Flux Theatre Ensemble

By August Schulenburg

Just a few fun pictures from our Jacob's House rehearsals - don't forget to take advantage of the $11 tickets for opening weekend with the discount code MANIFEST! (All photos by Isaiah Tanenbaum except where noted).

Dinah (Jane Lincoln Taylor) faces off against Tamar (Jessica Angleskhan) as Joe (Zack Calhoon) tries to play peace maker.
Scheck (Anthony Wills Jr.) watches as Young Dinah (Bianca LaVerne Jones) admires the black diamond he found.
Jacob (Matthew Archambault) and Rachel (Kelli Dawn Holsopple) drunkenly tease Leah (Tiffany Clementi).
(Photo by Anthony Wills Jr) The Messenger (Isaiah Tanenbaum) has come to collect from Jacob (Matthew Archambault).
So get your tickets now - or face the racketful wrath of Tamar (Jessica Angleskhan)! Read the full story

What is Jacob's House?
What is ForePlay: Divine Reckonings?

Anthony Wills, Jr.
Actor, Jacob's House

Previous Flux Experience: Frequent Flux Sundayer. Appeared in two past ForePlays: Imagination Compact and Poetic Larceny.

(What is Flux Sunday?)

Playwrights: Rob Ackerman (Throwing Gumballs), Johnna Adams (Tumblewings), Katherine Burger (Legends of Batvia), Isaiah Tanenbaum (The Transcendental Etudes), Anthony Wills Jr (Eddie Falls)

Directors: Michael Davis, Kelly O'Donnell, August Schulenburg, Christina Shipp, Isaiah Tanenbaum, Anthony Wills Jr

Actors: Gretchen Poulos, IT, JA, RA, Nora Hummel, David Crommett, AW, Brian Pracht, Ken Glickfeld, KB, Cotton Wright, Richard Watson, CS, Ryan Andes, Katie Hartke, Jason Paradine

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was our first Flux Sunday of 2010.

Highlights included:
-Kelly O'Donnell's brilliantly funny direction of the newly revised final scene of Legends of Batvia, which included a hilarious mountain climbing montage
-David Crommett's moving performance as a the big hearted patriarch of Tumblewings, fighting and then affirming a move to a senior center (though as this a Johnna play, I kept expecting the natural rhythm of three generations hunting to be sabotaged through an invading angel or demon).
-The ensembles of Throwing Gumballs and Eddie Falls, who fearlessly navigated two plays of wild physical invention - Flux Sunday was never such a workout

But the day ended without time for us to share the work being done on Isaiah's The Transcendental Etudes, the first time in recent memory we've been forced to end a Flux Sunday without seeing all plays present. It was heartbreaking, and I'm determined to be better disciplined about the balance between reading and staging scenes.

Artists who attended, did I miss any highlights? Read the full story

(What is Flux Sunday?)

We're back! After a break in August for our 4th Annual Retreat at Little Pond and our Food:Soul of Volleygirls, we're back for the month of September.

We started with a more intimate crowd than usual, but that was lucky for me as I was the only playwright (beedle dee, deedle dee, dee).

Director Heidi Handlesman, hot off Bird House, returned after a long absence to helm two scenes from my new play, Dark Matter. This play follows Maxine, a physicist working with her mentor Nikolay at Princeton. At a conference, they drink and mock Afruz, a physicist more known for his showman mass appeal than his scientific accomplishment. Then Nikolay tells her that he has hired Afrux to work with them at Princeton.

This is the first of several shocks for Maxine: she then gets a call from her partner Winny that her father, the roguish charmer Jimmy, has managed to get his hands on the car keys. Suffering from the early stages of Alzheimers, Jimmy crashes the car.

Meanwhile, Maxine's daughter Marie, sick with a possibly terminal illness, is falling under the spell of her ne'er-do-well older cousin Donny. Determined to give her every experience life has to offer, Donny leads her down some dark alleys.

It was great to spend some real time with the play: Carissa Cordes and Lynn Kenny shared the role of Marie, David Crommett read Nikolay, Jane Taylor and Mariam Habib shared Maxine, Ryan Andes played Donny, Tiffany Clementi played Winny, Anthony Wills Jr. read Jimmy, and with her usual daring, Candice Holdorf played a wee bit against type as the older male Bengali physicist Afruz.

Highlights included Candice's Afruz handing the peace offering of the gum to Maxine; Ryan's bewildered amusement as Marie cleverly traps him in a lecture from Maxine; Anthony's realization that Jimmy's "How fast?" story was actually a ritual he plays with Marie and Donny; Lynn's reaction to the East Coast Chronic.

Thanks to everyone for a great return to Flux Sunday - if you were there, what else would you add to this brief history? Read the full story

FLUXERS, OUT AND ABOUT

Lots to see and do while you wait for our next Have Another, or recover from it!

This week, check out my short play America, or God Shed His Grace On Thee at the U.S-ification of America Conference at Center Stage - I'm on the Thursday/Saturday 'Stripes' program. This event also features plays by Flux friends John Hurley and Nick Monroy, and a host of buds from Impetuous Theater Group. I'll be there tonight - see you there?

Opening next week is the long awaited Bird House, press photo above featuring Flux Members Christina Shipp and Cotton Wright (photo by Marcus Woolen). The play is written and directed by Flux friends Kate Marks and Heidi Handelsman respectively, and also features Flux friend Anthony Wills Jr. It's a can't miss!

Opening the week after is NeverCracked, a double bill of plays featuring Flux Member Candice Holdorf, presented by our friends at The Intentional Theatre Group at MITF. Check it!

And opening and closing next week is She Of The Voice, a Thinking Person's Theatre production at The Underground Zero Festival at ps122, featuring the work of Flux collaborators Becky Kelly (Rattlers, Pretty Theft) and Rebecca Marzalek-Kelly (Rue, Riding the Bull). That's right, two Becky Kellys working on the same project - look out. (also,

Any other Flux friends doing stuff we should know about? Post below! Read the full story

What is Flux Sunday?

While not quite the groove fest of last week, our last Flux Sunday before our short summer break was solid. We heard scenes from Johnna Adams, Jeremy Basescu, Mary Fengar Gail, myself and first time (as playwrights) Zack Calhoon and Anthony Wills Jr. Some Sundays, each play speaks to the other, but this Sunday, they carved out their own unique territory.

I LIVE IN A BOX OF PAINTS
Zack's new play Paint was up first. In it's first scene, Paint takes time to let the complicated relationship between a recently divorced middle-aged couple (Ray and Sarah) unfold. The pacing of this scene is lovely: fights break out, only to be dodged through another glass of wine, a deft change of subject, or a simple touch, still erotically charged in spite of time and spite. Because of the length, Ray was split between David Crommett and Ken Glickfeld, and Sarah, between Nora Hummell and first-timer Lynn Kenny. Lynn and David especially found the uneasy but unavoidable attraction between these two difficult people.

Later in the day, we returned to Paint to read the next scene, where David (Sarah's son, and a major source of trouble between her and Ray), is trying to convince his older girlfriend Christina to treat him seriously. Isaiah Tanenbaum and Ingrid Nordtstrom found the darker currents under the happy banter, and we ended excited to hear more from this play.

FORGET ABOUT THE VEGETABLES...
...in this Sunday's read of Jeremy's Onion Amnesia, the subject of comedy was the internal warfare of the office. Fen, sweetly and posionously played by Hannah Rose Peck (she was back visiting, yay!) squares off against the sour (and equally poisonous) Annalee (played by Marnie Schulenburg). This scene showed off Jeremy's talent for sustaining the furious rhythm of farce.

ABSINTHE MAKES THE HEART GROW, WELL
You've heard that one before. But you've definitely not heard anything like Mary's trippy murder mystery Opaline, where intrepid forsenic anthropologist Hargraves may be up against a power that exceeds his own sure-handed intelligence. Watching Matt Archambaults's disheveled delight of a Hargraves match wills against first-timer Ryan Andes' seductive force of nature abysnthian painter Gaston was thrilling, and Nancy Franklin's mysterious Opaline and Johnna Adam's hilariously precise Celestia made this my favorite read of the day (and perhaps my favorite of Mary's contributuons to our Sundays). Can't wait for the next scene!

EDDIE FALLS
Then we turned to Anthony's absurd spin of Pirandello, Eddie Falls. The dizzyingly fast word play was disorienting, but the actors' surprisingly naturalistic take on the material gave it some sea legs; and I was especially drawn to Ryan Whalen's guru like Peter. This is a play that will be well-suited by our return to playing on our feet in July.

LICKSPITTLING GOOD
We also looked at the fourth act of Johnna's rhyming Alexandrian verse play, Lickspittles, Buttonholers, and Damned Pernicious Go-Betweens. The sheer verbal energy of this play is intoxicating, but what was really exciting about today's scene was the darker, human turn her play took when rival go-between's Guthbert (Anthony) and Candine (an excellently fierce Cotton Wright) explain their tragic histories. An additional treat was seeing Marnie and Brian Pracht reunite after Pretty Theft to play the sniveling Lickspittles, Christienne and Peder.

Wildly different plays, and no theme to unite them; all the same, the Sunday was satisfying. Much work awaits us when we return in July! Read the full story

What is Poetic Larceny?

And how can I learn more about Flux's upcoming production of Pretty Theft?

ANTHONY WILLS, JR.

Actor, April 13th

Previous Flux stuff: An actor in last year's Imagination Compact, Anthony has participated in a number of Flux Sundays

We asked the amazing artists of our upcoming staged reading series Poetic Larceny to answer some questions about stealing, beauty, and consequences. Read on for their answers!
Question #1: What is the worst thing you've ever stolen?
I once was taken on a shopping spree by someone who claimed to be "in love" with me I later found out he had been using a stolen credit card. (I didn't return a thing though... oops)

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

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

Anthony Wills Jr.

Actor, The Royals, May 12th

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

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

3. If you had to date one of the Midsummer lovers, 
who would you date and why?   
Lysander: If I can't play him I'd date him

4. What is the first thing you think of when you hear the word "flux"? 
Acid reflux (sorry)

5. Fairies: colorful playmates or dangerous tricksters?
Tricksters

6. 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?
They'd rule the world!

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

8. If a capricious fairy turned you into an animal against your will,
what animal would you be and why?  
Mink

9. How many licks does it take...?  
depends on how good you are at licking

10. If we could compact your imagination,
what color would it be and why?
Clear there's no recognizable color that can describe my imagination.