Lingual Tremors

Fringe Festival: PB & J

Okay, absence of posting does not = terrible Fringe plays.  My in-laws are in town & we have been juggling some heavy sight-seeing, so Fringe has been "on the side" until the coming weekend.  That said, please do add Tara Dairman's PB & J to your list.  Remember "the secret's in the sauce"?  Well, the secret's in the "p" of the "p, b & j."    It's a hilarious ride.  Here's the official blurb:

Meet Lillie and Millie Hackett, vigilante Vermont sisters whose wildly popular homemade peanut butter and jelly has a secret ingredient: penis. When well-endowed local radio host Dick Longfellow drops in to record an interview, will he manage to get to the bottom of the story before he becomes their next victim?

Suffice it to say the play is funny, well-paced, well-acted, and really one of my favorites so far.  And, for those keeping tabs:  Cherie's monologues, the "foreign student intern" will be featured in all of my future auditions.  AWESOME!!! See it!

Fringe Festival: 516, or how to get a Lingual Credit Card

We saw a production of 516 at Fringe Festival.   Look.  I don't know what to tell you, but academic fiction has a real pull in the Lingual Household.  Say "foxy grad student."  Say "hired-gun term paper auteur."  Say "a dark sex farce for brainiacs."  We will give you our credit card.   Every damned time.  I have to say that I have absolutely poured over the Fringe Festival program guide.  I have read each and every play blurb over and over again, attempting to create a perfect schedule of upcoming shows matched to Lingual Y's and my preferences.  And, the blurb for 516 was the best blurb in the whole program guide!  So, off we went, a merry band of three post-graduate students, ready for the ride.

516 (five sixteen)
Roust Theatre Company
Writer: Katharine Clark Gray
Director: Todd Parmley
A brilliant dropout turns hired-gun term paper auteur. A foxy grad student has a thesis and a secret. An icy prof holds their future in her hands. A dark sex farce for brainiacs, where porn meets 'Meet the Press'.

My comments are divided into "Act I" and "Act II."  First:  the writing in Act I is some of the tightest, best written dialogue I have ever seen on stage.  Act I is best characterized by fast paced (think ER, think West Wing), witty, and sexually provocative dialogue.  Katharine Clark Gray has an excellent, intuitive handle on the nature of dialogue and what makes it work in a play.  I have rarely been so riveted by "words" in a play.  You may find my emphasis on "words" strange, but I mean that as a true reader.  Actual words appear in this production. 

The inventive set made use of a screen on which portions of the script appeared as it was happening on stage.  The set was GREAT!  It was an excellent use of space.

**Side bar** for those of you new to Fringe, multiple productions share the same venue.  Each production has only 1/2 hour to get their set up and cued for the production.  So, turnover time between productions is really tight.  Often, that translates into very sparse, very pragmatic sets. **

516's set really stands out, so far, as one of the best uses of space.  The director and the crew thought very carefully about how to make the most out of the space (Kudos!).

I'd also like to say that Annalee and Sigurd, two of the main characters, give a brilliant performance in the first act.  Their chemistry is electric.  The pace of their dialogue is realistic.  They suck you in.

So, the shoe drops:  the second act is comparably weaker.  With the introduction of Professor Martie Hodge, comes a problematic plot twist.  I say this as an academic:  Professor Hodge's character (not the performance), isn't fully believable.  I neither "get" nor "believe" her motivations.  Her actions are suspect.

That said, the performance is well worth the price of a 15.00 ticket (come on, people!  You know you saw at least one suck movie this summer--for the price of one silly mainstream movie, you can get real, edgy theatre!).  Roust Theatre Company is doing some very avant garde, cutting edge theatre.  I thought this entire play was worthy of inclusion in any list of academic satire.  It has interesting things to say about the nature of academia, about the pursuit of degrees (versus knowledge), about writing, about relationships, about mentoring, about legacies.  Oh, yeah.  And I would be remiss if I didn't mention a certain dog fibula.  Let's just say that I saw this production with a sex expert ( as in her academic degree) and it was all new to her.  Kudos to any production that can shock sexually.  Love the dog fibula.  Kind of grossed out by it.  But loved it.

So, I put 516 on the must see list.  Despite the disappointment of the second act, it was a very worthy production.  Or, as my friends said, "I was along for the ride."  And it was a good ride!  Put it on your list!

Update on Hillary Agonistes

We just got back from Fringe Central, purchasing our tickets for the rest of the week (and seeing a truly awful show, which will go unnamed, but which we left early!).  For those of you new to Fringe, Fringe Central is where you can purchase tickets, pick up information about the shows, and hang out.  It's an uber cool space and one where the audience, performers, writers, directors, and industry folks all hang out.

So, we ran into Nick Salamone, the writer and actor of Hillary Agonistes.  We congratulated him on the wonderful show on Sunday and ended up having a great conversation with him.  What a NICE guy!  Seriously!  Smart, funny, and so passionate about his work.

Regular readers of this blog know that I sometimes regard writers with particular caution.  As a creative writing student, I met too many of my favorite writers who disappointed royally in person.  And, while I know it's about their writing, it is also always a big disappointment to me when a favorite writer turns out to be a mean or small minded or neurotic person in real life.

Not the case with Nick Salamone.  I felt like we were watching him interviewed as he discussed the play and his ideas and intentions.  He had smart things to say about the crafts of writing and acting.  He had smart things to say about writing political theatre (Hillary Agonistes is his first venture into political theatre).  I love when writers can really talk about the genesis of a piece and let you see "inside" the writing.  Mr. Salamone is a very talented writer & actor (see yesterday's review, below), but he is also very well-spoken and interesting.  What a pleasure!

Please go see his play, because it's great, because it's well written, because he's a great actor, and because it's nice to support genuinely nice, good people.

Fringe NYC Well Under Way!

So, Friday started two weeks of interesting, provocative, and surprising theater in NYC.  The Present Theatre Company is hosting the annual Fringe NYC.  I'll be seeing a number of plays over the next two weeks.  Since many of these plays are experimental & edgy, sometimes they don't work.  Frankly, it's what I love best about Fringe--it's a total indulgence in the intellectualism of theatre.  So, I've decided that I will only write about plays I really like.  I am totally sympathetic to writers, directors, and actors who take a chance on something that doesn't work & I don't want to "bash" them because I admire their willingness to take chances. 

So, only "must see" recommendations will follow over the next two weeks.  First up:  Hillary Agonistes.  It's already been sold out twice, so get your tickets early!

HILLARY AGONISTES
Playwrights' Arena in Association with Frantic Redhead Productions
Writer: Nick Salamone
Director: Jon Lawrence Rivera

Spring 2009. Hillary in the White House. 65 million people disappear. Is the Rapture upon us? Pat Robertson, Stephen Hawking, Chelsea and the Antichrist weigh in. Can Madame President avert Armageddon. Starring Priscilla Barnes as Mrs. Clinton.

Hillary Agonistes is what I would call a perfect Fringe NYC production.  It's politically edgy, timely, and provocative.  It's what I go to Fringe for (and why I avoid Broadway like the plague).  Hillary Agonistes was very well written.  Salamone pulled together a tight script with interesting twists and challenges.  Borrowing from the literary tradition of Milton's  Samson Agonistes (and followed by Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes and Wills' Nixon Agonistes), the premise is that early into her first term in office, Hillary Clinton wakes up to find that 60 million people have disappeared.  Inexplicably.  What follows is an exploration of how to explain the inexplicable.  It's about the tenuousness of reality and the everyday dominant portrayal of something called "truth" that is often more fabricated that real.

This play is why I like to teach political literature;  it's always timely and comments on the contemporary moment.  Good political literature leaves the reader/viewer with questions both philosophical and practical.  And, while the contemporary moment may dissipate, meaning that the particular piece (in this case a play) won't always be relevant, that's okay.  Our society isn't static and our art shouldn't be either.  This piece speaks to our current cultural crisis.  We don't actually know how to talk about difference and everyone envelops themselves in a coat of "truth" that shields them from hearing or talking to or understanding other people.  Hillary Clinton's fierce intellectualism makes her the ideal protagonist for this play:  leading the country towards "truth" in a time of confusion and mystery.

If there's going to be one overwhelming criticism of this play, it will be that it's didactic.  And, that's kind of its genius.  Salamone embedded in the play the exact kind of arguments that people use everyday, thus didactically exposing didacticism.  It's an interesting move. 

Salamone's play is essentially a meditation on religious difference and the ways in which the United States is often consumed by a hegemonic Christian fundamentalism that doesn't accurately represent the national religious picture.   Cameos,  (all played by Salamone himself) from Pat Robertson to Stephen Hawking  to Mike Bloomberg, all present opportunities for Salamone to explore the ways in which institutions from science to religion to economics all seek to use their institutions to explain the disappearances.

And, of course, since it's a play, it's not all about the writing.  Salamone's performance is brilliant.  He plays a general, Mike Bloomberg, Stephen Hawking, Pat Robertson, and a cardinal from the Vatican, among others.  His transformation of each character is fantastic.  It's the kind of breadth and depth you want from an actor.  Priscilla Barnes, Rebecca Metz, and Jean Gilpin all give solid performances that make the entire show a delight to watch.  They work well together--really comfortable in their roles, in their transitions and in their lines.

This show is a real treat and I can't recommend it highly enough.  If you're in the NYC area in the next two weeks, this is a must see.