Cornelius Eady on Emmett Till

The New Yorker, magazine published an excruciating, beautiful, and compelling poem by Cornelius Eady, “Emmett Till’s Glass-Top Casket.” 

The poem appears in the July 27, 2020 issue. I was fortunate to introduce Cornelius Eady when he read last year in Julia deBurgos park in Willimantic. He is published in The Poetry of Joni Mitchell’s Songs, edited by Lisa and John Sornberger (Lisa is a Thread City poet).

 Eady is a co-founder of Cave Canem, which in 2016 received the National Book Foundation Literary award for Outstanding Service the the American literary community. 

This issue of The New Yorker is “an archival issue” and is dedicated to “Voices of American Dissent.” If you get a chance, read the poem, it ends with a wild surprise.

Burton Leavitt Theatre

Pieces

Burton Leavitt Theatre

Windham Theatre Guild

779 Main St

Willimantic, CT

March 6-7, 2020

The collection of six plays is called Pieces because each play is part of a larger script that the playwright is working on. This is the second year of the Windham Theater Guild’s “Playwrights Showcase.”

The works range from absurdist comedy to serious investigations of social issues.

The Guild has consistently offered quality productions of new work, older established plays and now, we have the chance to see lesser known playwrights who are perfecting their chops.

The Funny Affair by J. Mason Beiter is a great way to start the evening. He is a clown. She is leaving him for another man. She says that among his many great qualities, the other man, “has great hands.” He is a mime. The clown, and the mime, face off in a fight to the…death?

I was fortunate enough to see this short play done at another venue as a cold reading, but this production put it on its feet and brought it to life. Beiter has a strong sense of what makes a production work: clearly differentiated characters, opportunity for physical movement that reinforces the spoken word, and a linguistically satisfying text that pulls the audience on with forward momentum.

With: Harry Gagne, Olivia Kurnyk, Jake Buckley

Curse You, Matt Damon by Jill Zarcone brings us two elderly sisters who grow pot in their basement. This wouldn’t be so dangerous except that one of them is having an affair with a South Boston policeman.  The other one is jealous.

Playwright Zarcone has a wonderful sense of the absurd and a great sense of timing. Although she writes with authority she shows us a kind of hesitance and unsureness in her characters that is very playable by actors.

With: Michele Abbazia, Jim York, Kody Mileski, and by special arrangement, Sharon Soderbergh.

Playing by the Rules by Peter DeNegre. In the script the athlete wants the tutor to help him put the paper he bought on-line into his own words. The frat house is never seen from the inside but various characters enter and exit through the window and the door.

Mixed signals, frat rape of the young tutor Francis, and boozy seduction of women are par for the course in this comedy that makes us stop and think about what we accept as funny.

With: Alex Gentile, Raven Dillon, Dan Reynolds, and Rachel Lewis.  

Kindling by Rebecca Steigelfest is the most poetic of the pieces offered in this evening of one acts. It also seemed to be the most personal-confessional.  If I have the quote right Steigelfest   says “My throat is sore with words I haven’t spoken.”

Kindling portrays the character (and maybe the writer) as struggling to overcome a violent betrayal that threatens her ability to go forward with life. But she says, “I won’t burn out, I’ll burn through.”

            Performed as a monologue by the author.

The Waiting Room by Scotty Duval brings together Mozart and several people from the 21st Century. They are caught at the limen between this life and “The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.”

The group of recently deceased souls meets in between life and the afterlife, unable to let go of life due to regrets and unfulfilled dreams. We see shades of Sartre’s No Exit (Huis Clos).

Whose fault is it that they died, committed suicide, had a fatal accident. Does responsibility end with our life on earth, or does it continue in the afterlife? Can we do anything to fix it, after the fact? These are some of the questions that come to mind as we watch the longest of the plays offered this evening. It has 3 scenes, the second scene is played in the middle aisle of the theatre and is very powerful monologue that ties the first two together.

With: Jacob Wurst, Joshua Stern, Jay Barbeau, Natalie Pavone, Carly Oliver, Julianna Cargo, and Scotty Duval.

Jorts by Julianna Cargo is a fashion-forward fashion-disaster. Cargo (the playwright not the pants) tells us that fashion is a way of showing who you are without speaking. But in doing so she gives us a blizzard of comedic dialogue.

Words are a kind of clothing. Writing for performance, like understanding retail, is not as easy as it seems. Cargo manages both with a sense of style.

With: Zoë Hayn, Allison Sawtelle, Jake Lachinet, Joe Martin, and Kody Mileski.

The Windham Theatre Guild is to be commended for their commitment to developing new talent. The “WTG Playwrights” is a group that will bring increased audience and admiration to the whole Windham Theatre Guild organization.

Parasite

Congratulations to writer/director Bong Joon-ho for “Parasite.”

First foreign language film to win best picture. Also won academy award for best screenplay best director and best foreign language film. Also won Palme d”Or and many others. This guy can write!

TheaterWorks reopens with American Son

American Son

By Christopher Demos-Brown

Directed by Ron Ruggiero 

With Ami Brabson, Michael Genet, Tony Crane, and John Ford-Dunker

TheaterWorks

233 Pearl Street, Hartford CT

Oct.18-Nov.23. 2019

Review: Edmond Chibeau

After significant renovations TheaterWorks Hartford open with a killer script and a killer production.  Director/Producer Ron Ruggiero chose American Son by Christopher Demos-Brown to introduce the new theater

Does it make a difference what ethnicity, gender, or color a person is when they confront bureaucratic authority.

Most Americans would say yes, but would have a difficult time explaining how the differences extend out into the larger society.

In plays about social issues we are often faced with a pastiche of anecdotal incidents that point in a general direction, but don’t exactly add up to a coherent whole.

Writer, Christopher Demos-Brown, sets up a dichotomy and then confounds that dichotomy by pointing out all of the blendings, heterogeneities and halfway measures that are difficult to separate onto on side or the other. The problems remain alive in our conscious, but unsolved in our society.

The last lime of the play, “I can’t breathe” leaves us wondering how police treatment is different on different sides of the line of privilege. It also leaves us wondering about the culture of Staten Island in New York where, “I can’t breathe” were the last words of Eric Garner, a black man who was being arrested for selling cigarettes in the street. On the surface the play takes place in Florida. It has nothing to do with the incident on Statin Island. But underneath the death on Staten Island is an objective correlative of the socio-poetic themes of the play. 

The line would seem too pat if it weren’t a dead-on-accurate quotation of the temper of the times in which we live.

The plot twists and reversals, which I won/t reveal here, are thought provoking and about issues that all people must face but are especially salient in 21st Century America.

 

American Son at the newly renovated TheatreWorks has the writing directing and acting talent to make it all work. This production takes the time to let the premise run its course. Rob Ruggiero directs this production to a T

The set by Brian Prather is wonderful to look at, including the mirror-writing on the door to the office. But more importantly the set is motivated by the script and helps the actors motivate, not only their movement, but the way the voice individual lines,

The new facility is an experience! The gallery for hanging graphics, the lounge, the whole vibe of the space is aesthetically exhilarating.

You should check it out.

CABARET: A Cautionary Tale

July 6, 2019 

Harriet S. Jorgensen Theatre 

July 5 to July 21, 2019

Book, Joe Masteroff

Based on the play by John Van Druten & Stories by Christopher Isherwood.

Music by John Kander. Lyrics by Fred Ebb.

Director, Scott LaFeber. Creative Consultant, Peter Flynn
Music Director, Ken Clifton. Choreographer, Christopher d’Amboise. 

Cabaret is a highly political musical. The hard part for a director is to bring political aspects of the script to the fore without interrupting the entertainment. Two problems we often see with productions of Cabaret are: One, that the elements are divided from one another so we get a series of sexy skits leavened with (didactic) political lectures;
Two, that the humor and sensuality of the script overwhelms the production while the political elements are not well represented.
 Director, Scott LaFeber, manages this difficult task with showmanship and sensitivity.
Flynn’s production of Cabaret is both entertainment and a cautionary tale.
 The Führer’s bunker has many mansions.

Sally Bowles asks us, “What good is sitting alone in your room?”
But Isherwood asks us, how long we can ignore the closing vise of autocratic rule. How long can we hide in the world of transgressive vice called the Weimer cabaret scene.
It is impossible to hide. Hitler’s fascist state enters every underground club, private dwelling and public space.

 In producing a play that takes place at several times, in several locations, this production team keeps the flow of the program going while the different locations are being set up. This Cabaret never breaks the rhythms of the show. There are many different cadences but the forward thrust of the production is never interrupted. Scene changes are smooth and fast. They are accompanied by music and dance that keep us in the story-world of the production.

 

Forrest McClendon & The Kit Kat Girls

Forrest McClendon creates an Emcee that is always in touch with the audience.
Dee Hoty and Jonathan Brody act well together. They respond not only to the words but the feelings of the person they are speaking with.
Jonathan Brody delivers his character and his lines with piercing understatement.
Dee Hoty speaks, listens, sees, and is seen, without ever distracting us from the spine of the scene she is in. 

The reprise of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” at the end of act one, is a smooth transition on stage but an abrupt and horrifying one for the characters, and the audience. We are now clearly confronted with the unmistakable fact that things are not going to go well for the bohemian underground at the Kit Kat Club.

 The song Cabaret is the most difficult piece in the show.  Not because the composition is difficult to sing, but because it is freighted with audience expectations that come from repeated hearing of the piece as background music in bars, clubs, elevators, and radio. The song is associated with its iconic performance on film and many theatrical productions. Laura Michelle Kelley nails her rendition of it near the end of act two.  A production team must be tempted to help the singer with dances, lights and other special effects. But this brave artist takes the stage alone Kelly, confronts the music and the audience, and mesmerizes us with her ability to handle the most important tune of the evening. Laura Michelle Kelley makes us live in the moment of her song; now. 

When Terence Mann returns next year I wonder what it would be like to see a production of Brecht’s Three Penny Opera, or better yet, of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera.Would the Eastern Connecticut Community be interested in such work?
This writer thinks it would. The people who attend CRT, and live near UConn are educated, politically active, and ready for an intellectual challenge.  

The polymorphous perverse Emcee discovers that being a collaborator does not keep you safe.
The Emcee, (Forrest McClendon) is the one who throws the brick through the window of the Jewish storekeeper, Herr Schultz, and is the first to strike out at the American writer when he is beaten up by the Nazis.

The final moment of the show is powerful and frightening. Nazi banners unfurl as they fall from the heavens. As Emcee turns to see the swastikas he is revealed to be wearing striped pajamas of the concentration camps. This image is an objective correlative of Clifford Bradshaw’s line that, “If you’re not against it you’re for it.” 

This final scene creates a kind of Brechtian Alienation Effect, that interrupts the entertainment and makes us consider the stark reality of totalitarian government.
       But don’t worry; it can’t happen here.

Bina Oblique at TNC

Dream Within A Dream

Writer & Director Bina Sahrif

Cino Theatre @Theatre for the New City

Dec.13 - Dec 30 2018

With: Selar Duke, Kevin Mitchell Martin, Manuel Salazar, Bina Sharif

The script for “Dream Within a Dream” at Theatre for the New City, is intelligent, witty, and theatrically compelling.  It pulls the floor out from under us and leaves us suspended, like our disbelief, between hilarity and despair. It is not a comedy, but it is always funny. It is a dream play, but it forces us to confront reality.  One of the problems with absurdist theatre is that it lacks emotion. The confrontation with absurdity leaves the characters devoid of basic human feelings. But Bina Sharif’s “Dream Within A Dream” confronts human emotion head on. The script forces us to face the loneliness, contradiction, apathy, and injustice of an absurd world.  The playwright places us, and the characters, in a disjointed universe where falsehood, fake news, and overblown hyperbole, make us question, not only the honesty of others, and our own senses, but the very rules of the game we find ourselves in.

Selar Duke, Bina Sharif, Kevin Mitchell Martin

Sharif offers us an answer to bleak absurdity. It is the comfort of human companionship, and the realization that no matter how bad it gets, we have each other. 

Is the bohemian café where this takes place really there? Is the waiter really there? Does this play actually take place? Is there an audience? Is it raining? These existential questions are confronted, if not answered, by the characters, the playwright, and the audience. 

As members of the audience, the answers we give are as valid as those of the playwright.  The playwright is not answering the questions for us, but encouraging us to take a stand. 

The confrontation with the absurd cruelty of life leaves these characters trembling with compassion, and dancing with doubt.

The play has a strong formal architecture as well as a powerful appeal to our inner humanity. Several different realities intersect at oblique angles, not in direct linearity, but with circular precision. It is a play within a dream, within a dream.  

One of the most compelling dramatic devices of the evening, one that repeats throughout the play… is silence.

Kevin Mitchell Martin and Bina Sharif, sit at table, each totally attentive to the other, but neither one speaking. With silence they advance the plot, and sharpen our focus as members of the audience.

Wait! What? Can silence advance the plot? Yes, of course it can. Silence does not mean that nothing is happening. It may mean that the characters are at a loss for words, or that they are expressing the ineffable. They may be expressing a dramatic truth beyond what language has to offer.

In those moments of silence, the characters are communicating deeply and completely with each other. They offer a kind of radiant stillness that opens up and decontextualizes the other parts of the play. 

“Dream Within A Dream” is highly structured but it is not the conventional act structure of Broadway theatrical realism.

There is a frame at the beginning and end that sets off the structure and the meaning of the script.  

The story is framed by the hobbling on and off stage of the older couple. Throughout the script the two lead actors become many different aspects of their character. They are younger, older, sure of themselves, and confused. They are performing in a play and not performing. They are speaking directly to the audience and they do not exist at all.

This is a script that can be seen over again. It is rich in language and complex in ideas.

Manuel Salazar, as the Waiter, delivers his lines with clear articulation of the individual words, but also with insightful articulation of the ideas and contradictions that he portrays on stage. 

Selear Duke, as Dancer, and Actor, has great stage presence. She moves beautifully as well as delivering her lines with great understanding. 

Lighting design is by Alexander Bartenieff who has been resident lighting designer at Theatre For the New City since 2000. In 2006 while reviewing another play at TNC I said that, “The spare but effective lighting designed by Alex Bartenieff sets the mood, enriches the portrayal of the characters and illuminates the meaning of the text.” His design for this production defines playing areas and shapes the performers without distracting us from the dramatic action. 

Theatre for the New City is an important venue. You haven’t seen theatre in New York if you haven’t seen something there.

READING BETWEEN THE LINES

READING BETWEEN THE LINES  A Collection of Student Written Comedy Scenes

Delmonte Bernstien Studio Theatre

Friday 9 Noverber 2018

Directed by Peter Vasone

Produced by ECSU Drama Society

The, READING BETWEEN THE LINES  collection of student written comedy scenes, directed and produced by Peter Vasone, and presented by the Eastern Drama Society was a terrific experience. The scripts were well chosen and well directed.

It is not easy decide the right amount of production value to put into a staged reading but this presentation fit the bill. The rhythmic walk at the entrance of the actors, and the fact that we heard footsteps before we saw any of the personnel, got the evening off to a good start..

 The actors were introduced by the director as they marched on  stage to take their seats. 

Non –traditional casting added a lot to the evening and made us think about whether someone referred to as “he” must be played by a male and how we should approach new ways casting a script. 

The “Special Mentions” in the program of 2 of the playwrights whose work was not able to be included was a testament to the director’s professionalism and his development of a theater community at Eastern. Artists need encouragement.

There were 10 plays and 8 playwrights.  Six of the ten plays, and four of the eight playwrights come from the Scriptwriting class. This is an example of students and faculty working across different disciplines and classes to find ways to collaborate.

Two Gay Dads And A Baby Kangarooby Chris Burkle was based on reversal of what we consider to be a commonly occurring situation. It was both funny and insightful. It was especially telling that, even though the parents were upset and flabbergasted by the young man’s confession of his desires, his younger brother “always knew” that he was straight.  The casting women in a script were almost character was gay male was a good touch.

The 2 Mason Beiter scripts were both started in Scriptwriting  class this semester (F’18). In, My A-Hole Step-Brother, one character often picks up the last words of another ‘s previous speech and uses those words to begin his new thought. It would be a great accomplishment if this short script were brought to the next level and made into a longer piece.

The work in several disciplines (music, dance, and theatre) at the new Fine Arts Instructional Center at Eastern Connecticut State University leads us to believe that the building will become an significant showcase for important artistic accomplishment in the years ahead.

DEPOT Play Reading Series

The last Depot script reading of the 2018 season took place, not at the old barn-like structure at the Depot, but at the United Congregational Church in Norwich, Connecticut.  OIt was a joint venture with The Chelsea Players.

Jeanne Beckwith

The Rhode Island Chapter,by Jeanne Beckwith, is the story of New England vampire hysteria and certain  who have been given very long, but not eternal, life by a mutation in the tuberculosis bacterium.

The 200 and 300 year old characters insist that they are not vampires and do not kill anyone. “We just outlive them.” They use Facetime to communicate with others in their “chapter” of the Antiques Consortium.

The story is based on actual New England folklore. The humor comes from the situation and the dialogue, not from bunch of jokes laid over the action.

Faye Ringel & Greer Gilman

O Brave New World by Faye Ringel and Greer Gilman is a 10 minute play in Blank Verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter). The 10 minute play looks at the founding of New London, Connecticut as an “academical colony”.

Influenced by Shakespeare’s Tempest, the lines of ten syllables are sometimes begun by one character and finished by anther. Sometimes a single line of 10 syllable verse starts with one person is picked up by another, and then finished by  the first character. Iambic Pentameter is not easy to read. The actors who did a cold reading were practically pitch perfect. Many people in the room were associated with the Flock Theatre that often performs Shakespeare. All of this held together as tight drama in terms of character, plot, and dialogue.