3 New Awards Presented at IT Ceremony

This year at our awards ceremony we introduced 3 new awards.

The Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award

This award was named in honor of a true Off-Off-Broadway pioneer and a dear friend. Doric Wilson was a radical, pioneering, innovative, and unflinching playwright and New York theater artist. He was one of the original playwrights of the Caffe Cino, the author of many extraordinary plays, and the creator and artistic director of TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence). The success of his plays at Caffe Cino helped, in the words of playwright Robert Patrick, to "establish the Cino as a venue for new plays, and materially contributed to the then-emerging concept of Off-Off-Broadway." His Now She Dances!, a fantasia on the trial of Oscar Wilde, was the first Off-Off-Broadway play to deal positively with gay people. Under the mentorship of producer Richard Barr, Wilson became a pioneer of the alternative theatre movement, dedicating his career to writing, directing, producing, and/or designing hundreds of productions. Through his work with TOSOS, and because of his unwavering love and belief in playwrights and the theater, he was a mentor and friend to many young writers and helped foster the future of their plays.

The award named in Doric’s honor will be given to a playwright whose writing and work ethic honors the innovation, uncompromising vision, heart, and spirit that was Doric Wilson and his work. Writers working in the five boroughs of New York City who have not received an Off-Broadway, Broadway, or prominent regional theater production are all eligible.

The 2012 Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award Committee includes: Jennifer Conley Darling, Mark Finley, Julie Kline, Daniel Talbott and Kathleen Warnock.

The inaugural recipient of this award is Donnetta Lavinia Grays a playwright that Doric knew well; someone who Doric supported and mentored. She is a writer of singular vision, and unparalleled ability.

Congratulations Donnetta!

Outstanding Revival of a Play and Outstanding Premiere Production of a Play

Just after last Thanksgiving, we asked you, the community at large, to discuss a series of questions we’d been facing, to get your feedback, and give you the opportunity to share your ideas.

We asked about our rules and requirements such as ticket prices and budget caps (all good reads), but the topic that got the most traction by far was the discussion about award categories.  Specifically many members of the community championed the idea of there being a category for revivals. It wasn’t a completely cut-and-dried issue:  there were many voices, backing the many angles of the topic, and there were aspects to adding such a category that are complicated to be sure.  But ultimately, it was clear that the community wanted the new award and perhaps most importantly it gave us the opportunity to recognize more artists and more outstanding work.

So, in direct response to your input, we created 2 awards; Outstanding Revival of a Play and Outstanding Premiere Production of a Play. These two awards replace “Outstanding Production of a Play.”

The Revival category includes classics, established plays, or the production of any script that has previously received a full production (this excludes workshops or readings).

The Premiere category includes plays that are, as the title indicates, receiving their premiere production.

This season Ajax in Iraq produced by Flux Theatre Ensemble received the Revival award and Advance Man produced by Gideon Productions received the award for Premiere Production. Both are worthy recipients and we are happy that we are able to recognize both of these outstanding productions and exceptional companies.

Congratulations to both.

And congratulations to all of the nominees this year. There is so much inspirational, engaging and innovative work happening in our community - we could not be more proud.

Hard Sparks

Hard Sparks is an inspirational company that works in intimate spaces. They choose productions that promote positive change and they strive to worthy community organizations.

We caught up with Artistic Director J. Stephen Brantley to find out more about this community minded company.




What are the origins of Hard Sparks and what is the significance of the company name?

Hard Sparks takes its name from The Zohar, which is the scared text of Kabbalah. It refers to the idea that we are here to elevate the sparks of creation. I think that’s what theatre does, at its best. It’s about transformative sharing, which sounds very heart-and-flowers but trust me, nothing kicks your ass harder than striving to serve a higher purpose.

Hard Sparks chooses to work with playwrights and actors who are "early-to mid-career" Why this specific group of artists?

We don’t have anything against established artists – in fact we’ve worked with quite a few this year. But when Robert Lohman and I launched Hard Sparks, it was partly to showcase actors and writers who weren’t being seen as much, or treated as well, as we thought they deserved. It’s a long list. We’ve barely made a dent.

Eightythree Down is a pretty intense work. Was any of it based on personal experiences? What was the inspiration for this play?

It’s actually not on my personal experiences. Because I’ve been very open about my own addiction, and three of the four characters in Eightythree Down are users, there’s been an assumption that it’s based on my actual life experience. To be clear, my drug of choice was heroin not cocaine, and in 1983 I was twelve years old and living in Plano Texas, nowhere near the East Village. My party days came much later, and it was dope and grunge, not coke and new wave. What is familiar to me is Martin’s loneliness, his protective little nest and the way it is ultimately destroyed. I spent my teenage years listening to The Smiths and living vicariously through others, and I know how that kind of pain catches up to you later. Other than that? My dad really did work for the mobile communications industry in 1983 and we really did have a phone in our car!

The ensemble received a nomination and each actor has praised the tremendous trust and care that was required in the rehearsal process. How did you achieve that sense of safety and what was the result in your opinion?

Our fearless foursome – Melody Bates, Ian Holcomb, Bryan Kaplan and Brian Miskell – turned in some of the bravest performances I’ve ever seen. This has everything to do with director Daniel Talbott’s way of working with actors. He’s not ensconced behind some table or buried in the script. He’s up there, in there, with them. He’s an actor himself, and actors can sense that. They know he’s not asking them to go anywhere he wouldn’t venture himself. For my part, I just tried to remind them that what they do is extraordinary. I believe it’s sacred. And they should honor and trust the full force of the abilities. Plus I brought them snacks.

What was the most satisfying part of working on this production?

Daniel pushed me to develop the script in the room. It came along leaps and bounds, thanks to him. But I think what was most satisfying to me was watching those actors connect to one another, and work all together. Their individual IT Award nominations are well-deserved, but it’s their Ensemble nod that really thrills me. The way they collaborated was so inspiring and deeply meaningful for me. Hard Sparks is about giving artists the opportunity to do that, and I’m incredibly grateful to them for responding with such passion and generosity.

What is next for Hard Sparks?

No idea really. My goal was to fuse edgy theatre with social issues, and to partner with other non-for-profits to improve people’s lives. What I’ve found in the two short years since we launched is that just getting a show funded and on its feet is tough enough, even without trying to save the world. So we’re weighing some options and looking at different ways of doing things. As soon as we’ve worked it all out, we’ll gladly share the secret formula!


Congratulations to the cast and crew of Eightythree Down!

FullStop Collective

Since 2007 the FullStop Collective has been producing new and innovative work. This last season they took on a musical set in a landfill in the future.

Producing Director, Leta Tremblay shares a little about their company and working on Unville Brazil.

What were the origins of the FullStop Collective?

FullStop Collective was originally formed in 2007 by a group of students who studied together at the Eugene O'Neill National Institute. After we graduated from our respective colleges, a contingent of us moved to New York City where we knew that we wanted to continue to work together and support each others artistic endeavors. That first year included a workshop of new plays in Upstate New York, a world premier production in the New York International Fringe Festival, and site-specific stagings of one week of Suzan-Lori Parks' 365 Days/365 Plays. Since then, we've continued to expand our artistic community and to heighten the production value of our shows which led us to our first ever musical, Unville Brrazil!  


What inspired Unville Brazil?

Playwright Patrick Shaw and director Brian Hashimoto began cooking up the idea of what would become Unville Brazil back in 2008. I recently asked Brian this question to refresh my memory and this is what he said: "Two guys, a bar, a rhyming dictionary, and something to do with garbage. That was literally the impetus. It was originally imagined as a serial musical radio drama." The story developed from there. Pat began writing songs on his guitar, Brian incorporated his love for puppets in the staging, and we added actors in a public reading to flush out the characters. Each new added element inspired the further gestation of the project.

What are the challenges of producing a new musical?
The music! Music added an entirely new set of challenges to producing a new play. Originally we hoped to have live musicians on stage throughout the performance but it quickly became apparent that this was not feasible for us for this production. Our backup plan was to prerecord all of the music and incorporate it into the sound design. This actually turned out to be a great solution because the actors were able to rehearse with the recordings (they still sang live) and we had more control over the volume and balance of the music in performance.

Did you incorporate green practices into the production?
Absolutely. This was a huge initiative for us. Nearly the entirety of our set was constructed out of recycled materials. The play takes place in a landfill so it was actually easy for us to collect recycling from the cast, crew, and community to build our set. We also chose to go almost entirely paperless with our programs. Cast bios were posted on the lobby walls and on our website along with other pertinent information. Water and wine was served during intermission in reusable mugs that were returned after use and washed at the end of each show. We sold FullStop branded tote bags to encourage our audience to use reusable bags when shopping rather than constantly bringing home plastic.

What was your favorite line in the production?
This is such a hard question! Pat's writing is so poetic and there are so many beautiful lines in this play but I'm actually going to answer with some lyrics from the opening song:

I know,
This seems like the end
Of ice caps, trees, and the inter-specicial friends
I know,
You think you're at the end
Of the world
But then again
There's much more to be done
There's plans and dreams and history to be spun
You're not giving up when you know it's time
To begin again

In this beginning is the thesis for the journey that this musical takes you on. For me, the play is a call to arms in the form of a love story. It speaks to where our world is headed if we continue on in this way with disregard for how we are affecting the lives of future generations. But it also speaks to the doubts that we all face as individuals. Have I made the right choices? Is this all that there is to life? Unville Brazil 's answer is that there is always more to be done, and always time to begin again.

What is FullStop currently working on?

FullStop Collective just wrapped Cause of Failure at the 2012 New York International Fringe Festival this summer to great reviews and an opportunity for the play to be published on Indie Theater Now! Next up, we are producing Outfoxed, a new play by Lucy Gillespie, at Access Theater November 29 - December 16. And Brian reprises his role as director. Here's the teaser:

A bookish American student abroad gets in over her head in a life of sex and drugs.
Her mother gets a phone call…

I hope that you'll check out www.fullstopcollective.org in the coming months for more details and join us at the theater this winter!

Magic Futurebox

Magic Futurebox employs 'story theatre' to produce some incredibly visceral and intriguing  work.


Co-Founder and Executive Artistic Director, Kevin Liabson explains their esthetic and how this form of theatre engages and excites audiences.

What are the origins of Magic Futurebox and what is the significance of the company name?
A couple of years back, my now-partner Suzan Eraslan was working as Programming Director for The Tank. She took me on as a theater curator there. At the time, I was working with a different theater company, and as we embarked on a big series at The Tank - the Public Domain series - my partners at that company all got married and had babies all within a fairly small time frame. As such, Suzan stepped in to help with a lot of the production aspects of Public Domain. Before we knew it, we were producing together full time. Immediately after Suzan left The Tank, we were given the opportunity to move in to our space in Brooklyn, and it's been pretty non-stop ever since. We're currently running, I believe, our twentieth production in 2 years. 

In terms of the name, it's not a great story - when we realized that what we were doing constituted running a company, and needed to get our LLC, and thus a name, we spent a day or so throwing possible names around. As you do when you're naming something, a possibility would come up, and we'd google it and see if it was taken. Suzan suggested something, I said, "let me look it up on the old magic futurebox," which was just how I occasionally referred to my laptop, and she hit me and asked why I'd been holding that phrase out on her. It stuck. Tommy Smith, who wrote Demon Dreams (and two other shows we've produced), called it "the eventual result of producing all of these shows - it's the thing we're gonna open in the future, and we'll look back and see everything that's gone on and realize that we are in the future as a result of opening that magic futurebox in the first place," which I like better.

Tell us what 'story theatre' is? and why do you choose to work in this form of theatre?
 
Story theater is a form wherein actors both narrate and play the story. As an actor mimes opening a door, he might say "the baker creaked the door open and crept through." He then may continue to narrate or enter in to dialogue, but he never (or rarely) exits the story, exactly. The form was created by Paul Sills while he was working with the Game Theater in Chicago in 1968. The form requires no sets, costumes, or props - all factors of the environment are suggested by the actors through spacework, and often a shadow screen. A small group of actors play several characters each, and usually, there's a circle on the floor which is used as a guideline for travel, passage of time, etc. It's an incredible form when it's done well - it allows the audience to experience storytelling and theater the way that children do, but without any sort of pandering or condescension. It's a form that allows for wonder and awe. I had the good fortune to work with Paul on several story theater productions while I was at the New Actors Workshop, either as an actor, musician, or lighting designer, and then stage managed several more for Jason Hale, a student of Paul's and a real master of the form.  

Generally, story theater is applied to a collection of folk tales or classic stories. I'm very interested in applying the form to other work. I feel like there are so many ways in which other media has theater beat in it's effectiveness, and the only theater that really excites me is that which capitalizes on its form. Story theater, for instance, doesn't work on screen. Or hasn't yet.  I want to make theater that has to be theater. Story theater allows the audience to involve themselves in the creation of the piece by imagining the wall separating the two young lovers, as the actors simply lean on the space between them. If we're gonna get a whole bunch of people in the room for something, shouldn't we invite them to play?

 

Demon Dreams incorporated live music. What were the benefits and challenges of this?
Music's a pretty integral part of the story theater form, and Tommy capitalizes on it beautifully in the script to Demon Dreams. Because the form is so open and playful, audiences are totally willing to accept songs and underscoring - anything that helps shape the environment, tonally or otherwise. We brought in the Wiz Kids, a couple of DJs who had invented a wearable turntable set (TurnTableTar) to play the shows, and Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky generously provided tracks for us to use as the beats for lyrics Tommy had written. Having live musicians is a huge boon to a story theater show, as the music and the sounds they can provide further shape the environment. Most of our sound effects were variations on record scratches and such, and we focused on underscoring the show the way you would a Warner Brothers cartoon.  Having the flexibility of live musicians playing with the cast, we were able to allow the cast to improvise physical choices a lot more than if we were tethered to a sound board.

What has the audiences reaction been to Demon Dreams and your other productions?
Demon Dreams was pretty well received. Basically, it's a fun, high-energy children's show questioning the innate goodness or evil-ness of human beings. What's not to love, right? Our shows seem generally to be fairly popular, but it's a tough question. I'm not out to shock or offend anybody, but I don't think everybody should like everything. People who thought Demon Dreams was too silly or frivolous loved Firemen, another of Tommy's shows we produced, which was anything but. Theater is for audience, absolutely. But any given piece has its own audience, and not everyone is a part of any given audience. If everybody likes what we're doing, then we're not doing our job.

What was the most satisfying part of working on this production?
I was (and continue to be) super duper in crazy love with the cast. They were 6 of the most giving, collaborative people I've ever worked with, and I'd do anything for them. So much of my job for this show was just to set up an environment wherein they could play around until they found something wonderful. I really just got out of their way. Only one of them, Joe Burch, had worked in story theater before (Joe and I both played Hanrahan in Paul Sills' adaptation of Yeats' The Stories of Red Hanrahan), and teaching the conventions of the form to these lovely, playful people was incredibly satisfying.  It's such a cool form, and working with pros who'd never really seen it before served to reinforce my love for it.

What is next for Magic Futurebox?
I think I can officially announce that we're extending our current show, Open Up, Hadrian, which we're co-producing at our space with Caborca Theater through Sept. 29th. We've just started rehearsals for Bloody Lullabies for Brave Women, a new piece my partner Suzan commissioned from Miranda Huba, which will be a very limited run to benefit the New York Abortion Access Fund.  We've also got the Deconstructive Theatre Project in residency at our space working on The Orpheus Variations, which will run at our space Oct.19-28th, and we're about to start casting The Carnivorous, a play by Julian Mesri, the focus of our Playwright Spotlight this year.  The Playwright Spotlight program focuses on one writer a year - MFb produces three of their plays, showcasing the breadth of their work.  Last year's Spotlight was Tommy - Demon Dreams was the second of his pieces we produced.  We're also working with Tommy on a new show, hopefully for Spring, but it's in the earliest stages of development. We have about 5 other projects in some stage of development, as well as upcoming workshops and residencies. I know that's a lot of information, but there's even more at magicfuturebox.com.

Sans A Productions

Sans A Productions is a relatively new theatre company, which  we all know can be simultaneously terrifying and thrilling.

They have been making a name for themselves with their high quality work. We caught up with founding member Sally Cade Holmes to find out more about this organization.




What are the origins of Sans A Productions and what is the significance of the company name?
Sans A started almost two years ago in a living room in Astoria. We wanted to be pro-active about our careers and have control over our art. All five of us went to the University of Evansville where we formulated a common language of theatre production. After moving to New York and working with lots of different companies, we longed for folks in the room that spoke our language.

We also saw the majority of new theatre companies focused on the actor/director/playwright relationship and we wanted to expand that conversation to include designers. We want a true collaborative process - the best idea comes from whoever has it.

Our name went through a few drafts. After our original name brought about a threat of lawsuit from another company, we found ourselves briefly without a name - we were sans a name. So we landed on Sans A which also serves as an acronym for our first names.

 

Sans A Productions is a new company. What has been the most challenging and most exciting part of creating this company?
Producing brings with it unexpected problems and pitfalls at every turn. Most exciting has been to look those unknowns in the face and decide to do it anyway. Honestly the hardest part was trying to decide who we were as a company and what kind of work we were interested in. How do you know what you want to do if you haven't done anything yet?! But it's been exciting to see five individual artists collaborating to become one cohesive artistic group.


Exit Carolyn was the company's inaugural production. Why did you choose this play?
We saw a reading of Jennie Eng's EXIT CAROLYN put on by the Slant Theatre Project. Besides being genuine and funny and ready for a production, Jennie's play also called to us because of its unique design challenges. The script calls for a full New York City apartment, an eccentrically dressed wacko and a beautiful moment when the whole stage fills with fireflies. So the opportunity to flesh out that world is what drew us to the play.


What was the most satisfying part of working on this production?
The most satisfying part was probably the first night of tech. Seeing all the different elements of the world come together for the first time was so exciting. The intersection of all the production elements is where the story lives and it's that collaborative intersection that we find most satisfying.


Your focus is on new works. Why develop new works?
Foremost we look for work that calls for a great degree of collaboration amongst all theatre artists (directors, writers, designers, actors) and that inherently begs working on new material. New York is a new play town and new work always has the potential to reverberate down the line. It's the possibility of being part of something bigger than ourselves, the possibility to develop the next generation of great plays in the American canon that excites us about new works.
 

What is next for Sans A Productions?
We have two projects in the works at the moment. Up next is a co-production with aMios Theatre Company on November 5th. We're bringing in design elements to their monthly short play series, Shotz!

Then in March of 2013, we're producing Mark Rigney's wonderful new play BEARS at 59E59. Come check it out!

Keep track of our upcoming projects via our website, facebook, or twitter!


Congratulations to the entire Sans A Productions team!

Homunculus Mask Theatre

Homunculus Mask Theatre is creating some of the most interesting and unique work in New York City.

Artistic Director, Joe Osheroff tells us about this cutting edge company that employs one of the earliest theatrical tools.




What are the origins of the Homunculus Mask Theater?

I'd been wanting to start a mask theater company for quite a long time here in NYC.  I've been making masks off and on for fifteen years and I had directed some mask shows in graduate school, but found it difficult to get it started again here in New York, where most of my focus was directed towards being an actor.

About four years ago, my friend Kevin Laibson, who was curating at the time for the Tank, asked me if I would like to create a mask show for a Halloween show at his venue. Apparently one of the acts had dropped out. This was exactly two weeks before the performance date. At first, I was pretty apprehensive, but then decided what the hell, why not? Somehow, I managed to wrangle a few actors together and we created about forty five minutes of material in ten days. The audience seemed to really love it, so we decided to keep it going. 

Somewhere down the line I cast Michael Raimondi in our adaptation of Karel Capek's RUR (the only traditionally scripted show we've done). He subsequently took the initiative to help legitimize the company, so to speak, and took on the role of Executive Director. He's pretty much the reason anything gets done, and definitely shares the same passion for this kind of work that I do.  

Why work with masks? and how do the masks enhance or change the work?

I've always been fascinated with masks, both from a theatrical and cultural/ritualistic standpoint. My parents used to work a lot in Africa, so we always had these crazy wooden African masks all over the house, which must have influenced me in some way as a kid.

I've studied a lot of different styles of mask work, but have always noticed that there isn't a whole lot going on to move the form forward theatrically. If you look around, you might find a lot of masks used in folk tale theater or in commedia troupes. I've never been interested in going down that road, although the work we do is certainly rooted in a lot of the older styles. What I'm attempting to do with Homunculus is make mask work more accessible to a modern day audience - make it a little more rock and roll, if you will. 

There is something incredibly simple and beautiful about watching mask theater.  It seems to often reach an emotional place for the audience that is unexpected. In terms of our productions, I don't think that the masks enhance the work. I think it's the opposite - the work enhances the masks. Or maybe it's a symbiosis between the two. If a mask is embodied fully by the actor, anything can happen.


The choreography and movement of the piece is very important. How did the movement enhance or support the production?

The choreography is a vital part of what we do. About eighty percent of what we do is set to music, so it's important that we allow the music and the movement to intertwine. On the other hand, what we are doing is not dance. We are telling stories with soundtracks. Sometimes the choreography is very exact, depending on the piece, and sometimes the actor has the leeway to use the music to inform his or her choices. 

I think the music enhances the production because it helps set the tone and inform the world we are creating. It's also essential to have certain moments in the show that don't have music - this juxtapostion adds depth to the overall tone of the show. 

What's essential to remember, though, is that nothing will work if the actors aren't being truthful with the masks. No amount of music or underscoring can cover up a "dead" mask. So, the piece should be able to stand on it's own without the music, although the music definitely gives it the boost it needs to be more visceral.

Homunculus: Reloaded was created by the group. What was that process like?

The process was fun but intense. A lot of times it felt like we were all jumping out of an airplane without a parachute.  There was definitely a freefall period between the first rehearsal to about two weeks before the show that was a little nerve wracking. I guess the same could be said about working on any show, but when you are up against the clock and trying to devise original material, you have to have a lot of blind faith that it will actually come together.

Our process included a lot of brainstorming and problem solving. Most of the time I would come into the rehearsals with an image in my head that I'd want to explore, or a piece of music that I'd found. Other times, it was a little more straightforward, where I'd have a definite story I'd want to tell. We'd do a bunch of improvisation based on these ideas. More often than not, something entirely new and much more interesting would emerge than what we originally set out to do, which is a testament to the amazing group of actors in the company. 

The concept of this show and a lot of our other work is to present a series of energetic, but non related scenes that segue seamlessly from one to the other.

After we found the overall arc of the scene, we'd then set about polishing it. With mask work the proof is in the details, so this would often take a lot of time. For example, we opened the show with a scene in a restaurant where everything goes woefully awry. The music was from the Barber of Seville - Evan Zes, the assistant director, and I were watching TV one night and heard that song on a car ad and immediately decided we needed to put together a restaurant scene set to that song. In our heads, it had all the elements of being something really cool - a bumbling waiter, an uptight maitre d, an abused customer, on and on. In reality, though,it was incredibly challenging.  Every second of that scene had to be airtight - in the end, the scene was about four and a half minutes long, but ended up using about twenty props and took thirty hours to rehearse. 


What is next for the Homunculus Mask Theater?

We are trying to regroup and gear up for a production in the next eight months. As you well know, it's crazy expensive to produce in this city, so we are going back to square one with our fundraising. In the meantime, we hope to keep busy by premiering new short work  around the city - we just did an few pieces at the Living Theater as part of Elephant Run Lab's evening of new work. We are currently collaborating with the Asian theater company Leviathan Lab to do a playwright/mask making program in the Chinatown school system. I'm also working with composer Bobby Cronin, Jack Feldman (Tony award lyricist of Newsies), and playwright Alan Mogul on a musical adaptation of the cult film Mary and Max, that will use masks to help tell the story. 

Contratulations to Homunculus Mask Theatre!