Messy, Messy

Posted on July 10, 2012 by admin

By Cason Murphy, director of POP

Image from Fuerza Bruta in NYC

Back in May of this year, I wandered into a gutted bank-turned-theatre in the heart of Union Square in New York to experience Fuerza Bruta alongside Tiffany and Alex – our buddy/tour guide extraordinaire. After a brisk ninety minutes and feeling like we pretty much got our half-priced tickets’ worth, our motley trio emerged slightly damp and each covered in confetti to varying degrees. In fact, for several weeks after, Tiffany would randomly find some stowaway pieces of paper from the evening in her purse and the experience would get rehashed and discussed anew. There was no denying we had been there; we’d literally been carrying it around with us.

And all I can wonder is – isn’t that the point?  Life is messy, so why shouldn’t our theatre be messy, too?

This adage is particularly prescient in the work of Jen Huszcza. When I get the pleasure of directing one of her shows (this year’s festival marks the second time I have – hopefully – risen to the challenge), there is no doubt that something has happened onstage. I love making messy theatre and Jen’s plays help fuel that. You could maybe write all of this off on my part as a masculine veni, vidi, vici desire to have left my mark whereof I have been – the dick-swinging bombast of the LOOK AT WHAT I HAVE CREATED-ness of it all...

Or maybe it’s that all-too-human resonance of the intangible made tangible.

It’s the reason why live theatre hasn’t been entirely blighted out by movies or reality television or live-streaming – we go to see something real, even if it’s shrouded in disreality. It’s why the sight of all of those poncho-clad front-row thrill-seekers getting splattered with watermelon in old Gallagher specials that HBO runs at 2 AM some Tuesday mornings still elicits chuckles. It’s why I stood beneath a giant mylar “pool,” my confetti-speckled face inches from an actress in performance above me – the two of us holding our breaths: one to keep the water out of their upper respiratory system; the other in awe; both together because we were there, waiting…to see what might happen next.

Sean Jeralds, Anthony Osvog, and Dino Palazzi in Jen Husczca’s RINSE

Last year, in the first Jen play I directed, she has two actors repeatedly dunk another actor in water. I knew I’d made the right choice when about half an hour after my incessant begging to direct Rinse was indulged, sheer terror set in. The beautiful, terrifying, soppy mess that Jen had put on the page had to happen. There would be no faking it. No magic tricks, no sleight of hand, no cool technical solutions – just an actor being dunked in water. Repeatedly.

When it happened, actually happened, it was liberating. Yes, it was unsettling (although me dancing around in the light booth out of sheer enjoyment at the simulation of a man being tortured and drowned is probably more unsettling). However, and more importantly, the whole experience was liberating – because something messy happened. And whether they were in the splash zone or not, our audience felt it happen. Even our stage crew got a round of applause after they quickly mopped up the puddles we had left on stage. There was a theatricality in that happening too.

With Rinse, not once did discussions of the Bush-era torture policies regarding “enemy combatants” surface. That leaping-off point was so close and ultimately so far from what ended up happening onstage. I ultimately don’t think Jen or I are interested in making theatre about “politics.” (But if we were, what better place to learn how to make a mess?) I’ve seen too much agitprop and the really subtle “Bush is Bad – the Musical” to know that on-the-nose stuff only flies with really excitable fringe groups.

That said, this year’s offering from Miss Huszcza – Pop – does plumb some timely social depths. Pop is more effusive and ebullient in its mess than Rinse, yet it is my hope that this might be more of a mess you carry around for a while after. As evidenced by its visceral title, this year’s piece is a bit more concerned with what the audience hears happening.

Now, excuse me, but I have to go blow up some balloons.

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A Predestined Miracle

Posted on July 9, 2012 by admin

By Karen Murphy, playwright, actress and director 

For those of us who like to take pen to hand, there’s an old saying we hear a lot: “Write what you know.”

I know Texas — born and raised there — and I know current events — a pop culture, trivia-loving, newspaper-reading, TV-watching, Texas Monthly-subscribing, media junkie. So I can claim that Mattie and her miracle are indeed based on fact. Only the names, and a detail here and there, have been changed to protect the innocent — and me. I don’t want to be hit with any libel lawsuits or claims filed against my writing profits. Although, come to think of it, a part of nothing would be nothing, so bring on the legal eagles if you see yourself in anything I’ve written.

I do have to fess up: I cheated.

First, some background: Mattie’s miracle has been my muse through several literary incarnations. He first appeared in the short story “Will Miracles Never Cease?” that I wrote for a class back in the 90s, hence the play’s time period of 1997. I called upon him again in 2000, when he starred in my short film The Pope of Pontius County. I turned to him yet again when I got the notice for 10-minute play submissions to From the Mouths of Babes.

Now, for the confession: (In my loudest stage whisper) I already had the rough draft.

It was originally going to be my submission for the thrifTheatre festival. By the time the Babes’ deadline came calling, I was knee deep in several other projects at the local theatre. I panicked. Then, it hit me. Mattie’s miracle was predestined for Babes not Thrif. Hey, I was raised a Presbyterian and we’re great at rationalizing stuff. Besides, the Thrif deadline had been postponed, so what was a girl to do? As an old newspaper reporter, I always work chronologically. The deadline up on deck gets priority. I would worry about a script for Thrif later.

My submission for Babes only took a tweak here, a rewrite there, and — ta-dah! — I had my entry. No angst over looking for inspiration; no staring at a blank computer screen for hours on end. I knew immediately that it was going to take a miracle to meet that Babes‘ deadline — and I just happened to have one stored right there in my Documents File. Divine intervention? Lady Luck? Primal desperation? Call it what you like, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. I didn’t hesitate a second. I shamelessly clicked that file button. Absolution is immediate when you’re doing the right thing.

Now, if only I can think of another way to incorporate an old Polaroid camera into a different script for ThrifTheatre. Yep, paybacks are hell.

Unless … I wonder if anyone would notice if I tapped my muse one more time? Desperate times call for desperate measures  … don’t mind me, just thinking — and rationalizing — out loud …

~ Karen Murphy


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Behind She Said, She Said

Posted on July 2, 2012 by admin

By Katherine James

I travel.

A lot.

So I run into a lot of other people who are checking into the same hotel I am checking into.  Mostly they are just run of the mill folks who are traveling for business…  But every once in awhile I walk into a full blown event of such immense import and proportion to the folks involved that it takes the breath away.

Just last week I walk into an entire convention of Elvis impersonators in Indiana.

Not noteworthy for the Elvises, but certainly for the wedding party who had just come in for their small and dignified reception and had not expected to be there with all those Blue Suede Shoes.

Talk about looks of shock and awe.

The inspiration for She Said, She Said comes from just another Bat Town and another Bat Hotel.

A number of years ago I am somewhat exhausted and walking into The Omni in Dallas in the late afternoon.  I whoosh through the revolving door and into…

A beauty pageant for girls 12 and under.

I did not know such things even existed (this was 1996 –  way before Toddlers and Tiaras).

There are endless hysterical children, insane mothers, racks of dresses, demanding “officials” — and a check in line of about 60.  It is like landing in the middle of Munchkinland but through the prism of Rabbits On Acid.  I am clearly THE ONLY PERSON IN THE ENTIRE OMNI who is not a part of this circus.

I line up behind a woman in her early 20’s. She looks like a Stepford wife except for the horrible haircut and paunch. She is carrying a six month old baby who is peacefully sleeping through all of this insanity.  She is incredulous that I have no clue about this world – for a moment or two I, too, doubt my credibility as a true American.

More women with small girls line up behind me to check in.

I am in some bizarre sandwich.

I ask the gal in front of me why she put her six month old daughter into this beauty pageant.

She laughs maniacally.  “It wasn’t my idea. It was hers. She told me the day she was born that she wanted to be a pageant girl.”

The lunatic behind me nods and smiles, “Oh, yes! Mine, too! That’s exactly what she said!”

It’s amazing what you can learn as you stand between two crazy young women who are talking over you in a 60 person check in line at The Omni for what can’t be more than an hour but which seems like a lifetime.

I keep this memory…pondering it in my heart like The Virgin Mary…knowing that someday…somewhere…it is going to become a play…

And now those two gals have, God Bless America, morphed into the characters in She Said, She Said.

 

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Pop! Goes the World: Notes on Pop

Posted on June 1, 2012 by admin

By Jen Huszcza 

We all remember the financial meltdown back in 2007. The government bailout. The collapse of Lehman Brothers. Executive Bonuses. Subprime mortgages. Those good ole days.

Earlier this year in a week of masochism, I watched the Oscar winning documentary Inside Job and the drama Margin Call back to back. At the same time, Greece was defaulting, and austerity was the new word in everyone’s vocabulary.

I wanted to write about the ongoing economic crisis, but I didn’t know how. How do you talk about something that is both epic and abstract at the same time?

When I got the topic, Mouths of Babes, I thought about Wall Street executives in their playroom.

Rubadubdub. Three men in a Tub. A butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker. But my three men don’t make anything. They just play. They’re toddlers babbling away on their colourful carpet. They’re not intellectuals. They say nothing of substance. They just shift things from place to place. When their play turns destructive, they have a nanny who will make things right, so they can continue to play.

With this play, I was stepping out of my dialogue zone. The play happens in its physicality as if I’m choreographing a dance on the page.

I like the word pop. It’s short, balanced, but oh so destructive.

While I was in Spain, Tiffany emailed me to let me know that Pop will be produced in the Prescott. I did a little happy dance, ate some paella, and thought about how I would get to Prescott in July.

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The Line Up

Posted on May 6, 2012 by admin

There is something so exciting about a first read-through… I think it’s the collective enthusiasm and surprise a room full of people share when hearing a script for the first time.  A first read-through is one of my most favorite playwriting moments when working  on a script (both as a writer and as a director) and today I got to enjoy 9 of them.

I think it’s time to announce the line up for our From the Mouths of Babes festival!

  • Babes in the Wood by Kate Hawkes (Prescott, AZ)
  • Big Baby by Tiffany Antone (Prescott, AZ)
  • Looking for a Miracle by Karen Murphy (Prescott, AZ)
  • On Tuesday by Jennie Webb (Los Angeles, CA)
  • Pop by Jen Huszcza (Los Angeles, CA) – Pop performed in Prescott, Swallow read in LA and Minneapolis
  • She Says, She Says by Katherine James (Los Angeles, CA)
  • Tastes Like Teen Sprit! by Sara Israel (Los Angeles, CA)
  • Thomas by Rachael Brogan Flannery (Minneapolis, MN)
  • Vampire Mouth by Shanee Edwards (Los Angeles, CA)

Each one of these plays is AWESOME and took on the  spirit of the fest in unique and exciting ways.  I absolutely cannot wait to see these plays in July!

So congratulations to each of our selected playwrights, and welcome to From the Mouths of Babes!

 

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The Problem is FEAR

Posted on April 26, 2012 by admin

I’ve been in the room/part of many conversations while Artistic Directors and committees decide their seasons.  I’ve done it in LA, and I’ve done it here in little ‘ol Prescott, AZ – and the one thing that does not change is the collective fear of making mistakes with that all-too-precious line up:

If the play is New – “How will we market a new play?!”

If the play is about women – “How will we convince men to buy tickets to this play about women?!”

If the play is dark/depressing/has a sad end – “How will we convince people to spend time watching a play that might leave them depressed?”

If the play is about non-caucasians – “Will our subscribers be able to relate to these non-caucasian human beings?”

And these questions are not asked out of bias or criticism of the material at hand – they are asked out of panic. The room might agree that the work being discussed is “important/entertaining as hell/genius as genius can be” but it is as though they have lost all faith in their audience’s ability to see in the play the same merit.  It is as though they have completely forgotten how to do their job as leaders to teach and inspire the audience to explore new worlds/perspectives.  They have spiraled downwards (sometimes in a matter of minutes) into helpless, panicked toddlers clinging to tried and true toys for comfort- Simon, Margulies, Albee, and other refreshingly “safe” white dude playwrights.

Everytime I am a part of this terrifying phenomenon, I feel like screaming “Why don’t you just grow a pair and push through this bullshit?!”  Because it is the Artistic Practitioner’s JOB to lead their audiences to new lands – to challenge them to explore new perspectives.  It is NOT our job to feed them the same tried and true applesauce that they’ve bought before just because it fills seats – a theatre company isn’t/nor should it aspire to be WalMart.

Which is why I get angry when I read articles like this one about the Guthrie – a theatre of national repute- where the artistic director responded to concerns over their all-white/all-male helmed season with this little gem:

“But one thing I want to be very clear about, tokenism is the worst thing you can do,” he said. “I employ people because of their talent, male or female. It is a very stern task to direct on a stage of our size, and I am responsible to the board for the shows we produce.” (Minneapolis Star Tribune)

Dowling is insinuating of course that women/people of color are not talented enough to make the Guthrie “cut”.   But I’ve (and I’m sure you have as well) read a tremendous number of amazing plays by women/people of color.  I’ve seen amazingly talented female directors/directors of color…. because the truth is talent knows no gender or racial devide.  Dowling’s argument is an incredibly lazy and irresponsible one to make.

Unfortunately, he’s not the only one using such logic to validate what is essentially an administrative culture of fear – “If I take a ‘risk’ with my season, it may cost me ticket sales” and everyone who’s ever worked for a theatre company knows that a theatre’s box office is usually the one steering the ship.

Which leaves the sad saps on board blind to their own power and ability to steer that ship into even richer waters through innovation and leadership.

So what’s to be done about it?  Support the theatre companies that are forging ahead.  See “new” theatre.  Attend works by women/artists of colors.  Bring along your friends, talk about what you see/like/are excited by – in other words – accept and embrace your role as Audience Activist and start making a difference the only way theatre companies will feel – by impacting their bottom line.

Because the dirty little secret about that “Box Office” captain is that he’s US.

~Tiffany

 

 

 

 

 

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Community

Posted on April 10, 2012 by admin

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about community  (mostly in the theatrical sense, since that’s where my primary community lives) and what it means to inhabit a shared world of common ideals/pastimes/passions/etc., because community, after all, is comprised of a group of people tied together by something.

And no matter the “binding”, complex, all-too-human factors inevitably take a front seat to the issues that brought everyone together in the first place;  Leaders will rise to positions of leadership, while most just shuffle along – sheeple unaware of (or uninterested in) their untapped collective power.  Some members will come on strong, and others with unwavering passivity… Intentions will be drafted, re-configured, and taken up in arms -for always there will be moments of contradiction amongst a community’s flock.

Always, there will be moments of momentum and drag, pulling at those who stand together… Always there will be chatter about what isn’t getting done, who isn’t making good choices… Always there will be change and opportunity to refocus.

And a good leader (of any community) will be able to tend to those moments of strife and (sometimes) furor… they will listen, they will lead, they will stay cool.  A good community will listen when the leader speaks reason, and challenge the leader to find reason when she/he has none.

Which is why what comes of community can be amazingly powerful – a group of people working towards a common goal… it’s part of what we bought into with “The American Dream” – that united we stand.  

And so we stand.

But community can also fracture and split into useless 2-man bands intent on sounding the drums amidst a cacophony of dissent if it’s not careful.

It can yield revolutions, change… it can evolve – if it’s focused.

There are a lot of theatrical evolutions happening right now (amidst all the other daily, more obvious upheaval) and it’s an opportunity for us as theatre practitioners to listen to one another, apply our knowledge, and create real change… to lay the groundwork for sustainable practice, thought, and longevity.

So I don’t cringe (too much) when I listen to conversations about where theatre is “going” – I listen, I pay attention, and I look for windows.  I try to find others who are also invigorated by the transformations happening around us, and I lay plans for action.

I’m getting ready to announce the From the Mouths of Babes line up – I’m excited by the women playwrights writing for the fest, the directors helming their work, and the countless other actors and audience members who will enjoy, bear witness to, and sustain the fest.

So, I know it’s just one step – one little festival (going up in three cities) but you see – the thing about community is that if you haven’t yet found one, you can get busy creating it.

Stay tuned for the From the Mouths of Babes play announcement!

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Where the Plays Come From

Posted on March 4, 2012 by admin

By Jen Huszcza

I like writing short plays.

I know that’s like a carpenter saying she likes to hammer nails into wood or a pilot saying she likes the take-offs. It’s a pretty basic thing to say, but I do like working on short pieces.

I can try out ideas and bring them to completion—or not. Because I only have ten pages or less, I can’t have any fat on the play. Everything is important. Every line, gesture, costume, set, prop is important.

So where do my short plays come from?

For From the Mouths of Babes, I started with the topic itself. I let it tumble around in my head. From The Mouths of Babes. From The Mouths of Babes. From The Mouths of Babes.

Blow job!

Yes, that was the first thing that came into my head.

My internal critic yelled at me:

Jen! This play is going up in Prescott, Arizona! You promised Tiffany no sexy stuff! You could get run out of town.

I let my internal critic roll through all my fears and prejudices, then I wrote blow job on my paper.

The second thought was the song, “It Ain’t Me Babe” by Bob Dylan, but I thought about June Carter and Johnny Cash singing “it ain’t me babe, no, no, no, it ain’t me you’re looking for” at each other. Besides, it gave me an excuse to watch old Johnny Cash performances on youtube. Research!

My next thoughts were babes, babies, toddlers, children. When do adults behave like children? What are the audience expectations when they see adults onstage? In our civilized world, adults behave within certain parameters. What happens when those expectations fall away?

In the world of children, something ordinary can become extraordinary, but in the world of adults, something extraordinary can become bittersweet and painfully human. If I can get both working at the same time, I might just have something.

Or I could just write a play about a blow job. That’s one way to get a head.

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Bite Me

Posted on February 24, 2012 by admin

By Shanee Edwards

I was so happy to see Tiffany on Saturday.  She’s endless inspiration, not to mention fun.  The theme of her next playwright’s festival is “From the Mouths of Babes” and I was really struggling for an idea suited to this theme.  Babes, babes.  Babies.  Funny things kids say?  Ah, I know!  I’ll write a play called “In the Mouths of Babes” that takes place on the set of a porno shoot.  But when it became about the “adult actors” wanting to have rules about using condoms and then organizing for a union to get health care, I gave it up.  Seemed a bit, well, not so much fun.

So instead of “babes” I focused on “mouths”.  I researched ancient dentistry and discovered something called “Waterloo Teeth“. Apparently, the battle at Waterloo decimated the French soldiers so much that teeth diggers retrieved enough teeth from the fallen young men to inspire an entire denture industry.  Real teeth were prized for dentures and of course, hard to come by until then.  It’s an interesting part of history, but not really a short play.  So I was stumped.  Again.

Then I read Patty Smith’s memoir, Just Kids and found it fascinating. She talks about her relationship with Sam Shepard and the play they wrote together, Cowboy Mouth.  It was performed one time by the two of them, then he left town.  I had read the play years ago, but wanted to read it again.  I found a copy at Barnes and Noble at the Grove and plucked it from the shelf, sat at a table and read it.  It’s pretty out there, but it was the 1970′s after all.  So using the play as inspiration, I decided to do my own homage to Cowboy Mouth, updating it for modern times.  Vampire Mouth is the result.  There will be a guitar. There will be drums.  Even a gong.  And one long, slow juicy BITE.

This is when life gets fun…

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New Poster!

Posted on February 2, 2012 by admin

Well, I told you I wasn’t sold on the first poster for From the Mouths of Babes – so you shouldn’t be surprised that I made a new one!  It’s much more fun, don’t you think?

Scripts have already started coming in from some of our playwrights, and I’m SO excited to start reading them.  Stay tuned for posts from some of our playwrights and updates on locations, dates, and more 🙂

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