Flux Theatre Ensemble

(What is Flux Sunday?)

If the previous Sunday was the Flux of the actors, this Sunday was the Flux of the playwrights - as many strong pages as we've seen in a long time, and despite my best attempts, we simply could not stage them all.

Playwrights: Johnna Adams (The Anguisher), Fengar Gael (The Cat Vandal), Larry Kunofsky (So Retarded), Kitty Lindsay (Life is a Dream House), Kristen Palmer (Bridgeport), Brian Pracht (Unplugged In), August Schulenburg (Jane the Plain), Adam Szymkowicz (The Note)

Directors: Pete Boisvert, Kristy Dodson, Heather Cohn

Actors: Isaiah Tanenbaum, Jason Howard, Alisha Spielmann, Melissa Herion, Drew Valins, Tiffany Clementi, Cotton Wright, Ken Glickfeld, Kersti Bryan, David Crommett

Highlights included:
-Well, it's not everyday one gets to play a fundamentalist possessed by the spirit of a cat - so that was certainly a personal highlight.
-Working on Brian's Unplugged In - we've seen many incarnations of this play (and first scene), and while Flux Sundays are used less frequently for longer term development, it's always exciting when it happens
-Cotton and Jason as the tormented Karbie and Ben dolls - they found the slightly askew physicality that made those parts pop
-Reading through So Retarded allowed us to do two big scenes that play off each other...and boy, did they ever, and the second scene really highlighted Kersti Bryan's Flux Sunday debut

Now I had to leave early, so...did I miss anything that should be forever recorded in the annals of time? Read the full story

(What is Flux Sunday?)

We had one of the biggest actor turn-outs ever for this Flux Sunday, and it was exciting!

Playwrights: Larry Kunofsky (So Retarded), EM Lewis (If I Did This), Kari Swenson Riely (The Bicycle), August Schulenburg (Jane the Plain)

Directors: Heather Cohn, Leigh Hile, Brian Pracht, Alisha Spielmann

Actors: Lynn Kenny, Jason Richards, Kitty Lindsay, Maiken Wise, David Crommett, Tiffany Clementi, Matthew Archambault, Isaiah Tanenbaum, Rob Maitner, Anna LaMadrid, Cotton Wright, Melissa Herion, Jen Kipley, Jane Taylor, Robb Martinez, Stephen Conrad Moore

Highlights included:
-The debut of Kari's writing! She's been an acting force at Flux Sundays for some time, and it's always exciting when we see a different side of a talented artist.
-The moment when Lynn as Lucy negotiated Jen as Jen's sudden arrival with the audience - pure natural comedy - in Larry's So Retarded
-Speaking of that play, the whole New Haven/ n sympathizer section was painfully funny.
-Watching Rob and Robb offer two different but equally compelling takes on Hal, the dissolute mystery writer of Ellen's If I Did This
-Cotton's lovely Jane in Jane the Plain somehow maintaining the honesty of the character in the face of a shirtless, gleeful Matt Archambault as Scotty

If you were there, what do you remember? Read the full story

Should Cotton, playing Rene, tell the story of Justin and her honey hand?
Yes, yes she should.
What's that you say? Hankering for the picture of a rainbow-neck deer? Hanker no longer.

We smiled for the camera...and closed the party down.

For pics from past Have Anothers, click here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here. And if you were there, share your thoughts in the comments below!
Read the full story

We'll be reading a scene from the play, but to know which one, you'll just have to come. See you there tomorrow night!
Read the full story

Thanks to everyone (around 100!) who came out for our sixth Food:Soul, Adam Szymkowicz's Hearts Like Fists. This was a special Food:Soul for us, as our first Food:Soul was Adam's Pretty Theft. It was also our second partnering with Judson Memorial Church's Bailout Theater series, a relationship we're hoping to deepen.

(*Remiss in our first posting was including a thank you to the businesses that provided food, including John's Pizzeria of Bleecker Street, NoHo Deli and Juice Bar, and Norwich Meadows Farms, provider of the Judson Church Community Supported Agriculture program.)

It was also our first event after our 5th Annual Retreat, and so was the first chance to test out our newly articulated Core/Aesthetic Values and Mission in action. Part of that mission is to treat our audience as partners in our process, so if you were there, PLEASE share with us your thoughts in the comments section below. What were you favorite parts in the play? What worked at the event, and what could we do better?

To inspire you, here are some beautiful shots of the reading, all courtesy of Isaiah Tanenbaum.


Thanks again to everyone who made this possible - now share your thoughts in the comments below! Read the full story

The event went really well! Thanks to everyone who made the trek on a grey day to support our work and share in Rob Ackerman's Volleygirls. Our extreme staged reading was a whirlwind process, but we landed in a good place, and thanks to the commitment of the cast, the reading captured a little of the kinetic thrill of Rob's play.

We'll be posting pictures and a deeper round-up, but I wanted to try something new on the blog by first directly soliciting feedback from the audience and artists who were there in the comments section: what did you like? Any performances or moments you thought were particularly successful? Any sets you weren't quite able to spike? Any thing we could've done to make the event run more smoothly? PLEASE post your responses in the comments.

As for me, I'm remembering many things fondly, but here's a few specifics:

1. Tiffany's Jess chastizing Isaiah's Xavier immediately after kissing him.
2. DeWanda's 'nice' face as Ingrid - it still makes me laugh when I think about it.
3. David's Phil and Jane's Carla rocking out to the Ladyhawk's cheers.
4. Jessica's delivery of "passing" as Marisol - a little detail that probably no one noticed but me - but she captured Marisol's conflict of needing to lead but being afraid of the consequences in that one moment (and throughout).
5. Cotton's "And I am by myself. All alone. Do you get that?" as Katie, the girl who has dominated everyone she meets, and by doing so, made herself entirely alone - in that moment, Cotton showed us the cost.

As for things we could have done better, I wish I'd taken Rob's suggestion for Jocelyn's entrance - she rocks out privately to some MJ before realizing she's being watched, then runs from embarassment - and I chose to have her notice the audience watching her. Despite Caitlin's hilarious and heartfelt cut-loose dancing, I think Rob's suggestion of having Katie (another character) walk by and notice her might have played more clearly - I had thought the convention of the audience being an equal partner in the play would carry the discovery, but I think Rob was right.

SO how about you? What do you think worked? What didn't? And THANK YOU again for everyone who showed their support! 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?

COTTON WRIGHT

Actor, May 11th

Previous Flux stuff: A Flux Member whose past Flux credits include Thalia in Rue, Actor in The Dream Chain, Ben Brantley in Brantley/Lightning, Actor in The Imagination Compact, Azazyel in Angel Eaters, 1/3 of God in The Alpha and the Suzan, The Internet in Channeling, Ari in Narrator 1, Supervisor/Allegra's Mom/Ballerina in Pretty Theft, and many Flux Sundays and retreats

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 #5: If you could steal something beautiful without consequences, what would it be?
Time. Sweet jesus, lots and lots of time. 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

Our amazing cast, director and playwright, minus the lovely Polly Lee and AD Kyle Fox.
Did we mention there was food?
The program, the audience, the magic (can you spot two Davids?)
Our star Narrator Two, wearing a bracelet by Ryan Andes (shouldn't you be?)
What do directors wish for? Perhaps great production of their upcoming projects, Pretty Theft and J.B.?
Stars Jake and Ingrid of our fall production The Lesser Seductions of History are happy to see each other...
...and stars Candice and Brian of our upcoming Pretty Theft are happy to be seen.
Anyone for dessert? Read the full story

WHAT A NIGHT!
And long overdue. After our first two Food:Souls - Adam Szymkowicz's Pretty Theft and Jason Grote's This Storm Is What We Call Progress - somehow a year snuck by and we were, well, ravenous.
Luckily, our third Food:Soul featured Erin Browne's Narrator 1, a play we've been hungry to spend some time with since we staged a scene from it at our 1st Have Another.
Here was our artistic team:

Zara: Christina Shipp

Dan: Jake Alexander

Narrator 1: Polly Lee

Narrator 2: Michael Davis

Haiku: Isaiah Tanenbaum

Ari: Cotton Wright

Noah: Brian Murray

It was great to see Membership so well represented, and especially exciting to have Packawallop Productions superstars Polly Lee and Scott Ebersold in the action! But the best part of the evening was hearing Erin's beautiful play...

Narrator One is about the stories we tell ourselves about our own lives. It is a romantic comedy, and therefore especially concerned with the stories we tell ourselves about love. And like any true romantic comedy worth it's salts, the question of whether the story of looking for love is better than actually finding it hangs over the play like an axe. If they fall one step too far in love with their own stories, our lovers will miss each other.

This danger is especially keen when our lovers are writers. In a brilliant theatrical move, Erin conjures two Narrators who tell the story of our lovers, Dan and Zara, even as Zara and Dan write their novels and poems of love. These three worlds - the 'real-life' Dan and Zara, the fictional Narrators, and the fictional fictional Haiku, Noah and Ari - weave in and out of the action around the question lingering in Narrator 1's description of Zara's love for Dan:

To want want...to need emptiness. The question is simply will Dan and Zara allow themselves to be happy, or at least find that kind of happiness that comes from not being a coward towards love.
Of course, it's easier to muck up loving someone else if you suck at loving yourself (though we manage it all the time, thankfully). And a second theme emerges of the self-loathing that only the overly thoughtful perfect - the minds of our two lover/writers turn in on themselves and devour any trace of earned confidence or ease. They don't have what they want, or if they do, they don't deserve it.
And so, both our writer/lovers write about simpler things. Dan turns to (spoiler alert) haikus, embodied by enigmatic Haiku who urges Dan to act through his seventeen syllables:


Zara (I nearly wrote Christina, so closely paired are the two in my mind) writes about two teen lovers, Ari and Noah, who in contrast to her own ceaseless doubts, live so simply he speaks to animals and she walks on water. Of course, being a romantic comedy (about a writer writing a romantic comedy), something stands in their way of being together; and even if Zara wanted to, she is unable to write them an entirely happy ending. Their story is about the opening of love, where suddenly you realize everything is possible, colliding with the opening of maturity, where you eventually realize you can't have everything you want.
But to quote the famous philosophers, if you try some times you just might find you get what you need. Do our lovers, and their fictional (and fictional fictional) counterparts, get what they need? Well, to quote our eminently quotable Narrators:


There were many exciting surprises in the evening - how funny the play is! how funny Polly Lee is! how fast a play about thinking can move! And Jake brought a soulfulness to the troubled Dan, Michael's wry Narrator 2 was a perfect foil to Polly's inspired Narrator 1 (her Maggie's crying brought the house down), new friend Brian Murray found the sweetness of Noah, with Cotton finding the bittersweetness of their journey; Isaiah made of his seventeen syllables a character of intention and hope; and Christina slipped on Zara like a perfectly tailored elegant suit, and the part (and play) sang.

A great thanks to Scott (and Kyle!) for his excellent direction - he was able to capture the three interlocking worlds with grace and simplicity. A huge thanks to Tiffany Clementi for making everything run smooth. And above all, a thanks to everyone who came (and brought delicious food) to our third Food:Soul.

I left full. Read the full story