Flux Theatre Ensemble

What is Flux Sunday?

So much to catch up on! Have Another last night (it went well), a shout out for Infectious Opportunity (go see the extension), an update on the quality discussion and more NET unpacking. But for now, a quick update on our last Flux Sunday!

BACK ON OUR FEET, BUT WOOZY
Thanks to Tiffany, we were back on our feet staging things. While everyone likes the ol' read around the table, there's a special alchemy when the right director and rights actors play for an hour and something alive breaks through. The flip side (or in honor of Bird House, the Lop Side) is things get messy, and that was definitely the case last Sunday, as we ran nearly half an hour over!
But good work was accomplished. We read more from Johnna Adams' Lickpittles, Buttonholores and Damned Pernicious Go-Betweens and David Ian lee's In The Year Of Nothing, or So Goes The Nation; both big cast beasts, one the rhyming hexameter play featured at last night's Have Another, and the other a gritty cinematic look (or so I think early on) at the trickle down of corruption.

HONEY ON THE HANDS
I then staged two new scenes from an old play of mine, Honey Fist. Finally finished after a year's hiatus, Ingrid Nordstrom and Candice Holdorf took turns as Gretyl Barnes, the kidnapped pop star maniuplating her hijackers in all sorts of surprising ways. My favorite part was Aaron Micheal Zook's portrayal of Sul - first time through, he played up what appears on the page like sarcasm, but in the run he played it sweet and sincere - and it landed just as I'd hoped.

PAINT ON THE FINGERS
Next up was Zack Calhoon's Paint, featuring the recently divorced couple Sarah and Ray trying to work through Ray's violence against her son, David. As Ray and Sarah, David Ian lee and Karen Sternberg (first timer!) really found both the attraction and ugliness in this relationship, and it was off set beautifully in the youthful rush of David (Brian Pracht) and his girlfriend's (Caitlian Kinsella) post coital laughter. The legacy of violence raises its head in this scene, as well, and the question of both couple's survival hangs in the air.

GREEN IN THE EYES
Then we returned to Mary Fengar Gael's Opaline, another play featured at last night's Have Another. And much like last night, this scene was playing like gangbusters. A line about a damned horse doctor stopped the scene as the room rocked with laughter, and Johnna's sudden seduction of Matthew Archambualt's Hargraves was a delight. More of this play, please!

BLOOD ON THE TRACKS
We ended with the first scene from a new play by Aaron Michael Zook, whose We Are Burning was another Have Another. This scene, Graves and Worms and Epitaphs, started silly, turned a notch of darkness when Jane Taylor as Liz exploded against her ex-husband's door, and then turned very dark indeed as Mariam Habib as Josh told just how that ex-husband became a shut-in. A lovely way to end the day with a red sun setting of sorts.

We're back on our feet again, energized from this last Have Another...but more on that anon. Read the full story

Yes...
After so long...
It's finally happening...
The return of bar staged reading series at Jimmy's #43, Have Another!
You might remember Have Another from its previous incarnations. But it's been over a year since we've held this event. Why are we bringing it back, besides the obvious fact that theatre over beer is fun?

Because we want to open up our play development process to you, attractive audience person. Another thing that came out of the NET summit was a movement from theatres to share the process of making theatre with an audience (a post on that anon), and while we've been dabbling with that through past HAs and Food:Souls, we want to move further in that direction. Have Another is our attempt to bring you into the process of what we're developing through our Flux Sundays in a non-traditional theatre setting.

And the line-up of scenes is looking great! Check it:

What is Flux Sunday?

Well, we had another one of those Flux Sundays where everything feels kind of right - the actors are on and the scripts are good - and there is a kinetic camaraderie that makes the hours sweep by. Playwright Aaron Michael Zook described this heightened state in the last scene of his We Are Burning, that feeling when a struck baseball reaches the top of its arc and is neither rising nor falling; we lived there a little today.

Oh, and a cool breeze was blowing in, messing with the pages, and the view from the 24th floor was showing off for us like it was the first time.

Speaking of, we welcomed Sunday first timers Kira Blaskovich and Mariam Habib to the group, and then launched into reading scenes from five plays: a scene from my Dark Matter, Jeremy Basescu's short play The Intervention, the 4th scene of Corey Ann Haydu's Wife Training, Daren Taylor's new musical, and the aforementioned scene of We Are Burning.

Dark Matter
Jason Paradine's irreverent physicist Afruz Sen got us off to a rollicking start with his speech about terra incognita and dark matter (yup). Ken Glickfeld's Jimmy fought with all his considerable charm to drive again in spite of the Doctor's warning, Becky Kelly and Kira (playing a dude) found the edge of two kids starting to push limits, and Nancy Franklin caught the fire of physicist Maxine, balancing her dying daughter, senile father, and charming competitor against her need to discover the next break through.

The Intervention
Wow, this one cooked! A ridiculous farce about an unusual intervention was treated with a deadly (and hilarious) seriousness by Candice Holdorf, Jason, Corey, Isaiah Tanenbaum and Mariam. Following on the strong energy of Dark Matter, The Intervention tossed the afternoon into the firmament. Candice especially found every nuance of ludicrous urgency in Jeremy's funny, funny play.

Wife Training
Corey's disturbingly 'normal' look at a world where women are rigorously judged for marriage on looks, sexual skill, baby ability (and a good deal more squirm-inducing qualities) by a court of male elders took another twist of the knife. Two gentleman judges look through a pile of women to decide which candidates are strong enough to be placed in the first round. The kindness that Luke (Ken again) shows towards the daughter of his own jilted prospect from man years ago makes their casual cruelty even more powerful. These are real people in a world like ours, only twisted a notch to be grotesque. We're looking forward to more of this funny and disturbing world.

i don <} u ne mor
We then leapt into Daren Taylor's musical comedy about the hope for connection in a digitalized world. I'm really excited that Daren (also a talented actor) is bringing in pages, and loved the energy and warmth of his characters: the panicking, inhaler-prone Ron (Isaiah), laid back mystery roomy Nic (Autumn Horne), capable Sam (Cotton Wright), and malevolent force of nature boss Jaimie (Aaron). Will he break his protagonist's heart, or will Ron connect with his dream lover? Only a time of Sundays will tell.

We Are Burning
Sad, sad, sad to be finished with this brutal, metaphysical puzzle of a play about love and destiny. But it was a lovely ending. Haunted by a first perfect brush of the beyond, Will struggles to find anything to compare; and the savage Lucy beats against him, trying to provoke him into a real and lasting love. And this intimate tale unfolds against a bigger backdrop of Prometheus versus the Gods of Zeus, and other mythic figures driven by those Gods to tormented ends. God-struck, these characters at last find a hot kind of peace; but not before a comic tryst in the bathroom becomes a haunting image of Lucy's ability to be inches away from Will's soul, and still unseen. A last great turn as Lucy from Ingrid Nordstrom, with a beautifully still and poignant read of Io by Cotton Wright.

Sometimes you are in the right place, doing the right things, with the right people. Thank you, right people. Read the full story

ETUDES AND ATTITUDES

Our post trilogy return to Flux Sunday was marked by stabs at virtuosity, some made, some missed. The first attempt was my own hope of staging the EIGHT scenes on our list all in three hours, an attempt that fell utterly short. But many others succeeded in honoring the patron saint of this Flux Sunday, Franz Liszt.

THE TRANSCENDENTAL TANENBAUM
Member Isaiah Tanenbaum brought his work as a playwright to an exciting new place with the first two scenes of his play, The Transcendental Etudes. A play inspired by a fraud surrounding the nearly impossible to play Liszt composition, The Transcendental Etudes is written in a highly formal stylized poetry that makes even the simplest question and answer an opportunity for flights of fancy. Jane Taylor and Cotton Wright were able to root these soaring words in two deeply felt readings.

OUR TALKING IS BURNING
On a different wavelength of virtuosity, Aaron Michael Zook's We are Burning continued it's unique mash-up of grand myth and crumbs on the cafe table; this scene featured a lengthy monologue for lead lost soul Will, which read like a run across a smooth floor covered in marbles without falling. Another, very different, opportunity for verbal virtuosity.

DIVING ASIDES
A comic virtuosity emerged from Rob Ackerman's Volleygirls; as his deeply funny use of asides to the audience even in the midst of a dive for a ball lends this play tremendous staging opportunities for actors and directors. We just read this scene, but even reading these scenes you feel like diving for something.

KINGDOM OF GRAIN
A newly revised first scene from the 60's play aka Ten Black Boxes aka Kingdom of Grain gave director Heather Cohn another opportunity to wrestle with the unique challenges of the simultaneous scenes; and gave David Crommett a chance to mash-up John F Kennedy and Frederico Garcia Lorca.

CLUBBED BY THE CLUB
The second scene from Corey Ann Haydu's Club brought us into the most grueling virtuosity of all, the busy restaurant. Marnie Schulenburg brought a empathetic goodness to new waitress June as she was assaulted on all sides by Cotton Wright as a nasty customer and nastier waitress, with only David Renwanz's bartender (and yay for the return of David!) as a source of dubious help.

We also heard the first scene of Jeremy Basescu's The Syndrome Syndrome, and in a wonderful visit to memory lane, read a newly revised scene from Katherine Burger's Legends of Batvia, one of the first plays we finished workshopping in 2008. Read the full story

Yes, I've been a wee bit derelict in posting about our Flux Sunday activities - trilogies will do that to you. And I know that somewhere in the first half of the year, a Flux Sunday went unreported on this blog, a victim to this swiftly tilting 2008. Sometimes this blog feels like the Buendia home and the flood of work we do Macondo's assault, but I try as best I can to keep all smelling like basil, even months after the fact.

Still with me? All right then. Our final Flux before the Trilogy went out with a good-sized bang, featuring new scenes from Aaron Michael Zook's We Are Burning, Jeremy Basescu's The Will, Johnna Adam's Lickspittles, Buttonholers, and Damned Pernicious Go-Betweens, Rob Ackerman's Volleygirls; and the first scenes from new plays by Corey Ann Haydu and Mary Fengar Gail.

Highlights included Ingrid Nordstrom's continued beautiful work as Lucy in We Are Burning; Christina Shipp channeling every long night serving cocktails as a waitress gone mad in Club; Anthony Willis Jr's nuanced playwright charmer in Beggar At The Feast; Richard Watson's hexameter sputtering Stub in Lickspittles, Aaron's hilarious portrayal of sad-sack simpleton Victor in The Will; and the shortest volleyball team ever in Volleygirls.

I could say more about this particularly jam packed Flux Sunday, but there is only so much time left in 2008 to look back. Read the full story

FRAMES
This last Flux Sunday was the most powerful work we've done since our return from our Annual Retreat. We continued through Ten Black Boxes, Volleygirls, and We Are Burning; and also saw the 1st scene of Jeremy Basescu's brand new play, The Will. The writing and the performances were all at an exciting level, as if Flux Sundays just needed a few weeks back under her belt before she gathered full steam.

VOLLEYGIRLS
Rob Ackerman's fast, funny and heartfelt exploration of a girl's high school volleyball team continued apace; with a string of 5 losses setting our heroines against each other as they try find a way to win. Highlights of this table read included some cross gender casting of Richard Watson as crash and David Crommett as an impassioned Marisol.

THE BLUE FLAME
Aaron Zook's play We Are Burning reached that fire heat that makes a blue flame this Sunday. An unsettling monologue from Prometheus (again excellent work from Crommett) about the glory of our human illusions is followed by the near end of Will and Lucy's troubled relationship, which broke into a gorgeous threnody between Will and the Chorus for an lost love named Beth; Aaron's evocation of Beth's cold lips, simply rendered by Brian Pracht, Isaiah Tanenbaum and Matthew Archambault held our audience in warm hands, until Prometheus pulls the bottom out by announcing our lover's final fate.

THE WILL
Jeremy's new play The Will crackled with two ex-lovers negotiating over an exceedingly unusual will. Richard and Kate Neuman nailed the dance of desire and disgust between these two formidable adversaries, and Jeremy compressed years of relationship into one tight scene. He also admitted to completing his zany president play over the summer, so Fluxers will have to beg him for those now completed pages!

WHATEVER IT IS NOW
Tegan, our political junkie, is looking at the frames of Kennedy's assassination as our ten characters moved through another year of the 60's in my Ten Black Boxes. Highlights included Cotton Wright's wrangling three roles (Martha, Lizzie, and Anisa), Rob's staging of the Beatles invasion, and Carissa Cordes as Marie and Michael Davis as George battling it out for Isaac. Looking through the frames to write this scene was profoundly unsettling...313...

It was a bit of an unsettling day, with the joy of Volleygirls and the lust of The Will battling against the darker premonitions of We Are Burning and the center coming undone in Ten Black Boxes. Only one more Sunday before the Trilogy sweeps all away... Read the full story

(Photo: Allison Bolah. Pictured l to r: Autumn Horne, August Schulenburg, Heather Cohn, Jane Taylor)

A VOLLEY OF BURNING 60'S

One of the best parts about Flux Sunday (from a playwrights perspective) is the weekly need for pages. You have to bring them every week, and they damn well better be as strong as the actors and directors you hand them to. And with that need as a spur, it's amazing how the pages ride.

And so it was this Sunday, with a plethora of new pages from Rob's Volleygirls, my Ten Black Boxes, and Aaron's We Are Burning. All three seem to be in that lucky place of surging towards unknown destinations, and there were some damn good directors and actors to hand them to.

BUMP SET SPIKE
We continued reading through Volleygirls, tabling a bunch of pages and throwing some juicy Coach, Xavier and Jess scenes on their feet. Coach's love for a game he hates continues to vie with Xavier's precocious passion for my favorite part of this play, and in Zack Calhoon's 2nd Sunday, he embodied both with the help of Jane Taylor as deadly serious athletic director and 1st timer Carissa Cordes as the disciplined team captain Jess who kisses Xavier in spite of herself. Can Flux keep returning the rapid volleys of Ackerman's pages? Tune in next Sunday to find out...

AS FLIES TO WANTON BOYS ARE WE TO THE GODS
Prometheus to be exact, who both suffers the indignities of the Olympians and chronicles those of two human lovers, Will and Lucy, both misbegotten with too much feeling in a world literally on fire. Aaron's play continued apace with great work in David Douglas Smith's subtle portrayal of Will's mysteriously assigned therapist, and Ingrid's delightfully Mom-frazzled Lucy; as well as Richard Watson's increasingly enigmatic Prometheus.

STONE MOUNTAIN OF GEORGIA
Angela Astle drew the daunting task of staging my latest scene of the 60's play Ten Black Boxes. In this scene, the characters we follow year by year are taken over by King's dream speech, and it was scary to turn this sacred text to our own ends. In some places it worked, and in others it jarred; but it worked enough to move forward, thanks in no small part to Jason Paradine's Bobby, Joe Mather's Barry, Kelly O'Donnell's Tegan, Felicia Hudson's Martha and 1st Timer Anthony Willis Jr's George.

And the days go on so the work does too. Read the full story

What is The Imagination Compact?
And how can I learn more about Flux's Midsummer?

Aaron Zook

Actor, The Fairies, April 28th



(Pictured here in Impetuous' 12th Night of the Living Dead)

1. What Shakespeare role would you like to play next? 
Hamlet.

2.  What Shakespeare role would you like to play
that no one will ever cast you in?
Aaron the Moor

3. Describe the best Shakespeare production you've seen. 
I've never seen a live production that fully satisfied me
(though I've been fortunate enough to perform in some good 'uns).
I've seen video of Trevor Nunn's Macbeth with Ian McLellan and Judy
Dench, and it fairly knocked my socks off. Spare, economical, unsettling.
No flash, no grand concept: just fantastic actors mining the text for all it's worth.

4. If you had to date one of the Midsummer lovers,
who would you date and why?
They're all schmucks. I'd rather be single.

5. What is the first thing you think of when 
you hear the word "flux"? 
"Acid re-"

6. Fairies: colorful playmates or dangerous tricksters? 
Depends on the phase of the moon
and the direction of the wind.

7. If the Flux Capacitor made time travel possible
when the DeLorean reached 88mph,
what do you think would happen if Flux Theatre Ensemble 
got theatre up to 88mph? 
It would engage the company's Improbability Drive,
and we'd all turn into sacks of yarn.

8. Complete this sentence: "It's too late to go back now,
I'll just have to do without my _______" 
OED.

9. If a capricious fairy turned you into an animal against your will,
what animal would you be and why? 
Since it's against my will, I suppose it's up to the
capricious fairy. If it were an ass, though,
I'd be more in the Eeyore vein.

10. Which would win in a fight - the forest of Midsummer
or the forest of Arden?
Unless Arden's fairies are just being coy,
the Midsummer forest by first-round TKO.

11. How many licks does it take...? 
I never made it without biting.

12. Would you rather have a beer with Richard Burbage 
or William Kemp? 
Feh. Give me some sack and Bill Shakes.

13. If we could compact your imagination,
what color would it be and why?
Complete absence of color.
Having achieved sufficient density to become a quantum
singularity, light would be unable to escape the
gravitational pull of my imagination.