THE BARN SERIES AT LABYRINTH THEATER COMPANY

It's time again for a series of free readings written, acted, and directed by some of New York (and the world's) best.

The LAByrinth Theater Company presents The Barn Series. Here's a list of the plays with their descriptions and reading dates.

The plays are FREE, but THEY SELL OUT! Well, they don't "sell" but you know what I mean. So, come early, or sign up as a LAByrinth LABpass member.

Tickets for all readings in the Barn Series are FREE to the public. No reservations necessary. Free tickets will be distributed an hour before curtain on a first come, first served basis.

LABpass Members can make advance reservations as a benefit of their membership. If you are a LABpass member, please call 212.513.1080 to make your reservation. For information on becoming a member:

http://www.labtheater.org/tickets/labpass.html


THE BARN SERIES
AT THE CHERRY PIT
CHANNEL
by John Jiler
Directed by Brian Roff*
Nov 29 & Dec 9 at 8pm

The illness of a child hurls together a rough-hewn white actor
and an elegant black doctor….with violent, awakening results.

Featuring Charles Goforth*, Ron Cephas Jones*


MARCY COMES HOME
by Adam Bock
Directed by Trip Cullman
Nov 30 at 8pm

When you drive out of town, but then come back on the
Greyhound bus - well, that can be hard.

Featuring Vanessa Aspillaga*, Quincy Tyler Bernstine*, Zack Booth,
Ari Graynor, Jason Butler Harner, Linda Larkin, Maulik Pancholy


IF YOU LOVE ME
by Lyle Kessler
Directed by Lola Glaudini*
Dec 1 & 2 at 8pm

Extremism in the name of love.

Featuring Sam Rockwell*, Elizabeth Rodriguez*, Yul Vazquez*


YOU ARE HERE
by Melissa Ross*
Directed by Mimi O’Donnell*
Dec 3 & 10 at 8pm

In You Are Here, six New Yorkers befriend and brutalize each other in a desperate attempt to control their out of control lives. As they stumble through the dive bars, cramped apartments and cut-throat boardrooms of a ruthless city, they wrestle with the reality of rapidly approaching middle age while still struggling to hold on to their disappearing youth.

Featuring Alexander Alioto, Max Casella, Michael Chernus, Sarah Nina Hayon*, Jennifer Mudge, Amanda Perez


THE BENDS
by Megan Mostyn-Brown*
Directed by Josh Hecht
Dec 4 & 5 at 8pm

When an alcohol fueled reunion between former college friends treads dangerous territory, everyone is forced to ask can we ever out run who we were? or is the past always there to haunt us?

Featuring Jeff Biehl, Caitlin Fitzgerald, Michael Gladis, Sarah Nina Hayon*, Greg Keller, Alexa Scott-Flaherty*


OH, THE POWER
by David Bar Katz*
Directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman*
Dec 7 & 8 at 8pm

Ten years after they were forced to disband, a group of superheroes gather for cocktails in a finished basement in the suburbs to try to unravel the mysteries of their final mission.

Featuring Tina Benko, Saidah Arrika Ekulona, Jeffrey Horwitz,
Joseph Parks, Ed Vassallo*, Yul Vazquez*


RIVERS OF JANUARY
by Ben Snyder
Directed by Stephen Adly Guirgis*
Dec 11 at 7pm & 9pm

Rio de Janeiro. New Year’s Eve. Three old friends struggle to make peace with the past, get a grasp on the present, and avert a tragic future.


HEAL ME TELEVISION
by Martha Wollner*
Directed by Kevin Geer*
Dec 12 at 7pm & Dec 21 at 8pm

1959. Small town, South. Lawerence Welk's on TV; home made ice cream with your peach cake; communion at home when you' re too sick for church; and a lynchin' just down the road. For goodness sake, don't just stand there gawking! Come on in!

Featuring Elizabeth Canavan*, Scout Cook, Andrea Haring*, Scott Hudson*, Russell G. Jones*, Florencia Lozano*, Kelley Rae O’Donnell*, Richard Petrocelli*, Yolonda Ross*, Finnerty Steeves, Sidney Williams*


THE WALKING GAME
by Daniel Harnett*
Directed by Padraic Lillis*
Dec 13 at 7pm & 9pm

A young man is having trouble holding on to reality and the room he's checked into - in this new musical one act.

Featuring Scout Cook, Kevin Geer*, Charles Goforth*, Marshall Sharer*


UTILITIES
by Jonathan Marc Sherman
Directed by David Bar Katz*
Dec 14 & 15 at 8pm

You should know how to break up with a friend.
You should know what your childhood idols are really like.
You should know what your partner is really feeling.
Shouldn't you? A story about how then became now.

Featuring Didi O’Connell*, Annie Parisse, Yul Vazquez*


NEW SHORT PLAYS
by Israel Horovitz
Directed by Israel Horovitz and Scott Illingworth
Dec 16 & 18 at 8pm

Israel Horovitz's New Shorts include
Just The Way You Are
...(an intervention from hell),
Inconsolable
...(on suicide),
The Vote In Orange
...(on the night France elected a Fascist candidate for the presidency),
Beirut Rocks
...(on the radicalization of an American Arab),
What Strong Fences Make
...(on the radicalization of an Israeli Jew).

Featuring Scout Cook, Jeremy Sisto, Francisco Solorzano


A FAMILY FOR ALL OCCASIONS
by Bob Glaudini*
Directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman*
Dec 17 &19 at 8pm

A father without skills, nor the ability to show his feelings, attempts to navigate the demands of a wife with a temper, a wayward daughter, who brings a man home to live,and a son so bright he has trouble communicating.

Featuring Lex Friedman, Craig “muMs” Grant*, Didi O’Connell*,
Charlie Saxton, David Strathairn


THEY KILLED BOO BOO?
by Maggie Bofill*
Directed by Jill DeArmon*
Dec 17 & 18 at 11pm

Sisters, Men, Wolves and Song....and Boo Boo. This is the story of…

Featuring Carlo Alban*, Raul Castillo*, Adam Cohen, Salvatore Inzerillo*,
Angela Lewis*, Paula Pizzi*, Yolonda Ross*


UNTITLED
by Stephen Adly Guirgis*
Dec 20 at 7pm & 9pm



*denotes LAByrinth Company member


All readings take place at THE CHERRY PIT: 155 Bank Street

LABYRINTH HOME
http://www.labtheater.org/

THE BARN SERIES CALENDAR
http://www.labtheater.org/onstage/barnseriescalendar.html

THE LABYRINTH LABpass
http://www.labtheater.org/tickets/labpass.html

ELLING

The night I saw ELLING, the audience seemed to love it. They laughed heartily at every joke and every piece of business, and jumped to their feet for a standing ovation at the end.

I was not quite so amused. There were a handfull of fine lines and good jokes. My favorite, which I shall actually remember, came when a character who seemed to be mentally and socially challenged, but skilled in mechanics, remarked of his classmates in the vocational school he was sent to, that the students were all idiots. The apparently very well educated, distinguished poet beside him then remarked that in his own case, his teachers were all idiots.

This play is an American version of a distinguished Norwegian novel, play and movie. Two mentally/socially challenged older men are sent from a mental institution to learn to function in the real world.

There are several problems with this American stage version, which seems (without knowing its history) to be hastily thrown together without solving its dramatic problems.

Coincidentally, I just watched an episode of Theater Talk on TV in which Cherry Jones remarks how much a play can and should change over time as the actors really begin to understand it. Given the success of the Norwegian original, I suspect that a visit from a play-doctor, and some more time to solve the problems could generate a much better play.

There are two main characters, Elling (Denis O'Hare), a small, fussy older man who lived with his mother all his life, until she died, and Kjell Bjarne (Brendan Fraser), a large, older man, a virgin who is obsessed with women and sex, but does not understand how social relations work. (He proposed to a woman with his pants off. She called police. That's how he arrives at the mental institution to room with Elling, to start the play.) They both seem so mentally incompetent that nothing that happens later is believable.

If they are really as disfunctional as they seem, only the most brilliant psychological therapy would have the slightest chance of rehabilitating them. If there is actually a healthy guy inside each socially/mentally/wounded body (which is what the action of the play requires) then the acting and some of the writing is just too broad, too campy, too much caricature and too inaccurate to carry the story believably. For the rest of the play, then, most of the jokes must be shtick, not human humor.

A second problem which makes the play confusing is that all the acting behavior seems quintessentially American, yet every once in a while the characters say something to remind us that they are Norwegians in Norway. It is a disconnect.

In a similar vein, there are some ethnic, racial, and similar remarks that may be funny in Norway but just seemed unpleasant to me.


Having all the women in the play -- a nurse, a waitress, a poet, and a pregnant neighbor, who are really very different characters -- played by the same actress (Jennifer Coolidge) further confuses the story, because it seems to suggest a through-line between the various women and their relationships with the two men. I think, in fact, a strong contrast between the women and how they relate to the men would be more helpful to the play.

I hope, as the play plays out, the characterizations will mellow out and become more realistic. (Cherry Jones in the interview I mentioned above suggests that anyone who sees a preview of a play should be given a voucher to come back and see the play again in a few months... after it has matured.) The second act, in fact, is better than the first act. And the pictures from the play, shown in this story, suggest a more spot-on human interpretation of the characters than was evident in the too-over-the-top "theatrical" acting at the preview I attended.

In any case, ELLING is a pleasant, amusing (to a degree depending on your taste) holiday show, with a fundamentally uplifting character arc.

The best thing about the play is seeing familiar actors on the stage. I've always liked Brendan Fraser, the very popular movie star; Jennifer Coolidge has been a favorite of mine since Legally Blonde; and Denis O'Hare is starring in True Blood at the moment, and was the subject of an extended profile in the NYT.

If the actors come out after the show and say "Hello" to the theatergoers at the Stage Door, that would be an added attraction.

THE OFFICIAL SITE:
http://ellingonbroadway.com/

BRENDAN FRASER WIKIPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Fraser

DENIS O'HARE WIKIPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_O

DENIS O'HARE NYT PROFILE
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/theater/14ohare.html

JENNIFER COOLIDGE WIKIPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Coolidge

THE WASSERSTEIN PRIZE AFFAIR

Wendy Wasserstein was an important woman playwright who died in 2006 at the age of 55. She was much honored (Tony, Pulitzer...). She was known for woman-centered plays including The Heidi Chronicles, The Sisters Rosensweig, and Uncommon Women and Others.

In her honor, a prize was set up to honor young women playwrights. It is given to "a female playwright under 32 who has yet to receive national attention." It is funded by the Educational Foundation of America (AFAW) and administered by the Theater Development Fund (TDF).

In 2010, there were 19 finalist plays competing for the Wasserstein Prize. The Wasserstein Selection Panel decided that none of the plays was worthy of the prize (see the quote below).

Note: Nov 16, 2010 - According to the NYT, the "Administrator" of the Prize has decided to review the process and procedure for awarding the Prize and reconsider whether the Prize should be awarded this year:

A Do-Over for the Wasserstein Playwriting Prize
By PATRICK HEALY, NYT:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/a-do-over-for-the-wasserstein-playwriting-prize/

A Youngblood Playwright at The Ensemble Studio Theater protested -- for a variety of reasons -- that declining to award the prize was a terrible thing to do.

I'm not sure I agree. First of all, a prize should not be awarded if none of the finalists is deemed worthy: it protects the value of the prize that the "standards" are maintained.

Secondly, as some people have pointed out, the Wasserstein Prize is sexist (women only) and ageist (young women only). From my perspective, older men who have plays also have trouble getting them produced, as does every other demographic! I think prizes should be for everybody.

Thirdly, none of us actually know if the plays were any good, or if the 19 plays nominated were "better" than other plays that were eligible but not nominated, nor who the judges were, nor what their aesthetic criteria were. It's kind of presumptuous to assume the panel of judges was wrong when it's not even known what plays were considered, much less how well they were written.

(Note 1: Of course, from the point of view of the prize-giving organization, declining to award a prize not only protects the "integrity" of the prize, it generates a lot of publicity -- some good, some bad. Assuming the decision was reasonable or wise, and not just stupid, this raises the public awareness of the prize.)

(Note 2: Of course, not awarding a prize also saves money and avoids making one kind of hard decision -- while making a different hard decision. Trying to look up information about the current state of the prize, neither the TDF which administers it, nor the Educational Foundation of America (EFAW) which funds it, seems to have much to say about the Prize. Indeed, EFAW seems to be retrenching at the moment. So perhaps the failure to award a prize is more administrative retrenching than any intended insult to the 19 finalist playwrights or to any other playwrights who never made it to the finals.)

Nevertheless, the result of this controversy is -- as perhaps they expected, see Note 1 above -- increased visibility for the Prize and theater, generally. There is now a movement afoot to produce readings of the 19 dissed plays, and even stream them over the internet. With a little -- or probably more than a little -- publicity the plays could reach a bigger audience than any black-box or OOB presentation ever would. It would also increase the experience of theater people with live streaming, for application to future productions.

Two of the leaders in this project are the Ensemble Studio Theater (EST), whose Youngblood Playwright escalated the affair, and a new group, 2AMT.

EST is well-known, but what is 2AMT? Here's their own description of 2AMT:

"2am. You’re wondering why this is called 2am. What does that have to do with theatre?"

"2am is when the ideas start to flow."

"The beginning: In January 2010, over on Twitter, a group of theatre folk started talking, brainstorming, tossing out ideas and testing to see how they’d float. Or if they’d float at all. And even though it was late, the conversation kept going. As it went on, it started to pick up more and more people from more and more places. It was one of those conversations."

...

"#2amt: In order to keep the conversation’s focus, we now use #2amt when tweeting, adding the t for theatre. That’s only five characters out of your 140, which saves a lot of space. Why? Because nobody else is using that tag, and no one else would need or want to. It means you can drop in at any point in the conversation and, if you so desire, follow it back to its source. Or find new topics or ideas in the stream."

"Primarily, this site will act as a gathering place for theatre ideas."


STREAMING

Here are some thoughts on the process of streaming readings of the plays:

There are several sites that provide an easy method of streaming... USTREAM and LIVESTREAM are two. Actually, Skype may be another.

Simple streaming is easy: Point a camera, upload in real time to the streaming site. Access the streaming site.

Effective streaming is a little harder:

=1=> It is necessary to check every element of the technical chain all the way to the end user before starting.

For example:
Camera + mic =>
computer =>
streaming site =>
streams (how many?) =>
computer (MAC? PC? Linux?) =>
browser (which - IE? Safari? Firefox? etc?) =>
streaming video window.

Also: Log in process; startup, etc

=2=> It is necessary to reach out to the audience and get them to tune in. Getting a large audience requires significant promotion.

=3=> And the audience must be available for the whole broadcast. People at home are fickle. There's a reason theaters put people in seats that are not that easy to get out of, and have them turn off their phones before the show starts.

Indeed, it might be worthwhile to stream the readings not just to people's own computers, but to large, high resolution monitors in theaters. (See item =1=> Make sure the theater system works -- to avoid a really bad experience.)

The NYFF has used SKYPE for interactive press conferences with directors. The Metropolitan Opera has started streaming operas to movie theaters. Streaming to theaters avoids the problem of interruptions to audience attention in the "distractionacious" real world.

=4=> A production seen through a camera should be directed not just as a reading, but as a production seen through a camera. The camera must be pointed at the right place at the right time, the audio must be picked up clearly, and the way actors convey a sense of reality can be somewhat different from either a table reading or a staged reading.

=5=> Of course, once live streaming is over, the recorded event should be available for on-demand streaming.


CONCLUSION

So, perhaps the Wasserstein Affair will turn out to be not just a win-win, but a win-win-win...win-win (that's one "win" each, for the 19 playwrights, the Wasserstein Prize itself, EST, 2AMT, and theater in general).


HERE'S WHAT TDF SAID ABOUT NOT AWARDING THE WASSERSTEIN PRIZE:

“We regret to inform you that of the 19 nominated plays, none was deemed sufficiently realized by the selection panel to receive the Prize. As a result, the Wasserstein Prize will not be presented in 2010. While the panel thought that many of the scripts showed promise, they felt that none of the plays were truly outstanding in their current incarnation.”


HERE'S THE LINK TO MICHAEL LEW'S LETTER:

Michael Lew's letter to the Theater Development Fund, which administers the prize (following the letter there are gazillions of comments which explore several of the issues) :

http://youngbloodnyc.blogspot.com/2010/11/no-wasserstein-prize-in-2010-selection.html


HERE ARE SOME MORE LINKS TO THE SITES OF INTEREST:

2AMT ON TWITTER
twitter.com/2amt
( #2amt is the thread on Twitter.)

2AM THEATER... COMMENTS
http://www.2amtheatre.com/
http://www.2amtheatre.com/where-2am-began/

THE ENSEMBLE STUDIO THEATER - EST
http://ensemblestudiotheatre.org/

EST - YOUNGBLOOD
http://ensemblestudiotheatre.org/programs/youngblood/

WENDY WASSERSTEIN on WIKIPEDIA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Wasserstein


WASSERSTEIN PRIZE 2010:
I could not find a clear link to this! Not to the nomination process, not to the judging criteria, not to the panel that makes the decision. There is more information about 2009:

WASSERSTEIN PRIZE 2009:
http://www.tdf.org/TDF_NewsDetailsPage.aspx?id=86

USTREAM
http://www.ustream.com/

LIVESTREAM
http://www.livestream.com/

SKYPE
http://www.skype.com/

THE THEATER DEVELOPMENT FUND
http://www.tdf.org/

THE EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION OF AMERICA
http://www.efaw.org/