Flux Theatre Ensemble

It was a great night! For details on who was there and what they did, here's the post with the goods. For pics from past Have Anothers, click here, and here, and here, and here.
Here's a shot from Corey Ann Hayu's Moving Statues, a play about two teachers in love and free fall, finding solace in street performance and alcohol, and sometimes, each other.
Jeremey Basescu's The Will was up next, and featured some comic tour de forces from a cast of unseemly talent. Here, our lawyer heroes hold a seance with the deceased patriarch to interpret his enigmatic will.
One of the great things about Have Another is it gives us a chance to work with actors we've admired but never hooked up with, like all stars Ben Fine and Matthew Trumbull.
But there were several Have Another veterans, as well, including 2-timers Jane Taylor, Angela Astle, Drew Valins and Gretchen Poulos; and 3-timers (holy crap!) Michael Davis, Brian Pracht, and Christina Shipp.
And it gives is a chance to connect with artists we've worked with and love, and don't want to lose touch with, like Matthew Crosby, Elise Link, Matthew Murumba, and Katie Hartke. Wasn't it great to hear Matt and Gretchen sing that song (written by Flux friend Jerry Ruiz!) in Crystal Skillman's beautiful scene from The Sleeping World?
(Photo: Isaiah Tanenbaum. Pictured: Matthew Crosby, Gretchen Poulos)
But most of all, it gives us a chance to share the work we're developing with you! So what were your favorite moments from the night? Post away! After all, we may not get another Have Another until June... Read the full story

Read the full story

(What is Flux Sunday?)

Playwrights: Throwing Gumballs (Rob Ackerman), Projects (Erin Browne), Yellow Wallpaper (Katherine Burger), McTeague (James Comtois), Untitled Russian Project (David Ian Lee), Dinkles and Holly (Zack Robidas), Caged (Adam Szymkowicz)

Directors: Angela Astle, Heather Cohn, Nancy Franklin, August Schulenburg

Actors: Matthew Archambault, Jaime Robert Carrillo, Carissa Cordes, David Crommett, Becky Kelly, Ingrid Nordstrom, Gretchen Poulos, Brian Pracht, Jane Taylor, Isaiah Tanenbaum, Drew Valins, Richard Watson, Travis York

We're back! And as you can see from above, we had a full house. Highlights include:

- Zack Robidas' first pages, the Christmas-themed romp Dinkles and Holly (best line: elf-improvment?)
- Travis York's first FS, rocking out the disturbing-funny Man of Adam's Caged and the disturbing-frocked John of Katherine's Yellow Wallpaper.
- Becky Kelly's picnic enthusiasm as Trina in James' McTeague
- James showing the actors how it's done with his hilariously serious turns as Paul and Santa (yup, the Claus)
- Gretchen Polous' third rock star Flux Sunday in a row as the lonely/under pressure Emily in Erin's Projects
- Angela's moody environmental direction of David's Untitled Russian Project, with an all-star cast and lighting cues to boot (I'd pay to see Captain Adam ordering Zack to be funny)
- Rob Ackerman playing himself in Throwing Gumballs. 'Nuff said.

I was also fascinated by the speed of the first scene in Erin's Projects - usually in her work, the pauses are as important as the words, but the rapid pace made for an interesting dynamic. I also had a great time trying Adam's bird scene three different ways with Ingrid Nordstrom - that kind of trial and error is what makes these Sundays so valuable.

Artists who attended, what were your highs and lows? Read the full story

(Photo: Justin Hoch. Pictured: Tiffany Clementi, Gregory Waller)

Just because Flux itself doesn't have anything cooking in June, doesn't mean our Members and friends aren't busy.

This Sunday the 7th and 7PM, check out Core Member Tiffany Clementi at the 48 hr Film Festival. There is a judges vote and an audience vote, and she needs your vote, as the 10 best films will be screened at the Cannes Festival. Click here to purchase your $10 tickets - her team's name is Goose & Bunny. And click here to learn more about the event.

That very same day, support Pretty Theft director and Member Angela Astle's next production by attending this cool event at 4PM.

Have you got your tix for the Brick Theatre's Anti-Depressant festival yet? We're excited for this, this, and this. Of course, your safest bet is to see them all. Read the full story

(Photo: Isaiah Tanenbaum. Pictured: Cotton Wright, Brian Pracht, Lynn Kenny)

A great interview with Pretty Theft director Angela Astle and playwright Adam Szymkowicz on the Broadway Bullet.

Listen, and then get your tickets here! Read the full story

A very nice post from Martin Denton on his blog, nytheatre i, about an email he received from New York International Fringe Festival Producing Artistic Director Elena K. Holy about the Fringe, Flux, Pretty Theft, and creating a community.
It's an honor to get a shout-out from two people we respect as much as Martin and Elena - thank you both! Read the full story

(Photo: Isaiah Tanenbaum. Pictured: Cotton Wright, Candice Holdorf, Brian Pracht, Lynn Kenny)














































































































































(All photos: Isaiah Tanenbaum. Pictured: Marnie Schulenburg, Maria Portman Kelly, Todd D'Amour, Lynn Kenny, Cotton Wright, Zack Robidas, Candice Holdorf) Read the full story

We have a cast for our upcoming production of Pretty Theft, and it's a great mix of Members, friends, and new folks. Playwright Adam Szymkowicz, Director Angela Astle and myself worked very hard on achieving a consensus, and the rewards of that process are not only a great cast, but an enhanced understanding of how Adam's play works. But more on that anon. Here's the list:

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

Now why, you may ask, does this post begin with a picture of Candice Holdorf as Chuck in my play Rue holding triumphantly aloft a zuchinni? I'm glad you asked. A picture being a thousand or so words and all, I thought his particular one might speak eloquently of the zeal Candice brings to each and every role, and that was especially true at our last Flux Sunday.

Some actors think, "Cold table reading, better play it cool." Candice thinks, "How can I spontaneously transform into a were-panther whilst sitting here at this table and reading these lines for the first time?" It's all about the zuchinni, ladies and gentleman.

We began by reading scenes from my play Honey Fist, continuing through Katherine Burger's Legends of Batvia and Rob Ackerman's Icarus of Ohio, and read a scene from Johnna's 8 Little Antichrists. The highlights most certainly included Candice's previously mentioned lycanthropic transformation, but it was also the absolutely funniest Batvia scene yet (including a book beating scene that I wish we had staged); and Icarus' reached an exciting climax that has all of us eager for the final pages.

This was also a good Flux for Zack Robidas, who played a doddering English lord, a stoned charismatic kidnapper, an eccentric inventor, and an immortal angel of evil all in three hours. The immortal angel of evil was in the second scene of Johnna's 8LA, and featured Candice as his angel/demon partner. Their good cop/bad cop chemistry as they tortured a helpless mortal was one of the most exciting surprises of the day.

We also continued staging Erin Browne's new play Trying, which featured for the second week in a row an incandescent performance by Elise Link as Walker, a love-struck woman with a heart of high metabolism.

And we reached a climatic scene is Adam Szymkowicz's newly retitled Open Hearts. Angela Astle staged a wild romp of a comic stage battle, with performances from Felicia Hudson, Katrina Foy, Brian Pracht and Katherine Burger (as the evil Dr X.) as highlights.

Comic book heroes, angels of doom, metabolic hearts and lyncathropy...not a bad way to spend a Sunday. Read the full story

"And so I go on to suppose that the shock-receiving capacity is what makes me a writer.... I feel that I have had a blow; but it is not, as I thought as a child, simply a blow from an enemy hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life; it is or will become a revelation of some order; it is a token of some real thing behind appearances; and I make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because by doing so I take away the pain, a great delight to put the severed parts together. Perhaps this is the strongest pleasure known to me. It is the rapture I get when in writing I seem to be discovering what belongs to what; making a scene come right; making a character come together. From this I reach what I might call a philosophy; at any rate it is a constant idea of mine; that behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we - I mean all human beings - are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words, we are the music, we are the thing itself. And I see this when I have a shock".

I read a shorter version of this at the beginning of our Flux Sunday yesterday not only because it seems to have wrestled into my breath, so that whenever I pause a phrase from the paragraph above will suddenly reveal itself to me completely; and the pattern and shock she describes become my own; but also because I wanted to begin our Sundays with some shared centering moment. Our Flux Sundays tend to end well, but they begin with me frantically trying to figure out how all the parts fit together, with unexpected actors arriving and last minutes pages from playwrights and only three hours to squeeze it all in.

So, I thought the idea of this shared centering moment would either work, or be completely pretentious and silly; thereby giving people an opportunity to tell me I'm pretentious and silly, which would itself be a kind of centering moment.

But now to the heart of it: it was another solid Flux in spite of the residual stress from our director vote earlier in the day (more on that anon) and my own scattered self. We began with a read-through of Melissa Fendell's newest play, a brooding mysterious stranger sand-storm a-comin' and Momma wants me to fix the fence kind of tale, with proper teen rebellion from Felicia Hudson and brooding mystery provided by Gregory Waller.

Then, we lightly staged scenes from Rob Ackerman's Icarus of Ohio, Katherine Burger's Ah, Batvia!, and David Ian lee's Sleeper.

I ended up directing Katherine's Batvia, and mostly just got in the way as Candice continued her tour de force as the were-panther Anthea and Zack added the stodgy Lord Roderick as a new quirky/creepy old man to his Flux resume. Joe returned to the Scottish Inspector Cottage as Jake challenged Jason for widest-ranging Eastern European accent ever. Yay, Batvia!

Then we jumped into David's Sleeper, which benefited from the clarity of Melissa Fendell's direction sorting out the various plot twists and industry jargon, as well as the strong gender-blind casting of Cotton Wright, Marnie Schulenburg and Elise Link as three swaggering Masters of the Universe. We're all looking forward to seeing how the separate plot strands will be joined together.

We ended on the 'up note' (sorry) of Angela Astle's direction of Rob's Icarus of Ohio. Our protagonist Jay flies in a wonderfully theatrical sequence that fully captures the shock, terror, joy and humor of not only flying, but also really kissing someone you love. Tom DelPizzo once again nailed Jay's vulnerability and comic energy, and Angela filled the stage with some theatrical flourishes that made Rob' story come to vivid life.

Thanks again to everyone for a great Sunday. We are away for the holiday, but return on the 30th to find again whatever shocks and patterns we can. Read the full story

After a brainstorming session with the Jake Alexander, Flux Theatre Ensemble's Bar series has been renamed, "Have Another". Here are some pictures from the very first "Have Another", courtesy of Angel Juice star, Marnie Schulenburg.



Here's Jimmy #43 stuffed to the very gills. Can you spot Flux Sunday regulars Daren Taylor, Erin Browne and Elise Link?
5 points for spotting the rare Kelly O'Donnell.







Director Angela Astle explains the finer points of directing Narrator 1 to some rapt fans.






Opens Minds director John Hurley and Flux core member Tiffany Clementi plot to take over the world. In fact, look around you...they already have.








Flux member Felicia Hudson can't hide from the eager eyes of the paparazzi. Read the full story