This Month's Title Photo

By Byrne Harrison

January has completely gotten away from me, thanks to the day job.  So it seems I'm only now giving credit where credit is due for the wonderful title photo from January.

The photo is by Isaiah Tanenbaum and is from Flux Theatre Enesemble's production Erin Browne's "Menders."

Corey and Aimes are new recruits mending the wall that guards their city from an unnamed threat. But as their teacher Drew tells them subversive tales of the world outside they begin to wonder at the real purpose of the wall, until an unexpected act of passion tears the menders apart. Inspired by Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall”, Menders is a hauntingly lyrical look at what we’re walling out.


The production, presented by Flux Theatre Ensemble, will play a four-week engagement at The Gym at Judson (243 Thompson Street at Washington Square South), January 19-February 11; January 19, 20 & 21 at 8pm, January 22 & 24 at 7pm, January 27 & 28 at 8pm, February 1, 2, 3 & 4 at 8pm, February 5 at 3pm, February 7 at 7pm and February 9, 10 & 11 at 8pm. Tickets($18/$15 students) may be purchased online at www.fluxtheatre.org or by calling 866-811-4111.

Our Holiday Title Photo

Our Christmas-themed title photo comes from A Molly Jolly Christmas featuring Andrea Alton as Molly "Equality" Dykeman.  The photo is by Ron Lasko.

The show's final performance is December 22nd at 7:30 PM

The Laurie Beechman Theatre
407 W. 42nd St (at 9th Avenue) in the West Bank Cafe

Tickets: $18 (plus a $15 food/drink minimum)
For tickets or more information click here.

This Month's Title Photo

This month's title photo comes from Rachel Klein’s The Tragedy of Maria Macabre, a dance piece which will be performed at the Wild Project (195 East 3rd Street between Avenues A and B) October 20-30; Thursday through Saturday at 8pm and Sundays at 5pm.  This striking photo is by Beau Alluli.

Megan O'Conner & Eric Schmalenberger in The Tragedy of Maria Macabre
Photo by Beau Alluli

The Tragedy of Maria Macabre is a theatrical dance piece inspired by 19th century European Circus imagery, silent horror films, and el Dia de los Muertos. The story begins at the end of the life of our twisted heroine, Miss Macabre. Upon dying, Maria Macabre is not granted eternal slumber, but instead a whirling, kaleidoscopic carnival of horrors: a morbid funhouse where humanity is stripped away and a permanent place in the gruesome chorus line is all but assured. Arriving in the land of the dead, Maria Macabre is greeted by the King and the Queen of the Dead, and many other ghoulish Hades-Dwellers including a maniacal Ringmistress, a Beauty Queen burnt to a crisp, a menacing French Clown, and three skeletal Mariachis.

Video trailer: http://vimeo.com/28088659

This Month's Title Photo

This month's title photo comes from the Planet Connections Theatre Festivity production of Yvette Heyliger's White House Wives: Operation Lysistrata!, which has received nine Planet Connections Theatre Awards nominations including Outstanding Play With Music.  The photo is by Yvette Heyliger.

White House Wives: Operation Lysistrata! is an anti-war comedy inspired by Aristophanes' Lysistrata. This "what if..." play is set in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House and stars the wives of the architects of the impending war in Iraq (Laura Bush, Lynne Cheney, Alma Powell, Cherie Blair and friends!). It takes place in 2002 before Congress votes on Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution. White House: Operation Lysistrata! captures Aristophanes' strong anti-war message laced in the bawdy sexual humor so enjoyed by ancient, as well as present day audiences.

This Month's Title Photo

This month's title photo by Cat Crow comes from Two Days 'til Dawn, by Tyler Ham Pong, currently part of the Planet Connections Theater Festivity.

Two Days ‘til Dawn follows a troubled writer, who risks his grasp on reality in search of inspiration. Disconnecting from his family, and with potentially more at stake, he seeks salvation through the advice given by ghosts of three literary figures.

Left to right: Anthony Ames and Geoffrey Pomeroy.

This Month's Title Photo

This month's title photo is by Brittany Duck and comes from the Red Fern Theatre Company's production of Donna Fiumano-Farley's A Shot Away: Personal Accounts of Military Sexual Trauma.

The docudrama play deals with survivors of US Military's sexual trauma. A Shot Away is based entirely on interviews with American soldiers who have been sexually assaulted by their "fellow" soldiers. In their own words, the soldiers explore this ongoing epidemic in our military and examine what can be done to address and prevent instances of sexual assault and rape in the military, and that it is not only the rapes and assaults, but it is also the handling by the military, as they are the judge and jury.

Panayiota Bertzikis, a Coast Guard veteran, is one of the veterans interviewed for A Shot Away. "The problem of rape in the military is not only service members getting raped, but it's the entire way that the military as a whole is dealing with it," says Bertzikis. "From survivors having to be involuntarily discharged from service, the constant verbal abuse, once a survivor does come forward your entire unit is known to turn their back on you. The entire culture needs to be changed."

The production opens at the LABA Theater on 14th Street March 31st.

Red Fern Theatre Company presents
Donna Fiumano-Farley's
A SHOT AWAY: Personal Accounts of Military Sexual Trauma
directed by Melanie Moyer Williams

Featuring
Laura Anderson*, Dana Berger, Grant Chang*, Elizabeth Flax*, Jessica Myhr*, Jeff Pierce*, Tara Ricasa*, Jackie Sanders*, Rafe Terrizzi, and Ian Way

*Actors appear courtesy of Actors Equity Association. Equity Approved Showcase.

LABA Theatre at the 14th Street Y
344 East 14th Street between First and Second Avenues, NYC

March 31 – April 17, 2011
Thursdays at 8 p.m. , Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 8 p.m. , Sundays at 3 p.m.; Additional performance on Monday, April 11 at 7pm.

Tickets $25
http://www.redferntheatre.org/ or 866.811.4111

Tina Priest is dead. Is it suicide? Or, is it because, just weeks before, this American soldier reported she had been raped on her Army base in Iraq. Her mother and twin sister are left with many doubts and unanswered questions.

Priest is not alone; six other soldiers recount their experiences as survivors of military sexual trauma. In their own words, the soldiers explore this ongoing epidemic in our military and examine what can be done to address and prevent instances of sexual assault and rape in the military.

This Month's Title Photo

This month's title photo comes from Little Lord’s Jewqueen playing at UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place between 1st Ave and Ave A), March 17-April 2, Thursday through Saturday at 8pm.

The photo is by Cecilia De Bucourt and features Julia Arazi, Laura von Holt, Das Elkin, Michael Levinton, Diana Konopka, Rodney Pallanck, and Sarah Bishop-Stone.

Little Lord’s rough and ready collective of shiksas, queers, and misinformed Jews stage a slap-dash celebration of the biblical Book of Esther. Combining the sincere but awkward rawness of faith-based community happenings with Little Lord’s signature “cheap ’n cheerful” style, JEWQUEEN is a holiday party for the haters.

LITTLE LORD (a theater company) manipulates classic texts, pillages faulty nostalgias, and celebrates the homemade as a means to create vibrantly bawdy, offbeat, intelligent, queer, funny (and often musical) theater. Past works include: a new adaptation of the musical-extravaganza-turned-recession-spectacular, BABES IN TOYLAND, starring David Greenspan as The Master Toymaker (OHIO Theatre's Ice Factory Festival 2009); the NYC premiere of Tennessee Williams’s kinky short play THE PRONOUN 'I' (Bushwick Starr 2010); (oh my god I am so) THIRST(y) - an offshoot of Eugene O'Neill's early melodrama on race and madness (Incubator Arts Project 2010 and The Chocolate Factory/Target Margin Theater 2009); BALABUSTAS (!), a queer yiddishkeit version of Aristophanes' raucous comedies (HERE Arts Center 2007); and THE BARBIE-STEIA: Curse of the House of Malibu, an absurdist take on Aeschylus' classic trilogy “The Oresteia” starring a chorus of Barbie dolls (OHIO Theatre 2007).

This Month's Title Photo

This month's title photo features a scene from Theaterlab's Three Sisters Come and Go, a tragicomedy drawing on the texts of Anton Chekhov, Samuel Beckett & Julia Kristeva. The photo is by Enrico Luttman. Three Sisters Come and Go was performed in September and October of 2010, and featured Liza Cassidy, Claire Helene, and Jackie Lowe.

For more information about Theaterlab and their current season, please visit their website.



THREE SISTERS COME AND GO follows the lives of the three archetypal women of Chekhov's plays read through the lens of Beckett's comic take on the existential dilemma, and Julia Kristeva's insight regarding the transformation of despair and loss into joy and acceptance. Bound to living together, each of the sisters is comically obsessed with being the most unhappy of the group.

“The sisters play the game of theater finding a future in the present of the stage,” explains director Orietta Crispino. “After all, there is life beyond despair.”

THREE SISTERS COME AND GO opens with Samuel Beckett’s dramaticule Come and Go, which serves as the model for a geometry of the unspoken, the unsettling reality of consisting beyond the veil of representation. Three women sitting in perfect stillness together repeat a cycle of the action, the revelation of a secret never heard by the audience. The remainder of the piece features recombined text from
Chekhov’s major plays.

The piece was devised through a collective process among director Orietta Crispino (who conceived the piece), Italian dramaturg Marco Casazza, and the three actresses: Liza Cassidy (Patricia Wilson’s Zia Dance Company), Claire Helene, and Jackie Lowe (Broadway: THE TAP DANCE KID, AIN’T MISBEHAVIN, EUBIE, THE FIRST, and WIND IN THE WILLOWS). The group scoured Chekhov’s work act by act, collecting lines mostly from the female characters. Through a cut and paste technique, each actress reordered the material creating one monologue and one dialogue scene (using only Chekhov’s words). Then, Crispino and Casazza shaped and developed the piece.

This Month's Title Photo

This month's title photo is by Onno de Jong and is from an innovative "larger than life" family-friendly production, A Wonderfully Flat Thing, based on Mark Twain's short story, "A Fable," a magical journey of self-discovery told with puppets, dance, and music.

"The play's message is incredibly fun and relevant today on many levels,"”says artistic director Manju Shandler, who previously created masks and puppetry for The Lion King on Broadway. “"For kids, it is an entertaining riddle, a romp on stage with surprising puppets - an ostrich, a snake, a donkey, a house cat and an elephant prince! For adults, it's a piece about self reflection and how we interpret technology. The focus of the play is encompassed by Twain's moral: ‘You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you stand between it and the mirror of your imagination."



A Wonderfully Flat Thing

Join Mark Twain and his animal friends on a fun journey of self-discovery and magic. With puppets, dance, music, and interactive video projections, kids ages 3 & up will be delighted by this visual feast. Based on Mark Twain’s short story, A Fable, our talented cast discovers a mysterious “flat thing,” a mirror, and each sees something different. Is it magic? Only Mark Twain has the answer! A Wonderfully Flat Thing is an innovative children’s theater production your kids will love!

A Wonderfully Flat Thing is one of the first productions to be mounted in The 14th Street Y’s newly renovated LABA Theatre. It is the result of a collaboration between artist fellows from the 14th Street Y’s LABA: The National Laboratory for New Jewish Culture.

A Wonderfully Flat Thing
Based on A Fable by Mark Twain
Created by Manju Shandler & Basmat Hazan
Directed by David Winitsky*
Choreography by Jesse Zaritt
Script Adapted for the Stage by Valerie Work, Manju Shandler, & Basmat Hazan
Multimedia & Lighting Design by David Tirosh
Original Music by Tamar Muskal
Puppet & Set Design by Manju Shandler
With additional lyrics by Stephen Hazan Arnoff

Artistic Director: Manju Shandler
Producing Director: Becky Skoff
Music arrangement and production by Milica Paranosic

Cast:
Mark Twain/Donkey: Jake Goodman
Cat: Emily Hartford
Elephant: Shawn Shafner
Snake: Sarah Painter
Ostrich: Sarae Garcia

A WONDERFULLY FLAT THING plays the following schedule:

Saturday, 12/18 11:30AM (Preview)
Sunday, 12/19 11:30AM & 2:30PM (Preview)
Saturday, 1/8 11:30AM, 2:30PM & 5:00PM
Sunday, 1/9 2:30PM & 5:00PM
Saturday, 1/15 11:30AM, 2:30PM & 5:00PM
Sunday, 1/16 11:30AM & 2:30PM

This Month's Title Photo

By Byrne Harrison

This month's title photo is by Rhys Harper and comes from the APAC (Astoria Performing Arts Center) production of Joshua Conkel's MilkMilkLemonade, playing at the Good Shepherd United Methodist Church, 30-44 Crescent St (@30th Rd) in Astoria.


Emory is an effeminate 11-year-old boy who lives on a farm with his chain smoking Nanna and his only friend, a depressed chicken about to be processed. Nanna wishes Emory would get his head out of the clouds, stop choreographing ribbon stick dance numbers, and be more like Elliot, the boy down the road with a penchant for burning things. But Emory and Elliot have a relationship — just not one Nanna would expect or approve of. With absurd, poignant dialog and brutal characterizations, MilkMilkLemonade is a bitterly funny exploration of gender, sexuality, life, death, and the human body.

For more information on MilkMilkLemonade visit APAC's website. For more about Rhys Harper, click here.

This Month's Title Photo

By Byrne Harrison

This month's title photo comes from Legs and All, currently at The Kraine Theatre, and features Summer Shapiro and Peter Musante.



After winning the Festival Favorite Award at the 2010 FRIGID New York Festival, an award-winning, sold-out run at the 2009 San Francisco Fringe Festival, and their most recent run as part of the New York Clown Theatre Festival at The Brick in Williamsburg, LEGS AND ALL returns to Horse Trade Theater Group for a limited engagement, October 2-16 at The Kraine Theater.

A man in an attic meets a woman in a box. As they lure one another into their worlds, their curiosity unfolds to expose a hilarious, mind-bending, innovative allegory for the classic man-meets-woman story. Rooted in physical comedy and drenched in imaginative stage illusion, LEGS AND ALL is an inventive exploration of human loneliness set to an evocative tango-meets-bluegrass score.

LEGS AND ALL will play a special limited engagement on Saturday, October 2 at 2pm, Sunday, October 10 at 2pm, Thursday, October 14 at 8pm, Friday, October 15 at 8pm, and Saturday, October 16 at 3pm & 8pm at The Kraine Theater (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave and Bowery). Tickets ($20 / $15 for Students & Seniors) may be purchased online at www.horseTRADE.info or by calling Smarttix at 212-868-4444.

This Month's Title Photo

By Byrne Harrison

Since I've never been able to decide on an official look for StageBuzz.com, I've decided to start using production photos in the title block. The current photo, which will be up through September, comes courtesy of the New York Neo-Futurists and is from Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, their twice-weekly showcase of short plays at the Kraine Theater.



The photo is by J.M. Pixley.

To find out more about the New York Neo-Futurists, please visit their website, then head downtown and see a show.

To submit a photo for consideration, please contact me.