Joshua Bastian Cole
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Dramablurb

Memoriam (staged reading)

8/30/2012

 
  • Just a reminder, I do not rate staged readings, but I do blurb about them.
  • What a refresher!  Playwright and director, Steve Kaliski, is a friend and colleague of mine, and he never fails to impress.  Although, you may recall, I was not a fan of THE MINERVAE (see July).  However, in that case, I fault the play itself and the venue, primarily, and not Steve.
  • Steve's background is in English, and I also happen to know he has a strength with classics.  This play, loosely based on what may happen after the events of Euripides' ALCESTIS, is very well-crafted.  In fact, in many ways, it has similarities to my own play, TWO TRUTHS AND ALLIE (the characters often referred to Alcestis as Allie, which really jumped out to me), in that it revolves around loss and extreme reactions to grief, but where Steve wins and I fail is in the clarity of the concept and the sharpness of character development and relationships.
  • Beyond grief, the play (as the title suggests) is more  about the construction of memory as it relates to those close to us.  Steve's mastery of the art of playwriting shows in the ways he deftly weaves memories (and also forgetting) into episodes throughout the play.  A standout moment is when the maid/nanny character, Aimee (played by Hanley Smith), discusses with her mother/the chorus the old lullaby she can't quite recall.  Another highlight is the story/memory of how Alcestis (Amanda Holston) and Admetos (Graham Halstead) met, and how they both remember the event similarly, but slightly differently.  Steve's poetry also comes out in this scene because it is a beautiful construction of the beginning of the intangible, but visceral connection that occurs between two people in love.
  • What worked very well in this staged reading was the use of a puppet to represent the child of Alcestis.  The puppet was constructed and voiced by Liz Ostler, who has training and experience in Bunraku and other styles of puppetry.  Because of the clarity of the action around the puppet, the child was a very live character in the space.  I wonder, however, if this would work in a larger production.  A child actor may be difficult, but I'm not sure the use of this device, which is very Eastern, works in this play, which articulates variations on Greek (Western) traditions, namely its Euripidean origin and also the use of a chorus, and a prologue and epilogue.
  • The chorus, by the way, was highly effective and well-performed.  Overlapping voices can turn into a mess very fast, but Shawna Cormier, Kristi Funk Dana, Katie Lear, and Hanley Smith, always maintained a unit, while being simultaneously individual.  Shawna Cormier's chorus character, Irmadene, even had a southern accent for no reason I can see other than to individualize her.
  • I feel I must make a special mention just for Amanda Holston as Alcestis.  Before recovering her memory later in the play, she spent much of the first act silent, confused, but also the center of attention for the other characters.  To balance the perilous line of either disappearing or overcompensating is no mean feat, but Amanda managed it flawlessly without breaking a sweat, and she was well-synced with Liz Ostler who voiced her stage directions.
  • Also Richard Ugino as Death and Gabriel Weissman as God were both adorable and a nice touch of lightness to a very heavy idea.
  • The one device that I questioned, however, was the inclusion of a theatre game into the text.  Memories and how we construct them or reconstruct them is central to the play, but Steve allowed characters the ability to stop a scene in its tracks by saying outloud, "freeze."  It sounded like something from an improv game, and it turns out that it came from when the actors workshopped the piece.  I like the idea of playing with time, especially because the characters of this play have power over death itself, and therefore are already messing with timelines, but... there's gotta be a stronger way.
  • Overall, I was very impressed not only from my Brooklyn College colleagues (once again!), but by the newly formed Resonance Ensemble that produced the reading.  Everything, from start to finish, was well-polished and professional.  I wish this was the norm, but as of late, professionalism is the exception.  Stay tuned for my next blurb + Rx.
  • Again, I don't rate staged readings, but if MEMORIAM moves forward into production, I have no doubt that it would have quite a few T shots going for it.

With the Assistance of Queen Anne

8/22/2012

 
  • Oh my....... oh my..... okay, so this is like getting food poisoning, and the best thing to do is just vomit, and get it out of your body.  This may sound like hyperbole, but I truly believe this may be THE WORST PLAY I HAVE EVER SEEN!  If I wasn't there with other people, I would have walked out.  In fact, maybe I should have anyway.  These notes are going to be harsh, but I must reiterate that I am not exaggerating the devastatingly disastrous thing that was this play.
  • I wish I could just forget it all, block it out, and never re-visit this traumatic experience, but I feel I must do what I can to alleviate the pain this play brings about.  I also feel I have a duty to humanity because I have been informed the playwright, Rick Charles Mueller, believes he and this play have a future in this business we call show, and that the tragic performance I was forced to suffer through went well.  Oblivious.
  • Let's start with this idea: future.  I'm flabbergasted that Mueller has a PAST in the theatre according to his bio.  Supposedly, he has acting experience, but his auto-biographical performance was the first of MANY problems with the production.  Mueller was consistently awkward and unnatural including line delivery (which he often flubbed) and his strange and uncomfortable-looking posing and gesturing.  He had no sense of the energy of the room which died as soon as he started talking.  He single-handedly killed the room.  And he couldn't tell, because he was too busy rattling off inane historical facts that even the most boring history professor on the planet could deliver with more zest.
  • Problem #2 out of infinity: Mueller's sandals.  He slid around the stage in them causing an irritating shuffle sound likened to a blackboard scratch.
  • Mueller's performance I would liken to a fisherman, his fellow cast members his doomed prey that he netted into his small one-man rowboat.  As they flailed and flopped around just to stay alive, Mueller hammered them to death with a mallet.
  • But moving on from his nauseating acting abilities (a master class of what NOT to do), he also wrote this piece of trash.  From start to finish, it was clear the entire piece was set up to create the chain of events that end in Mueller getting to kiss a young guy.  The kiss moment itself was climactic only in how sad and obvious its purpose in the play was: masturbation for Mueller.  (I know this sounds extra harsh, but it was very obvious).  The kiss was absurd, disgusting, and an embarrassing perpetuation of a homophobic stereotype.
  • Let's talk about that stereotype.  I learned that the original choice Mueller made for the "character" was to queen it up.  Even with that idiotic idea gone, the relationship of Mueller and his boy-object was problematic to say the least.  It is not just set up, but beaten to death, that Mueller's role is a surrogate father figure for the boy's missing deadbeat dad.  Fine.  Mentor/father figure.  Line in text: "he who is like a father."  Got it.  Sexualizing this=creepy/predatory/homophobic.  Mueller's character flirts with and pursues the boy relentlessly, and in odd ways seems to try to convert him to the gay side (the boy character is straight, but later, possibly bi-curious or who knows what, just as long as there's some rationalization for making out).
  • More about objectification.... so already Mueller creepily interacts with the boy character, Evan.  He informs Evan that he was hired because he was "gorgeous."  Now that relationship is already pretty terrifying, BUT Mueller's  objectification of women is even more frightening.  Evan's mother is an invisible character, diagnosed with breast cancer during the events of the play.  Mueller using this situation to get closer to Evan is very disturbing, but made moreso when talking to Evan about his mother's breasts.  There was also a flubbed line, probably intended to be: "the lump is small," but came out, "the breast is small."  It actually kind of added to the creep/gross/stop talking factor.
  • More about depiction of women... so this play bounces around in time between the modern male characters and Queen Anne and her possibly lesbian lover, Sarah Jennings Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough.  The play might have been worth watching if it was just them.  The two actors, Victoria Tucci as Anne and Emma Servant as the Duchess, both contributed a refreshing energy to the stage and listened to each other and paid attention to the audience (kind of the basics, but Tony-worthy next to Mueller).  However, these characters get buried because of the frame of the play.  Okay, so the play is about Mueller writing with his hunky boytoy/assistant, Evan, about Queen Anne.  So, the depictions of Anne and Sarah are projections THROUGH Mueller.  They are objects of his bizarre history fetish (hey, I'm a historian myself, but this was more creeptown fetish than research area) that verges on diva worship.  The women didn't have agency of their own, but were reduced to being figments of a male mind.  There was further content in the play about Mueller aiding the success of Evan's career, so the whole thing just felt like a boy's club.  White guys giving opportunities to more white guys, to be paid back in sexual favors.
  • Mueller even made the Evan character an objectifier, while being himself objectified.  He talked about previous girlfriends in the worst cliche of a fratboy, with lines like: "I don't think I could marry her, but she *is* hot" because, obviously, women are only there to be looked at and valued by sex appeal. Barf.
  • Okay, I have to wrap this up, because it's really just all so terrible.  I'm going to move away from attacking Mueller now, and talk briefly about the production itself.
  • Direction: weird.  Bizarre-o abstract-y movements that were inconsistent and just plain strange.  Also Mueller didn't have the technique to sell it.  Things like slow motion moving and freezing.  Yes....they really did that.  My fave moment of this kind of direction was Anne's backwards somersault on the floor post-miscarriage.  Pretty amazing, and by amazing I mean bad, but props to Tucci for doing the move in that gigantic circus tent, I mean dress.
  • Which brings me to costume design.  The men were a giant fail, so I just won't even go there.  (remember the sandals?)  So the dresses.... not completely awful, but they were ill-fitting.  The Duchess's gown kept slipping off her shoulders, revealing Servant's awesome, but anachronistic shoulder tat.  If the play was better, that kind of anachronism could have been a nice intentional nod to playing with time periods, but... in this case, no.  The dress just didn't fit.  There were also exposed and gleaming safety pins holding up the skirt.
  • As for anachronisms, Anne and Sarah were given very modern movement directions, that, again, MAY have worked if they went gung ho all the way through with modernizing their physicality, but failed because... well they didn't, and the play was terrible.
  • Okay, I'm going to round up this unintentionally homophobic and sexist play by pointing out a line that sums it all up.  I love when a play writes its own epitaph: "Dear God, this confusion is not necessary."
  • Prescription: Needs an Rx refill.  Zero T shots.
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Queering History (staged reading)

8/19/2012

 
  • Another one that's not fair to rate because 1) it's a staged reading, and 2) I was heavily involved with the project.
  • I participated in 2 workshops that developed content for this piece, AND I contributed a 19 minute video submission.
  • I also attended a pre-reading reading and stayed after to give feedback, and I also continued to tweak dialogue up until the night before the script was printed.
  • I cast 2 of the actors, involved another workshop participant, and roped in an extra dramaturg.
  • So, yes, I had a hand in this.
  • The reading went well, but it is clear that there are chunky patches in the emotional flow of the beats connecting the piece together.
  • It was pretty neat to see some famous Broadway stars up there, mixed with the queer performers I know, as well as Green Chimneys youth.  Very nice to see a theatre space get all mushed like that.  You might say, in that respect, the space was queered.  In fact, I do say that.  The space was queered.
  • Even though my hands were in the bowl mixing up the trans monologue, my hands still feel sticky because everyone knows how I feel about trans monologues.  The audience ate it up, and it was well performed by the actor I brought in, Jax Jackson, but it was still.... a transguy talking about himself.  Can that just please PLEASE stop??!?!  Stop.
  • The monologue suits the piece, however, and it's balanced equally with another monologue that I found beautiful: Brandon's monologue, performed by deaf actor, Garrett Zuercher, and voiced by Stephen A. Lance.
  • I wonder if both the transness and the deafness still held onto elements of freak show... I think that's what I dislike so much about these types of theatrical moments... they're meant to empower, but it ends up with a bunch of cisgender or non-disabled or whatever it is people who are just staring... and they may be too busy staring to be listening.  They may not even notice there are people in the audience, right next to them, who identify as the character does.  I don't know, I'm still trying to find the balance with this in my own writing because how do you have a larger audience for a minority character without a teeny bit of fetish or confusion or enamorment or curiosity from the audience attached when the actor is also that identity?
  • Complicated, but beyond that stuff which is stuff I take so personally, the whole piece at large is fun and valuable, and it's nice to make Broadway people read stuff that's not just complete candy.

Two Truths and Allie (staged reading)

8/15/2012

 
  • Oh wait, I WROTE THIS PLAY!  I guess it's not fair for me to rate it.  I have also decided not to give T shot ratings to staged readings, although I will write about them.
  • So, even though I wrote the play, selected the actors and the director, I have to say... IT WAS AWESOME!
  • The play is clearly still in development, but I am blown away with how far it came towards a polished production in only 2 rehearsals with partial staging using only chairs as set pieces.
  • I have to hand that credit to director, Gretchen van Lente and certainly the actors who picked it up in no time flat.
  • I got excellent notes and feedback in the talkback and from emails later in the week.
  • Many people are asking about a workshop and a full production of the piece.... that would be incredible.
  • I am still glowing from how well received the play was, how many laughs it got, and how many people think it should move forward.  ...maybe I'm not too bad at this.

The 7th Annual Bring a Weasel and a Pint of Your Own Blood

8/10/2012

 
  • ............
  • ........................
  • ......................................
  • ............................................what?
  • 1 syringe for the actors
  • It's no surprise that the only writing I liked was the most traditional of the bunch: Mark Sitko's 'Febo, Spaghetti, and Spam.'
  • I appreciate experimentalism *sometimes,* but Mac Wellman's group always seem to go for the ugly and the  "what?".  It always seems to come from a very narcissistic/masturbatory place where only the writer will ever "get" it, and to hell with whether or not the audience can access it.
  • What is theater art for if not to convey a story or a character or an image that moves us?  Although Mark Sitko's "Febo" was revolting, it did, in fact, move me, and I will remember that image (an image conveyed only through the words of a monologue), where everything else was pretty forgettable.
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    Cole

    Trans man, Playwright, Dramaturg, and Theatre & Dance Historian

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