Headlines ...

So, the blog is back—resurrected after an all-too-long hiatus, and for that I apologize. At the beginning of September, I celebrated my birthday in Disney World and then started classes at Columbia the day after I got back. It was a tough transition, for sure—traipsing around the Magic Kingdom with a tiara in hand, to sitting in my History of Journalism course at 9 AM. Oy.

Since then I’ve just been trying to get my bearing. Here are a few headlines about shows I’ve seen, or ones I’m interested in seeing as soon as I get a free moment.

Nemo vs. Mermaid

What vacation wouldn’t be complete without a musical or two? I still need to get my fill of shows, relaxing or not. So, while in Disney, we saw Finding Nemo: The Musical at the Animal Kingdom. All I’ve got to say is that whoever designed the Nemo set did a much better job at creating a visually appealing underwater paradise than the Broadway crew that brought you the iridescently fabulous scenic design in The Little Mermaid. That plastic playground of a set looked as though the local Michael’s might have made a killing off its sale of glitter to the Mermaid creative team. The interesting thing to consider here, though, is that both shows are represented by the mouse. Curious indeed.

Let Me Down Easy

Time to plug a health-related play! No really, I’m quite excited to see Anna Deavere Smith’s one-woman show about our healthcare system. Here’s an interactive website launched by Second Stage Theatre on behalf of Let Me Down Easy. Happy posting!

Opening Night: A Boy and His Soul

A Boy and His Soul opened Thursday night at the Vineyard Theatre. Earlier this week I had the privilege of speaking with Colman Domingo, the writer and performer of this one-man show. His experience of growing up on soul music in Philadelphia inspired Domingo to pen A Boy and His Soul. And as he was grappling with his parents’ ailing health and the burden of selling his childhood home, writing was a way to cope. The show now features music from Aretha, Marvin, and Earth Wind and Fire, as an energetic Domingo plays 11 different characters. I won’t say anymore, but you can read my full story next month in the Philadelphia Inquirer. (It’s my first byline in a major daily!)

Talk-Backs during Oleanna Previews

I got a press release the other day about a “Take A Side: The Oleanna Talk-Back Series,” which will occur after each preview of the Mamet revival. (Previews begin Sept. 29 and run through Oct. 10.) Oleanna concerns the power struggle between a college student and her professor, and will star Julia Stiles and Bill Pullman. I’m not quite sure why I’m excited to see this show … maybe it’s my proximity to the college experience. Or perhaps it’s because I saw two Mamet plays last season (Speed the Plow and American Buffalo), liked one but loathed the other, and now I’m curious to see where I’ll land here. Regardless, the panel for the talk back series will include notable public figures in entertainment, media, law, education and politics. Here’s a list of a few that have been confirmed:
- David Dinkins, former New York City mayor
- Dennis Walcott, NYC Deputy Mayor of Education and Community Development
- Lis Wiehl, FOX news Channel legal analyst
- Mary Schmidt Campbell, Dean of the Tisch School of the Arts
- Kathleen M. McKenna, Legal Partner of Proskauer Rose LLP

Either Judith Kaye, JD (Juris Doctor from Harvard and President of Judith Kaye Training & Consulting) or Cynthia Tornquist (President of Tornquist Productions LLC and former CNN correspondent) will moderate the series.

My guess is that you’ll be able to go on the website and see who’ll be on the panel each night. There’s no news there yet, though.

Bye Bye Birdie: Stamos and Middle School

This one’s just for fun, but I may be going to see Bye Bye Birdie tomorrow because my Mom wants to see John Stamos live, onstage. If my family ends up going, I will be sure to let you know what’s what. The show opens on Oct. 15, so in good taste, I’ll hold my full review until then. In middle school we did Birdie, and I played various ensemble roles: a screaming teen, a Happy Face girl, etc. I remember everyone having a crush on the boy (at the time he was 13!) who played Albert, and as a braces clad 11-year-old I proudly sang “Kids” in a Limited Too bathrobe. Oh, the awkward years …

PHOTO: Colman Domingo in A Boy and His Soul / courtesy of Carol Rosegg

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One last thing I’d like to say. A friend of mine from high school, easily the smartest guy I’ve ever known, passed away last weekend after falling from a third floor fire escape in Boston. It’s a phenomenal loss for both those that knew him and the medical community. Babur Khalique was in his third year of the MD/PhD program at Boston University; and I swear to you, this boy had more glial cells than the average bear. (Einstein's brain was rumored to have had more glial cells—or cells which support neurons and aid in communication and integration—than a normal brain.)

Everyday I remember the good times that we shared, how he was always there to listen and laugh. He always wanted me to read Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, but I never found the time. It was only after I had heard the news of his death that I finally got my hands on a copy.

So Babur, wherever you are, I hope you know that I’m reading your favorite play … and that I miss you.

Goodman Getting Back in the Game After Rooms Closes Prematurely

Yesterday afternoon I caught up with a friend of mine, composer and writer Paul Scott Goodman. We met to share stories about our time at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, but we got on few tangents.

I first met Goodman following my internship with New York Musical Theatre Festival when I did a story about his show Alive in the World. Alive in the World is a post 9/11 look at the city, and the show played as a benefit concert for a few nights at the Zipper Factory. (The sad news here is that the Zipper closed earlier this year. The house was made up of scrapped car seats, and you could literally buckle yourself in if you so desired. Such a unique venue now shuttered - it's a shame, really.)

This past spring I did another piece on Rooms, Goodman’s two-person musical that played at New World Stages. Its run ended in May, and a cynical (“yet hopeful”) Goodman feels that producers may have pulled the plug prematurely. The coming-of-age romance about two kids from Scotland, he says, needed the summer to really build an audience. Hey, if Toxic Avenger managed to cultivate its following in these lazy, hazy days, why not Rooms? I am quick to remind him, though, that one of Bon Jovi’s founding members is attached to the former. (Smells like another Spidey scheme to me.)

What’s more, Goodman’s still sore about the New York Times giving him the runaround. The paper sent a third string critic to the press preview, and then the review came out three days after the show’s opening and was stuck on P.6. Meanwhile, Rooms had garnered great press during its out of town tryout in Washington D.C. and was nominated for five Helen Hayes Awards. Goodman believes that the New York incarnation really could have benefited from an Isherwood byline.

I play devil’s advocate by arguing that the power of a Times critic just isn’t what it used to be. And he later agrees, saying that there’s just too many “wankers” writing anything they want all over their self-indulgent blogs. (Dum, da, dum, dum …)

So, Goodman’s got good reason to be grouchy because his first Off-Broadway venture didn’t recoup its initial investment. But he’s incredulous that a royalty’s paycheck from a 60-second TV slot was more in his pocket than the chunk of change he made off Rooms. (This is yet another staggering example that no one goes into this business to make money.) Royal Pains used his song “Waiting”—the only recorded track from Alive in the World—and just like that, Goodman’s music was on the small screen.

But Goodman prefers live audiences, and he was pleased to have a following up at the O’Neill. His Easterhouse was a part of the National Cabaret and Performance Conference last month. And earlier in June, Goodman had been an artist in residence. While he doesn’t seem to think the place is as magical as I do, he agrees that it’s a summer camp for theater professionals and appreciates the tranquility the O’Neill has to offer. After living in the city for the past 25 years, a sandy beach and a patch of grass look mighty fine every now and again.

I walk with Goodman on his way to the synagogue as he discusses his daughter starting the University of Michigan and plans for a restaging of his show, Bright Lights, Big City. He tells me if he were a wealthy man, he would start a foundation that would pay certain individuals not to go into musical theater.

Smiling impishly, he says that it’s the only award people wouldn’t be itching to receive.

We're All in This Together ... Newsroom, or Not.

Gawker features a little blurb that brings more bad news for young print journalists. A survey issued by the Associated Press Managing Editors said that layoffs and buyouts in the newspaper industry were particularly common for the 18-35 age group. That’s me! (*Sad face.*)

It doesn’t help that J-School keeps sending me reminders to read this article in the Village Voice. Even if you elect not to peruse its content, the headline says it all: “You Just Graduated From Journalism School. What Were You Thinking?” And that’s supposed to assure me that I made the smart choice in choosing Columbia?

We all know that the industry is transitioning, but what to exactly? No one knows. Living in the murky unknown, we seem almost immobilized by the possibility of change. What’s more, no one has come up with a viable business model for online media. (Hint: Advertising is not the answer.)

I can’t speak on behalf of other journalists, but for me, one of the most frightening things about the switch to digital media is the dissolution of the newsroom. As far as theater criticism is concerned, long gone are the days you see critics running down aisles during curtain call, hopping into a cab to rush back to the office, and pumping out copy in under two hours. (For a wonderful account, however, read the opening of Frank Rich’s “Exit the Critic.”) Now, we have the luxury of time, but also that of space. We can sleep on our thoughts about a show and then point and click our review to print. In many cases, we serve as our own copy editors.

Most of my reviews for Columbia Spectator were written somewhere between the hours of 1 and 4 AM as I was lounging on throw pillows and gulping down vitamin water. The following morning, I would make some quick edits before attaching the document in an e-mail and sending it off to our alias.

It’s no secret then that working from home takes an incredible amount of self discipline and there’s no shortage of distractions. (Before I sat down to write this post, I took a spin around town and caught up on an episode of Mad Men. Two hours of solid procrastination right there.) But with a deadline we eventually move past the fear of starting on an assignment. What we actually lose when working remotely is that essential element of human interaction.

We’re a social species, so I do believe that we’re doing ourselves a disservice by getting our daily fill of conversation on gchat instead of at the water cooler. But the internet is all-encompassing, allowing us to ignore those tips from time management disciplinarians. And let’s be real here, who actually sets aside specific slots in their day to respond to e-mails?

But new research shows that perhaps we should be more wary. A recent study found that the average worker’s IQ dropped by 10 points if she was constantly plugged into her laptop and other electronic devices that go beep in the night. I was also particularly fascinated by one scientist’s comment about how the brain responds to digital stimuli. John Ratey, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard, says that the brain elicits “a dopamine squirt” every time we use a device like our BlackBerry or iPhone. (Dopamine is a neurotransmitter similar to adrenaline that facilitates cognition, attention, and learning among other things.) If this dopamine release phenomenon is true, then at some level we have a neurological addiction to these gadgets—an acquired ADD, Ratey claims.

While this scientific evidence explores what’s happening in our brains when we use these devices, it doesn’t make any specific conjectures about how our office environments affect our frequency of use. But to a certain degree, by working at home, all we’ve got are these mediums through which to communicate. We miss out on that requisite office socializing, and direct face-to-face contact is eliminated. Plus, feng shui tells me it’s bad when your desk becomes your bed.

One day I do hope to get paid to work in the company of other journalists. Newsroom, or not. Call me a cockeyed optimist, but maybe what this industry really needs is a dose of camaraderie. We may not know what direction we’re heading, but we’re all in the same boat. I’d just like to know who I’m with.

On FringeNYC - installment 3

A review of The Event, but first a story ...

Two summers ago I interned at New York Musical Theatre Festival. My job description was nebulous, and sometimes I got the chance to work for our executive director and founder, Kris Stewart. But because interns are at the low end of the totem pole, here and there, he’d ask me to execute small, seemingly innocuous tasks—run down to Subway to pick up his lunch and a diet coke, or walk his blind, seriously-separation-anxiety-prone pooch. If I looked in the least bit not-thrilled by any of this, he’d wink at me and say, “You’re a legend, Laura Hedli, and don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.” Might I add that he has an Australian accent.

And thus began my fascination with festival directors and how they work their magic to get people to do things they might otherwise never willingly submit to. But more than that, they have a knack for making people believe in the power of live theater.

I am reminded of my experiences at New York Musical Theatre Festival when I sit down at The Event, notebook in hand, on Wednesday night. So, you’ll have to excuse me if I find all the gloom and doom curious given its playwright.

Founding artistic director of the Fringe, John Clancy, wrote the 63 minute script, and with his words he works a different sort of magic. In the witching hour where the house is dark save for a plainly lit stage and a single man in a standard suit, he casts a spell of disenchantment. A play is nothing more than a string of rehearsed lines, the faint glow of the footlights can be achieved with the press of a button, and the entire experience is expendable to us and to its creators when the curtain falls.

But that doesn’t mean it’s any less engaging. In being so intricately connected to his craft—having played both administrative and creative roles—Clancy recognizes the strengths and limitations of this art form and draws analogies to real life. The Event tells us that we’re living a “high stakes game of charades” where we’re “good actors in a very bad play.” If our ancestors are retired actors watching our performance, they’re neither amused nor applauding.

The Event’s backstage account is by no means glowing with glitter and showgirls. Instead, a single actor, Matt Oberg—who is responsible for plowing through the challenging just-over-an-hour monologue—says that we’re sitting here due to “chance and advertising.” He invites anyone who wants to leave to do so. And for anyone who feels compelled to use this time to sleep, he sings a rendition of “Rock-a-bye-Baby.”

The words that follow achieve a sort of lulling effect, and I only start to squirm in my seat when Oberg pretends to forget his lines. It’s part of the play, of course, but still produces the effect of watching a nerdy boy wring his clammy hands, feet pacing back and forth as he tries to get through public speaking class unnoticed and unscathed. The only other moment when I emerge from my hunched position are to watch the man in front of me who is actually sleeping, head back, mouth gaping open ready to catch those flies. He’s sitting in the second row. Bold move. He doesn’t snore, but does that head bobbing thing on the words “exhausting” and “connection.” Innnnteresting.

Though, near minute 35, The Event does seem to lose some of its spark. Clancy ditches the sarcasm and theater-insider speak, and instead resorts to telling us what we know. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still impeccably well written. But as the sweat drips from Oberg’s face as he discusses the nature of a cliché or how we have a need for speed, he seems to be wasting his breath on stating the obvious.

The Event works best when it’s self-referential. Clancy lives theater, and when he writes about what he knows the results range from incisive humor to heartbreaking realities. He gives us a backstage look, but seems to suggest that there really isn’t very much there to see. It’s like one giant wink to the audience that says theater is transient, and don’t you ever forget it.

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The Event plays tonight at 11 PM at the Players Theatre. The final performance will be on Fri 28 @ 6 PM. The Players Theatre is located at 115 MacDougal St.

The Event is written and directed by John Clancy and stars Matt Oberg. Tickets are $15. Please visit http://www.clancyproductions.com/ for more information.

On FringeNYC - installment 2

As a neuroscientist, a journalist, as someone who refuses to keep a daily planner but still remembers what you wore the last time we got together, losing my memory would seem a fate worse than death.

But writer of The Crow Mill, Andrew Unterberg was struck by how his grandmother grappled with dementia. Watching Alzheimer’s disease strip her of recent memories (like what she had for breakfast) and then transport her to a time long gone (a cruise she’d taken in the 1950s), “I began to think about, well, what could be worse,” he says. And so, from this thought exercise an idea was born.

For Unterberg, this is his second time around at FringeNYC. In 2006 he co-wrote the festival’s Overall Excellence Award Winner The Infliction of Cruelty with Sean McManus, but “I couldn’t imagine having written this one with someone else,” he says.

Here, Unterberg examines opposites: forgetting and remembering, nature versus nurture. Like his grandmother, the character of Mia is someone who suffers from Alzheimer’s, while her son Nathan, a brilliant geneticist, is desperately trying to remember what happened during his childhood. Abuse and subsequent repression has left the first twelve years of his life a question mark.

“There is an element of racing against time,” says Unterberg. Add to the mix, Anna—Nathan’s wife and psychologist who tries to play therapist to her guarded husband—and the conflict seems almost inherent.

“It was definitely challenging to take these characters who are coming from such different places; but at the same time, it was really exciting because there’s so much great tension that comes about by these personality clashes,” says Unterberg. “It also provides an avenue in which you have these different perspectives all converging together and all trying to find a common ground. And that’s so much of life.”

Growing up in a family who specializes in treating phobias and vanity, depression and anxiety, in The Crow Mill Unterberg doesn’t shy away from probing sensitive issues. During one scene, Nathan and Anna fight over the limits of genetically engineering children. Sure, we all want them to be disease free, but if you could, would you elect for yours to have brown hair, blue eyes and a penchant for soccer? Just how much is too much?

“The goal is that we keep this play going so that these questions will continue to be asked,” says Unterberg. “For me, that’s what’s most important with the work.”

With his days occupied clocking in long hours as a lawyer for a Manhattan financial firm, Unterberg spent his nights and weekends reading genetics papers, consulting with his father (a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst), and getting his hands on as many plays as he could. The result eighteen months later is a script peppered with a discussion of the Watson-Crick model, but also one that includes poetry by cummings and Longfellow.

“I surprised myself at times in terms of where I was letting the work take me, which is something I had not expected when I first started writing the pages,” he says.

Without another voice to keep his tangents in check, though, Unterberg acknowledges that he had to do a lot of trimming and rewriting. But all and all, he says that the experience has been easier than his last. His wife found him his director, Eli Gonda, and Unterberg brought on casting director Cindi Rush to streamline auditions. He’s happy with his show times and his location, the new Cherry Pit theater.

“It’s air conditioned,” he remarks, “which is huge in the summer.”

Certainly, it also doesn’t hurt that all 90 seats will be filled this evening, as the opening night performance of The Crow Mill is sold out.

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The Crow Mill opens tonight at the Cherry Pit at 9:30 PM. Subsequent performance times are as follows: Fri 21 @ 4:15 PM, Tue 25 @ 2:30 PM, Wed 26 @ 12:45 PM; Sat 29 @ 7:45 PM. The Cherry Pit is located at 155 Bank St (btw West and Washington Streets).

The Crow Mill is directed by Eli Gonda and stars Geraldine Librandi (Mia), Quentin Mare (Nathan), and Margot White (Anna). Tickets are $15. Please visit http://www.thecrowmill.com/ for more information.

On FringeNYC - installment 1

The last time I attended a media junket, they sat me next to the New York Times. (Gulp.) So, this time, I show up in business casual with my laptop and ipod recorder ready to go.

The blogger sitting next to me is wearing a worn T-shirt and shorts. He doesn’t even have a pen handy.

Welcome to the press conference for the New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC). It’s my first Fringe, and it becomes quite clear to me that things are much more “chill” down here. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re any less legit.

Featuring 201 shows from Aug. 14 to 30, FringeNYC is the largest theater festival in North America. And despite a sparse attendance at the press conference, Producing Artistic Director, Elena K. Holy assures that advance sales are up 48 percent.

Holy serves as the cruise director for this preview of the “New York’s Best Staycation”—as the Fringe is marketing itself these days. With each ticket at the chump-change price of $15, the Fringe is trying to attract New Yorkers who may not have the dough to escape to the Hamptons, or even Hershey, in this recession summer.

The sampling of performances shown to us insiders at the Minetta Lane Theatre ranges from campy (Devil Boys From Beyond) to tongue-in-cheek (The Event – my personal favorite). We witness Japanese sword fighting set to drums and flutes (Scattered Lives), and see variations on Looney Tune characters brought to life by puppeteers (Powerhouse).

With so much to see and so little time (16 days), FringeNYC offers package deals, the most intriguing of which is the Lunatic Pass. For $500, you get the golden ticket to everything Fringe. (Of course, there’s still that $500 out of your pocket, so perhaps Wonka references make for a faulty analogy here.) I ask Holy just how many of these Lunatic Passes they sell each season, and she says around 12 or 15.

“A number of people may see one or two shows a year, and then they may see 20 in 16 days” says Holy. The price is right, she explains, and the Fringe selects work that draws in the younger crowds.

In fact, I was amazed at a statistic on their website that says that 60 percent of audience members in 2007 were 18-35 years of age. Given that no one seems under 70 in most Sunday matinees at Broadway and prominent off-Broadway houses, this number is astounding. Holy takes it even one step further:

“We can’t afford to do super fancy research, but anecdotal evidence shows that not only have a lot of them [18-35-year-old Fringe-goers] never been to an off-off-Broadway show, but a lot of them have never seen live theater.”

This is hard to believe at the press conference, where I am surrounded by folks that may or may not have ties to one show or another; perhaps they’re friends of a certain actor or actress. It’s unclear. One woman sitting two rows in front of me is armed with a digital camcorder and pans to me as I watch the performances.

I hope she caught my good side.
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Coming up in FringeNYC coverage:

- Comments from the people behind Scattered Lives, Far Out, and Powerhouse.
- An interview with Andrew Unterberg, writer of The Crow Mill.

For now, check this out. From Graveyard Shift. Anyone who’s ever had to give up their lunch break to watch office safety videos ought to appreciate.

Sanctuary ... Magical Thinking at St. John the Divine

A close friend of mine, who recently relocated (at least for the time being) to Switzerland, just sent me a message. Among other things, she wanted to remind me to get my ticket for the one-night benefit performance of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. She tells me it’s her favorite show, having nagged me to get tickets to this particular staging at St. John the Divine for the past six months.

The play, Didion’s first, is based on her memoir by the same title, which was written as an account of her grief and mourning. Didion lost her husband in 2003, and later (after the memoir was completed) her daughter in 2005. Having starred in the Broadway production (2007) and the London incarnation (2008), the famous Vanessa Redgrave will reprise her role in this one-woman play. But after the tragic death of her own daughter Natasha Richardson, I imagine that this performance will be different from the others. In fact, Lisa Schubert, Vice President of Cathedral Events, Marketing & Communications goes as far as to say that it will be a “historic evening.”

Because I happen to have moved just blocks away from the largest cathedral in the world, I decided to do some investigating this afternoon. (Did I mention that I’m starting Journalism School exactly one month from today?) So, after speaking to three staffers at the cathedral, the game of telephone eventually ended with Schubert.

I start by asking her why an Episcopalian church would chose to do this show, and she tells me that it was Redgrave in fact that chose the cathedral. Last fall she approached reps with her idea to do a staging of The Year of Magical Thinking. As for Didion, I learn that her husband and daughter are both buried in the columbarium at St. John. Everything seems compounded.

“The cathedral has always been a major place to talk about the big issues of our time,” says Schubert, citing poverty, civil rights, and environmental issues among others. “It’s tried to provide a voice for those critical humanitarian concerns.” As Redgrave is a Goodwill Ambassador of UNICEF, a portion of the proceeds from the performance will go to providing aid to the children in Gaza and Southern Israel.

With all these major players involved—UNICEF, Redgrave, and Didion—you’d think you could easily google (or bing) your way to this information. And you can, though, coverage is sparse and Schubert says there’s been no formal press release. For the time being, they’re relying heavily on word of mouth.

Conceding that they’re a little old-fashioned at the cathedral, Schubert says she does hope to continue seeing St. John in the blogs. Lucky for her, I plan to be there on Oct. 4 to report at the Feast of St. Francis, otherwise known as the blessing of the animals. After all, when else can you see turtles, llamas, and puppies together again on the Upper West Side?

For now, though, I’ve got my copy of Didion’s “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” sitting just two inches away, my ticket reserved on will call.

Thanks for nagging me, Andrea. ;)
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(The Year of Magical Thinking will be directed by David Hare. The performance is a one-night only benefit scheduled to take place on Monday, Oct. 26. You can purchase tickets online via the link on the church’s website.)