Flux Theatre Ensemble

Post by August Schulenburg
Food:Soul is back this Wednesday, October 5th! And we are thrilled/ecstatic/super-psyched to be returning with Liz Duffy Adams' (of Dog Act glory) play Wet, or Isabella the Pirate Queen Enters the Horse Latitudes.

Not only does this Food:Soul features the return of Liz' mighty pen to Flux territory, but Dog Act-ers Becky Byers and Julian Stetkevych and director Kelly O'Donnell return, as well. Throw in Members Tiffany, Isaiah and Matt, Food:Soul veteran Elise Link and old friend Daren Taylor, and you have the recipe for a souffle of awesome. And as always, Food:Soul features free food and even freer theatre.

Here are the deets:

WET OR, ISABELLA THE PIRATE QUEEN ENTERS THE HORSE LATITUDES
by Liz Duffy Adams
Directed by Kelly O'Donnell

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Offstage focus on what appears to be a very serious scene.

Every good play deserves at least one dream dance sequence...
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About the play:
Charlie and Maurice are two brothers growing up with big ambitions in a small town. Their mother Carolina does her best to keep them from harm, but Charlie's insistence on singing - and dressing - like a woman raises the threat of violence. When things take a bad turn, Maurice is forced to abandon his chance at hoop dreams and protect the brother he doesn't understand. Read the full story

Much like an elephant, I won't soon forget our 7th Food:Soul of Miss Lilly Gets Boned. Please leave your thoughts on the play and the event itself in the comment field below. To whet your mindblade, I offer up these pictures from photogenie Isaiah Tanenbaum.






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About the play:
Miss Lilly, a Sunday school teacher, has been waiting patiently for God to drop a man in her lap. When a new student disturbs the harmony of her classroom and his father disturbs the harmony of her heart, Miss Lilly is forced to re-examine her own sense of faith and self. Right or wrong, sinful or holy - a natural force is at work in Miss Lilly's classroom where her hymns are accompanied by the rumble of angry elephants and her prayers are answered by a stranger to her god.

About the playwright:
Bekah Brunstetter's plays include A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE (Naked Angels, Spring 2011), OOHRAH! (The Atlantic Theater) and HOUSE OF HOME (Williamstown Theater festival.) She is a member of the Primary Stages writer's group, a Playwright's Realm Fellow, and resident playwright of the Finborough Theater, London, where MISS LILLY received its debut in the Summer of 2010. MISS LILLY has also been developed with the Lark, Luna Stage the Babel Theater Project. MFA, The New School. www.bekahbrunstetter.com Read the full story

Our friends at Judson Memorial Church, hosts of our last Food:Soul Hearts Like Fists, have another Bailout Theater planned, and some Fluxers are contributing plays. Judson is partnering with Living Wage NYC to stage short plays inspired by their work.

Myself and Erin Browne (playwright of our upcoming production of Menders) are among those contributing scripts, and I reckon there may be a few more Flux folk involved before all is said and done. Given my recent post about widening theatre's frame, this seemed a great way to wrestle with some hard issues in a playful way.

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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

We're back from the retreat with a treat for you: Adam Szymkowicz's crimefighting comedy, Hearts Like Fists. You've heard about this play before, and after an uproarious read at our retreat (more on that anon), we're sharing it with you.

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One of the exciting things about engaging with the blogosphere is finding moments of common ground amidst separate discussions. Like the physicists of string theory before Witten's M-theory, we are all unknowingly using different languages to describe the same underlying thing. And like the different arms of M-theory, each language can unravel problems impossible in one of the others (truly one of the most amazing parts of the theory, which I will leave now before falling completely into amateur physicist nerdfog).

Such a case happened recently with two separate threads discussing the metabolism of theatre. How quickly should an artist produce work? How often should an audience come into contact with that work? Is there too much hastily conceived theatre, or too much expectation placed on over-developed work?

A post from 99seats featured this quote:

"If I read an interesting news story and I want to write a play about it, chances are it’s going to be, at best, two to three years before that play sees the light of day. In that time, there will be a Law & Order episode, a CSI episode, an SNL skit, a 30 Rock reference, a novel, a YouTube video and a feature film all about the same thing."

Which led Tim Bauer at Direct Address to second this idea. In the comments, Malachy enlarges it, writing:

"Another aspect is that when work is done often and quickly it changes the way audiences approach it.
Today, a play that has been “developed” over long period of time and then presented in a season that is only 5 plays long, has a lot of pressure on it to be more than it might be, artistically and financially.
The disappointment is sharper because it’ll be another 2 month before the audience goes to the next show when it’s reminded again of how ponderous theatre can be.
But let’s say, for argument that a show is loved. Even this can be detrimental since it’ll still be 2 months before someone sees the next show – rather than capitalizing quickly on the bump the show gives the theatre.
Overall, the current system with its long lead times discourages the idea that the theatre is a place to explore."

From the other side, The Collective Arts Think Tank posits that artists should produce less - that the financial obligation of presenting work before it's ready diminishes quality. Much of their excellent post (and many of the comments that follow) pushes for a slower metabolism for theatre:

"We advocate the opposite philosophy: do less with more. Meaning, make work that is fully realized, full-resourced, and created in an appropriate amount of time.
This also speaks to a problem of supply and demand. If there are hundreds of small theatre and ensembles in New York, and all of them are half-full, then we are overproducing, substituting quantity for quality. Doing less with more may also mean the venues produce fewer shows, artists produce fewer works, and audience remain hungrier longer. We think that's a good thing".

So who's right? My sense is that every artist, company, project and audience have their own unique metabolism, and a sweeping fix would do more harm than good.

For Flux, however, our way may lie in the best of both proposals: bringing our development process more frequently to our audience, while at the same time not rushing plays to full production. This would mean more Have Anothers and Food:Souls, while being more careful of programming plays before their development is complete. I'm especially interested in pairing this philosophy with something like Stolen Chair's developing CSA model (moving towards a model of audience engagement that mirrors Community Sustained Agriculture).

In this model, the monthly crop of work in development is brought to an audience, deepening their connection to the eventually fully realized production. Ideally, this relationship goes beyond a clever reframing and moves towards a substantive conversation that leads to a mutually empowered audience and artist (linking to Scott's last great post on this subject).

In this model, Malachy's goal of sharing the exploratory nature of theatre with an audience rubs elbows with CATT's goal of longer production timelines leading to improved quality. Both goals address a problem the other is ill-suited to solve; both make each other better.

Thoughts? What is your artistic metabolism? Please post in the comments below. And for a visual image of Flux's somewhat intense metabolism, I offer this hilarious picture from our retreat:

We can burn hundreds of calories just by focusing...

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A huge thank you to everyone who came out to support us at our Food:Soul Benefit Party on August 9th; everyone who purchased raffle tickets and donated items to the raffle; and those who couldn't attend but made a tax-deductible contribution toward our 10 lives, 10 years, $10,000 campaign! We are 36% toward our achieving our goal!

Flux is delighted to announce the winners of our Food:Soul RAFFLE prizes:

1) Star for a Day! - Stephen Lee

2) Daily Show Tickets - Johnna Adams

3) Jimmy Fallon Tickets - Amy Carickhoff

4) Mystery Box - Luis Cobo (and in case you were wondering what was in the box...the 1960s-themed goodies included: two tickets to The Lesser Seductions of History, a hardcover edition of Life: The Classic Collection, a lava lamp, a free facial at Aveda spa and pack of Starburst)

5) Shakespeare in the Park (The Bacchae) - Luis Cobo! Yes, he won twice, but well-deserved as Luis bought 100 tickets

6) Dinner for 2 with a Flux member - Marnie Schulenburg (and who's she going to dinner with? Her own brother and Artistic Director of Flux, Gus Schulenburg)

7) A tour of Google's NYC offices - Lesley Magaril De Lia

8) Handmade purse by Jason Tseng - Marnie Schulenburg (again!)

9) Foot Massager - Deb Clementi

10) BlueTooth headset - Greg Tagaris

11) Gift certificate to SoHo Santuary - Michael Rubenstein

12) Area Yoga gift certificate - Mandy Chan

13) Handmade 60s necklace by Ashley Faison - Liz Crommett

14) Two seasons with NYC Social Sports - Amanda Crommett

15) NYC Theatre Package (ArsNova, Epic Theatre Ensemble, New Perspectives) - Carissa Cordes

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We want to thank everyone who attended the event--those who bought tickets in advance and those who paid at the door (apologies to the few of who whose names we don't have, but a particular shoutout to Rob & Carol Ackerman's friends who came to support):

Rob & Carol Ackerman, Johnna Adams, Thed Allyn, Karin Anderson, Ryan Andes, Camille Averso, Mariette Booth, Erin Browne, Amy Carickhoff, Eleanor Casey, Carissa Cordes, Liz Crommett, Jennifer Conley Darling, Jessa DeLia, Joan & Dick Firestone, Matt Freedman, Ken Glickfeld, Mark Gordon, Jason Gullo, Sean Harvey, Jessi Hill, Kara Knapp, Alano Miller, Paul Mischeshin, Matthew Murumba, Chance Parker, Nicole Potter, Brian Pracht, Zack Robidas, Michael Roderick, Marnie Schulenburg, Barry Shapiro, Ken Shieh, Doug Strassler, Michael Swartz, Daren Taylor, Jason Tseng, Mark Weston, Jodi Witherell

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We also want to give a shout out to everyone who bought raffle tickets in advance and the day of the event (please forgive us for not having all the names of those who purchased tickets the day of):

Luis Cobo, Matthew Archambault, Michael Rubenstein, Mike Tsouris, Johnna Adams, Betty Astle, David Astle, John Cassidy, Deb Clementi, Carissa Cordes, Billy Ehrlacher, Ken Glickfeld, Leah Grip, Sean Harvey, Lesley Magaril De Lia, Faith Rosen, Greg Tagaris, Jane Taylor, Karen Tortora-Lee, Brad Bender, Jackie Berg, Marilou Cassidy, Mandy Chan, Cathy Cohn, Garrett Cronin, Dylon Curatolo, Amy Dechowitz, Kurt Ebrahim, Brian Griffin, Kate Marks, Paul McEnerney, Rachel Meyers, Sandra Morgan, Rany Ng, Warren Nichols, Frederick Olmstead, Catherine Porter, Patrick Schoonveld, Adam Smoler, Mark Valdez, Claire Mazur, Mariette Booth, Becca Firth, Meghan Formwalt, Andrew Glenn, Justin Hoch, Becky Kelly, Alison Klurfield, Kelsey Lebeau, Molly Metzler, Alissa Moore, Renee Nilson, Heather O'Brien, Eliza Bent, Linda Fung, Lindsay Hockaday, Colleen Jasinsky, Toni Quan, Heather Shock, Jen Thatcher, Camille Averso, Megan Dieterle, Nicole Estvanik Taylor, Crystal Skillman, Doug Strassler.

Hope to see you all at The Lesser Seductions of History in November!

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Here they are! When Isaiah Tanenbaum wasn't busy heroically playing Xavier, the hard-nosed journalist and announcer of the Ladyhawks, he was taking these pictures - most are from our rehearsal that day, but a few are from the party itself. For more info on the event, go here; and to read artist/audience thoughts about the event, go here.

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