by Karen Tortora-Lee on September 28, 2010
There’s something truly wonderful about smartly written children’s stories. When you look at the enduring ones they’re not still around because they’re cute or funny or have clever titles . . . they’re still around because they teach an amazing lesson in a subtle and gentle way. So, while Stinky Flowers and the Bad Banana has a title I could say over and over again and still laugh – I don’t think it’s gotten as far as it has on funny alone. In fact, after hearing what creator Croft Vaugh had to say about his play, I think the reason this show has come this far is because its creator is as extraordinary as its topic.
Beginning as solo play performed by Croft Vaughn himself, Stinky Flowers and the Bad Banana was first presented as part of Six Figures Theatre Company’s Artists of Tomorrow Festival at the Westside Theatre in December 2006. From there it went to both the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2007) and the Indianapolis Fringe Festival (2008). The new 5-person version of the play was presented in 2008 as part of The Management’s Salon Reading Series. Now, audiences will be able to see the first fully staged production of the ensemble version of Stinky Flowers and the Bad Banana at UNDER St. Marks.
Today Croft Vaugh tells me about the challenges of turning a solo-show into an ensemble piece, he explains how Fairy Tales are filled with parental imagery, and he gives some advice on how to transform yourself into a monkey . . .
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by Sarah V. Schweig on May 17, 2010
photo by Enrico Luttmann
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal;
bad poets deface what they take, and good poets
make it into something better, or at least something different.
T.S. Eliot
The very idea of Three Sisters Come and Go was risky to begin with. A collaborative effort between the actors — Liza Cassidy, Claire Helene and Jackie Lowe –, the director, Orietta Crispino, and dramaturg, Marco Casazza, the play would open with Samuel Beckett’s “dramaticule,” Come and Go, and then the following scenes would be drawn from the texts of Anton Chekhov’s four major plays: Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard, The Sea Gull, and The Three Sisters (which, to add to the complexity of the intertextuality, is a play based loosely on the three Bronte sisters), and the entirety of the play was to be governed by Structuralist philosopher and critic Julia Kristeva’s ideas about … something or other.
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by Diánna Martin on February 18, 2010
Christina LaFortune and Vince Gatton
Henry James’ novella The Turn of the Screw is one of my favorite works committed to paper, being a wonderful macabre pastime that my Grandmother and I used to share together, acting out the roles as we read along. I feel it is truly one of the most important staples of Gothic Literature. With every read or artistic version (such as the film The Innocents) a new strata of possibility can be found in the characters, who are as fascinating now as ever. Two Turns Theatre Company’s amazing adaptation of this piece has put their finger on the pulse of these characters, and found an innovative way to share a classic tale.
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by Antonio Miniño on October 28, 2009
Lets start with a tangent shall we. I always hate when reviews only focus on their headlining actor.
Exhibit A. Roundabout Theatre’s current revival of After Miss Julie: all the reviews have focused on Sienna Miller and her amazing-to-some (or stale-to-others) performance, only a handful remembered to mention the likes of Johnny Miller and Marin Ireland without really going into detail on their stage craft. As you get to know me, you will learn I am Marin Ireland’s number one fan! I cursed the day I missed Beebo Brinker Chronicles, but kissed the ground of the day our love affair began during reasons to be pretty and our second date at After Miss Julie … now to The Diary of Anne Frankenstein.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 19, 2009
You can tell it’s Fringe Season when theatres ’round the city are suddenly bustling with life at odd hours of the day and escorting people in and out quickly so they can strike a set and get ready for the next show which is happening in, oh, about a minute. Yes, it’s all about endings and beginnings at Fringe which is why it’s rather fitting that I started my rounds this year with two very different plays that both dealt with the same fine line between living and dying, and what you do with that quick snap of a moment in between the two blackouts. Eli and Cheryl Jump takes you off on the wind of fanciful, magical, dreaminess while Look After You shows the realistic portrait of a life interrupted by a flash of illness that comes quickly and takes certainty with it. Both plays speak to the frailty of what we take for granted every day, both highlight what it means to be a survivor.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on August 1, 2009
New York Fringe Festival 2009
Unless you’ve been living outside of New York City for the last decade or so, chances are you’ve either attended a Fringe show yourself, or you’ve at least heard about the festival. ”Fringe”, of course, means The New York International Fringe Festival and it is the largest multi-arts festival in North America, with more than 200 companies from all over the world performing for 16 days in more than 20 venues. It kicks off in just two weeks on August 14th, so right now everyone involved is getting their act together, so to speak, and preparing for Opening Night.
One very special show which will be featured this year at the Fringe Festival is Eli and Cheryl Jump, a poetic, haunting play written by Daniel McCoy. I got a chance to chat with Daniel and find out what it’s like to be part of the Fringe, what sparked him to write this play, and what he hopes it will mean to the audience.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on July 25, 2009
Bird House (Photo by Marcus Woollen)
Lewis Carroll did it with Alice in Wonderland … L. Frank Baum did it with The Wizard of Oz: gave us stories of fantastical worlds where innocent girls stumble backwards into their watershed moment and grow up from the inside out. Now, playwright Kate Marks brings us another place of fantasy where not one but two girls on opposite sides of the same world struggle with the same journey. This is Bird House. (Directed by Heidi Handelsman and currently playing at Theater 3.)
Just as Wonderland begins with young Alice bored on a lovely day sitting near her sister, her life nothing so confounding as the frustration of trying to read a book without pictures, so begins Bird House … innocently. Young (or rather, of indeterminate age… but “childlike”) Louisy (Cotton Wright) is excitedly sitting in wait with the more grown-up (and therefore completely underwhelmed) Syl (Christina Shipp) for the clock to strike 8, for that is when Kook (Anthony Wills Jr.) and Ooo (Ora Fruchter), the two puppet birds who live in the cuckoo clock, will come out and announce the hour. Louisy is beside herself with excitement. She’s baked biscuits. Syl is bemused by Louisy but calmly reading the paper … (a book without pictures). It’s all so idyllic. So charming. So … safe. You can just see a rabbit hole and a tornado on the horizon.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on July 22, 2009
When I came on to the staff of neighborbee in October of 2008 as the theatre columnist I had no idea that just nine months later I’d be this immersed in the Off-Off Broadway community. But here I am, 29 weeks, 32 shows and 25 reviews later … writing not just for this site but for The Fab Marquee as well (go check it out!) … and thrilled to be part of a mechanism every week which (I hope) gets people off the couch, out of their homes and into these charming, cozy, sometimes unpredictably configured independent theatres. I love knowing I play a part in helping to get audiences out there in order to watch amazingly talented performers break new ground with never-before-seen plays, or bring the classics alive again for a whole new generation of theatre-goers. I’ve been lucky enough to see a bit of both in these last nine months and have enjoyed virtually every single performance I’ve reviewed. And you know, even the clunkers have a charm all their own, and can sometimes stay with me far longer than expected, just like that other indispensable New York linchpin that can be an equal hit-or-miss: the pushcart hot dog. But I digress.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on July 14, 2009
Twisted is the latest great ensemble piece to come from the Horse Trade group and once again they deliver a show that lives up to its name. From outlandishly twisted to deviously twisted to simply subtly twisted, each of these five one-acts is served up with a twist.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on July 8, 2009
Going to see The Temperamentals at the end of Pride Month was as deeply stirring as watching a reenactment of the signing of the declaration of independence on July 4th, if not more so. Because, while the history of how America fought and won its independence is a story that is well worn, the story of how, long before the Stonewall Riots, a group of men fought for their own personal freedom is one I’d never even heard about before seeing this amazing play.
The Civil Rights movement didn’t happen in one fell swoop; it progressed bit by bit and built on itself event by event. Brown v. The Board of Education beget Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott which paved the way for Martin Luther King, Jr. Similarly, the Gay Rights Movement didn’t burst forth, fully formed, in one great disco-as-wreaking ball through the walls of the Stonewall Inn. By definition, it simply couldn’t. Rather, it started off years earlier with Harry Hay, Rudi Gernreich, and a manifesto which became The Mattachine Society. The Temperamentals is the play which tells their story.
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