Flux Theatre Ensemble

Jake Alexander, the Have Another Maestro, captained the whole affair from start to last call, and do you see how charming he is? Very.
It's one thing to be a crazy talented playwright/actor who is capable of writing plays in rhyming hexameter (we're looking at you, Johnna Adams). It's quite another to whip together the wax head of Marie Antoinette the night before. Hooray for Lickspittles, Buttonholers and Damned Pernicious Go-Betweens!
Mary Fengar Gael's first scene from Opaline had the audience howling and the gift of the evening was one particularly funny moment where the mighty Ryan Andes, with a sweeping gesture, knocked Nancy ever so slightly in the head, and to apologize (in character), gave her a sideways hug that stopped the play with laughter; and just when the laughs seemed ready to ebb, Nancy expertly leaned her head just so against Ryan's chest, as if to say, all is well; and the laughter swelled again. Little gifts of live theatre (in bars).
The night ended with Aaron's gorgeous end of act 1 scene from his play, We Are Burning. The lovers above can't be fully happy, because...
...because the memory of lost love is so perfect.
Our audience (spot director Alexis Williams!) was warm...
...our minds were rapt...
...and a lovely time was had by most (and maybe all).
Did we mention David Ian Lee was brooding and enigmatic as Prometheus? Did you see him steal Amy Fitts' beer in the scene? Now that's acting.
This one speaks for itself. And now...
...you're obligatory Isaiah artsy logo in action shot...
...and a bonus Isaiah acting shot.

For all the pics, go here. Check them out, and let me know if there are any others that MUST be posted here.
What were your favorite moments in the night? Comment below!
And THANK YOU to everyone who came out - it was a great night, and we were thrilled to share some of our plays in development with you. Read the full story

What is Flux Sunday?

So much to catch up on! Have Another last night (it went well), a shout out for Infectious Opportunity (go see the extension), an update on the quality discussion and more NET unpacking. But for now, a quick update on our last Flux Sunday!

BACK ON OUR FEET, BUT WOOZY
Thanks to Tiffany, we were back on our feet staging things. While everyone likes the ol' read around the table, there's a special alchemy when the right director and rights actors play for an hour and something alive breaks through. The flip side (or in honor of Bird House, the Lop Side) is things get messy, and that was definitely the case last Sunday, as we ran nearly half an hour over!
But good work was accomplished. We read more from Johnna Adams' Lickpittles, Buttonholores and Damned Pernicious Go-Betweens and David Ian lee's In The Year Of Nothing, or So Goes The Nation; both big cast beasts, one the rhyming hexameter play featured at last night's Have Another, and the other a gritty cinematic look (or so I think early on) at the trickle down of corruption.

HONEY ON THE HANDS
I then staged two new scenes from an old play of mine, Honey Fist. Finally finished after a year's hiatus, Ingrid Nordstrom and Candice Holdorf took turns as Gretyl Barnes, the kidnapped pop star maniuplating her hijackers in all sorts of surprising ways. My favorite part was Aaron Micheal Zook's portrayal of Sul - first time through, he played up what appears on the page like sarcasm, but in the run he played it sweet and sincere - and it landed just as I'd hoped.

PAINT ON THE FINGERS
Next up was Zack Calhoon's Paint, featuring the recently divorced couple Sarah and Ray trying to work through Ray's violence against her son, David. As Ray and Sarah, David Ian lee and Karen Sternberg (first timer!) really found both the attraction and ugliness in this relationship, and it was off set beautifully in the youthful rush of David (Brian Pracht) and his girlfriend's (Caitlian Kinsella) post coital laughter. The legacy of violence raises its head in this scene, as well, and the question of both couple's survival hangs in the air.

GREEN IN THE EYES
Then we returned to Mary Fengar Gael's Opaline, another play featured at last night's Have Another. And much like last night, this scene was playing like gangbusters. A line about a damned horse doctor stopped the scene as the room rocked with laughter, and Johnna's sudden seduction of Matthew Archambualt's Hargraves was a delight. More of this play, please!

BLOOD ON THE TRACKS
We ended with the first scene from a new play by Aaron Michael Zook, whose We Are Burning was another Have Another. This scene, Graves and Worms and Epitaphs, started silly, turned a notch of darkness when Jane Taylor as Liz exploded against her ex-husband's door, and then turned very dark indeed as Mariam Habib as Josh told just how that ex-husband became a shut-in. A lovely way to end the day with a red sun setting of sorts.

We're back on our feet again, energized from this last Have Another...but more on that anon. Read the full story

Yes...
After so long...
It's finally happening...
The return of bar staged reading series at Jimmy's #43, Have Another!
You might remember Have Another from its previous incarnations. But it's been over a year since we've held this event. Why are we bringing it back, besides the obvious fact that theatre over beer is fun?

Because we want to open up our play development process to you, attractive audience person. Another thing that came out of the NET summit was a movement from theatres to share the process of making theatre with an audience (a post on that anon), and while we've been dabbling with that through past HAs and Food:Souls, we want to move further in that direction. Have Another is our attempt to bring you into the process of what we're developing through our Flux Sundays in a non-traditional theatre setting.

And the line-up of scenes is looking great! Check it:

So see you this Wednesday, July 8th at 7PM. at Jimmy's #43, located downstairs at 43 East 7th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue! 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?

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

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