Flux Theatre Ensemble

By August Schulenburg

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By August Schulenburg
(What is Flux Sunday?)

We're back! After an Ajax in Iraq sized hiatus, we returned to the friendly confines of Judson Memorial Church for some Flux Sunday action. It was a full day - we went over our 7PM limit - and everyone was really bringing it.

Playwrights: Fengar Gael (The Cat Vandal), EM Lewis (Now Comes the Night), August Schulenburg (Perse, The App of Paradise), Isaiah Tanenbaum (Viva Fidel)

Directors: Heather Cohn, Kitty Lindsay, Brian Pracht

Actors: David Crommett, Jane Taylor, Ken Glickfeld, Heather Nicholson, Kari Swenson Riely, Anna Lamadrid, Matthew Archambault, Ingrid Nordstrom, Vern Thiessen, Ryan Andes, Becky Byers, Leila Okafor, Carissa Cordes, Drew Valins

Highlights:
-Brian Pracht and Matthew Archambault found some really funny phone business in Viva Fidel, the play that routinely requires three times as many props as any other scene.
-Ken accidentally kicked my character's wounded leg in Now Comes the Night, and wow, that really helped my intensity the rest of the beautifully ravaged scene! Ellen said she might even keep it...
-No one gathered at this Flux Sunday will ever forget Ryan on the yoga mat as the cat-possessed Omar in Mary's The Cat Vandal. A supple kudos to Andes and director Heather.
-It was really cool to see two Perses and two Melindas in the long chunk of Perse we did - Anna/Becky and Heather/Ingrid each found completely different energies in the roles. I'm also unclear as to how they directed such a long scene so cleanly in so little time. Magic?
-Drew Valins was back! And he brought a real tenderness to Paco in The App of Paradise that grounded such an idea heavy short scene.

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

Who is that terrifying assassin with the great hair?

(Photo: Isaiah Tanenbaum.)

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(What is Flux Sunday?)

After two weeks off (one for Thanksgiving, one for NET's Micro-Fest), we returned to our trusty Flux Sunday back-up at 520 8th ave. That meant reads around the table, which, while not as fun as playing on our feet, does give us the opportunity to read more pages. And they were some solid pages, if I do so solid myself.

Playwrights: Fengar Gael (Devil Dog Six), Aja Houston (Superwomen?), Brian Pracht (Wendell Wants), August Schulenburg (One More Go Around The Darkness)

Actors: Will Lowry, Matthew Archambault, Alisha Spielmann, Jason Howard, Ken Glickfeld, Carissa Cordes, Isaiah Tanenbaum, Kathleen Wise, Ryan Andes, Ingrid Nordstrom, Heather Cohn, Garth McCardle, Regine Mont-Louis, Tiffany Clementi

Highlights:
-Aja's hilarious pageant play (wish we could have staged that second scene!) with a goofily lovable Grier from Regine and a fiercely focused Tiffany Clementi as Venus.
-Ken Glickfeld was ON this day: relaxed, nuanced, focused reads as Bernard in Devil Dog Six and Eliot in Wendell Wants.
-Watching our progression of Wendell's, from Isaiah's perfectly pitched younger Wendell to Garth's irony-laced teen Wendell to Jason's painfully present lover Wendell; it was a wide world of Wendell Wants.
-Ryan Andes dangerously funny cool kid. If you were there, you know what I mean.
-Ingrid Nordstrom taking my note of excitable and running with it as Charity in One More Go About The Darkness. I also appreciated Kathleen Wise's formidable Ellen.

What fireflies of the day did you catch in your bottle? Leave them in the comments below! Read the full story

(What is Flux Sunday?)

Playwrights: Rob Ackerman (Throwing Gumballs), Johnna Adams (Hripsime), Fengar Gael (The Spell Caster), Brian Pracht (The Misogynist; Or, No More Mr. Nice Guy), August Schulenburg (Deinde)

Actors: David Crommett, Alisha Spielmann, Nancy Franklin, Ingrid Nordstrom, Isaiah Tanenbaum, Heather Cohn, Jane Taylor, Elise Link

The playwrights returned in full force after my solo efforts the week previous; Rob brought the final pages of his momentary epic, Throwing Gumballs; Brian brought rewrites of his much traveled Misogynist; Johnna brought the Armenian verse play and I kept the science fiction coming.

Highlights included:
-Ingrid's hilariously trapped and smiling through the awkwardness portrayal of Julie in The Misogynist, as her suitor Ethan pulls out all the wrong stops
-David and Jane perfectly volleying back and forth the pleasure and recriminations of mentor and protege Malcolm and Nabanita in Deinde
-Heather showing off her acting chops as the enigmatic young sorceress Mayra in The Spell Caster
- Enjoying the final twisting peregrinations of the soul in Rob's epic blink in a man's life, Throwing Gumballs

There is always something special about coming to the end of a play we've worked scene by scene in Flux Sunday - sometimes they feel a little like tuning in to weekly episodes of your favorite TV show - and it is always hard to say goodbye. But then again, rewrites are never having to say goodbye... Read the full story

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

Ingrid Nordstrom
Actor, ForePlay

Previous Flux Experience: Anisa Hansen in The Lesser Seductions of History; Dramaturgy for A Midsummer Night's Dream and Other Bodies; Have Another: We Are Burning



Do you have a favorite Bible character?
I think Judith is my favorite. Partially because she inspired Artemisia Gentileschi and consequently Howard Barker.

Are you blessed?
Indeed.

If you were wrestling an angel, what moves would you use?
I would go medieval, and use my wicked logic skills to shrink it down to the size of a pin head, and have it dance till it was all tuckered out.

What would you do for more life?
Jeez, I don't think I want more life, really. Too lonely once the loved ones are gone. I would love to STAY healthy for most of my life and to die standing up. But I think I would do just about anything for wisdom. Damn that snake with his shiny apple!

What's the weirdest thing in your parents' attic?
I don't know... Homemade Crossbow? Is that weird? We have some gold teeth lying around from my Grandpa's medicine pouch from WWI, yes, the first one.

What is your prior experience with the Old Testament?
What a funny way to phrase that question! I went to bible school and what not in the Lutheran Church, but I think most of my exposure actually came from Europe and the art, or that is what made it really fascinating for me.

If you believe in a deity or deities, what kind do you believe in?
The kind that "would dance". It would be nice to think that there is some reason that life exists at all. It is strange and wonderful and it would be cool if there was something that could appreciate it as a whole, and it would be super awesome if at the end of this particular life, I could somehow be involved in that knowledge.

Anything else coming up for you that Flux readers should know about?
Just working on working.

Ingrid Nordstrom hails from the small Scandinavian nation of Minnesota. She studied Theater and Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin: Eau Claire, spent a bit of time in Europe "finding herself", and finished her training at the Atlantic Theater Company Acting School's 2 Year Conservatory Program in NYC. Now she acts. Read the full story

(What is Flux Sunday?)

Playwrights: Throwing Gumballs (Rob Ackerman), Projects (Erin Browne), Yellow Wallpaper (Katherine Burger), McTeague (James Comtois), Untitled Russian Project (David Ian Lee), Dinkles and Holly (Zack Robidas), Caged (Adam Szymkowicz)

Directors: Angela Astle, Heather Cohn, Nancy Franklin, August Schulenburg

Actors: Matthew Archambault, Jaime Robert Carrillo, Carissa Cordes, David Crommett, Becky Kelly, Ingrid Nordstrom, Gretchen Poulos, Brian Pracht, Jane Taylor, Isaiah Tanenbaum, Drew Valins, Richard Watson, Travis York

We're back! And as you can see from above, we had a full house. Highlights include:

- Zack Robidas' first pages, the Christmas-themed romp Dinkles and Holly (best line: elf-improvment?)
- Travis York's first FS, rocking out the disturbing-funny Man of Adam's Caged and the disturbing-frocked John of Katherine's Yellow Wallpaper.
- Becky Kelly's picnic enthusiasm as Trina in James' McTeague
- James showing the actors how it's done with his hilariously serious turns as Paul and Santa (yup, the Claus)
- Gretchen Polous' third rock star Flux Sunday in a row as the lonely/under pressure Emily in Erin's Projects
- Angela's moody environmental direction of David's Untitled Russian Project, with an all-star cast and lighting cues to boot (I'd pay to see Captain Adam ordering Zack to be funny)
- Rob Ackerman playing himself in Throwing Gumballs. 'Nuff said.

I was also fascinated by the speed of the first scene in Erin's Projects - usually in her work, the pauses are as important as the words, but the rapid pace made for an interesting dynamic. I also had a great time trying Adam's bird scene three different ways with Ingrid Nordstrom - that kind of trial and error is what makes these Sundays so valuable.

Artists who attended, what were your highs and lows? 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

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

(Photo: Allison Bolah. Pictured l to r: Autumn Horne, August Schulenburg, Heather Cohn, Jane Taylor)

A VOLLEY OF BURNING 60'S

One of the best parts about Flux Sunday (from a playwrights perspective) is the weekly need for pages. You have to bring them every week, and they damn well better be as strong as the actors and directors you hand them to. And with that need as a spur, it's amazing how the pages ride.

And so it was this Sunday, with a plethora of new pages from Rob's Volleygirls, my Ten Black Boxes, and Aaron's We Are Burning. All three seem to be in that lucky place of surging towards unknown destinations, and there were some damn good directors and actors to hand them to.

BUMP SET SPIKE
We continued reading through Volleygirls, tabling a bunch of pages and throwing some juicy Coach, Xavier and Jess scenes on their feet. Coach's love for a game he hates continues to vie with Xavier's precocious passion for my favorite part of this play, and in Zack Calhoon's 2nd Sunday, he embodied both with the help of Jane Taylor as deadly serious athletic director and 1st timer Carissa Cordes as the disciplined team captain Jess who kisses Xavier in spite of herself. Can Flux keep returning the rapid volleys of Ackerman's pages? Tune in next Sunday to find out...

AS FLIES TO WANTON BOYS ARE WE TO THE GODS
Prometheus to be exact, who both suffers the indignities of the Olympians and chronicles those of two human lovers, Will and Lucy, both misbegotten with too much feeling in a world literally on fire. Aaron's play continued apace with great work in David Douglas Smith's subtle portrayal of Will's mysteriously assigned therapist, and Ingrid's delightfully Mom-frazzled Lucy; as well as Richard Watson's increasingly enigmatic Prometheus.

STONE MOUNTAIN OF GEORGIA
Angela Astle drew the daunting task of staging my latest scene of the 60's play Ten Black Boxes. In this scene, the characters we follow year by year are taken over by King's dream speech, and it was scary to turn this sacred text to our own ends. In some places it worked, and in others it jarred; but it worked enough to move forward, thanks in no small part to Jason Paradine's Bobby, Joe Mather's Barry, Kelly O'Donnell's Tegan, Felicia Hudson's Martha and 1st Timer Anthony Willis Jr's George.

And the days go on so the work does too. Read the full story

SO MANY CONS, SO FEW SUNDAYS
Our second Flux Sunday back from Midsummer had the heart of a con man. Cons of the dishonest kind were being played in me tentatively titled new play, Denny and Lila, and of the probably dishonest kind in David Ian Lee's Dog Show, and of the most earnest kind in Johnna Adam's Oneida, Servants of Motion.

HEY, DENNY. HI, LILA.
Needing a break from wrestling with the thorny angels and slippery devils of Other Bodies, I wrote the first scene of a con play. Got to love a con play - everyone needs something and they're usually doing something interesting to get it. But of course, my damn head is already twisting it into some darker thing about love and lust and knowing how to trust those things - but for now, it was just about three people conning a woman too smart to see how she's being taken. This was especially exciting as it marked the Flux Sunday directorial debut of Amy Fitts, and she got vibrant performances from Ingrid Nordstrom as Mary and Elise Link as Jabber.
CANDICE, BRIAN, DOGS.
David's Dog Show, on the other hand, doesn't show its own con to the audience; and so you're left wondering just who is going to get eaten in this predatory play. We think Eddie is getting taken by Frank through Candice, but maybe Candice is using Eddie against Frank, or maybe Eddie is using them both; we only have hints about what game is being played, though by the end of this pivotal scene, we suspect the hapless Eddie may be much more than expected. Candice and Brian did an amazing job at showing the gradual change in power between these two dangerous yet vulnerable human beings who both take their hands of wheels literal and otherwise as the dogs strut for prizes.

SLEDDING YOUR WAY INTO HER HEART
The sweetest of counterpoints to these rags of cons was Johnna's Oneida, where Pip, the 13 year old boy freshly brought into the status of manhood by his 61 year old lover Harriet, tries to con his way earnestly into her heart through sledding. Appointed by their utopian community to train Pip in the ways of male continence, Harriet told the frightened boy sex was a little like sledding and a little like prayer. Now smitten with his lover, Pip takes her sledding, hoping the rush of it will convince Harriet to love him more than is permitted in their community's complex marriage. Just how successful he is was the subject of a fascinating discussion between playwright, director David Douglas Smith, and actors Jane Taylor and Jake Alexander.
But not to be out done in the hard core cons, Johnna's contribution to this Sunday ended with Gretchen Poulos hilariously playing the least honorable member of the Oneida community James, who passed out pamphlets to the audience praising the benefits of communal marriage for less than desirable men. The fake pamphlet she created easily belongs in the Flux Sunday hall of fame, right next to Johnna's lovingly designed snake-cages-on-pages. Ah, Hot Biblical Love! Read the full story