My Life In Community Theater, or The Great Strangulation

Domenick Scudera has a regular Festival Blog column about his experiences in the performing arts. He is a longtime theater artist and is the chair of the theater and dance department at Ursinus College. 

If you read on, you will understand the relevance.

Community theater is a curious thing. It is a place that attracts all the theater wannabes in a community, throws them together, and allows them to live out their performance fantasies for friends and family. The bank teller, the salesgirl, the local beautician, all with a secret desire to be the next Blanche Dubois or Auntie Mame, they all flock to these little havens. It is the high school drama club for grown-ups. You can pour all your energy into memorizing lines, painting sets, singing The Impossible Dream. You are not the bank teller or waitress anymore; you are a Star, albeit for a week and for a select audience. But the people in the audience adore you because watching Uncle Joe on stage is the funniest, most enchanting experience they have had in months. The productions are shoestring and terrible, but no one on stage or in the audience notices or even cares. Everyone is having a grand time, even if Thornton Wilder is turning over in his grave. It is not great art but, for the participants, it is a helluva good time.

In my first year out of college, I started my new life in a fresh location with no friends or contacts. What to do? Like a magnet, I was pulled to the local community theater. And after a few rehearsals of my first show, I had an instant pack of friends. I warmed in the glow of creativity once again. We all ignored the fact that we were totally wrong for the parts we were playing and that we were not overly skilled or talented.

Before long I was cast in The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie. I believe that, at one time or another, every community theater performer winds up performing The Mousetrap. The cast for this particular production was not particularly strong and the director barely registered a heartbeat, but we all reveled in the idea of creating an evening of fantastic mystery and intrigue for our audiences. As if no one had ever read or seen The Mousetrap before, we imagined gasps of horror as the shocking true murderer was revealed.

One night, the mystery became even more intriguing for the audience.

A little background: early in the play, one of the characters is left alone on stage. The lights suddenly go out. The murderer has cut the power. The woman, left in the dark, fiddles with a lamp next to the couch and realizes there is no electricity. The murderer enters the room. She hears his footsteps. He moves toward her. She senses danger. She says something like “What are you doing here? Please, no no NOOOO!” She gasps, struggles, and is strangled to death. The murderer leaves the scene. The lights come back on. The strangled woman is revealed to the audience, collapsed on the couch. Read More »

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The Writer’s Room

Prarthana Jayaram is a Philly-based writer and regular Festival Blog contributor.

Shakespeare is briefly mentioned in this article, so we've decided to put a picture of him up here.

Four hundred years ago when Shakespeare was writing plays, he never had to wonder if his hard work would go to waste. Once he had completed a piece, his theater company began the production process without delay. Not only was the bard guaranteed the opportunity to see his finished work on stage, he also had a stable position with his theater. Fast-forward to theater production today: once a playwright finishes a piece, s/he must find a theater company to produce it (if s/he is lucky) and it is not uncommon for production of the play to take several years to yield a performance. Worse, many plays get stuck in workshop purgatory, where they are continually changed and edited but never actually make it through the production process.

Playwrights of Shakespeare’s time would be confused.

To address some of the problems with the lengthy production process, Philadelphia’s Arden Theatre is implementing an innovative new program, The Writer’s Room. Over the course of this spring and summer, playwright Wendy MacLeod will write a new play, which the Arden will immediately put into production; the play will be cast, rehearsed, and open for audiences by mid-July.

Edward Sobel, associate artistic director at the Arden, spearheaded The Writer’s Room and is leading the program. Alongside Sobel, Becky Wright serves as the program’s producer, acting as a liaison to both the playwright and the audience members who will be involved with the process.

“We want to provide production-oriented development that keeps the writer close to the play,” explains Sobel.

Playwright Wendy MacLeod (middle) sits between Arden folks Becky Wright and Edward Sobel in a workshop with audience members.

Sobel’s work has focused on the pitfalls of the production process for several years now. His work has been driven forward by conversations with writers about what is missing in the field and what their needs are. He finds that even when a show does make it through the hoops to get produced, many plays suffer from a condition Sobel brands “premiere-itis,” in which there is a great deal of pressure on the first production of a play but not as much artistic momentum for additional productions.

Through the support of the The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative and the Independence Foundation, the Arden was able to move forward with The Writer’s Room, which Sobel hopes will give playwrights a taste of a shorter production timeline and allow the company to experiment with how the playwright fits into the production process. The Writer’s Room will offer a sense of immediacy and instant feedback for the playwright in seeing his/her play performed for an audience.

Read More »

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One Night In Bangkok: Bed Supperclub And Pina Bausch

Ellen Freeman is a freelance writer and former Festival Blog intern who is based in Oregon.

Random photo in Bangkok that Ellen took, has only tangential relation to the story in that the statue is in repose.

After backpacking on a shoestring through Morocco, Spain, Egypt, Vietnam, and Thailand, I had one night in Bangkok—and, like the song says, I was ready to make the world my oyster. I’d spent the last three months haggling self-righteously over fractions of a cent for the price of everything, shacking up with strangers (don’t worry, Mom, I’m talking about hostel dormitories) and trying not to think about what went into some of the dirt-cheap street food I slurped, all to make such an ambitious trip possible on my part-time yoga teacher/freelance writer’s salary. In the morning I would struggle to zip my bag and begin the 24+ hour journey back to Portland, Oegon, where I live with my parents. So I wanted to live it up for my last night as a world traveler. According to my Bangkok host Krishnan, a friend from college who moved there to teach English, there was only one place worthy of such an occasion—Bed Supperclub.

He wouldn’t go into details, but insisted that it would be an experience like no other on my trip. The Lonely Planet’s description was equally vague, something along the lines of “Bed Supperclub is like breakfast in bed, but without the breakfast or the beds.” When we got off the subway in Nana, one of Bangkok’s notorious sex districts known for it’s “entertainment plaza” of soapy massage parlors and ladyboy bars, I made Krishnan promise we weren’t going to a “ping pong pussy show.” (If you don’t know what that is . . . think about it.) But at the end of the block, past invitations from hustlers to just such a show, we came to Bed Supperclub, which was no naughty bar.

Inside the Bed Supperclub.

In fact, the place couldn’t have been more incongruous with its surroundings. The building was a large metal tube on stilts, shaped something like a bisected super-jet. The front was made entirely out of frosted glass windows, behind which pink and purple lights pulsated. A thumping beat grew louder as we walked up the ramp to the entrance, and I couldn’t help but feel like I was boarding a starship to a planet populated by a race of Euro-aliens. We were greeted by a pair of glamorous hosts who made sure that we weren’t defacing the image of the establishment by wearing flip-flops or t-shirts, and escorted behind a black curtain.

On the other side of the curtain was an ovular, all-white, two-level chamber, illuminated with icy blue lights and backlit with a pink glow. Each side of the room was lined with a long white daybeds, with the bar at one end and a DJ, clad in enormous headphones, bobbing his head at the other end. Other diners, undoubtedly all foreign, reclined on the couches sipping Technicolor cocktails and nibbling at plates of tiny foods. It was as if I had traveled from the streets of Bangkok to the set of Zoolander. Read More »

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Jumpstart Profiles: Meet Sahar Javedani

The mysteries of sand. Photo by by ShaLeigh Comerford.

This spring (May 31–June 2), at the Live Arts Studio, we are launching our new performing arts program, Jumpstart, which showcases the work of six emerging artists based in the region. Choreographer and dancer Sahar Javedani left Iran with her family when she was a young child, and grew up in San Diego. Sahar recently moved to Philadelphia after seven years as a New York City-based choreographer, teacher, and arts administrator. At Jumpstart she will perform her solo work in the Middle, somewhat aggravated, which explores Sahar’s lifelong investigation of her Iranian heritage, both “the values that I embrace and those I’ve left behind coupled with the challenge of allegiance between these two cultures.” We caught up with the Sahar and asked her some questions about her life and work.

Live Arts: Why is your show title in the Middle, somewhat aggravated? What inspired the initial creation of this work?

Sahar Javedani: in the Middle, somewhat aggravated is definitely a play on the title of a work that William Forsythe created [In the middle, somewhat elevated] and describes my fascination and frustration with being raised between two cultures—Iran and America. The work examines my physical and emotional territories of allegiance—the values I uphold and those I’ve left behind. I believe the idea for this solo began brewing during my graduate work at CalArts [learn about her time at CalArts here] and there were several incarnations of this in the last decade.

LA: What was it like to grow up in Tehran and San Diego?

SJ: I was raised predominantly in San Diego; my family left Iran just before the revolution and the few memories that I have of Tehran are the scents of my grandparents’ rose garden, the lush feel of the Persian carpets beneath my bare feet, and the taste of orange blossom jam. It was wonderful being raised in North County San Diego where the floral and surfboard industry was so abundant and proximity to the beach and parks was fantastic.

LA: How did you become interested in dance and choreography? 

SJ: I’m convinced I was a choreographer before ever being a dancer. I still struggle with the idea of taking technique classes. When I close my eyes and listen to a piece of music, I see the entire production before my eyes—costume, lighting, sets. I am the daughter of an architect and set designer and grew up either performing theater or daydreaming in the catwalks of dark theaters during tech rehearsals.

Read More »

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Artists & Their Coffee: Zornitsa Stoyanova



The artist with her bike, which has little to do with coffee.

Name: Zornitsa Stoyanova

Company:
Here[begin] Dance



Artistic occupation: Experimental movement artist, graphic and web designer.

First experience with coffee that made you understand coffee: I don’t think I ever “got it.” I understand the smell, the taste of good
coffee, but overall the indulgence of drinking too much coffee for me is
just another addiction.

Coffee you drink at home: 
My indulgent drink at home is David Rio’s Tortoise Green Tea Chai.

How do you like your coffee:
When I do drink it, I like it decaf, possibly Illi—the best coffee out
there without any funky bitter aftertaste. I like it with a lot of 2% milk.

Average no. of cups per day:
About 1 or 2 a month (only when I have a day off, as I crash from coffee so
hard, I need to sleep for hours or lounge in the sun).

Fave coffee shop:
 I haven’t found one in Philly yet to be
honest. I like more Euro type of places, either super design-y or something
like the cafés on the streets in Venice. Fancy small tables, little coffee
drinks and lots of interesting people walking around.
However, my favorite pub in Philly is hands down Grace Tavern.

Fave fancy coffee drink:
Vanilla latte.

Enough about coffee, what are you doing now?
 With my own company, I’m doing heavy research on performance qualities and presence with a group of super talented Philly dancers and actors. I also
have a new solo that was part of Falls Bridge Festival in January and which
I’m bringing to Europe this summer. I’ll be showing the piece at Mixed Grille
on May 26th. I’m also doing an awesome little site piece for Mascher Space
Cooperative that will be revealed soon and creating an atmosphere/lighting
design for Katherine Stark’s new dance. The crazy videos I take of myself dancing and all the rest of the weird engagements you can check out at www.herebegindance.com.

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Fly Creation: More Behind The Scenes Of PA Ballet’s Peter Pan

Suspended Wendy (Evelyn Kocak).

This Saturday and Sunday are the last two performances for Pennsylvania Ballet’s production of Trey McIntyre’s Peter Pan at the Academy of Music. We recently heard from two of the dancers (playing Peter Pan and Wendy), but we were also interested in the behind-the-scenes perspective in staging the complex flying sequences. For this production, the flying is not controlled by “eight guys standing in the wings” but is programmed, fully automated, and computer-controlled. We caught up with Brett Perry, a dancer for the Trey McIntyre Project, who helped McIntyre stage the flying sequences on the PA Ballet dancers.

Live Arts: What does the ability to suspend bodies in air allow artistically? And how does the technology of this particular system aid in the creative process?

Brett Perry: I remember being with Trey and the dancers the first day in the theater when they started working with this new flying equipment and noticing how amazing the system was but also how many challenges it would present. When Houston Ballet did Peter Pan in 2002 and 2004, all of the flying was done manually by eight tech guys. This time at Pennsylvania Ballet, all of the flying is computerized. That has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are that when all of the flying cues are put into the computer, it will be done forever. Anytime another ballet company wants to do Peter Pan, the flying will be ready to go with little more than a few tweaks here and there. The disadvantage to this system is that it is basically a robot—and robots do not have human instincts. The program doesn’t know when the dancer plies the next move, it is usually going to be a jump. All of those details have to be programmed in and the timing has to be perfect. I talked to Trey about the flying a few days into the rehearsals and he was saying how tedious and time-consuming the flying was. Making a change in the computer and getting it just right was taking hours to perfect. The ability to suspend bodies in the air offers weightlessness that you cannot achieve on the ground. Some partnering that Wendy and Peter do would never work without the assistance of flying.

Read More »

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Jumpstart Profiles: Meet Katherine Kiefer Stark

Photo by Bill Hebert.

This spring (May 31–June 2), at the Live Arts Studio, we are launching our new performing arts program, Jumpstart, which showcases the work of six emerging artists from the region. Choreographer and dancer Katherine Kiefer Stark is bringing her company The Naked Stark to perform Looking For Judy, a series of five duet vignettes that explores the various layers of a person—how she remembers and how she is remembered. The work includes five wooden structures that allow for an interchange of walls and floor. We caught up with the Philly-based Katherine and asked her some questions about her life and work.

Live Arts: Why is your show title Looking for Judy? What inspired the initial creation 
of this work?

Katherine Stark: The idea for Looking for Judy emerged slowly. I began about a year ago to actively remember good memories of a family member with mental illness and deal with the strangeness of losing someone to her own mind.

LA: Where did you grow up?

KS: I grew up in Jenkintown, a suburb of Philly. I spent a lot of time at Ihop, Fiesta Pizza, and the Willow Grove Mall.

LA: The Naked Stark is the name of your company. What are some of the themes or narratives that you are or would like to explore?

KS: My work is deeply personal. I am interested in investigating social norms and politics by reflecting on my own personal choices and everyday experiences.

LA: How was your college and university experience in regards to dance?

KS: Studying dance at Connecticut College was my first introduction to modern and contemporary dance and where I fell in love with being off balance, making movement, and making dances. My time there, particularly with my teachers Jeremy Nelson and Dan Wagoner, fueled my passion for dance and helped me learn how to define, for myself, what it means to be a dancer and an artist.

Read More »

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The Bushwick Book Club: A Secret Approach To Art Making

Festival Blog contributor Ellia Bisker is a writer and performer who fronts NYC-based indie rock band Sweet Soubrette.

Thank you books!

The Bushwick Book Club is a monthly literary event in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where songwriters perform songs they’ve written in response to an assigned book. We don’t otherwise discuss the book. There’s an audience. It’s not really a book club. It’s a show.

But secretly, it’s not even a show. Secretly, it’s an approach to art making, a way for those of us participating to trick ourselves into creating new work. For me, as a songwriter and performer developing a body of material, it has become an integral part of my creative practice, a way to keep loose, a lab for testing new ideas.

I’ve done twenty book club shows during the last few years, and now my process is pretty consistent. As I read the book, whenever something jumps out at me, I dog-ear the page. After I’m done, I go back through the book and write down the things on the dog-eared pages that catch my eye. I do this by hand. Then I sit on my couch with my laptop and my ukulele and ponder what I wrote down and type a few lines and play a couple of chords. When I sit down on the couch, there is no song. I have absolutely no idea how a song is going to happen. But I’m certain that it will—that on Thursday night there will be a song. It’s a moment of complete ignorance and complete trust. Then there comes another moment when I realize there’s a song where there wasn’t one before. I’ve learned to sit and wait patiently for that magic to happen.

I’ve been a participant almost since the book club began in 2009, and recently I have been co-hosting shows with Susan Hwang, who created the series because she had been writing songs based on the George Romero Night of the Living Dead movies and wanted to create an event around new music written in response to a narrative.  She came up with the idea of writing songs about books. It turns out that the Bushwick Book Club combines a number of elements that are brilliantly helpful when it comes to making art. You don’t have to create a songwriting book club show to access these creative tools, but the Bushwick Book Club provides a great example of what works.

1. Assignments: The book club assignment is to write a song in response to the book. That’s it. This is the perfect kind of assignment, right in the sweet spot between too narrow and too broad; the book provides parameters, but there are no other constraints, so there’s a lot of room to play. Some songs end up being about something really specific, like a line of dialogue or a particular character; others relate the songwriter’s feelings about the book, or something about it that bothered her, or something only tangentially related that the book happened to make the songwriter think of. Part of the assignment is to create the assignment, like designing your own puzzle to solve, or your own labyrinth to escape from.

Read More »

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Lee Etzold And Her World Of Funny

Lee Etzold with Madi Distefano, co-artistic directors of BRAT Productions, going over finances.

When it comes to creating art, Lee Etzold is not afraid to work up a sweat.

“I’m not really a sit-down-at-a-computer playwright. I’m more of a get-in-a-big-space-and-jump-around playwright,” she explains.

A lifelong athlete, Etzold has always been a very physical person. She played sports in high school and believed she would play basketball or field hockey in college. Everything changed when she auditioned for a school play and turned her attention to the arts. As an actor and playwright today, she brings her athletic background to the stage.

“Because I was an athlete first, I always have a physical approach to theater. I have better muscle memory than any other kind of memory,” she says; in fact, she never learns her lines until she learns her blocking. [Ed note: hmmm, actors have an excuse for everything.]

After college, Etzold moved to Philadelphia to work with New Paradise Laboratories, the experimental theater company headed by director Whit MacLaughlin. It was Philadelphia that inadvertently sparked her imagination and led her to create her own work.

Etzold originally moved to Philadelphia during the Philly Fringe and saw the city rife with musicians and actors. After the shows, she felt lonely as the city went back to business as usual. “I felt like everyone I had just met had vanished into their other lives. I started writing songs—ridiculously depressing songs that made me laugh at myself.”

Read More »

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Live Arts Takes Chestnut Hill Sunday: Come Say Hi!

A dispatch from our marketing assistant extraordinaire Tara Demmy.

Tara gets ready to travel to Philly's other downtown.

The weather app on my phone says it’s going to be a beautiful 73 degrees on Sunday! Where will I be? With marketing manager Dan Comly, spreading the sweet Festival word to folks attending the Chestnut Hill Home and Garden Festival, when they shut down Germantown Avenue and fill it with food, plants, live music, and people. I’ve never been to this Home and Garden event, but everyone is telling me it is the place to be (delicious food, live music, collectibles, face painting, zoo critters!).

Our booth is at 8314 Germantown Avenue (right in front of Gerald Paul Salon). Come visit us (and then get your haircut). I will be sitting by a big prize wheel (you can win FREE tickets!), a big bag of candy, and one of those fans connected to a water bottle that keeps you cool and content. Give me your email and get 20% off your first ticket to the 2012 Festival. It’s easy as cake. Plus, I have been reading up on all the upcoming Live Arts Festival performances, so I’m ready to chat about them!

Moral of the story? It’s never too early to start getting pumped about the Festival. See ya Sunday!

Fast Facts:
Chestnut Hill Home and Garden Festival
Germantown Ave, from Willow Grove Ave  to the top of the hill
Sunday, May 6th, 11am to 5pm
73 degrees
Food & beer
Zoo critters
Plants
Cobblestones

–Tara Demmy

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    The Festival Blog is your most comprehensive source for news and information about artists who participate in the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and the Philly Fringe. We also cover a broader range of artists based in the city and elsewhere, as well as issues and trends in the performing arts generally. We hope to open a door on the artistic process to audiences and other artists.

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