Jumping into the dating pool requires a leap of faith.
Turning that act of bravery into a musical is how "Hearts on Line" ended up being created (from the original title, "Leap of Faith").
Tonight Firehouse Theater did a staged reading of the new play by local playwright Rebecca Jones with music by composer Paul Bartsch, who also played piano.
I don't want to say that online dating is a hot topic, but when I arrived 30 minutes before show time, the ticket line was out the door.
People got turned away.
It seems that others are finally realizing what I've been saying for a while now. The Firehouse's $5 staged readings are the best theater deal in town.
I got lucky. I hadn't bought a ticket in advance because I'd never needed to for one of these productions.
And as the line inched up, it became clear that I might not get in.
But the theater gods smiled on me and I was allowed in as one of the last seven people to gain admittance before the house was full (they were counting seats at that point).
An usher was seating the last few of us and as she led me to my seat, she warned that I wouldn't be able to sit with my party.
What party? I was a party of one at a play about finding love.
Somehow I was seated in a second row seat, one off the aisle. It's exactly one seat from where I choose to sit at Firehouse functions.
I don't know how in the world I got so lucky.
Some of the people who were let in with me were seated in folding chairs off to the side with an obstructed view, presumably so they could sit together.
Sometimes it pays to be Miss Lonelyhearts.
The play told the story of a nice Episcopalian girl, Rachael, who goes on J-Date to find love.
Apparently a Jewish drama teacher in 8th grade had sealed her appreciation for Jewish men.
Interwoven with her attempts at finding Mr. Right were subplots of other people doing the same while her gay best friend shored her up.
You know, basically the story of every other single woman's life.
The subplots were funny because they took the audience through unsuccessful first dates where couples discovered they had little in common and no spark.
Eventually, though, and with enough optimism to keep trying different people, each idiosyncratic one of them found their match with someone else's reject.
As one of my former bosses liked to say, "There's a lid for every pot." And, yes, he was Jewish.
Strong characters and astute portrayals gave everyone in the crowd a reason to care about the dating action.
The audience got caught up in the plot, some fascinated with Rachael's dating adventures and others just as taken with the sagas of the other couples.
The play got a bit muddy with a tangent about her converting to Judaism, but ended with the promise of a dinner date (a doctor!) with an interested/interesting-sounding man.
The play was long, too long, but the songs were clever, witty and some even beautiful.
But it was Rachael's continued willingness to take yet another leap of faith that kept the audience in their seats for nearly three hours.
I'm not putting my heart online, but I'd happily take possession of my lid.
Showing posts with label staged reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label staged reading. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
The Play's the Thing with Girl Parts
I know all about being surrounded by females.
Because I grew up in an all-girl family with five sisters (okay, obviously there was my Dad; that's where all those sisters came from) I never knew a shortage of females.
The same could be said for Firehouse Theater's staged reading of "A Gender-Reversed Hamlet" tonight.
There were nineteen women in the cast and only three guys.
It was beyond awesome.
Some of Richmond's best actresses had been pulled together to create a female cast in a play where usually men rule.
Not surprisingly, there was a full house to see how "Hamlet" played with estrogen.
There was a period of audience adjustment as we got our minds around seeing a black man (Todd Patterson) play Ophelia and a very tall white man (Joe Inscoe) play the role of Queen Gertrude.
Seeing Joe bend down almost a foot to lay his head on the King's shoulder required a certain open mindedness that challenged people, resulting in some tittering at what they were seeing.
But mostly, we were caught up in the drama of one of the best family tragedies ever written and the novelty of women playing men was forgotten.
Needless to say, this was not a sit-down style staged reading.
The actors moved around, interacting, grave digging and even fighting as the script required (scripts replaced rapiers).
Afterwards during the talkback, several people mentioned the uncomfortable laughter about men in women's roles.
It was explained away as something we're not culturally as comfortable with as women playing men.
The irony here, of course, is that in Shakespeare's time, all the roles would have been played by men.
Come on, Elizabethan women were not worthy of being players.
But that was then.
In tonight's version, Hamlet had a ponytail. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were babes.
Maybe it's my unique family history, but I really liked my Shakespeare with breasts.
Because I grew up in an all-girl family with five sisters (okay, obviously there was my Dad; that's where all those sisters came from) I never knew a shortage of females.
The same could be said for Firehouse Theater's staged reading of "A Gender-Reversed Hamlet" tonight.
There were nineteen women in the cast and only three guys.
It was beyond awesome.
Some of Richmond's best actresses had been pulled together to create a female cast in a play where usually men rule.
Not surprisingly, there was a full house to see how "Hamlet" played with estrogen.
There was a period of audience adjustment as we got our minds around seeing a black man (Todd Patterson) play Ophelia and a very tall white man (Joe Inscoe) play the role of Queen Gertrude.
Seeing Joe bend down almost a foot to lay his head on the King's shoulder required a certain open mindedness that challenged people, resulting in some tittering at what they were seeing.
But mostly, we were caught up in the drama of one of the best family tragedies ever written and the novelty of women playing men was forgotten.
Needless to say, this was not a sit-down style staged reading.
The actors moved around, interacting, grave digging and even fighting as the script required (scripts replaced rapiers).
Afterwards during the talkback, several people mentioned the uncomfortable laughter about men in women's roles.
It was explained away as something we're not culturally as comfortable with as women playing men.
The irony here, of course, is that in Shakespeare's time, all the roles would have been played by men.
Come on, Elizabethan women were not worthy of being players.
But that was then.
In tonight's version, Hamlet had a ponytail. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were babes.
Maybe it's my unique family history, but I really liked my Shakespeare with breasts.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Notes on Bear Fornication
Staged readings at the Firehouse Theater, how do I enjoy thee? Let me count the ways.
I get to see a play that's never been produced in Richmond. The admission is a mere five bucks (free if you're a student or subscriber). They take place on Sunday nights when not a lot else is happening. They have a bar serving beer, wine and candy. It's really a no-brainer.
Tonight's offering was Itamar Moses' The Four of Us, a play about what happens when all your dreams come true...for your best friend. And while this hasn't happened to me, the premise was compelling enough to check it out.
It was a two-person comic drama about the friendship between two guys who meet at camp and whose lives stay loosely connected as one achieves his dreams of being a published novelist and the other struggles as an aspiring playwright.
Both Kyle Cornell and Jacob Pennington were strong in their roles as the two guys, each with obviously different personalities and distinct memories of the friendship's history. The "four" of the title seems to belong to the two of them and their egos...or the two of them as adults and young people. Who knows?
The play's scenes were not done in chronological order, an interesting construct that required the viewer to pay attention to what period in the characters' lives we were seeing at any given time. It also meant that sometimes full comprehension came only after seeing a later scene of a previous event.
The dialogue was particularly naturalistic, especially on the subject of their differences ("You have access to all these people, but you're too pop-culturally ignorant to appreciate it!"), which were considerable ("It's one of the things that makes you a seductive friend. You rarely seem to need anything from outside yourself.").
On the subject of sleeping around versus having a girlfriend, at issue was finding that feeling that comes with the new. "Why not have a series of very, very beginnings?"
That line comes during the "bear-f*cking scene," as it is identified in the script, along with the playwright's notes about just how far to push it without overdoing it. It's apparently a delicate balance and of great importance to the playwright.
The only reason I know that factoid is because after these staged readings, there is always a talkback with the director and actors so that the audience can satisfy their curiosity about, well, whatever they're curious about.
It should be noted that no one had to ask what the reverse cowgirl position mentioned in the bear-f*cking scene was.
Perhaps that speaks to the kind of people who attend staged readings. Make that Reason #5 why I enjoy them so much.
I get to see a play that's never been produced in Richmond. The admission is a mere five bucks (free if you're a student or subscriber). They take place on Sunday nights when not a lot else is happening. They have a bar serving beer, wine and candy. It's really a no-brainer.
Tonight's offering was Itamar Moses' The Four of Us, a play about what happens when all your dreams come true...for your best friend. And while this hasn't happened to me, the premise was compelling enough to check it out.
It was a two-person comic drama about the friendship between two guys who meet at camp and whose lives stay loosely connected as one achieves his dreams of being a published novelist and the other struggles as an aspiring playwright.
Both Kyle Cornell and Jacob Pennington were strong in their roles as the two guys, each with obviously different personalities and distinct memories of the friendship's history. The "four" of the title seems to belong to the two of them and their egos...or the two of them as adults and young people. Who knows?
The play's scenes were not done in chronological order, an interesting construct that required the viewer to pay attention to what period in the characters' lives we were seeing at any given time. It also meant that sometimes full comprehension came only after seeing a later scene of a previous event.
The dialogue was particularly naturalistic, especially on the subject of their differences ("You have access to all these people, but you're too pop-culturally ignorant to appreciate it!"), which were considerable ("It's one of the things that makes you a seductive friend. You rarely seem to need anything from outside yourself.").
On the subject of sleeping around versus having a girlfriend, at issue was finding that feeling that comes with the new. "Why not have a series of very, very beginnings?"
That line comes during the "bear-f*cking scene," as it is identified in the script, along with the playwright's notes about just how far to push it without overdoing it. It's apparently a delicate balance and of great importance to the playwright.
The only reason I know that factoid is because after these staged readings, there is always a talkback with the director and actors so that the audience can satisfy their curiosity about, well, whatever they're curious about.
It should be noted that no one had to ask what the reverse cowgirl position mentioned in the bear-f*cking scene was.
Perhaps that speaks to the kind of people who attend staged readings. Make that Reason #5 why I enjoy them so much.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Of WIne and Being Read To
Once upon a time back in the late 90s, I had a boyfriend who liked me to read to him, so he'd pour a glass of wine and we'd lay in bed and night after night, I'd read a book of his choosing. He was slow reader, so that was part of it, but mostly he just enjoyed hearing someone else read to him. I thought of him tonight as I spent an evening drinking wine and being read to.
I met my most hipster-like friend for wine at Ipanema (where else?) and to catch up since we hadn't gotten together since before Christmas. I went with the Beyond Sauvignon Blanc out of Constantia, South Africa, an area I've visited and one which produces superior white wines. My friend presumed I was drinking white wine in hopes of Spring coming soon ( a girl can wish, can't she?). We had a lot of ground to cover, he and I, in terms of what we'd each been up to for the past two months and then I had to run. He accused me of using him to fill an empty interim period, but actually he had canceled on me last week, so I felt no friend guilt and left.
I wanted to catch the Richmond Shakespeare Second Tuesday staged reading. I know it's the fourth Wednesday, but snow had rescheduled things a bit. It's a great deal; they gather actors to do a show using minimal scenery, props and rehearsal and it's for one night only. While I've never been to one of theirs, most staged readings I've attended were essentially seated actors rising when they read their lines. In this case, the action was staged (although they did hold their scripts throughout; it is a reading after all)) with a fair amount of physicality and interaction. And the extremely reasonable cost of admission ($15) entitles you to wine with the reading.
Tonight they were doing The Merchant of Venice, notorious for its perceived anti-Semetism, an attitude which clearly made the audience uncomfortable in places (there were a lot of students there tonight). More striking to me was the glaring and obnoxious superiority of the Christians in the play. But it's Shakespeare, so there was also hidden identities, lovers wanting to be together and wonderfully comic characters. And of course, beautiful language, like, "Choose me and risk everything you've got." But is he referring to marriage being a gamble or just to a drastic turning point in life?
I would have been satisfied with just wine and being read to and ended up with even more. For one thing, they had dessert; the chocolate sponge cake with cherry whipped cream filling was to die for. And while I wasn't stretched out in bed, I didn't have to do the reading either.
I think my former BF was on to something.
I met my most hipster-like friend for wine at Ipanema (where else?) and to catch up since we hadn't gotten together since before Christmas. I went with the Beyond Sauvignon Blanc out of Constantia, South Africa, an area I've visited and one which produces superior white wines. My friend presumed I was drinking white wine in hopes of Spring coming soon ( a girl can wish, can't she?). We had a lot of ground to cover, he and I, in terms of what we'd each been up to for the past two months and then I had to run. He accused me of using him to fill an empty interim period, but actually he had canceled on me last week, so I felt no friend guilt and left.
I wanted to catch the Richmond Shakespeare Second Tuesday staged reading. I know it's the fourth Wednesday, but snow had rescheduled things a bit. It's a great deal; they gather actors to do a show using minimal scenery, props and rehearsal and it's for one night only. While I've never been to one of theirs, most staged readings I've attended were essentially seated actors rising when they read their lines. In this case, the action was staged (although they did hold their scripts throughout; it is a reading after all)) with a fair amount of physicality and interaction. And the extremely reasonable cost of admission ($15) entitles you to wine with the reading.
Tonight they were doing The Merchant of Venice, notorious for its perceived anti-Semetism, an attitude which clearly made the audience uncomfortable in places (there were a lot of students there tonight). More striking to me was the glaring and obnoxious superiority of the Christians in the play. But it's Shakespeare, so there was also hidden identities, lovers wanting to be together and wonderfully comic characters. And of course, beautiful language, like, "Choose me and risk everything you've got." But is he referring to marriage being a gamble or just to a drastic turning point in life?
I would have been satisfied with just wine and being read to and ended up with even more. For one thing, they had dessert; the chocolate sponge cake with cherry whipped cream filling was to die for. And while I wasn't stretched out in bed, I didn't have to do the reading either.
I think my former BF was on to something.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
