by Karen Tortora-Lee on May 12, 2009
They're Lying
So off I go to UNDER St. Marks to see No Tea Production’s new show, LIARS directed by Lindsey Moore, when on my way there I’m handed a lottery ticket by a man who’s slumped over a mail box. ”It’s … the winning … ticket ….,” he gasps to me, his arm outstretched, “… take it. I’m … I’m …” and with that he falls to the ground. ”What? He’s what?” I kick him a bit. ”What are you? Dying? Are you dying? Is that what you’re saying?” I turn to my husband, annoyed, with a WTF? look on my face, but he just shrugs. So I take the lottery ticket, cash it in, and find it’s worth a million bucks. Then I hire some scrub to write this review for me while I pack for my cruise around the world. Bon Voyage!
Of course, I’m lying. But you already knew that … just like the audience of LIARS … the laughs are built in when you know that everything that comes out of anyone’s mouth is NOT the truth.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on April 15, 2009
It was shocking, that first time in high school English class when my very Catholic, very quick-to-giggle sophomore class was taken through a reading of William Butler Yeats’ Leda and the Swan: A sudden blow: the great wings beating still // Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed // By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, // He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
Greek myth or not, there was something very evocative and real about it all, the idea of Leda being seduced by Zeus in feathered drag … it was a little naughty … a little worldly. A little grown-up. I don’t think we ever understood why it was necessary for the all-powerful King of the Gods to take on the form of a bird in order to convince a woman to sleep with him, but regardless it left an impression on me, and apparently I wasn’t the only one; the myth obviously left an impression on Playwright Dorothy Fortenberry as well for when her writing teacher at the Yale School of Drama assigned her students to write a swan-themed play, Dorothy penned Caitlin and The Swan. The play that started its journey there now continues its voyage as it take wing at UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1st and A) starting April 16th.
I got a chance to sit down with Dorothy, as well as with Director Joshua Conkel, to chat about how this production got started; what they both enjoy about collaborating on this girl-meets-bird story; and the skills needed to produce large-themed theatre in small spaces.
It all began on a Youngblood writing retreat in the Poconos, of all places, where Josh and Dorothy first met. Josh, who is also the co-artistic director of THE MANAGEMENT, asked Dorothy to submit her play to the group and everyone agreed that it was exactly they were looking to do …
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on January 16, 2009
Last night I had a great night … just kicked back with some old friends, drank a lot, reminisced, sang some songs, then passed out. Oh, wait, that wasn’t me … that was the cast of Mike Leigh’s Ecstasy.
For the next few weeks, until January 25th, 2009, you can catch this fantastic play at the Red Room, 85 East 4th Street which is being presented by the Black Door Theatre Company in association with Horse Trade Theater Group.
Ecstasy begins with a visual metaphor that’s impossible to miss in this tiny tiny theater; Jean (Mary Monahan) is naked in bed with her lover Roy (Josh Marcantel) and she’s more than just enticingly naked, even as she starts to dress she becomes emotionally naked, and uncomfortably so. With very few words, and just some subtle, longing glances, (which are responded to with casual, thoughtless gestures) we know who Jean is. We know where she’s been. We know what just happened … and we know that it will keep happening.
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