Flux Theatre Ensemble

So our ForePlay series Divine Reckonings continues this Monday the 5th at the Irondale Center, 85 South Oxford St in Brooklyn, at 7:30PM.

Check out this line-up of ForePlay vets:

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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

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Our first Flux Sunday at NYR Studios, where Flux is a resident company, was everything we'd been hoping for. We had room to move! Each of our three scenes had a comfortable space to work in, and the results were undeniable. There was a burst of energy and productivity that has me hoping this relationship with NYR will last (remember to mention Flux if you rent there!)

But to the nitty and then to the gritty...

THE SLEEPING WORLD
First, Kelly O'Donnell staged the first scene of Crystal Skillman's The Sleeping World, a melancholy-funny look at playwrights gathering to read the newly discovered last script of their recently passed friend. Once close, the three friends clumsily fall back into the push and pull of their painful-sweet old intimacy. Their friend's script, as it turns out, is a thinly veiled portrait of them, and brings to the light all the old wounds and longings they'd kept in the dark.
Kelly O'Donnell did a lovely job of staging this - I watched the run before the shared run, and with a few small adjustments to blocking, she brought out the story beautifully. A special shout-out goes to the triumphant returns of Gretchen Poulos and Kitty Lindsay, who brought Sam and Angie to a subtle, detailed life. Crystal is bringing back scene 2 next week, and we're all excited for more.

DARK MATTER
Then, Heather Cohn staged the next two scenes of my play, Dark Matter. (For plot and character, check out last week's entry). Jimmy (Nancy Franklin) and Winny (Jane Taylor) battled it out over Jimmy's dreams (Winny is now a Jungian analyst, after reading that great article about Jung's Red Book in NYT Mag) and dementia; followed by Maxine (Carissa Cordes) confronting her mentor Nicolay (Isaiah Tanenbaum) about approving funding for a project from rival physicist Afruz Sen. These scenes were a nice contrast to the elliptical loveliness of Crystal's scene - these were jugular collisions between formidable opponents. I especially loved the staging and playing of Jimmy luring Winny back with the promise of his truly disturbing dream, and the moment where Nikoly kindly but firmly exiled Maxine from his office, her realizing too late she'd gone too far.

LION CREEK
Speaking of triumphant returns, auteur Jeremy Basescu's back from the wilds of summer with a brand new joint. Lion Creek follows two couples, one seemingly thriving, one falling apart, navigating an awkward night of wine and Wii. There were notes of darker twists than twenty-something malaise, however; hints of secrets, hints of spies, hints of the mystery of Lion Creek sneak their way through the banter. Special shout outs to an icy-sweet Lynn Kenny as Tess and
goofy-charming Ryan Andes as Drake.

Yup, Flux Sunday and NYR are a good fit. Here's to many more.

And for those of you there, what were your favorite moments? What did you think of the new space? 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 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

What is Flux Sunday?

We're back!

And very happy to be back. Though we were a smaller, Memorial Day weekend crowd, the thrill of being back to work was strong. We read through three scenes: the end of Mary Fengar Gail's The Usher's Ball, the beginning of Jeremy Basescu's Onion Amnesia, and a rewritten How To Go from me.

Finishing Mary's play was bittersweet. Set in World War I, Anabelle and Wilfred are bound together during a lightning strike that gives them both enhanced perception. To say of what exactly would spoil the play, but suffice to say, the end took full advantage of this power. The Usher's Ball is a play about pacifism in a warlike culture, about love of music and theatre, and as with Mary's play Devil Dog Six (which I just finished), about a singular woman with an uncanny power, desperate for connection and uncertain of place. The play has a melancholy end, though there is a moment of grace in its ritualistic epilogue. Brian Pracht and Ingrid Nordstrom gave moving reads as Wilfred and Annabelle in their final scene.

We then turned to my How to Go, a play last worked on at Flux Sunday in November of 2007 - a week before this blog began! Yup, sometimes producing plays means you have less time to write them. But, I knew I'd have some key players to do it right, and so I did some rewrites and wrote a new scene, and the play seems to be demanding a move up the queue (the queue currently stands at: finishing 2nd draft of Lesser Seductions, plotting Dark Matter, first draft of Stepping, and 2nd draft of Honey Fist and then a mob of plays elbowing for position- Far Distant Classes, Angel Juice, Denny and Lila).
ANYWAY, the reading featured some stand out work from Gregory Waller as Sand, Ingrid Nordstrom as both sisters (Lucy and Sammy), Isaiah Tannenbaum reprising his role as the terrified and precocious Alexander, and of course, Ken Glickfeld returning as the Gonzo patriarch of the clan, Parker.
The reading sparked an interesting conversation about outlandish or brilliant ways to end ones life that made us all eager for something lighter after the break.

And Jeremy Basescu's Onion Amnesia: The Terifying Tale Of A Woman Who Forgot What A Vegetable Is delivered. The plot is ably summarized in the title, so all I will add is that Nora Hummel was hilarious as Laura, the eponymous de-vegetabled heroine, constantly struggling to keep up with a world gone several degrees askew. Also strong was Drew Valins double turn as hapless husband Hal, and as Cindy, Laura's ferociously nice boss.

Yes, it was good to be back. And I'm going to try to be better about posting our progress at Flux Sundays, which fell off early this year. Hold me to it! Read the full story

What is Poetic Larceny?

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

JEREMY BASESCU

Playwright, April 13th

Previous Flux stuff: A playwright in last year's Imagination Compact, Jeremy has developed a number of plays through Flux, including A Wonderful Wife, The Will, The Syndrome Syndrome, and Calling CQ.

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?
When I was in fourth grade, we had an all-elementary-school assembly to watch some kind of informative documentary film. About ten minutes in, the filmstrip got dislodged and started flapping around on the projector. I quickly burst out into my best Swedish Chef impersonation to say, "De flim go de flip-flip-flip!" Everyone laughed. Since no one really concentrated on the film after that, I think it's safe to say that I stole the show.

Question #2: What is the worst thing that's been stolen from you?
That same year, a bunch of the boys in my class were trying to one-up each other with insults while I quietly sat near them. At one point, I thought of a great one (long since forgotten) and muttered it under my breath. The boy nearest to me heard it, laughed, and repeated it to the group. The good news was that it topped everyone else's insults, and everyone laughed. The bad news was that he took the credit. I should have gotten the clue right then and there that I was destined to write words for other people to say.

Question #3: What do you find pretty?
The ladies. There's a more complicated answer to that, but I wrote an entire full-length play with competing definitions of the word "pretty" as a running gag... so it'as probably not worth it to go into that here.

Question #4: What do you find beautiful?
The Hudson River. Seriously. Especially when you compare it to what it used to look like.

Question #5: If you could steal something beautiful without consequences, what would it be?
The words, characters, and ideas of Anton Chekhov.

Bio: Jeremy is a native New Yorker and Flux Sunday regular whose plays have been performed by Feed the Herd Theater Company, Blue Box's Sticky series, the Atlantic Theater Acting School, and Stupid: the Plays, among others. He holds an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University. Jeremy works as a theater teaching artist for Lincoln Center Institute, as well as a bunch of other organizations with ridiculously long names. Read the full story

Tonight was one of the many nights that make being a part of Flux Theatre Ensemble grand. A few of us met to read through the latest draft of Jeremy Basescu's A Wonderful Wife, previously profiled here. David Crommett was a both arrogant and humble as Carl, Candice Holdorf continued her human excavation of the demon Angela, Brian Pracht (in spite of being sick) found the humor and anger of Max, and Tiffany Clementi was a boyount Christine, changing from a sassy undergrad to a more intruiging and morally ambivalent force by the end.

But a special thanks goes to our host Jane Taylor, who also played June, and who only deepened in her rich and complex portrayal of this challenging part. A great talk about the play afterwards lead into speculation over wine on the nature of beauty, ensembles, the 60's, the foolish goodness of any decade, the Yankees versus the Red Sox, and the difference between free love and friends with benefits...in short, one of the good nights.

Oh, and Jeremy's rewrite was great. Read the full story

ALL CYLINDERS CLICKING

Every once in a while, Flux Sundays will have a lightening strike day. All the scripts are tight, the actors connect with the roles, and each scene passes some essential undroppable thing to the next. It doesn't happen often, but boy did it happen on January 11th, and with all of us seated, no less.

VOLLEYING
Rob Ackerman brought in more of his kinetic comedy, Volleygirls. It's always good to start the Sundays with this play, because the energy and shared laughter brings the whole group together and gets us breathing in rhythm. Matt Acrhambault continued his duel with Jason Pardine for the laurels of the role Coach, and Drew Valins returned after a long break with his passionate Russian referee.

STEPPING
We next read the first few scenes of a new play of mine, Stepping; a welcome diversion from me finishing the 60's play! Following a brother and sister with unusual powers stepping through alternate Harlems, I enjoyed especially Ken Glickfeld's Druncle and Gretchen Poulos' scrappy Saffire, the bewildered best friend trying to keep up with her new blood sister Bahiya. With 60's done, I hope to bring more of this play to our Sundays, as it is eager to be written.

LICKSPITTING
Johnna Adam's epic hexameter farce about a professional lickspittle, buttonholer and go between exiled to the Napoleonic court picked up some heat as their French female counterparts, a not so Simple French Boy, and Napoleon himself battle for supremacy of state and end rhyme. Highlights included our once Oberon Michael Davis crossing gender to play a very different Eglantine, Becky Kelly as the subversive haiku spouting French boy, and Brian Pracht's continued perfection as Peder Pars the Lickspittle.

WILLING
The zanies of Jeremy Basescu's The Will continued their power struggle for inheritance of an eccentric tycoon's fortune as Jane Taylor's Eleanor nearly seduced David Ian Lee's Richard into breaking his lawerly judgement. As always, Aaron Michael Zook's Victor was a hapless triumph. I won't soon forget watching him, even before his character entered, watching the action as Victor, with the hopeful simpleness that makes this character so much fun.

BOATING
We had more Rob Ackerman as he brought in an older plays of his, Loon Island Picnic. A family has returned to their unchanging summer haunt only to find they've changed more than they'd like to admit. Nancy Franklin's defiance against time as Phylis played beautifully off Richard Watson's cantankerous honesty; and Katie Hartke's Marcy was perhaps pleasantly suprised by some unusual admissions from her tongue tied cousin Ben.

SLAPPING
The gentle regret of Loon Island Picnic became a violent defense of older values in David Ian Lee's Long Sought, More Perfect. David Crommett's Rodney tried to reason some values of the 60's into Christina Shipp's mockingly post-PC Heather; as a battle for social right masked a deeper battle for inheritance. An almost unwitting act of violence sears the end of this scene, and send another battle for a will into high gear.

Six very different plays caught fire in one of our hotter Sundays in some time. 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

This was the last Flux Sunday before the trilogy began, and again, it was a full three hours, with scenes from Rob Ackerman's Volley Girls, Johnna Adam's Lickspittles, Buttonholers and Damn Pernicious Go Betweens, Jeremy Basescu's The Will, Mary Fengar Gail's Beggar At The Feast, and my own 60's play.

Over two months later, I remember Jason Paradine's hilarious Coach in Volleygirls, Brian Pracht's deliciously self-satisfied smirk as Peder in Lickspittles, a fierce turn by Mary as Eleanor in The Will, and Johnna Adam's lyrical read of Martha in my 60's play.

Then everything was put on hold as we watched a family through three generations try to bring back mankind's lost beauty and grace in the horns so long lost and almost forgotten. 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

What is The Imagination Compact?

And how can I learn more about Flux's Misdummer?

Jeremy Basescu

Playwright, The Mechanicals, May 19th

Flux History: Plays developed at Flux Sunday include A Wonderful Wife and Calling CQ

1. What is your favorite Shakespeare play?

*King Lear.* It creates such a complete, compelling world that I can't help
but get sucked into it every time I start reading. Nature and artifice,
family and bastardry, sex and insanity… and it's often a mess, but such a
fantastic mess that I just want to roll around in it, run through a
torrential storm, and howl.

2. What is your favorite line of text?

"If music be the food of love, play on." ~*Twelfth Night*


3. Does Shakespeare influence your writing at all?

Shakespeare influences how I breathe, how I think, and how I live my life.
Writing plays is an extension of each of those, and his influence is
inextricable from my imagination.  I grew up with the Charles and Mary Lamb
versions, played Sebastian in the second grade, and went to see
*Midsummer *outdoors
before I learned how babies are made.  Shakespeare's characters are more
real to me than most of the people I know, and they are just as likely to
show up in my plays.  Having said all that, I still haven't read through the
histories.  Someday.

4. If you had to date one of the Midsummer lovers, whom would you date and
why?
Helena.  Totally.  Aside from that I have a soft spot for hard-luck cases, I
don't think there'd be a dull moment.  Also, I'm pretty sure she's hot.

5. What is the first thing you think of when you hear the word "flux"?
A trampoline.

6. Fairies: colorful playmates or dangerous tricksters?
Both (the best kind).  I think I might stay out of any long-term romantic
entanglements, though; last thing I need is a bad break-up followed by
waking up the next morning with a wombat for a head.

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?
Marty McFly would play Hamlet.  This would officially signal the death of
theater.  On the bright side, all you need is a DeLorean to sneak into the
world premiere of *Titus Andronicus*.

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

9. If a capricious fairy turned you into an animal against your will, what
animal would you be and why?
An anteater.  I've always secretly wondered what those things are thinking.
I'm guessing it has something to do with ants, but there's only one way to
find out.

10. Which would win in a fight - the forest of Midsummer or the forest of
Arden?
Never bet against sweet Puck.

11. How many licks does it take...?
As many as possible.

12. Would you rather have a beer with Richard Burbage or William Kemp?
Clearly Kemp.  Burbage was a pompous twit; Kemp was the funniest drunk
alive.  However, if we were going on a hunting trip, I'd take Burbage,
because Kemp would be much likelier to pull a Dick Cheney.

13. If we could compact your imagination, what color would it be and why?
Brown.  Put lots of colors together, and you get brown.  (I have no
imagination.)

Read the full story

ALL THE LITTLE BREAK THROUGHS
While much of the dialogue in the theatrosphere justly involves revolutionary change, it is often little incremental break throughs that give me the most pleasure. Flux Sunday regularly reveals such break throughs - the right actor, the right director, the right role - and some new unconsidered possibility opens up. The picture here is Brian Pracht from our 2007 retreat at Little Pond, working on his play The Misogynist. And at this last Flux Sunday, he gave a performance in Dog Show that revealed possibilities new to me - of Brian as a performer, of David Ian Lee as a writer, Jeremy Basescu as a director, and of that strange pride we sometimes have in our biggest mistakes.

CALLING CQ:
We began with Jeremy's new comedy, Calling CQ, about a President who is obsessed, perhaps justifiably, with an imminent Martian invasion. Highlights of this round table reading included Richard Watson's right wing reporter Storm and Jane Taylor's no nonsense paper editor Ruth.

BIRD HOUSE:
We then had the pleasure of returning to Kate Marks antic comedy Bird House. One thing we have learned about this wildly inventive play - if you think too much about it, the play sags; but if you just live absolutely in each individual moment, the audience will follow you down the strangest journeys. Returning to the play was reigning Bird House champion Nancy Franklin as Rita, with a comically committed performance by Felicia Hudson as the militant Myra. The best line reading of the day, however, belonged to Katherine Burger's "breakfast is so cruel and I never want to have it again".

DOG SHOW:
We continued through the second half of the second scene of Dog Show, where husband and wife team Candice and Frank are seducing, encouraging and/or destroying Frank's high school buddy, Edward. This scene featured the aforementioned Brian's reveal that he may have raped a girl in college; and the nuances of disgust, denial, power and pride ran beautifully through his subtle performance.

DEAR CHINA:
As a welcome appetizer to the upcoming Imagination Compact, Joe Mathers staged Rob Ackerman's riff on Quince, Dear China. This hilarious and tender portrayal of 3 techies building a window display for a hardware store is lit up by the characters' shared love of stories; and Ken Glickfeld found the touching human heart as Quince, a playwright who gets a little embarrassed by how much he loves writing plays.

TEXAS TOAST:
Andrew and Claire's marriage has been falling under increasing distress due to dislocation, childlessness, but above all, Andrew's indiscretion with a prostitute in Thailand. The secret of that indiscretion is gleefully revealed by Sally, the wife of Andrew's boss. Spurned as a friend by the high-minded Claire, Sally's revenge plunges their marriage into literal darkness. Kate's delicate direction and Kelly O'Donnell's gleeful Saly were among the highlights of this dark patch in this beautiful play.

Only one more Sunday before we break for Midsummer! Read the full story

On our Flux Sunday March 16th we completed working through Jeremy Basescu's A Wonderful Wife. This was especially exciting because Jeremy (pictured to the left) was writing the play as we went along - one of the original goals of Flux Sunday was to serve as both spur and immediate gratification to plays in progress.

And what a play! A Wonderful Wife is like Pinter writing with a porcelain pen - the pauses and subtext still have menace, but are impeccably clean and groomed. This is the kind of play where you can hear the soup cool and the ice jangling in the martini is unspeakably loud. Carl, the bread winner of our immaculate house hold, surprises his accommodating wife June with a 'visitor'. The visitor is a stunningly attractive younger woman named Angela, who tries to seduce her way to absolute power in the household.

Unexpectedly, however, Angela finds herself more drawn to the unassuming June than her alleged lover Carl. An axis of power forms between the women: in Angela, June has a tutor in how to wield beauty and power overtly and without apology; in June, Angela has an ideal audience. Carl increasingly finds himself on the outside of the relationship that was supposed to offer him the connection his tidy marriage had been missing.

When Carl and June's son Max comes home from college, the subtle hostility and power struggle breaks to the surface as he fights for what he perceives as his mother's humiliation. Unable to see or accept the complexity and complicity of his mother's position, he takes action against the vampiric Angela by seducing her daughter, Christine. When Max sends drawings of Christine naked to his father, the beauty of the pictures sets off a chain reaction of epiphany, reconciliation and ultimately, exile.

The play's primary concern is beauty - who has it and knows it, who thinks they have it and doesn't, who knows how to use it and what are the costs of doing so. For the majority of the play, beauty is seen an as expression of power, of aggression and domination, primarily through the actions of Angela the visitor. The climax of the play reveals beauty to be a subtler agent, and at the end of the play, it is the meek-seeming June who holds the power and owns the beauty. Max and Christine seem to be together, June and Carl are apart but are finding a beauty in distance; and Angela is exiled from all of it.

Great directing work throughout the process was contributed by Jeremy himself and Isaiah Tanenbaum; and actors who left their mark were Candice Holdorf as Angela, Jane Taylor and Anja Braanstorm as June, Brian Pracht and Jake Alexander as Max, and Cotton Wright as Christine. Thanks to all for their great work over many months on this fascinating play. Read the full story

ALONE AND TOGETHER
One of our most exciting and well-executed Flux's that I can remember, our work together on the 16th seemed to coalesce around themes of aloneness and togetherness. Those themes were especially lovely and unsettling in Johnna Adams' play Oneida, Servants of Motion, about the Perfectionist communist christian utopian community that thrived for 33 years in upstate New York in the mid 1800's (picture to the left). The Oneidans share everything, including and most famously there marriage - all the women of the community were married to all of the men - and in this "complex marriage" (as they called it) women were encouraged to have multiple partners and the men required to practice male continence. The incredible closeness of this community lead (for some) to an equally strong alienation; and those themes echoed through the rest of our work.

SIMPLE: WHAT ALONE SOUNDS LIKE
In Jaime Robert Carrillo's play Simple, that alienation was at its strongest. Director Kate Mark and a cast of Joe Mathers, Gretchen Poulos and Jake Alexander found theatrically evocative ways to stage Jaime's themes of disconnection: one actor would turn upstage and say the lines as another actor silently acted saying them. Simple, but effectively disturbing, and Joe as the Clerk and Gretchen as Gigi and the Waitress found the humor surrounding Jake's portrayal of Perry as an open walking wound. We'd read these scenes at a Sunday last year, but Kate's staging really brought these first scenes to a disturbingly vivid life. Perry tries increasingly asocial ways to establish any kind of social connection.

ONEIDA: ALONE IN A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE
In contrast, Mary has an entire utopian community married to her to help her through the pain of her stillborn child. But in this next scene of Johnna's Oneida, that only makes her feel more alone. Because the Oneidans also practiced open and vigorous group criticism, Mary's failure to bring a child to birth subjects her to not only the group's concerned love, but also their concerned criticism; particularly at the hands of Ann, the head of criticism fiercely played by Flux newcomer Nitya Vidyasagar. In order to make up for her failure, Mary (heartbreakingly played by another newbie, Autumn Horne) asks for more and more severe criticism. This unsettlingly funny and sad scene was well staged by Jaime and featured additional great work from Jane Taylor, Ken Glickfeld, and Jason Paradine.

TEXAS TOAST: OTHER MARRIAGES DINING TOGETHER
In contrast with the 'complex' communal marriage of Oneida, Katherine Burger's Texas Toast again contrasted the vital and cruel marriage of the Texan Bo and Sally against the fragile and kind marriage of East Coasters Claire and Andrew. I was lucky enough to direct a dream cast of Richard Watson, Elise Link, Amy Fitts and David Ian Lee; and in a dinner scene between the two couples, watch how subtly Katherine exposes the fault lines and shifting allegiances between them. The theme of childlessness from Oneida carries through into Claire's chilling public declaration of her own barrenness; and as Andrew continues to hide the secret of his dalliance in Thailand, our hopes for this couple come under increasing siege.

BIRD HOUSE: TOGETHER UNTIL YOU'RE NOT
But if Texas Toast hints at the impending doom of a couple, Bird House gives it to us direct, albeit in its trademark vaudevillian style. Syl and Lousy have the banter of mutual shut-ins shut-in for a very long time - playwright Kate Marks even has ancient versions of them occasionally commenting on the action. But Syl, inspired by the hints of war and death and full of her own ability to change things, leaves the musty safety of Louisy behind; and in the silly comic banter that ensues, a little of the loneliness these zanies may find creeps in.

A WONDERFUL WIFE: ALONE WITH YOURSELF
The denouement of Jeremy Basescu's A Wonderful Wife served as a lovely and apt denouement to our days' work: whereas the other four plays' scenes dealt with breaking apart and disconnecting, Wife ends with June coming together in herself. She doesn't need Carl, Max, or the vampiric Angela to find beauty any longer; she has found it in herself. She has become, in the memorable words of Max's girlfriend (and Angela's defiant daughter) Christine, almost like the air in a room; her presence expanding to fill everything while at the same time giving room for others to move within. Rob Ackerman's reading of Carl the husband's letter to his lost wife proved a melancholy counterpoint to June's newfound independence - he is finally all the way alone and his only grace, knowing he is the sole cause of it.

After all the scenes were done, we had just enough time to circle and discuss one moment in the day's work that had some 'heat'; and all five plays received well-deserved attention. And I left feeling lucky to be a part of Flux's own, ever evolving and always complex marriage. Read the full story

I am so late posting about Flux's developmental adventures! I would be ashamed if I had time to be ashamed! Instead, I will do penance by making every sentence in this post end with an exclamation point!

Or no, that would make all suffer. No one likes an unnecessarily exclamation. (I think!?!?)

Ah, reader, but we've had a good run of Flux Sundays since March 2008 became a part of our lives. Let me tell you about the first.

19 WORDS
We began by reading through the second half of my short play for Gideon Productions, 19 Words. For those of you who know, imagine Jane Taylor reading this monologue, and then imagine me profoundly happy with the happy-sad:

Shh, listen, you’ll like this.
I was thinking about how I met you,
And him, for the first time; and I just knew
One of you was going to change everything
For me; suddenly I became aware
That my body was an adult body
Or close enough, which meant it was going
To get sick like my Mom’s body was sick,
Die like all my fucking grandparents did,
(All four of them dead by then, no damn fair);
I felt my skin turn into something that
Could and would get sick and die; so then why,
Looking at the pair of your teenage grins,
Did I feel something wonderful begin,
Something so beyond anything I’d dreamed
That in that moment I couldn’t tell which one
Of you I’d fallen in love with, first sight;
And then I blinked and realized, oh, right, him;
But Fred, what if I just blinked the wrong eye?
Setting aside the fact you were attracted
To little kids and so that wouldn’t have worked;
And now you’re dead and can’t hear me at all;
(FRED moans.)
Thanks for moaning, sorry this is so long;
But I’m just trying to say in that blink
Our entire life together was lost forever;
And that’s how we go, blinking along, losing
Entire lives with every lowered lid;
So that when my husband died, when you die,
And me, a million blinking lives go, too;
A field of fireflies dark all at once;
And once dark, like they never lit at all.
I know that. What I don’t know is why I
Want to say the sentence so fucking bad;
Why the end of the world feels so much like
Looking at a pair of teenage boys grinning;
Because, Fred, now I know the final word,
The nineteen words that end the world, I know;
And so even though I know that ending
Even one blinking life is tragedy,
Two boys are grinning and one of them’s mine.
Shh, Fred, I’m going to tell you a secret.

ACTING CLASS
We then read-through the first scene of Rob Ackerman's play about an acting teacher at a military school, most memorably brought to vividry (not a word, and probably shouldn't be) by the happy return of David Crommett and his performance as the drill seargent.

SLEEPER
Once on our feet, we staged 8 pages of David Ian Lee's Sleeper, which have the proportional weight of 3 pages of a normal play. Especially exciting was the introduction to the group of Jason Howard, of whom I've heard such wonderful things (especially in the legendary Universal Robots production) as Bobby; and his dirge for his daughter.

A WONDERFUL WIFE
We also approached the climatic confrontation in Jeremy Basescu's A Wonderful Wife, as Angela's malevolent hold on the once hapless marriage of Carl and June is shaken by the arrival of drawings with too much beauty for anyone's good. Especially exciting was Ken Glickfeld's righteous helpless and hilarous wrath, and Isaiah Tanenbaum's continued impressive work as a director (he will go on to earn his Flux Merit Badge in Directing and pull into the lead of Flux badgery.)

TEXAS TOAST
Now, if I'm you, and according to Walt Whitman, I might be, I know what we're thinking; why did we use that picture of Caitlin Kinsella from Have Another at the start of this post? Well, if you've read this far, that means you should be rewarded with that very knowledge, and you must therefore know that as Sally, the Texas cheerleader/decorator/land shark from Katherine Burger's marvelous play, Texas Toast; Caitlin broke through into major Flux Sunday player status. This coveted status was earned by her Sally cavorting like a bull made of sunlight through a particularly delicate china shop; perhaps best immortalized by her spanking herself in delight at just how bad she was being. The scene was Sally's 'friendly' visit to Claire's home. Claire, an East Coast transplant brought to Texas by her husband Andrew's work, is ill-prepared for the hurricane of judgement, peer pressure, and aggressive kindness that Sally brings.
While Claire is being overwhelmed by Sally, Sally's husband Bo is performing a similar dominance of Andrew (Claire's husband). And as we learn that on their business trip to Thailand Bo has persuaded Andrew to do some darker things; the bottom drops out of the play's antic humor; and becomes about a working marriage of two delightfully morally bankrupt vitalists (Sally and Bo) trying to dominate the failing marriage of the well-meaning but guilt-ridden Andrew and Claire.
Also exciting was Amy Fitts' first Sunday as Claire, and her subtle and nuanced work was truly lovely. Read the full story

FLEX IS FLUXIBLE
Er...strike that, reverse it.
But as our mission statement plainly states, we do value the multi-faceted theatre artist. And that flexibility was plainly on display on this particular Sunday (as it is here to the left as Cotton Wright stretches skyward as Thalia in Rue).

Short on our regular dose of directors, Flux membership stepped up to direct our five scenes. The result was one of the smoothest run Flux Sunday's I can remember.

PUSHING CERTAIN ENVELOPES, OR, PINTER ME THIS
Jeremy Basescu's A Wonderful Wife returned, directed in a long scene by Flux Associate (and frequent blogger) Isaiah Tanenbaum. This tea and saucer Pinter-esque exploration of a family politely falling apart as the father takes a mistress came to a boil; and that boil provided several Flux Sunday veterans a chance to push their work in places I'd not yet seen it go. David Douglas Smith and Jane Taylor kept up a smooth veneer only to shatter it suddenly; and Brian Pracht, as their stunned son, battled to make sense of the ruins of his family in his most daring work yet. Isaiah's work as a director kept the action moving, with Candice Holdorf's mistress the still center of poison in the center of the family circling around her.

DIRECTING AS A WHOLE BODY EXPERIENCE
Directing Adam Szymkowicz's Open Hearts was Christina Shipp, and it was a joy to watch her unique style of directing again. Some directors work clinically, by diagnosing the needs, objectives and obstacles and laying them before the actors as the cure; Christina, on the other hand, incarnates those needs, objectives and obstacles by living them in front of you; the urgency and stakes are palpably communicated like one guitar ringing a chord into another. And it paid off, with a passionately crazed take on this nearly penultimate scene.

Also exciting was Katherine Burger's Way Deep, a lovely play of hers she is transforming into a musical, and Rob Ackerman's Calculating Route 5, a hilarious short on a GPS system navigating a tricky new relationship. And we came once scene closer to completing Erin Browne's Trying, as Cotton lovingly directed the dinner table scene where Lena's choice between her pregnant sister and her passionate new girlfriend becomes ever more starkly clear.

Four Flux Members directing and five great scenes, and it ran so smoothly; like the little clam before the storm of the casting process descended upon us. But more on that anon. Read the full story