . me, and I noticed these pianos just lying there unattended. So I snapped a shot and did some snooping around, and found out about a fantastic non-profit called Sing for Hope, and their Play Me I’m Yours arts project.
Play that thang! ©Antonio Minino
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by Lina Zeldovich on June 28, 2010
Becky Byers as Cynthia in The Little One
A somewhat hackneyed vampire genre gets an absolute and terrific makeover in James Comtois’s play, The Little One (directed by Pete Boisvert).
Cynthia (Becky Byers), a young, recently “turned” vampling, faces challenges in her new life after being bitten by a troubled male vampire who liked to “play with his food before he ate it” and who puts a wood stick through his heart shortly after, committing vampacide.
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by Stephen Tortora-Lee on June 25, 2010
There are many rites of Food in the world, and the vibrancy of our young nation’s reverence toward the the appreciation of food and the veneration of all things nutritious and/or tasty is woven into the very fabric of our collective psyche. In SMALL BITES: A SMORGASBORD OF ONE-ACT COMEDIES (written and directed by J.C. Svec) homage is paid to the ideals brought forth from the hallowed preparation and consumption of the victuals which sustain us through nearly all of our most cherished traditions of American Culture. The fact they are all excellent comedies that really make you laugh – hard – is even better.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on June 25, 2010
It’s not every day that you get a marriage proposal, especially not after the 3rd date, but that’s exactly what’s happening to Vincent (John Fico) as the lights come up on Monica Bauer’s beautifully written one-man show, Made For Each Other (directed by John FitzGibbon). Vincent, a 50ish man flips his cell phone shut and proceeds to give the audience hilarious snapshots of his life in zinging one liners, self deprecating anecdotes and breezy patter. Between the laughs we can tell that Vincent is a man with a heart who’s hoping against hope that this isn’t all as crazy as it sounds.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on June 25, 2010
Today, in memory of Michael Jackson’s passing, we re-post a great tribute written by Michael’s friend and business associate, Howard Bloom, who shared his memories of Michael with me one year ago.
- Guest Blogger Howard Bloom
Guest Blogger Howard Bloom began his legendary career in music public relations when he co-founded The Howard Bloom Organization Ltd in 1976, and helped build or sustain the careers of Michael Jackson, Prince, Bob Marley, Queen, Billy Joel, John Cougar Mellencamp, Simon & Garfunkel, Bette Midler, Joan Jett, AC/DC, Talking Heads, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and roughly 100 other stars of the 1970s and 1980s. Here he shares some of his personal reflections on the passing of his client, Michael Jackson, and takes us past all the noise to a quieter place.
* * *
On the night of June 25th, when I was on my nightly mile-long 1 am walk that loops me up to Prospect Park then takes me back to my brownstone, I passed a pair of 18 year olds sitting on a stoop at this lonely hour when the streets and sidewalks are usually utterly devoid of human beings. The guy had long dark black curly hair and the girl had a short, blond haircut and was wearing shorts. The male said something to me as I passed. I walked back, took off my headphones, and asked him to repeat it. He said, “Michael Jackson is dead.”
I asked him why he said that to me. I wondered if he knew me from the Tea Lounge on Union Street, where I do my writing, or from the streets and if he knew my Michael Jackson connection. No, he didn’t. He was telling it to everyone. He wanted no one to ignore it.
He was particularly emphatic about making sure that no one over the age of 30 pass it by or dismiss it. Michael Jackson’s death, he felt, was a loss to all of us whether we realized it or not.
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by Diánna Martin on June 25, 2010
Austin Pendleton (photo by George Hartpence)
In the fourth and final installment of our Oberon Theatre Ensemble Rep Interview Series, we’ve got a treat – actor, director, and teacher Austin Pendleton. With a body of work on stage and screen that has spanned several decades, Austin is a vocal and active member of the Off-Off-Broadway community, who has championed the need to recognize the importance of theatre at all levels. Austin is the director of Order, now extended until July 3rd at Theatre Row.
Austin took some time out of his insanely busy schedule to answer some questions about his work both with Oberon and his long career.
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