The Stolen Chair Blog

Oh sad forsaken blog!

2010-04-16T18:52:00.004-04:00

I guess that with the launch of our Community Supported Theatre, keeping up on Twitter, and developing a new play (Quantum Poetics, workshopping at the Connelly Theater mid-June), and posting on the ERPA blog, this blog has lost what little lovin' I once gave to it.

I will come back.

I promise.

How 'bout Tuesday? It's a date! I'll debrief with y'all about Sunday's semi-staged reading of Quantum Poetics...

In the meantime, some news, hot off the presses:

Stolen Chair has a profile in this month's American Theater mag. You can read it online (they call us "scrappy." How cool is that?) but you should really go out and buy the issue as it's darn good. Thanks to Eliza Bent and the fine folks at American Theater for making this happen.

Give the gift of Community Supported Theatre (or take it yourself!)

2009-12-03T16:42:00.004-05:00

Just a few weeks left to sign up for the CST's pilot season
...or to give a unique gift to the theatre lover in your life

Stolen Chair's Community Supported Theatre (CST), the first membership group of its kind in the country, will continue accepting new members until Dec 31, 2009.

You can join the CST today or purchase it as a unique, experiential holiday gift for friends and family.

For less than the price of two Broadway tickets, the theatre (or science) lover in your life will receive eight months of arts and entertainment, including:

Exclusive access to every stage of Quantum Poetics' development, from its creative retreat to its world premiere; they will see first-hand how a new play is born.
Members-only panels, lectures, and discussions with some of the country's hottest scientific writers and thinkers, who will reveal the secrets of how their universe(s) and brain work.
A chance to participate in our members-only science fair and to build that exploding volcano their parents forbade in 4th grade.
Their name on the guest list at New York's most scientastic Valentine's Day party: "Atoms and Eves"
An invitation to join the CST's online social network filled with exclusive Stolen Chair and Quantum Poetics content: a feedback forum, video, photos, podcasts, and more.
Field trips to NYC's most exciting science-themed cultural offerings.
A discounted year-long subscription to New Scientist magazine, a free copy of the play anthology, Playing with Canons, andcomplimentary wine & treats at all CST events.

Don't forget: there are SIX affordable (and tax-deductible) ways to give the gift of membership!

Individual, Group, Student/Artists, E-membership, Corporate Membership, Installment Payments

Cheating on Stolen Chair's blog

2009-11-23T16:49:00.003-05:00

As part of the $20k award Stolen Chair received from The Field's Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists grant, I will be occassionally blogging over on their site, chronicling the rise (and hopefully not the fall!) of the country's first Community Supported Theatre (CST).

Here's my latest post: "What a year of market research didn't teach me"

Enjoy!

(And stay tuned there and here and on Twitter for up-to-the-minute developments on the CST and Quantum Poetics.)

A letter from me. To you.

2009-11-12T19:34:00.002-05:00

Dear friends of Stolen Chair,

You've been getting quite a few publicity blasts from us lately, but I wanted to take a moment to share some thoughts with you sans flashy graphics and HTML code. (Before I begin, though, I do want to remind you that you only have a few days left to register for our Community Supported Theatre before the Nov 22 launch event.)

Along with the rest of the core company and six incredible collaborators, I've just returned from Stolen Chair's 13th creative retreat where we noodled around with ideas for our 13th original work, QUANTUM POETICS: A SCIENCE EXPERIMENT FOR THE STAGE. For three days we worked together, lived together, and cooked together as we explored a slew of exciting theories from neuroscience and quantum physics. It might sound like serious business, but if you saw our quantum-inspired "Three Little Pigs," you be as tickled as I was.

And, for the first time in Stolen Chair's history, we'd like to invite you to be a part of these experiments. Stolen Chair has just launched the country's first Community Supported Theatre (CST), an innovative new way of connecting theatregoers with theatremakers, and we're now accepting members. On Nov 22, charter members of our CST will kickoff their season with an exclusive live showing of some of the most exciting (and most ridiculous) highlights from our creative retreat. For the eight months after that, CST members will watch each step of the project's development up until its premiere next summer, seeing first-hand how an idea becomes a play. Our members will not only have the opportunity to discuss the work with us at open rehearsals and work-in-progress presentations, but to learn alongside Stolen Chair as we invite some of the country's hottest science writers to come speak to us. (Members will also build exploding volcanos with us at our members-only science fair and dance the night away at our "Atoms and Eves" themed Valentine's Day Party!)

As the director of QUANTUM POETICS, I could not possibly be more exhilarated by the possibility that this work will be developed through collaboration with a circle so much wider than the artists in our creative team. As co-artistic director of Stolen Chair, I am proud that our organization is the first in the country to offer this depth of engagement to our audience. As someone who has faith in theatre's power to bring people together, to challenge our perspectives, and to delight us, I feel so lucky that I'll have the chance to participate in this novel experiment in building a real community comprised of engaged art-makers and art-lovers.

Hope you'll join us! Remember, the party starts Nov 22nd.

To read more and sign up, please visit: http://communitysupportedtheatre.org

If you have any further questions, please email cst[at]stolenchair.org for more info.

Best,

Jon Stancato

Flux considers Community Supported Theatre

2009-10-15T10:50:00.003-04:00

Great post over on Gus' Flux Theatre Ensemble blog and a very interesting discussion ensues. Basically, Gus works to problematize some of Isaac Butler's recent statements over at Parabasis about why theatre shouldn't be "supported" in the context of our new social business model which boldly puts "support" right in the middle of its name. Turns out (as is so often the case), "everything is everything" and the debate is actually just dialogue, but it is an important one that all cultural organizations should probably be having both internally and with their "supporters."

Oh, and http://communitysupportedtheatre.org is now live, though the content will change a lot over the next week.

Oh, and we're compiling a FAQ to eventually live (how's that split feel, Mr. Infinitive?) on that page so if, as Radioshack says, "You've got questions; we've got answers." Free bottle of wine (you arrange NYC pickup) goes to the best suggestion for our FAQ!

Huge, massive, earth-shatteringly good Stolen Chair news

2009-10-13T15:35:00.005-04:00

I apologize for the unfathomably long blog silence but we've been very very busy with this...

After 9 months of research and development funded by an innovation grant from The Field's Economic Revitalization for Performing Arts (ERPA), Stolen Chair has been awarded a $20,000 implementation grant from ERPA to adapt the business model of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) to the theatre.

So...IT'S ALL HAPPENING, FOLKS! We're gonna create the country's first Community Supported Theatre (CST), a development playground/research lab/community of audience-investors who will trace our newest project, Quantum Poetics (A science experiment for the stage), from its first creative retreat to its first public work-in-progress presentation.

You can read about the grant and our plans here and listen to my presentation (at the WNYC Green Space!).

Please tweet this, blog this, facebook this, talk about this at water coolers, and mention it loudly on subways: people interested in becoming charter members of our pilot Community Supported Theatre should visit http://communitysupportedtheatre.com to find out more and drop a line of interest to cst[at]stolenchair.org. We're especially looking for a small group of booster members who will receive highly discounted or free memberships in return for help recruiting other members.

Support indie theatre's fairy godparents!

2009-06-03T18:39:00.004-04:00

I can't say enough about the incomparable Martin and Rochelle Denton, without whose support and encouragement, Stolen Chair (and scores of other indie companies) would not likely be here today.

The Dentons need your help, in much the same way Stolen Chair needed your help a month ago. It's another one of those popularity contest grants; given how many people Martin has published and reviewed, and given how many people depend upon NYtheatre.com as their go-to site for intelligent and thoughtful theatre criticsm, Martin and Rochelle should have no trouble sweeping the proceedings...that is, of course, if YOU vote!!!

Here's the details, straight from the man himself:

Today I write to ask for about 10 minutes of your time to help nytheatre.com and The New York Theatre Experience, Inc., win a grant from Microsoft.

We have entered the "Show Your Impact" Contest, which is sponsored by TechSoup and Microsoft Corporation. The winners of this contest -- there will be three -- will each receive a $5,000 cash grant from Microsoft plus $25,000 in donated software. For a technology-based small nonprofit company like ours, this is a fantastic opportunity! And we believe we have a shot at winning.

To enter the contest, we had to write a "story" about the impact that Microsoft software, which we received via their donation program with TechSoup, has had on our organization and on the community of theatre-goers and theatre-makers we serve.

We now need to get our friends and supporters to go online to the "Show Your Impact" contest website and vote for our submission. So this is where you come in: please follow the link below, register, and vote for nytheatre.com:

http://www.showyourimpact.org/microsoft/gallery

The public voting process ends on Friday, June 5, and then the top vote getters in each category will move on to the finals, to be judged by Microsoft and TechSoup.

Anyone can vote. It will take you a few minutes: the contest rules require that you register (all they ask for is an email address) and also that you vote for a minimum of 3 projects (so you can't just vote for us--you have to pick a couple of other projects in order for your vote to be counted). It's kind of complicated and I'm sorry about that--but if you'll bear with the process and vote, we will be very appreciative!

Our submission is called nytheatre.com. Our submission date is 5/20/2009. Our category is "Optimize Mission Delivery." There can only be one winner per category, so you'll maximize our chance to win by not selecting any other entries in that category.

Please pass this information along to anyone you think would like to help us! Your support is enormously appreciated.

And please take a few moments to read our submission entry, which details some of the work we've done over the past several years to prepare nytheatre.com and our other websites for Web 2.0 and beyond. Your comments and thoughts are welcome!

But the bottom line, once again: please vote for our submission to help us win this grant from Microsoft. Click here:
http://www.showyourimpact.org/nytheatrecom

Read our story, register, and vote for us. Thank you!

Email me if you have questions. Learn more about TechSoup, the great nonprofit organization that has put together this contest, here.

Best,
Martin

The speech that got booed

2009-05-16T13:05:00.004-04:00

So I was one of the five artists on the "cultural entrepreneurs" on the panel at Wednesday's New Economy Smackdown, hosted by The Field & Galapagos. The unedited audio of the entire event is already online. You can read Claudia La Rocco's take on the event here and Morgan von Prelle Pecelli's own panel statement here. Below, however, is the speech I made, a speech which received the event's first boos. The offending statement is in bold and I stand by the remarks even more after hearing how many hackles it raised.

Jennifer asked all to create a soapbox manifesto reflecting on how the current arts economy is affecting us and our work. I struggled to get any thoughts out, because the more I thought about it, the more I realized none of us in this room should be here talking about the arts economy. There is no such thing as an arts economy since non-commercial arts by their very definition don't follow market logic and can't compete in the market place without dependence on non-profit support structures and the government . So we can embrace our role in the margins of the economy and struggle the way that performing artists have struggled since theatre and religion parted ways, or we can model ourselves on the only other two positions left to us in a market-driven economy: as charity (quite like an endangered species) or as community resource (like a neighborhood garden). Well, if we're a charity we should follow the model of other charities: humpback whales don't send out end-of-year asks or write grant applications, so we shouldn't either. We should depend entirely on the goodwill of people who don't want to imagine a world without theatre and therefore raise awareness, funds, and support to ensure we continue to exist. But, I don't want to be a charity, in large part because I don't think our social cause has enough merit to compete with other charities who actually change lives on a grand scale. So, the only round hole we can force our square peg of a "business model" into is as community resource. In this interconnected, digital age, if our art can serve as a meeting place for communities of like-minded individuals to connect, celebrate, and be challenged, then we might find a way of restoring theatre's primacy in people's lives and creating sustainable theatre-making organisms (not organizations).

But, since we are, however, here to debate the "arts economy," I'll add:

Why is there now, why has there been, and why will there always be prime, beautiful, ready to theatricalized real estate sitting vacant for extended periods in all 5 boroughs? If someone can work out insurance, tax deductions, box-office splits, zoning laws, etc so that businesses have a reason to open their doors to artists then we can do what we do best, drive in droves of foot traffic, people with expendable cash some of whom may be looking to rent a new office or storefront. 80% of Stolen Chair's operating budget goes towards space rental. Knock out that cost and we can pay our artists not only living wages, but competitive ones.

As producer of a company made up of people whose survival jobs are freelance and often paid hourly, I am sick of arranging (or trying to arrange) quid-pro-quo deals that will help Stolen Chair the organization save money at the expense of the individuals who are Stolen Chair. In most cases, we'd be better off adding an extra-hour to our work-weeks and donating that money to the company.

We need the next generation of gatekeepers or, in the very least, our current crop needs to start communicating with each other and rethink what it means to support "emerging" art. The supply of indie theatre in New York will always outstrip the demand, but by presenting, critiquing, and funding the same two dozen artists, our gatekeepers stifle innovation and creative movements the same way corporate monopolies do.

So. Yeah. Boos. (And then some cheers in response to the boos.).

I obviously wouldn't work eleventy-billion "survival" jobs and put trillions of hours into each Stolen Chair show if I didn't believe in the fundamental power of art to transform lives and feel strongly that the choice to wake up and dedicate ones' life to art is nothing short of radical and revolutionary. That said (and perhaps this is due to Stolen Chair's recent experience as a Jenzabar Foundation finalist alongside far more vital social missions), I think that if art tries to compete with "real" charities toe-to-toe, we will not only lose, but feel terrible for entering the fray. So let's pull ourselvs out of this terrain entirely, rediscover art's special place, and develop compelling and innovative ways for people to use the power of their pursestrings to ensure that we continue to exist.

It's out of our hands now

2009-05-11T15:36:00.003-04:00

Thanks to all who helped edge Stolen Chair's social media proposal into the final round of the Jenzabar Foundation's Social Media Leadership competition. Here's their official announcement:

The Foundation would like to reiterate how impressed we were with all of the submissions from the 15 organizations that nominated their campaigns. The following FIVE organizations received the most votes, and thus, are the finalists for The Jenzabar Foundation Soical Media Leadership Award:
-The Stolen Chair Theatre Company
-Dream Activist
-Texas Friends and Allies Against the Death Penalty
-Forge
-The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
The winner will be selected from this pool of campaigns and will be announced by the Foundation on Wednesday, May 13th.

A social media manifesto (or...how to help Stolen Chair win $3,000 with 5 seconds of your time)

2009-04-24T17:45:00.002-04:00

One of the major auxillary components of Stolen Chair's Community Supported Theatre business plan is the comprehensive web of collaborative social networking tools we'll be using (and, in some cases, already use) to enrich communication between our company and our audience. When The Jenzabar Foundation announced a call for such proposals for their $3,000 Social Media Leadership Award, we quickly drafted and submitted a summary of our social media outreach programs.

Good news: Our proposal made it to the semi-finals.

Even gooder news: You can be the vote that brings us to the finals (and the $$$!). The winner is the organization which reels in the most comments on their proposal.

You know how tough times are for artists right now. Help Stolen Chair expand our programs (and our reach) by writing a few encouraging words at the bottom of our proposal (you don't even have to read it!). The race is tight right now and your one vote could be the deciding factor which shapes our entire season. Whether you have seen our work or not (heck: whether you have heard of us or not!), I hope you'll take the time to post a few words here: http://thejenzabarfoundationblog.com/2009/04/09/the-stolen-chair-theatre-company/

(Comments take at least one business day to be moderated before Jenzabar posts them)

THANKS SO MUCH!!! (And please spread this around!)

Physics & Failure: Lessons for a Laboratory Theatre

2009-04-10T16:02:00.007-04:00

In our attempts to devote even more time to the laboratory process in 2009, we have already started research on Stolen Chair's newest original work, Quantum Poetics, even though we probably won't even be thinking about scheduling the first creative retreat until this fall (once we have started the CST). Since the piece will draw inspiration from recent advances in neuroscience and theoretical physics, research has been both challenging and thrilling. Fortunately, writers like Brian Greene and Jonah Lehrer have made these fields so accessible that I find I'm not only able to grasp this heady material, but actively salivate over the possibility of theatricalizing it. And unlike previous Stolen Chair projects for which the research was primarily limited to books and movies, I'm able to devour tons of information on Quantum Poetics via podcasts!

But I digress. I'll post about my research highs and multiple universes and phantom limbs and Occum's razor and biofeedback and eleventy billion other titillating tidbits in the future. Right now I want to talk a bit about failure. I've been listening to Brian Greene and Heidi Schellman speak about some pretty far out advances in both particle physics and cosmology and they both chatted with glee about failure in their fields. There is a certain school of thought which holds that all of science's major advances came not from decades of methodical research but from accidental discoveries that opened up entirely new vistas of possibility. While neither Greene nor Schellman were speaking to that specifically, they were crystal clear that they'd be absolutely thrilled if they (or someone else) discovered something which contradicted their lives' work and research.

I know that two of Stolen Chair's most adventurous (and I think successful) works, Kinderspiel and Theatre Is Dead and So Are You, shared very little in common except for the several month-long periods in each when we were absolutely clueless about where the project was going. We began each of these projects much like theoretical physicists, using the studio as our Large Hadron Supercollider. In Kinderspiel, we knew that there was something rich to be found in the collision between Weimar-era cabaret and child's play; in Theatre Is Dead, we wanted to smash vaudeville and death together into an unholy hybrid. Aside from the titles (which, oddly, usually come first), we spent several months developing both projects without knowing much more than that.

And: we failed. Daily. Weekly. Monthly. We brought new ideas into the studio each time we met and played with each until we found its dead-end. Lost in a sea of theatrical possibilities, we grew tense and frustrated (and even lost collaborators in both at the height of this confusion). I'd be lying if I didn't say it feels terrible. It feels terrible. Awful. Absolutely rotten to ask a group of game actors to try something out when it's more likely to be yet another idea to toss into the REJECT pile than to lead to any real progress. But it shouldn't be. And, in Stolen Chair's future, it won't be. Because we are damn lucky to have the opportunity to actually experiment before we go ahead and present something as "experimental theatre." We are a laboratory theatre and we should never forget to take that moniker as literally as our scientific brethren do. In the lab, sometimes things explode. Sometimes those explosions are actually the result you're looking for, but, more often than not, those explosions just leave you covered in sticky sulphurous radioactive goo (okay, that's probably not true, but it's such a nice vivid way to visualize failure).

So...I can't wait to begin Quantum Poetics and to savor each and every failure, surrounding Stolen Chair with an army of collaborators who are as excited about the possibility that everything they know about theatre and about themselves as artists might be redefined by what we discover.

Announcing Quantum Poetics, coming 2010 to a theatre near you (if you live near NYC)

2009-03-26T18:07:00.002-04:00

Surprise surprise. It seems we only get our project pitches in anything resembling articulate shape when a grant deadline forces us to. This means, of course, that the project pitch is written in "grant-ese," a special language which requires four times as many words to communicate simple ideas. Like most grant apps for new Stolen Chair projects, the ideas are at the earlist, most zygotic stage; we won't have our heads firmly wrapped around this piece until 3 months after our first retreat and our first retreat won't be until October.

Science tells us what is true. Art tells us how those truths make us feel. Science is a building's structure. Art is the wallpaper. Science, we tend to think, will eventually know so much about the universe, perhaps art will no longer be necessary to describe human feeling. Recently, however, the fundamental truths of science have been discarded faster than last year's fashions, and new discoveries in neuroscience and theoretical physics have come to paint a chaotic, pluralistic vision of an unknowable world unrecognizable to our great-grandparents, but quite familiar to artists who have presented such fractured perspectives for decades. If art tells us the truth, then maybe science confirms the truth's truthiness? Or maybe: there is no objective, stable "truth," and scientists and artists are together joined in a journey to understand an ever-shifting reality. As science writer Jonah Lehrer writes, "Science needs art to frame the mystery, but art needs science so not everything is a mystery." In QUANTUM POETICS, Stolen Chair's 13th original work, we will fuse our experiments as a laboratory theatre with the experiments of chemistry, physics, genetics, and neuroscience laboratories around the world, guided by the question: how can theatre adapt recent scientific discoveries to the stage, creating a unique dramaturgy and performance style that speaks holistically to our contemporary human experience?

Since QUANTUM POETICS will be created over the course of our entire 2010 season--virtually doubling Stolen Chair's developmental time--we're still discovering the contours of the project. What we do know, however, is it will, like all Stolen Chair pieces, be developed by our resident company in a process likened to an "aesthetic supercollider" (Leonard Jacobs, NY PRESS), a collaboration further enriched through interviews with reknowned physicists, neuroscientists, geneticists, and chemists. We hope QUANTUM POETICS, our most far-reaching creation to date, may serve as a stepping stone for dialogue between the artistic and scientific communities, inviting each to draw inspiration from the other.

Puppet playlist recap and London street performers

2009-03-20T08:51:00.010-04:00

On March 12, Stolen Chair joined a group of 12 other physical theatre artists and musicians at the Tank to present pieces inspired by the work of Tom Waits (as part of the first edition of Puppet Playlist). When we first found out about the event, we were still in the thick of Theatre Is Dead but not yet in the thick of Quantum Poetics (pitch coming soon) or the possible Man Who Laughs remount (yes, you heard it here first!). So, as devout Waits fans, we knew we wanted to participate but also knew the whole thing would sort of be a fun one-off for us. As a company which spends 6 months developing new work, doing a little w.i.p. thrown together in a weekend is somewhat out of character, but we'll also take any opportunity to play.

We started working with the music, splicing together a 6 minute piece out of Waits' "Temptation" and "I Don't Wanna Grow Up." We found ourselves continually fighting the desire to craft some sort of literal narrative (being tempted to grow up) which the music could score. It is so so so so easy (and, forgive the pun, tempting) to fall into literal storytelling when songs have lyrics. Music videos always struggle with this. Do you offer a video which tells the story of the song, tells a completely different story (which will either complement the song or, in the very least, not divert attention from the song), or present a series of images which create a resonance chamber in which the sonic images and figurative language can bounce around. We decided to do the latter, structuring it so that there was still a clear frame for the audience to grab onto (Noah's "realistic" child-like character encountering a series of arresting and bizarrely erotic images staged as automaton machines by David and Liza).

What emerged was definitely the most abstracted theatrical vignette we've created since Portrait of Dora As a Young Man in 2002. And you know what? We had a damn good time doing it! I wish we could have rehearsed it more (and, um, at least once on stage) before running it for an audience, but people seemed to dig it (a few strangers coming up to compliment the actors after the show). This was the 4th Stolen Chair event in 2 years (the Kinderspiel staged reading, the Kill Me remount at the Brick, and Theatre Is Dead being the others) which was truly "unapologetic." We had so fully let go of any fear that the audience was not going to "follow" us that we ended up creating a much more compelling event for the audience to "follow" than if we had let ourselves worry if we were going to be liked. Moral of the story: there really is an audience for anything, and if one creates and present work with total conviction and faith in its worth (or simply its status as an experiment), one will please far more crowds than if one tries to craft a crowd pleaser. May seem like a no-brainer, but it's one we routinely re-discover. :)

Speaking of pleasing crowds, Kiran and I had the good fortune to catch a remarkable street performance in Covent Garden, London last week. They were just a pair of middle aged British clown jugglers, but as we sat there for 20 minutes on the cold pavement, I learned more about theatre than a semester worth of classes could have taught me. Some lessons learnt:

Wear the structure on your sleeve...and then play! The second thing these clowns did was introduce the unicycles (pictured at right) which would serve as the routine's finale. Of course, they prolonged and toyed with us for over 20 minutes before delivering the promised finale. This playful dramaturgy takes Chekhov's gun theory ("If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.") one step further, and, I think, is especially vital for companies like Stolen Chair who tend to devise unfamiliar theatrical structures. Show the audience the unicycles so they know where you're taking them. (And don't take too damn long to get there!)
Define failure on your own terms. The clowns told us to "Boo" loudly whenever they dropped a club or ball. They then mocked us when we didn't "Boo" loudly enough. This transformed what should be a net energy loss (the failure of a routine) into an energy gain (audience shouting loudly at the stage in complicity with the performers)
It's okay to remind the audience that they are watching live theatre and not television (and that live theatre is always an interactive event).

That last bullet helped Kiran and me re-realize (for the umpteenth time) that there is one thing that brings together all the theatre we want to make: it is ruthlessly and brazenly theatrical. We don't just want to parade another art form on stage (film, visual art, and literature being three of the most commonly "theatricalized" culprits). And the only thing which really, at the end of the day, separates theatre from these arts is presence: of the actors and of the audience. The former is hard to quantify (though many have tried) beyond the simple existential fact that, yes, the actor is a live human being standing anywhere between 5 inches and 500 feet in front of you (depending on the level of play and the theatre's architecture, of course).

But the audience? That's simple. They are simply there. You don't need to train them to be extra-there. But you do have to encourage/demand/invite/bribe/threaten/tempt them to be an actual theatrical audience (one which implicitly accepts and savors the presence of the actor and the interactive phenomenon that is live theatre) or you can let them keep their distance like your actors are projections on a 30' screen, pretty pictures in a frame, or talking books. I'm all for works of art that blur the lines of their genre and all for stealing freely from visual art, film, and literature (just look at Stolen Chair's body of work), but we (by which I mean Stolen Chair) kinda always need to be working to discover new ways of making sure the audience is present with us, not just enjoying us (or...[gulp] actively loathing us).

Playing catch-up after playing hookie

2009-03-09T19:08:00.004-04:00

Long time no post. Sorry 'bout that. I'd love to say that we've been playing hard-to-get or that we were off in exotic locals recharging after Theatre Is Dead's successful run (okay: Emily was!), but we've been hard at work in the lab brewing up some exciting plans for the next two years.

While we were maintaining radio silence, Back Stage's national edition published an "Ask a Director" column with yours truly. The question: "How do you deal with a cast of actors that have different processes and techniques?" Here's the tease:

"I don't really care if they're processing past traumatic memories or doing their taxes, as long as they can execute the score with precision and presence."

Thanks to Sarah Kuhn to asking such an important and provocative question.

Not content to read myself with the pesky restrictions of word counts, I was given free rein to run my mouth further in an interview at NYtheatre.com's NYtheatre Voices, where I detail, for the first time, Stolen Chair's plans to adapt the business model of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) to laboratory theatre. This is the proposal that landed us the ERPA grant we keep talking about. If you want to read even more about this, you can head over to ERPA's blog and read about the adventures that Aviva and I had visiting New Paltz yesterday and interviewing farmers.

New newsletter will be out tomorrow and we have a wee little gig on Thursday eve (Puppet Playlist @ The Tank) if you can make it.

Sharing the spotlight with Shrek

2009-01-26T23:35:00.007-05:00

After seven days atop the green ogre on NYtheatre.com's Picks of the Week, we now find ourselves beside the beast (and his Broadway show) on Back Stage's list of current critics' picks. Though I am generally inclined to enjoy the writing of anyone praising me or my work, I am quite fond of Ronnie Reich's playful and thoughtful exegesis of the play. Here's our "pull" quote:

This production from Stolen Chair Theatre Company is more than irreverent. It ruthlessly and riotously dispenses with notions of respect for the deceased...But while proclaiming theatre dead, the show's sharp, thoughtful writing, high-impact direction, and skillful performances justify its preservation.

There are only 3 performances left and two of them are just shy of sold-out so...um...HURRY!!!

(Oh, and I never linked to Aaron Riccio's lovely review over at That Sound's Cool. Here it is!)

The Enfant Terrible weighs in

2009-01-24T01:22:00.003-05:00

One of Stolen Chair's most favorite people (so much so that we asked him to interview us for a radio profile last year), Mssr Ian W. Hill of Gemini Collision Works just posted his review of Theatre Is Dead. Here's a tease:

I want to state immediately, [it] was TERRIFIC and you SHOULD SEE IT. It's about death, and it's very very funny, though maybe you need to be able to find the various thoughts about death both very funny and very disturbing (often at the same time) to appreciate it -- I found myself laughing a lot, but also torn and slightly upset by remembrances of human deaths I have witnessed in person or been near to, memories of the funeral home run by my grandparents and the bodies I saw there (which generally gives me a cold, dispassionate eye to mortal remains and cremains), and the increased sense of mortality that has hit me the last few years. A good mix of emotions for a show to give you...

Though he has many other insightful (and valuably critical) things to say about the piece (he has a special perspective as the grandson of a mortician), I especially appreciated the way in which he grappled with a frustrating review we received:

One reviewer somewhat dismissed the show as having been done before, and better, by some famous names (a dicey reason for critically dismissing anything, really; at a certain point you can dismiss anything, including masterpieces, as treading ground covered by earlier masterpieces)

Well, while this production may fall short of Ionesco and Beckett's greatest works, it's a damn good time and there are only 4 performances left. Tonight (1/24) is almost sold out but there are still some tix available for closing weekend. Get 'em quickly!

PICK OF THE WEEK and oversold Saturday night

2009-01-19T13:44:00.005-05:00

The run is half a performance away from being half over, but this is where the fun really starts. We played to a teeming mass of people on Saturday night, adding seats wherever fire hazards would allow. Good press is rolling in here and here and there is more press (which may be good or bad) coming in next week over here, here, and here. And...Stolen Chair is uber-psyched to be named as NYtheatre.com's PICK OF THE WEEK for the fourth time in four years. Here is the blurb:

THEATRE IS DEAD AND SO ARE YOU: This macabre vaudeville about death is not for everybody, but it's a terrific adventurous work by Stolen Chair Theatre Company featuring impressive production values, broad dark comedy, and great performances. PICK OF THE WEEK!

What are you waiting for? Buy your tickets now (and use coupon code BLOG1 for a special discount, valid this weekend only)! I'm pretty darn sure we will be turning people away closing weekend so please be sure to buy your tix in advance...

First rave for Theatre Is Dead...

2009-01-15T23:42:00.003-05:00

This just in from one Mr. Martin Denton:

A macabre and weirdly off-kilter cabaret that revels in death: in looking this greatest of taboos in the face and then throwing a custard pie at it..smart, stylish, and virtuosic, deconstructing what bothers us about the Final Rest by throwing as many theatrical gimmicks as possible at it. If the opportunity to see one of indie theater's smartest and most adventurous young companies tangle with the Unknowable tantalizes you, then a visit to the Connolly may well be in order.

Read the full review here.

And then...go buy tickets here. Use coupon code BLOG1 for $14 tix.

Oh, and in case you missed it, we launched the new stolenchair.org yesterday. Still in beta but go check it out now and email your comments to aviva [at] stolenchair.org. Need more incentive: the production photos from Theatre Is Dead await you there...

Wow. Well, that was nice!

2009-01-10T12:55:00.004-05:00

First preview of Theatre Is Dead and So Are You last night. I don't think I've ever heard laughter like that in a theatre before (and I'm not sure I'll ever hear it again so I'm mighty glad I got this chance!). It got to the point where the piece's big finale (no spoilers, don't worry!), a 10-min chunk of classical text, was so drenched in audience guffaws that I heard scarcely a word.

That's nice. Real nice.

And now...going into preview #2 we're likely to face an audience that is somewhat more reserved (and I've always found that Saturday audiences tend to be less fired up than Friday crowds. Is it the day of rest which numbs their funny bones?). We may have to find out what this show looks like when the energy only appears to be flowing one-way from stage to house (of course, it never is. whoever invented the phrase "smiling loudly" really hit something!). It's always tempting to try to force an audience to be something it's not. But as one of my acting teachers once said, "If you think your scene partner needs to make a change so that you can solve a problem, then you don't actually understand your problem." In a show that is this shamelessly presentational (actors spend a good 1/8 of the show acting in the house), the audience is our scene partner, and we're going to have to find out what we need to change (perhaps ever so slightly) in ourselves to meet them where they are and travel with them to the deeply (and delightfully) wrong places this piece demands.

Supercheap discounts (w/coupon code FIRST2) are still in effect for tonight. Visit www.theatreisdead.com to buy your tickets ASAP!

Theatre dies tonight!

2009-01-09T10:00:00.003-05:00

tTheatre Is Dead and So Are You opens tonight. Use coupon code FIRST2 for $12 tickets. Free wine will be flowing.

Buy tix and find out more at www.theatreisdead.com.

See you there!

Coolest grant ever!

2008-12-11T00:36:00.003-05:00

Good news for the Chairs! We've just been given permission by The Field to announce our acceptance into the Rockefeller-funded "Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists (ERPA)" grant. Here's the skinny:

Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists (ERPA)
If it's broke, fix it!

ERPA grows from the premise that the traditional non-profit model of fundraising does not support the majority of performing artists in New York City. This lack of financial solvency leads to early departures from New York, early departures from art-making, and ultimately, a diminishment of New York’s vibrancy and vitality. ERPA aims to combat these challenges by asking artists to conceive dynamic solutions for financial stability, and giving them the tools, resources, and cash to help develop their ideas. As its name implies, ERPA aims to thus revitalize performing artists’ and arts organizations’ economic lives for long-term impact.

In 2008 more than 350 community stakeholders joined us for community dialogues (aka Invention Sessions) across New York City. Moving into 2009, The Field invests in seven artists who brought forth innovative ideas to generate new revenue streams from their art for their art...

Congratulations to Kahlil Almustafa, Nick Brooke, Rachel Chavkin, Connie Hall, JoAnna Mendl Shaw, Jon Stancato, and Caroline Woolard.

These seven artists will be paid $5,000 to research and develop their projects under the auspices of the ERPA entrepreneurial lab. In the fall of 2009 their ideas-in-progress will be presented and publicly adjudicated to receive up to $25,000 in additional project implementation funds.

More than 100 ERPA applications were received and adjudicated by a panel of veteran arts and business leaders, including: June Choi, Shawn Cowls, Corey Dargel, Trajel Harrel, Jaki Levy, Kristin Marting, and Heather Rees. ERPA projects were selected based on their potential vision, impact, relevance, and viability.

And here's my proposal:

Jon Stancato/Stolen Chair proposes a way to adapt the business plan followed by most Community Supported Agricultures (CSA). Like the CSA model, Stolen Chair hopes to build a membership community which would provide ‘seed’ money for the company’s development process and then reap a year’s worth of theatrical harvests.

You can read about the other thrilling proposals on the ERPA website. We have an exciting 9 months ahead of us. Please contact me if you'd like to hear more about the proposal or jump on board and help make this crazy idea a reality. And...um...watch this space for further updates as plans begin to take shape.

Real skuls are too distracting?

2008-12-09T14:26:00.004-05:00

The Chairs and I have been so busy trying to make this play that there hasn't been much time to write about the play, but I couldn't resist posting this link sent in by Kiran's father. Apparently, the RSC was bequeathed an actual skull to use in their production of Hamlet but the audience was paying more attention to the skull than the bard so...

Read the full story here.

In other news, tickets are now on sale for Theatre Is Dead and So Are You. Get 'em while they last...

Born to die

2008-11-16T01:43:00.007-05:00

Ah, now that Vi is back in rehearsals full time again, it looks like we'll have a steady stream of rehearsal photos. Good. We played with some really fun/sick lazzi today:

Lazzo of Sicilian mourning (which I made Liza do 5 times. She thinks I was trying to explore different "variations." Nope. Just damn funny. Wanted more more more.)
Lazzo of the "Oriental" Seance
Lazzo of the Spirit Possession
Lazzo of death by consumption (picture above. Alexia's long sinewy limbs and dancerly control, not to mention her wide eyes, transform these classic death scenes from great drama into campy high art.)
Lazzo of death by smothering
Lazzo of death by poisoning
Lazzo of a toddler's death
Lazzo of the Dance of the Seven Veils (picture below. Rainbow, who has never seen the classic burlesque Dance of the Seven veils was asked to improvise one. I could have laughed my way through at least another 20 veils)

After rehearsal (and an exciting design meeting), Kiran and I devised a system to rank our lazzi (and their accompanying texts) in terms of their wrongness. Now, those of you who have followed Stolen Chair's work over the past 6 years perhaps know that Kiran and I have a special affection for the wrong. We like to break rules. Is this iconoclasm for its own sake? Maybe. But what's so bad about that? When you smash all the statues in the temple you find out what, if anything, is still worth having faith in. And honestly, if these (metaphorical) statues were really meant to be invulnerable, a couple of kooky artists couldn't shatter them so easily.

So, in an attempt to wrest our humanity and subjectivity from the monolithic pages of On Death and Dying, from the late-Victorian discomfort with corporeality, and perhaps worst of all, from the Judeo-Christian (and later Cartesian) soul-body schisms, we're trying to push past our own comfort zones and...well...do the "unthinkable" around, to, and with "dead" bodies (which, of course, are fully alive actors performing deadness: more on "dead drag" in a future post).

And how does this have any more artistic merit than dead baby jokes? Well, if you have any tolerance for dead baby jokes (God bless them!), I imagine it's rare that you are actually visualizing a real baby (let alone one that you have known, loved, etc) being processed in blenders, falling out of trees, getting fetal alcohol syndrome, etc. Completely disconnected from any social realities (our real fears of infant mortality, for example), these jokes titillate on a purely intellectual level with a baby-shaped-symbol serving as a placeholder for all of the grotesque abuse. We laugh at the transgression because we are smart enough to know that it is transgression. The dead baby jokes point to the taboo and let us share a laugh at its expense, somehow reaffirming the taboo's validity in the process. Yes yes, it is wrong to put babies in blenders or to even think about doing that.

Something about theatricalizing these taboos, though, is able to make the transgression seem more real. The human body, live on stage in front of you: you can't replace that with a baby-shaped-symbol. This is why the dead baby scene in the Scottish play can be so very chilling; we have been asked to accept this baby (or rag doll or bunraku puppet or whatever) as a real baby and suddenly it becomes very hard to laugh at the unspeakable violence done to it. But maybe, just maybe, if you repeat that scene a few dozen times or score it with "Hit me, baby, one more time," you can pull it just far enough into the realm of the ridiculous that it not only still possesses its visceral wrongness but also gives us the distance to examine that viscera and say: why do I instinctively react this way? To paraphrase James Kincaid in Child Loving, visceral reactions love to masquerade as untutored, universal, and otherwise bio-evolutionary-psychological "reals." More often that not, however, these so-called "pure" reactions are as socially constructed as contemporary norms of beauty. Now, that said, humans are social creatures who spend their days processing the world through social constructs so we're certainly not suggesting that anything we ever do on stage is intended to lead people to negate the belief systems that structure these responses. I guess we just think that we'll all be a lot healthier if we are reminded and reminded often that (most) taboos are as variable as our weather has been this fall.

Died laughing

2008-11-14T15:26:00.011-05:00

Cheeks. Still. Hurting. From. Tuesday's. Rehearsal.

In rehearsal it is often hard to tell if something is absolutely rib-bruisingly hysterical because you have a) discovered a comic moment so pure and undeniable that all audience members will be helpless to escape its contagion or b) found something that will be funny to you and only you because you know the actors very well and/or you are filling in necessary contextual blanks that actually allow the gag to make sense.

Honestly: either way, I left Tuesday's rehearsal feeling like the luckiest guy in the world. I was actually paid (very little, it's true, but still...) to laugh so hard that internal damage was more than likely.

Though these might be famous last words, I think we may have actually tip-toed up to a workable process for Theatre Is Dead. In the past, with the notable exception of The Man Who Laughs (which had no spoken text and was therefore immune to this particular issue), we've struggled to find theatrically viable ways to introduce text into the process. Right now, scene fragments are trickling in as fast as Kiran can write them, and it was important to me that, as we experimented with her text in rehearsal, we didn't lose the commedia-esque stylization and physical comedy vocabulary we have been exploring in November. Usually, we spend a few weeks exploring style-work, add the text in, get paralyzed by psychological analysis of the scripts, and wait for weeks before actors can actually feel enough ownership to begin exploring the scenes in their bodies again. This is no good. There has to be a way to explore style, character, relationships, physical space, and text together without one getting compromised.

I'm hoping that the solution lies in rethinking what the "unit" of work is. In prior shows, when rehearsing a scene, we might work page by page, or french scene by french scene, or by clusters of beats. We may start by staging that unit silently, finding strong actions to communicate the character's objectives. Problem #1 is that these actions are often quite "psychological;" they express the character's mental state but don't necessarily mesh well with the style in which we eventually intend to play. Eventually, we'll layer the text in and on comes problem #2 when the physical actions dull and the actors become statues with scripts in hand.

So, to avoid both problems we've changed the way we draft a scene's realization. Instead of breaking scenes down arbitrarily or by psychological "units," we've tried breaking down in chunks more appropriate to the performance style. As a vaudeville of sorts, the smallest unit of rehearsable action in Theatre Is Dead is an "act" (Not as in, "Act 1: Scene 3" but as in a "magic act"). Instead of viewing an entire scene as an "act" unto itself, we're breaking it up into many different smaller "acts" which we are, in the tradition of commedia dell'arte, calling "lazzi." So in Tuesday's rehearsal we rehearsed "Lazzo of the Jacket," in which Dave's character tries to switch jackets with a corpse. Before we even showed him the text of the scene in which this lazzo would appear, Dave improvised the given circumstances of the bit. Because it was broken down as an "act," and not a "unit" of psychological thought, the same stylistic rules applied: exaggerated physicality, complicity with the audience, clown logic, etc.

What Dave created through his improvisation was directly usable in the scene itself once we added text. The action doesn't "mickey-mouse" the text because, unlike the actions that usually emerge from our silent scenework, it was not created to reveal hidden subtext; Dave's "Lazzo of the Jacket" was created specifically to amuse the audience. In this model it is up to playwright, dramaturg, and director to lead the actor to lazzi that will, when complemented with text, create complexity (or at least, excess), character, and humorous juxtaposition.

I guess the simple moral from all of this is: each aesthetic demands a drafting style befitting its ends. You can't create a sculpture if you start with brush and palette. Further, the tools you'll eventually use to shape the marble or clay or chickenwire or whatever will determine not only the final aesthetics but how those aesthetics affect the receiver of the work. If you're hunting for new aesthetics and new responses, sometimes you need to invent (or repurpose) new tools, new materials.

Who knows if the seeds of these thoughts will be of any use to us in future projects. Life in the lab is always interesting: experimental drug X may work on patient Y but not on patient Z. But something will work for patient Z; you just need the time and the resources to figure out what that might be...

For my next trick...

2008-11-14T13:48:00.000-05:00

...I will make a press release appear out of thin air.

Poof.

New show, new process

2008-11-01T17:55:00.005-04:00

As with each new Stolen Chair collective creation, Theatre Is Dead and So Are You, presents us with a radically new rehearsal challenge, one which our past productions have prepared us for only insofar as they have helped us build a language to talk about what's working and what's not. Stepping into the lab today with Stolen Chair veterans Alexia, Liza, David, Emily, and Kiran, all I really knew with any conviction was that I wanted to push our characterizations to stylized grotesques and I wanted to use elements of Commedia dell'Arte to test and develop bits that will eventually become "acts" in our vaudevillian funeral.

I've been working with Alexia and David for more than 4 years now and Liza for over 2. Cackled my ass off though as they surprised me again and again and again today. We spent the first half of rehearsal attacking character from a few different angles: from prose descriptions, from photographs, outside-in, inside-out, upside-down and everything in between. Tried to capture it all on video but they had the nerve to let their impulses take them out of frame. How dare they!

After lunch (during which I decided that my clothes just didn't have enough black bean sauce on them), we came back to lazzi and concetti, some fun throwbacks to my Commedia training. What's pretty funny here, though, is that I think this developmental process will more closely mirror Commedia training than our masked Commedia dell'Artemisia. As of this moment, I imagine most of the elements that will eventually find their way into the script and onto the stage at the Connelly this January will begin their lives as improvised Commedia-esque scenarios. While Stolen Chair actors have always collaborated intensely on the playwriting and directing processes of our productions, offering compositions to create plots, physical worlds, kinesthetic dynamics and more, Kiran has never had the opportunity to script with quite so much support from improvising performers and the only other project on which I've been able to cull my staging from moments of actorly inspiration has been Kinderspiel.

Theatre is dead. Long live theatre.

Take our sweet-@ss time to die!

2008-10-27T13:03:00.008-04:00

For those that have been curious about what Theatre Is Dead and So Are You might actually be, our description now has a little more depth than the previous talking points ("Um...it's got death...and...uh...vaudeville?). As is so often the case, it was our desperate attempt to meet a grant deadline that forced us to fall in line. Below is the project description we pitched which, because this was a production design grant, is actually 1 part Stancato to 3 parts Bengali (stir, garnish with pineapple wedge). I think, however, that it paints a clear picture of the world we're trying to create. After you read the text, you should definitely click over to some incredible vaudeville photography that Aviva dug up. Rehearsals start this weekend and I am very very excited.

The Theatre is Dead and So Are You is a funeral for the stage in 12 acts. A ragtag bunch of variety veterans are laying to rest their MC and impresario and doing so for the world to see. They'll be performing his funeral live on stage, travelling from city to city, until such time as his body is too decomposed to make the proceedings pleasant. Their "eulogies" are performed à la classic variety, each taking its own deadly turn in style or content as they celebrate the life and death of their dearly departed dead dead dead friend. Even in their joyous performance, a spectre looms as each knows they've all been exposed to the fatal disease that killed their MC: Life (or is it Theater?). As part of Stolen Chair’s ongoing mission to address theatre’s continuing vitality in a world dominated by film, this piece will also ask the nearly century-old question: is theatre a dead art and if so, what makes us continue to make and attend it?

The world of this piece is one of joy in (de)composition. We will explore how, as things fall apart, they can be recombined into new forms and creations. Inspired by the Dia de los Muertos, we will celebrate death as a source of renewal, an escape from one dream into another even more fantastical. We imagine a classic Vaudevillian variety stage that is full of the detritus of production - visual evidence of what happens when closed plays go away to die. Our proscenium space will be draped with old, once glittering fabrics. A rich red curtain, when pulled aside, will reveal masks and puppets large and small that grin ghoulishly out of the shadows. Our players will explore the catacombs of an old prop storage where the caskets and shrouds contain the forgotten bits of productions now past their relevance to any audience. A testament to the transience of live performance, these objects have been lost to the memory of anyone who once knew what they were for. Inspired by the creepy magic of the inert but once alive, the players will clear out the space, leaving us with a totally empty unadorned theatre. By achieving a truly “dead” space, we will make room for new creative life.

Throughout the following non-linear, vaudeville, variety event, the audience is in for a raucous immersive experience using not only the stage, but the floor, the balcony surrounding them from above, and hidden areas that can be heard but not seen, just as Artaud might have wanted. The objects from the opening of the piece will reappear, ingeniously used by the actors in ways wewill develop in rehearsal, combined in designs that reveal new and unexpected harmony and imagery. Various objects will be strung up to utilize the full volume of the space. Some will be thrown over the balcony to dangle above the audience or the stage before we haul them back up. What kinds of objects will they be? Our collaborative design and rehearsal process will answer that question over the coming weeks and months, but it is certain that symbols of death will abound: skulls, dead flowers, rotting fruit, black fabrics, candles, religious idols, masks.

We will reveal the variety acts (and the accompanying magical reconfigurations of space) by closing and opening a big red tab curtain. If possible, additional layers of curtains will allow for multiple depths of reveals, and layers of visual texture. With multiple layers, clever lighting, and choreographed prop and set manipulation, we hope to achieve some Dali-style trompe l'oeil and assemble objects on stage to suddenly synthesize into a form. Perhaps a curtain will frame a piano, an urn of flowers, and some dangling masks to create the image of a giant grinning skull. Supplementary funding from the ____ Foundation would allow us to construct a more visually striking and creatively versatile curtain. It will allow us to commission high-quality fabrics and an appropriate rigging apparatus (from a supplier such as Rose Brand) to implement tab lift effects to selectively reveal parts of the playing area. A well-made and well-rigged heavy curtain acquired with the _______ Foundation would complement the Connelly Theater’s grand proscenium arch (and the stamped tin carved Greek masks that adorn it) to create a look of a classic turn-of-century music hall or vaudeville house. While a homemade single tab curtain of inexpensive material will serve the most basic functional needs of this piece and our space, additional funding from the _________ Foundation will give us the resources to procure a set of multiple well-rigged, attractive, and heavier curtains, allowing us to take the visuals of this beyond the functional and to create a striking physical world for the players and for the audience.

The other essential design component of this piece will be a collection of coffins. A grand coffin will sit center stage holding the corpse of the Vaudevillians’ deceased leader, opened and closed as his lifeless body is exhumed and used in the variety acts. Moreover, the actors will make the entrances and exits rolled on in coffins and coffins will serve as central accessories for many of the acts. A coffin designed for this project would need to do several things. It must roll both horizontally and vertically. It must support human weight. There must be multiple ways to get into and out of it. With our existing resources, we can create a simple pine box that meets these needs. With support from the _____ Foundation we can actually construct ornate coffins which carry the significance and gravity of the coffins audience members have seen at funerals. Additionally, this funding would enable us to build “trick” coffins designed to enhance the vaudevillian acts themselves. Perhaps a saw-the-assistant-in-half trick, or a never-ending clown-car entrance of corpses. Maybe a coffin that opens unexpectedly on its own at inappropriate times. With our current budget, we plan to develop vaudeville acts that do not rely on such a “trick” coffin. If granted support from the ______ Foundation, however, we would use our remaining development and rehearsal time (during the month of December) to generate new and more exciting choreography that can interact with the more elaborate and customized coffins.

Stolen Chair develops each new piece collaboratively: text, performance style, and design emerge organically together over the course of the rehearsal and developmental process. The Theater is Dead and So Are You is in its earliest phases of creation, and as such we don't yet know in what direction the piece will go. Our visual concepts for the piece, however, are beginning to take shape, and we welcome all opportunities to bring them to a more fully realized level of development.

Logo contest: $$$ & wine

2008-10-07T15:53:00.001-04:00

This from Liza Green, our director of Marketing:

Stolen Chair Theatre Company (aka Stolen Chair) announces LOGO DESIGN CONTEST.

Calling all graphic designers, Stolen Chair is in search of a new logo. Ours is no longer a fit for our growing indie theatre company, and we are holding a design contest to find our next image. The winner will receive $200, a case of wine and tickets for our 2009 season. We will be accepting logo submissions until Oct 13, 2008.

About Us:

The Stolen Chair Theatre Company is a critically-acclaimed award-winning collaborative theatre laboratory dedicated to the theft, recycling and re-examination of historical performance styles, and to the creation of visually stunning and uniquely contemporary work where the earnest and
ironic happily co-exist. Find out more and check out our old logo at www.stolenchair.org

What we’re looking for in the logo design:

* object and/or text based
* clean/modern
* can stand on its own
* scalable (should look good on business cards and on t-shirts)
* easily change color scheme
* no human figures
* include company name: Stolen Chair

Ideas that we'd like our logo to convey:

* delightfully wrong
* hip
* multilayered
* irreverent
* twisted authenticity
* collective/collaborative

Please submit designs (high res. pdf) before Oct 13, 2008 to logo@stolenchair.org. Students welcome. Sketches welcome. Designs that are not chosen will be destroyed. Winner will be notified by November 1, 2008.

And...we're back!!! Summer round-up.

2008-08-03T06:32:00.011-04:00

Whoah. Not a single posting since Kiran's scripts for Kill Me Like You Mean It and Kinderspiel were published (click here to purchase). So, what's happened since then? Nice run of Kill Me at the Brick Theater's Film Festival: A Theater Festival. With only two performances, the piece didn't get reviewed, but Ian W. Hill said:

It was an excellent rethinking of the show for a different context, but it was hard to put the original version, which I loved, out of mind.
It was reconfigured as a radio play, done entirely upstage behind The Brick's movie screen, with the actors barely visible as occasionally moving forms. Video of the original production was front-projected, mostly out of sync with the scene being played on the microphones (though a fight scene was amusingly synced up with live foley that got more and more absurdist as it went on). But most of the time, the video "burned" as though in a projector and we were looking at a "MISSING REEL" title card as the actors went on with the story (by the end of the show, it had become "MISSING REAL"). It was a beautiful alternate version of the show, but I probably would have liked it better if I hadn't seen the original version.
The actors were all outstanding as voice-over/radio actors, with excellent mic technique.

Overall we had a blast creating and performing this little ditty and we loved working with the Brick again.

Other news: We were also very pleased to see the excellent work of Cameron J. Oro and Barbara Charlene rewarded with Innovative Theatre Awards nods for Leading Actor and Best Choreography for their respective turns in The Accidental Patriot this spring. Best of luck, guys!

Work has already begun for our next production, The Theater Is Dead and So Are You, which is booked for a run at the gorgeous Connelly Theatre in the East Village this January. We were one of the 200 saps who busted our butts for the NEA's New Play Development grant so we actually had to move pretty quickly on creating a preliminary concept for this piece, though I'm sure once we go into retreat this September we'll probably toss much of what we've worked so hard to articulate. At any rate, here's the blurb we're currently working with:

The Theatre Is Dead and So Are You is a vaudevillian meditation on mortality that will stare death in the face and laugh. Audiences will enter an East Village performance space transformed into a Bowery music hall circa 1890, with peanuts for sale and rotten vegetables to throw. As they struggle to understand their mortality, twelve variety verterans burlesque Death, using Vaudeville's unsentimental vernacular to theatricalize one of the most sentimental (and sensitive) subjects.

I'm excited that, like Kinderspiel, this play will allow us to play around with taboo. As we've been sowing the seeds for an image overhaul (new branding, logo, website, etc. more on that coming soon!), Kiran and I have really fallen in love with the phrase "delightfully wrong" as a concise tag for our work, and I think Theatre is Dead will certainly let us work within that rasa (a word I'm borrowing from Richard Schechner who borrowed it from Sanskrit drama to denote a "flavor" of performance). I'm also really curious to see how the non-linear variety structure of the v'ville inspiration will reconcile with the narrative storytelling which we will be weaving through it.

This will be Kiran's twelfth play for the company. Not bad for our 6th season.

The research so far has been downright thrilling. Emily, our intern Rachel, and I are collaborating on it all via a Google Doc so you can sneak a peak at the evolving reading list. It has been such a treat reading vaudeville and burlesque sketches, some of which are well over a century old and hearing them leap off the page. Sure they're hoary chestnuts, but once you get past the groans, they offer sheer delight and, formulaic as they are, they really create a world as anarchic as Stage Kiss' Ludlam-esque, Kill Me's Ionesco-an, and Kinderspiel's Weimar cabaret influences. Here's a fun raunchy bit from classic burlesque (don't think pasties and sequins, think n: A work designed to ridicule a style, literary form, or subject matter either by treating the exalted in a trivial way or by discussing the trivial):

Comic (dressed as young schoolboy): Teacher, can an 11-year old get pregnant.
Teacher: No, that would be ridiculous.
Comic (to a woman dressed as a young schoolgirl): See, honey, I told you we had nothing to worry about.

A couple of features of the above show why v'ville a particularly perfect container to process taboo: [Warning: forthcoming joke analyses are anything but funny]

1) It is amoral, not immoral. It is immoral to use such a set-up to libidinous effect. It is amoral, however, to use such a set-up to delight us by referencing the moral universe in which such a scenario is "wrong" and give us the opportunity to laugh about it without condemning or otherwise participating in the inappropriate content.

2) The gags revolve far more often around that which remains unsaid than that which is explicitly said, unlike more contemporary punchlines which only leave unspoken the cultural norms that make them funny.

A very grotesque modern joke: "What's green and eight inches long? Cribdeath." While it's certainly revelling in taboo humor, it says everything. We laugh because of the punchline's unexpected yet ultimately reasonable revalation. It's inappropriate to laugh about infant mortality, but we've already made ourselves complicit by letting our mind browse through what we thought would be humorous answers to the vague question.

The burlesque above operates a bit differently, confronting taboo in a slightly more oblique manner. It never explicitly says that the two 11-year olds have carnal relations, and, therefore, our complicity is an active choice we have to make as audience members. If we choose to fill-in-those-blanks, we are rewarded with a laugh. It transforms what might be groan-inducing fodder into a sort of conspiratorial pleasure: "Oh, I know what he's talking about! That's very naughty, but very funny." This difference may be more due to the fact that the modern joke is a single question followed by a punchline whereas the burlesque is a series of narrative circumstances culminating in a punchline that refers backs to the "clues" that have been dropped.

...yeesh I must love to read my own words. I suppose I have to make up for nearly two months of a "dark" blog. So...I'll keep going.

Those that know me even a little know that I am viscerally entangled in my own fears of death and dying on a nearly daily basis. It was therefore surprising to pick up Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' On Death and Dying (origin of the 5 stages of dying/grief) and find myself cracking v'ville jokes throughout. I really have to say that this seminal interdisciplinary work of the 1970's is far more dated than any of these v'ville bits, its seriousness begging to be burlesqued. Part of me is excited that I'm able to conduct this theatrical and academic research into death and dying without getting emotional and weird, but the other part of me is displeased that it's so easy to gain critical, safe distance from a topic so intimate and personal.

All right. Off to do more research. I'm going to ask our collaborators to post comments below about their early thoughts on the project and hope some of our other readers will do the same.

The New News: May 24, 2008

2008-05-24T17:30:00.002-04:00

While I have very little idea how this magically seems to happen every time we close a show, we started rehearsing the new version of Kill Me Like You Mean It one day after we struck The Accidental Patriot. And while Kiran was cutting Kill Me down to 45 minutes for the festival gig, she was also revising Kill Me and Kinderspiel, which will be published THIS Thursday by United Stages and launched at a book party at the Drama Book Shop that evening (that's a caricature of Kiran in the Drama Bookshop's display window!).

So: all this news and more awaits you in our last e-newsletter, which you can receive regularly in your inboxes if you sign-up here.

Memorable Highlights of the Theatre Season

2008-05-20T21:47:00.003-04:00

We're on Martin Denton's list of moments to treasure from this year's season:

"12. Stolen Chair Theatre Company mounted two fascinating, ambitious, and entirely different new plays this year, both written by Kiran Rikhye and directed by Jon Stancato: The Accidental Patriot and Kinderspiel."

Our first film review :)

2008-05-16T14:51:00.003-04:00

Nathaniel R. of FilmExperience (a really wonderful film blog!) had this to say:

If you're a movie nut but hanker regularly for live theater only to lament your lack of a Broadway budget --I'm describing myself but surely some of you, too-- I've got a fun suggestion for a night out...It's experimental theater but not self-serious and...I had a lot of fun watching it...The play was self aware enough to point out the awkward and in so doing, make it comedically entertaining...handled with go-for-broke humor and pre-method acting aplomb. I'd recommended this to any of you seeking a different sort of entertainment adventure this weekend...I'm going to be keeping an eye on this theater company from now on.

Read more.

And the clever fellow managed to catch the allusions in our press photos. Check this out:

:)

A couple choice pull quotes from New York Cool

2008-05-16T01:34:00.002-04:00

To be fair, I haven't read the whole review yet, but here are two "leaked" quotes from Bryan Close's New York Cool review of The Accidental Patriot.

"If Stolen Chair didn't already exist, someone would have to invent it...At its best, The Accidental Patriot is happily over-the-top, rollicking fun. (Think The Princess Bride.)"

I'll post a link to the review (and, presumably, read the entire thing) as soon as it is posted.

In the meantime, what are you doing reading this when you could be buying tickets for one of the two remaining performances? Use coupon code BLOG for a special discount...

A rave for the Patriot

2008-05-09T17:41:00.004-04:00

Here's a teaser of what Mister Martin Denton of NYtheatre.com had to say about Stolen Chair's The Accidental Patriot:

[I]n terms of both audacity and entertainment value it's a fine example of indie theater at its best...and a harbinger of still greater things to come from this remarkable troupe.

Read the full review here and buy your tickets now! Just 6 performances left!!!

Interview: Jeff Lewonczyk of Babylon Babylon

2008-04-21T17:29:00.003-04:00

Our next interview in the series building up to Friday's opening of The Accidental Patriot (our new swanky website for the show is up and running) is with Jeff Lewonczyk, creator of Babylon Babylon. What I love about Jeff and his collaborators and Piper McKenzie is that if you asked us to cite our influences, describe our processes, talk about our work, etc, one would think our respective companies would produce wildly similar work. Nope. Not even close. Ain't that grand?

Jeff and I had the pleasure of chatting a bit on the air when we podcasted together a couple weeks back, but we didn't have enough time to delve as deep into the conversation. I thought it'd be nice to continue it here. Enjoy! And go buy your tickets for his show and for ours! If you bring your Babylon Babylon program to the Accidental Patriot (and vice versa), you get in for only $10. Incredible deal, eh? At any rate, here's the interview:

1) Tell us about Piper McKenzie Productions and its founding. How does Babylon Babylon fit in with your overall mission and body of work?

For a company that’s been in existence in one form or another for ten years, we’ve been taking our sweet time crafting a mission statement. Still hasn’t fully come together yet, but phrases like “heightened theatricality,” “fascination with forms and content from the past,” and “the gray area between comedy and seriousness” all come to mind.

As for that founding, it was in 1998 in upstate New York, after my partner (and now wife) Hope Cartelli and I graduated from Bard College. We had produced plays together extracurricularly at Bard, and we never even really had a conversation about whether or not we were going to do it after finishing school, we just kind of started. Our first show was an ensemble-created piece based on vintage comic strips called “Piper McKenzie Presents the Tinklepack Kids in the Great Yo-Yo Caper,” which featured a magical Abraham Lincoln; it’s all been downhill from there.

2) I know that, like Stolen Chair, you and your actors work collectively to generate material. Can you talk us through the origin, from stage to page and back to stage again, of one of Babylon Babylon's scenes?

Well, it’s a bit more of a challenge than I’m ready for to pluck a single scene out of the roiling mass of humanity that is BABYLON BABYLON, but I’ll give you an idea of how the process worked as a whole. Even before we started working on stage, I gave the actors a raft of source material to sift through and start working with – selections from Herodotus, the Bible, the Epic of Gilgamesh, some contemporary scholarship, and much more. While everyone was digesting this, we did a number of improv exercises dealing solely with the mechanics of the Temple of Ishtar, the seat of Babylonian ritual prostitution in which the show takes place. Over the course of the process these exercises got more and more particular, and I started introducing characters that I wanted to see, and then started being more specific about the character distribution until it pretty much bled into casting. After everyone had a role, we did some more improv, exploring in more detail the characters and relationships we’d be bringing to the stage. Throughout it all, I was working on script material both inspired by and often separate from the material we were generating in rehearsal. With everyone’s common grounding in the source material, the world developed as richer and stronger than it would have otherwise.

3)This show has a cast of thousands, live music, and combat. Have you ever played on such an "epic" scale before? Any surprising challenges? Surprising delights?

Every single moment of working with a cast of 31 is filled with surprising challenges – especially when you’re determined to give everyone a handful of interesting moments and not let any of the characters devolve into some sort of vague, mushy “ensemble.” And even though I knew scheduling was going to be a difficulty, well, let’s just say there are difficulties and there are difficulties.

Interestingly, I thought the sexually loaded subject matter was going to cause some leeriness, but everybody was surprisingly game – I suppose that anyone who wouldn’t have been comfortable with that kind of material declined the opportunity to do the show. The surprising delights are hopefully what you’ll be seeing onstage – the fact that everybody came together to put something this huge together with very little time, and even less money, is something that I’m immensely proud of.

4) In your press materials (and in our discussions), you've disclosed Demille's influence on your production? Did Demille's camera work influence the staging in any way?

The DeMille influence was first and foremost a question of scale and content – we were hoping to reproduce the epic historical sweep of one of his productions. It was secondarily a matter of sensibility – throughout the show, there are moments and characters that employ the grandiloquent speech and presentational style that ran through his films. In terms of camera angles, though, it was both impossible and inevitable to approach the show’s visuals on those terms. The audience, you see, is lining both sides of a long, deep stage, and the action plays out on every square inch of it, sometimes isolated into a small scene in some corner, sometimes all at once and all over the stage. With actors sometimes playing right in your face and sometimes at a significant distance, I’ve found that the experience is not unlike watching a movie that cuts between close-ups and long shots. And during the scenes where simultaneous action is taking place all around the stage, the audience gets to be their own camera operators and editors, cutting the shots, panning, making cuts, etc. The show is not the same from any two seats, so we like to think it will reward multiple viewings…

5) As a director, how do you balance homage with pastiche when you take on style work, especially film styles? To what degree do you strive for a purity/accuracy of the forms you borrow? How do you work to get your cast on the same stylistic page?

After a certain point – and a fairly early point it is – I usually end up letting go of all the striving for emulation of style, and let the show start being whatever it is. Rather than forcing the cast into a particular style, I tend to allow the style to develop according to the chemistry of the cast. I have certain quirks and tics and preferences that I’ll try to throw here and there, some of which just occur naturally, but in general all of our shows end up having a different feel, because different groups of people absorb the original materials (and my own direction) differently. In BABYLON, one of the big questions was how modern we should make it – should we have everybody walking around talking in faux-Babylonian cadences and strive for a supposed “authenticity,” or should we go fully contemporary and allow people to use modern slang and references in order to make the world feel more immediate? The result ended up finding a natural balance somewhere between the two. In the end, I like to believe that we go beyond homage and pastiche and create something new and unique out of the material we’ve digested – homage and pastiche being significant tools that we use to get to that point.

6) Where can we find out more about your company and this show?

Why, at pipermckenzie.com, bricktheater.com, or at our show’s blog – the Babylblog Blogbylon – at babylonbabylon.wordpress.com.

7) What are you going to miss about this production when it goes to the great production in the sky? What's next for you and Piper McKenzie? Are you eager to do something on a smaller scale?

Every time I try to conceive of something small it just starts ballooning towards a larger scale, so I don’t know that I can be trusted to accurately answer the last part of this question.

What I will miss most, I think, will be the sense of community we’ve built – when you have this many people in the room at any given time, it becomes more like a functioning mini-society – with all of its pitfalls and rewards – than the typical cast of a show. The Monday after it’s finished I’ll turn to Hope and say, “Why is it so quiet?”

As for what’s next, I’m doing a staged reading of the new play by William Peter Blatty (he of The Exorcist) at The Brick’s The Film Festival: A Theater Festival. I say I want it to be a reading, but it might evolve into something slightly more ambitious. And we’re planning a winter production of a cycle of short plays that take place in an alternate Arctic reality, based on a one-act that was produced at The Brick a few years ago entitled “Granduncle Tells the Children a Story of Kisselsrite During the War.” It will have a cast of only five or six, but I’m wondering if that’s where the smallness is going to end.

The New News: April 11, 2008

2008-04-11T19:27:00.002-04:00

An e-newsletter just went out to our subscribers. You can read it here, but you all really should be on the mailing list so go sign up!

NYTheatrecast: Episode #209 - From Film to Stage Roundtable

2008-04-11T16:57:00.003-04:00

Read more about the podcast below or download now.

More and more we see film influencing theatre. To discuss this trend and the various manifestations it takes are three directors whose upcoming works are strongly influenced by film. They are Jeff Lewonczyk (Babylon Babylon), Jon Stancato (The Accidental Patriot), and Ian W. Hill (The Magnificent Ambersons) and are joined by nytheatrecast moderator, Trav S.D.

The listener will quickly discover that the title of Jon’s show is really much longer and far more expressive.

There is much to learn from these three gentlemen about how and why they use film as a starting point and Trav S. D. draws this information expertly from each. Jon is more interested in the form itself which he uses to blend the swashbuckling era of Errol Flynn with the classicism of the Greek chorus and more.

Ian has recreated for the stage the original Orson Welles cut of this famous film. His knowledge of the making of this film is astounding and should fascinate any film buff. Jeff amazes Trav S.D. when he notes the inspiration for his play is the book by Herodotus. Deciding it has to be an epic film in the Cecil B. DeMille mode, his cast numbers 31 and includes battles and belly dances.

Interview: Kevin Lapin of Floating Brothel

2008-04-11T16:41:00.007-04:00

Kevin Lapin and his collaborators are now presenting what promises to be a stunning piece of a physical theatre over at the Tank. In this interview, Kevin talks all about The Floating Brothel and how his company developed the piece.

1) So...tell us about the piece.

Adapted from historical accounts, Floating Brothel follows three women—a down-on-her luck country girl, a thirteen-year old prostitute and a high-class con artist—on their harrowing year-long voyage from the underbelly of London to the underside of the world.

It starts in London, 1789. A whirlpool of filth, thievery and political unrest. Jails overflow with petty criminals, many of them women forced out of work and onto the streets as jobs are reclaimed by soldiers returning from the American war. The penal code hasn't been updated in more than a century, and crimes as trivial as pickpocketing are hanging offenses. Faced with a legal system in crisis, and a growing humanist movement opposed to executions, the courts hit upon an innovative solution: ship the woman convicts to Australia to revive the failing all-male penal colony in New South Wales.

2) Can you give a brief description of your source material for The Floating Brothel? What drew you to the story and what sort of research did you do before the development process began?

Our source material was a number of historical accounts of exile to Australia like "The Fatal Shore", "Mary Bryant" and the journal of one of the characters, John Nicol. There's also a book that's actually called "Floating Brothel" that we drew from as well. We came across the material while working on another project. We loved it but couldn't use it on that project, so decided to save it for later.

We describe the play as historical fiction. This time period is extremely rich in its details, stories and even the types of jobs people did to survive. For example, in the play one of the secondary convict women says that she used to be a "pure-finder" which was a real job that involved going around and collecting dog turds to sell to the tannery at 3 pence a bucket. Even the love story between Sarah and John Nicols is based on his memoirs. With details as rich and colorful as this, why make stuff up?

We link to several of the most important references on our website in the "About" section, for those who want to read more.

3) I believe many in your troupe are graduates of Ecole Jacques Lecoq. Can you tell me how that training informed the process you used to create this piece?

The Lecoq school influenced not only the process for creating this play, but it's central stylistic conceit. The small stage that we use is called a "tréteau" at the Lecoq school and is linked historically to the small stages of traveling Commedia troupes.

I think one of the most important thing that you learn at Lecoq is creating new work as an ensemble. Every week, you work in small groups to create a short scene or piece which you present to the group on Friday. Both Megan and I very much enjoyed working with the tréteau at Lecoq and were curious to see if it would be possible to perform a whole show on one.

The way we worked to create "Floating Brothel" was very much in the style of ensemble creation that we practiced at Lecoq, that is to say, we started with nothing but an idea and then worked collaboratively to develop the final work of theater. I think it is true with any ensemble or collaborative creation that at some point in the process people step forward and take on certain responsibilities, so not every word or decision is made as a group or by vote, nevertheless almost every aspect of this play from the text, to the staging, to the costumes, to the marketing materials exist as a result of our group's collaboration and I don't think any of it would be the same if they had been the purely the product of individual creation. From my experience at Lecoq and working on other ensemble projects since, the group is better than the sum of its parts. I should add that in this case, we were extremely lucky that Megan started off the process by bringing us a fairly full outline or rough draft of the script. Although it has changed quite a bit in terms of structure and actual dialogue, it is a real gift to have a strong starting proposition like that to use as a spring board. It's the same thing in improvisation, which is another key element of the Lecoq method, that is getting on your feet and improvising to create and try things out, good improvs start with a concrete proposition and proceed by all the actors adding to it, "Yes, and..."

4) You face the extraordinary challenge of creating a ship on stage, and on a 3'x 6' platform, no less. How did you approach the staging of these nautical scenes?

One of the reasons that we chose this story was precisely because we wanted to stage it on the small "tréteau" platform. From our work with the tréteau at the Lecoq school, we felt that part of the magic of the style comes from trying to tell as big and as epic a story as possible from the confines of the reduced space. It wouldn't be particularly interesting or challenging, in terms of the staging at least, had we chose to tell a story that took place in an elevator, for example, because then the platform would remain exactly what it is, a small space. The goal, and challenge, is to transport the audience to many different places, the high seas, bustling London, a dirty bilge, all from the confines of a small 3' x 6' space.

5) Your press release mentions your use of cinematically-inspired staging. How did that vocabulary evolve? Were you looking to any specific films or directors in your approach?

The challenge of the "tréteau" which I just described in response to the previous question, that is of telling an epic story from a 3' x 6' platform (with just a few simple props), in many ways is the magic of cinema. Images flash and cross on a small screen and transport us to other worlds, big and small. The "tréteau" is like a TV or movie screen without the special effects. You have to consider establishing shots and close-ups in order to provide the audience with perspective and create the story line. On the small stage, we don't have the luxury of changing sets, or crossing to a new space to tell the audience that the next scene is taking place somewhere else. Similar to film, one scene often cuts directly to the next and the audience or viewer fills in the blanks of what happened in between. If we hear a knock, and then see a character closing a door and speaking to someone else, we understand that the person must have just arrived at this new room. Similarly, in Floating Brothel we often cut from one scene to the next or use small scale images (the boat on the high seas) and allow the audience to fill in the blanks with their imaginations.

6) How can people find out more information about your show?

www.floatingbrothel.com

Our ears are burning...

2008-04-09T18:49:00.006-04:00

Yes it's true, I was googling us. Turns out our li'l show is the first search result for "Accidental Patriot." That's pretty cool. And speaking of cool, or kül, I just found out that Aaron Riccio has been buzzing about us over at kül: What Sounds Cool. Here's what he says as he recommends our upcoming swashbuckling adventure:

The Accidental Patriot (After seeing Commedia dell'Artemisia and Kinderspiel, I'm ready to go wherever Stolen Chair Theatre is willing to take me -- in this case, that's to the high seas of the American Revolution, and -- keeping with their CineTheater Tetrology of adapting film styles to the theater, one a year for four years -- as a 1930s swashbuckler. Tragedies, sea shanties, and drinking songs; shiver me timbers, folks, I'm going overboard.)

Thanks, Aaron!

Buy your tickets now! Use coupon code BLOG for $15 tickets!!!

And here are some photos to get you even more excited, all exquisitely shot by Carrie Leonard.

So...um...buy your tickets!!!

Some Inspiration

2008-04-07T20:20:00.002-04:00

Stanley Brode, one of the awesome merry men in our tragic chorus (Is it merry? Is it tragic? Stop, you're both right!) told me to check out this YouTube clip. Glad he did!

Whoa, Nelly. Stolen Chair explodes.

2008-04-07T16:46:00.009-04:00

We had a very full weekend with scene work, music rehearsals (5 original songs in multi-part harmony), combat rehearsals (2 mass battles and 3 duels), production meetings, a podcast, and our postcard design (see right), not to mention all of the costume and set building that's happening for the show. I still haven't seen the entire 18 person cast in the same room yet, but I'll have that chance over the weekend. Big as this show is (it's really really really BIG!), the production itself is only one of the many many things that will be happening during the run. On the evenings that The Accidental Patriot will not be running, Stolen Chair will be producing quite a few exciting events.

Commedia dell'Arte Maestro Antonio Fava will be returning for a masterclass on April 26th, and on April 27, he will bring his performance, Pulcinella's War, back for its second NYC engagement (we produced its premiere last year in front of an oversold crowd!) in a one-night stand. More details on that will follow soon...

During some of our other "dark" nights, we'll be presenting Pirates, Patriots, Patricides, several evenings of short works of theatre inspired by ancient Greece, the American Revolution, and...Pirates! We've got some really wonderful work lined up, including a visit from the Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble which will be creating a live "soundpainting" of a Sophocles text, a Commedia-inspired take on colonial America from Ron Nicholson, and at least two very silly pirate plays: one from the inestimable li'l Jimmy Comtois of Nosedive Productions and the other from L. Pontius (off Broadway's Umbrella), directed by our very own Emily Otto (who might I add is doing quadruple-duty as the piece's director, the curator of this entire short works program, our dramaturg, and our music director!!!).

Oh, and did I mention that we'll spend the last couple weekends of our run rehearsing a new version of Kill Me Like You Mean It, which will have two performances (June 2 & 8) in the Brick Theater's Film Festival: A Theater Festival?

We'll have more details about all of this in the coming days and we'll also have interviews with Kevin Lapin of Floating Brothel and Jeff Lewonczyk of Babylon Babylon coming up in the next week. Stay tuned!

The New News: March 17, 2008

2008-03-21T15:27:00.004-04:00

So after months of blog & website silence, we've updated (check out the new header of our press bling on the homepage!) and e-blasted with lots of exciting news, summarized in ye ol' newsletter:

We formally announce the new play, The Accidental Patriot: The Lamentable Tragedy of the Pirate Desmond Connelly, Irish by Birth, English by Blood, and American by Inclination, the third installment of Stolen Chair's CineTheatre Tetralogy, an original 1930s-style swashbuckler (as Sophocles might have written it if he’d been under contract to Warner Brothers), set against the tumultuous backdrop of the American Revolution. This mash-up of Greek tragedy and Errol Flynn-era pirate films features both rapier duels and rapier wit as it satirizes heroism, patriotism, altruism, and all of the other flimsy –isms that move us to action.
We formally announce that tickets are on sale for aforementioned new play.
We formally announce the beginning of our first 2008 fundraising drive and kindly ask you all to make an online donation. If you could find it in your hearts/wallets to spare a few dollars for our fundraising cause we'd be especially appreciative--we're working with more zeros than we ever have before and it's taking all of our resources to turn that red into black!
We formally announce the airing of Stolen Chair's profile on WPS1 Art Radio, with Ian W. Hill donning his interviewer hat (and dishy baritone voice!). I talk about how the company was founded, discuss its unique collaborative process, cover all of our productions, previewing through the end of the 6th season, and even reveal the origin of Stolen Chair's name.

Kiran, Aviva, I are in Stolen Chair's Parisian "offices," stuffing ourselves with food and culture (in the next few days, you can read about our experiences with the former on my food blog: Three Little Truffle Pigs) and trying to put the finishing touches on the script for The Accidental Patriot.

The blog, quiet since our fundraising party in early February, will soon see a flurry of activity as I talk about the recently wrapped development process for The Accidental Patriot, preview the upcoming rehearsal process, and interview some of the artists who have been drinking the same Kool Aid we've been guzzling.

Stay tuned! And donate now! Oh, and we just launched a new Stolen Chair opportunities listserve for actors, designers, technicians, interns etc. If you're interested in that or our regular ol' newsletter, just click here.

Voices in print and on the air

2008-01-31T16:18:00.000-05:00

Big press day for Stolen Chair and our Pirates of the Aegean party. We're a VOICE CHOICE (with the inset picture taking up almost the entire page!) in this week's Village Voice, and a podcast I moderated about indie theatre fundraising hit the NYtheatrecast website today.

So...hit the new stands, plug in your ipods, and get inundated by Stolen Chair's media-industrial complex :)!

And...um...BUY YOUR TICKETS!!!

The new news: 1/30/08

2008-01-30T23:25:00.000-05:00

Last newsletter of the month went out today. The pirate party headlined, accompanied by a reminder that admission is 33% cheaper if you buy online before party time rolls around. So...do it. Buy online. Now.

Only other item was a plug for the K'spiel photos and the announcement that K'spiel DVDs are now for sale. $10 if you want 'em. Just email me.

Kinderspiel stills...at long last

2008-01-29T14:36:00.001-05:00

Wow it took me a long time to get Aviva's lovely K'spiel photos on the company hard-drive, into our Picasa page, and then on the website. Here they are, looking quite Kantor-ian, if we do say so ourselves:

The busiest weekend of Stolen Chair's life...or one of them

2008-01-28T12:40:00.000-05:00

Whoah. I am astonished I've survived to write this. This weekend (by which I only mean Saturday and Sunday) featured 2 marathon rehearsals of the swashbuckler culminating in a semi-staged reading (for which nearly 25 people showed up: surprising, since we were expecting 3), a podcast for nytheatre.com I moderated about indie theatre fundraising (posting later this week), a decorating party for our fundraiser (less than a week away! visit www.partylikepirates.com and buy your tickets now!), and our quarterly board meeting.

Here's what John Clancy over at Scrappy Jack's had to say about last night's reading. (He even manages to plug like mad for our party. Oh, John, how we do love thee!)

Saw the first reading of the first part of Stolen Chair's latest last night, working title The Tragic Swashbuckler. Going to be great. Part three of their Cinetheatre Tetralogy, this time it's Errol Flynn meets Sophocles. So fucking funny and smart. Everyone needs to go to their big Pirate Party this weekend, Saturday the 2nd at the Underwater Lounge out in Dumbo. Nancy and I will be out on Long Island, partying like respectable people, but the rest of you can party like pirates. Live swordfighting, a Delphic oracle, DJs, all like that. Info and tickets at www.partylikepirates.com.

So, yeah, the reading went pretty well (I will post a pic as soon as we get them downloaded); we never know what to expect with these things. It was great to hear people laughing at the reading. Sure, we camped up some material that might be a little more earnest in production, but I think a lot of laughs showed that people were on board with this crazy concept. Still working out the kinks with the tragic chorus but I feel like that's a pretty universal struggle for all playwrights and directors dealing with that trope.

Mission for the next few days is to turn our working title into a title that works...

Raping and Plundering and Photoshopping!

2008-01-22T17:38:00.000-05:00

Here are my faves from our ever-so-much-fun photoshoot with the brilliant Carrie Leonard, shot on location at our party venue, the Underwater Lounge (one swanky space, if I might add!).

Enjoy!

PartyLikePirates.com

2008-01-21T19:22:00.000-05:00

Aviva Meyer's swanky design for the pirate party website is now uploaded and pretty damn cool. Check it out at www.partylikepirates.com and buy your tickets now!!!

We just did a photo shoot to promote the party. Best. Stolen Chair activity. Ever. I'll post photographer Carrie Leonard's gallery for the day tomorrow or later in the week.

The new news: Party like pirates!!!

2008-01-09T15:19:00.000-05:00

January newsletter #1 of 2 just went out to our subscribers. Read it here and sign up here to have the next one delivered straight to your email.

Here's the headlining news:
Stolen Chair presents Pirates of the Aegean (2/2)
A swashbuckling pirate dance party with an Ancient Greek twist.

Dust off your eye-patch and finish sewing your tunic, because on February 2nd, Stolen Chair will be swashbuckling our way into the Underwater Lounge for our Pirates of the Aegean fundraising party. DJ's, live swordfights, a Delphic oracle, and more.

Buy your tickets now at www.partylikepirates.com.

Enter an underground pirate ship and maraud the coasts of ancient Greece!
Witness live swordfights fought with naked steel on the dance floor!
Discover what the fates have in store for your future at our Delphic Oracle!
Savor a glass ’er two o’ Captain’s Blood!
Dance as our sails are filled by music from three rockin DJ’s:
-Been Jammin makes you shake your booty with Soulful Funky House Beats o
-Friar Tuck’s hip-shakin' mix of funky house, breakbeat, and electro-techno will get you on the dancefloor and put a smile on your face
-Shane Digital brings you thumpin mashup and some Baltimore club

…with clairvoyant performances by Lulu Miller and Jonathan Harford, spectacular swordplay by fight master Barbara Seifert, and décor by Laura Sheedy and David Bengali.

Doors open at 9pm and the party runs until 3am.

Tickets are $14 at the door (or $9 in costume) and $9 advance tickets are available at www.partylikepirates.com

@ The Underwater Lounge
located in the Water Street Restaurant
66 Water Street, Brooklyn
-Click here for map-

"Retreaaaat!"

2008-01-08T21:00:00.001-05:00

This is the much much much belated recap of our mid-December creative retreat for The Tragic Swashbuckler (working title). It was easily the best retreat in recent memory: good interpersonal vibes, good food, good drink, and um...good theatre! Click here to skip right to the photos.

The goal of the retreat was to figure out how the production's concept would balance the two influences: swashbucklers and Greek tragedy. Was this going to be a swashbuckler staged in Ancient Greek period? Would this be a Greek tragedy set on the Renaissance high seas? 20% swashbuckler, 80% tragedy? We left very confident about how to steer this ship (oh the nautical references are only just beginning, my friends!). We decided we would borrow some plot tropes, use of the chorus, and portrayal of violence from Greek tragedy and fuse it with the character archetypes, overall plotting, and moral/national fluidity from swashbucklers.

We also spent some time messing around with the biography of John Paul Jones, the "American" (really Scottish) pirate who is considered the father of the American navy. And it disturbed/delighted me oh so much to see us play around with the idea of American patriotism in an earnest way. Scary potent stuff. Talk about alienation-effect: scream at a downtown NYC audience and flash bright lights at them and they'll eat it up; but offer them up a slab of American patriotism (without the side of irony) and you'll have people lining up at the exits. Who'd of thunk that could be so darn provocative?

Another visceral discovery: combining swashbuckling and tragic modes of violence. In a swashbuckler, laughter abounds in climactic duels to the death but the deaths in the tragedies are...well...tragic. They are heavy. Devastating. Irrevocable. You get the sense that Sabatini (the novelist who penned most of the stories that would later become swashbuckler films, most of which starred Errol Flynn, were directed by Michael Curtiz, and scored by Erich Korngold) would hardly blush at the idea of bringing a character back from the dead after he's been run through, but Sophocles...if Sophocles is bringing someone back from the dead, it's to torture the already miserable protagonist. So, the idea of watching two laughing antagonists prance around with swords as they exchange witty repartee and then deal with the actual tragic consequences of their actions just gives me the shivers. I like the shivers.

One more thing. Or rather, one more thing before I paste in a few pages summarizing our activities over the weekend. Read Sabatini's Scaramouche and see the awful Mel Gibson movie The Patriot right now. They are both tragic swashbucklers, brilliantly and manipulatively dealing with the same cliches and contradictions that we're exploring in this piece. Do not, however, SEE Scaramouche (an awful unfaithful adaptation) or READ anything Mel Gibson says.

Here's what day 1 looked like (sorry for the wacky font sizes and any obscurely named exercises):

10:15-11:15: Warm up and Exercises

Personal Warm-up
One-Two, Princes Who'll Adore You
Chorus work:

Balancing the stage
2, 4, 6
Shipwreck: using only the body and voice, create a shipwreck. you are the elements (water, wind), the boat, and the people on it.

Swashbuckling characters

11:15-11:35pm: "Ha ha ha ha ha" (Comp #3)

Plot of Robin Hood
Only text can be laughter
One moment of Choral laughter

11:35pm-1pm: "Pirates of the Aegean" (Comp #4)

Use plot from Trojan War (Greeks vs Trojans, Gods), but each character on stage must correspond to a swashbuckling archetype
Chorus is onstage the entire time and two actors play all roles.
Chorus watches a battle which is appearing in the audience
An oath declaring what separates the Greeks from the Trojans
Use 4 different levels
Curtain peels back to reveal tableaux of tragic ending
Use 5 lines of text from the Iliad and 5 lines from Sea Hawk screenplay (Spend no more than 10 minutes finding text)

1pm-1:45pm: Lunch

1:45-2:30: "Captain Blood Curse" (Comp #5)

Adapt plot and characters of Oedipus Rex into swashbuckling archetypes
Use a maximum of 10 lines from Sophocles' text (Spend no more than 10 minutes finding text)
One "sped up" fighting sequence
Do not use a chorus
The entire scene must be set to the soundtrack of The Sea Hawk

2:30-4:00: "I have not yet begun to fight" (Comp #6)

Plot from the biography of John Paul Jones
The scene must be structured: Prologue, Parados, First Episode, First Stasimon, Second Episode, Second Stasimon, Third Episode, Third Stasimon, Exodus (http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pinax/Structure.html)
The chorus is American revolutionaries
The song "God Save the Thirteen States" should be the Parados (stanzas 1, 3, & 4) (http://www.mcgath.com/freelyr.html)
6 purposes of chorus pg 148 of packet
Use quotes from biography

4pm-4:30: Coffee break

4:30pm-6:30pm: Swordplay exercises (@ Molinari Hall)

And day 2:

10:15-12:15: More swordplay exercises

12:15-12:30: Snack Break

12:30-1:30: Comp #7

Work in partners
Use text from Prisoner of Zenda
Sword fight itself should be in swashbuckling style
When Rupert is stabbed, his death should be "real" and Rudolf is stunned and horrified by the murder he has committed

1:30-2:15: Lunch

2:15-4:00: Comp #8

Setting is Jacobean England, English colonies, and Caribbean Sea
Plot must include:

Incestuous relationship unknown to lovers
Someone's life must be sacrificed to save a ship
Protagonist must avenge a death even though he/she will be punished for that vengeance
Hubris

Characters must include:

Captain Blood archetype
Queen Elizabeth archetype
Rupert or Basil Rathbone archetype
Colonel Bishop or Prince John archetype
Arabella Bishop archetype

The protagonist must go through 4 identity transformations (pirate, Englishman, etc.)
Laughter in every episode
Choral prologue and then no chorus after that
Call and response speech ("What are we going to do with this money?" "Give it to Richard!")
A sea battle
6 levels
Patriotic pageantry
Sped up duel which ends in off stage tragedy which is revealed in tableaux
Happy ending (not ironic!)

And now...silly photos:

Thanks to Dave Gochfeld and Barbara Seifert for joining the Chairs for the weekend!

Winter cheer from the Chairs

2007-12-22T23:03:00.000-05:00

Stolen Chair would like to wish you and yours our fully non-denominational winter cheer and the best wishes for the coming year!

August 30, 2007 marked Stolen Chair's 5th anniversary, and it's hard to believe how far we've come since we presented Portrait of Dora as a Young Man on a $50 budget in 2002. This year we presented three critically-acclaimed productions, were chosen as New York Press' "Best of Manhattan," and secured public funding from both the city and the state. And we could not have done any of this without your invaluable support!

2008 will bring even bigger projects for the company. This spring, we'll present the world premiere of the third installment of our CineTheatre Tetralogy: The Tragic Swashbuckler (working title), a 1930's swashbuckler as Sophocles might have written it. This comic mash-up of Greek Tragedy and Errol Flynn-era pirate films will feature rapier duels and rapier wit as it satirizes humanity's dependence on moral codes, however flimsy they might be.

There are just a few days left to earn deductions for this tax year, and we hope you'll help us get a head start on next year's fundraising goals by making a charitable contribution to Stolen Chair. Please visit http://donate.stolenchair.org to find our more or click the button below make an online donation.

Wishing you the very best,

The Chairs

Noir in the News...

2007-12-14T15:09:00.000-05:00

Kudos to Brooks Reeves and State of Play Theatre for their recent write up in the Times on The City That Cried Wolf. We interviewed Brooks here on the blog almost a year ago in the lead up to our absurdist film noir for the stage, Kill Me Like You Mean It. You can read that interview here or you can find out about the third installment of our CineTheatre Tetralogy (4 years, 4 productions, 4 classic film styles adapted for the stage), a 1930s swashbuckler as Sophocles might have written it. We go into retreat to begin creating the work in...whoah, in 13 minutes! And while we're retreating, go see City..., it's quite a lot of fun, or at least was in FringeNYC two summers ago!

228 page reading packet!

2007-12-08T20:35:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Emily the superturg (jf you don't know what one is, go ask your parents, provided, of course, that your parents have MFAs in theatre), we have quite the swanky reading packet (read the table of contents) for The Tragic Swashbuckler, weighing in at a hefty 6 or 7 pounds :).

It contains a bunch of historical, critical, and analytical material about swashbucklers and Greek tragedies, as well as some suggested movies and plays. Interestingly, unlike the last two CineTheatre pieces, it was nigh impossible to get juicy film theory on swashbucklers; most theorists seem to think it's meaningless fluff unworthy of serious scholarly attention.

They're wrong... ;P

Enjoy the packet! And it's not too late to sign up for our upcoming swashbuckling playdate (12/11 @ 7pm)...just email us at info@stolenchair.org.

NYtheatre.com: "Identifying the future leading lights of NYC theatre"

2007-12-07T15:51:00.000-05:00

Martin plugs the Chairs in his latest blog post over at the I:

For example, we cited the Brick Theater back in 2004; now they’re one of Time Out-New York’s favorite venues. In 2005, Stolen Chair Theatre Company was on our list; this year, they’re on the New York Press’s “Best of Manhattan” list. Qui Nguyen and Robert Ross Parker of Vampire Cowboys were honorees for us in 2004; in 2006 they won the Caffe Cino Fellowship from the New York Innovative Theatre Awards. And Daniel Talbott of Rising Phoenix Theatre Company was a “Person of the Year” in 2006; and Rising Phoenix won the Caffe Cino Award in 2007.

Thanks, Martin!

The new news

2007-12-06T14:08:00.000-05:00

December newsletter 1 of 2 has just been sent to our eblast subscribers (sign up here!) featuring the official announcement of The Tragic Swashbuckler, details about the upcoming playdate, links to the two November print features on Stolen Chair, and a plea for all our supporters to make their holiday purchases with Giveline.

Calling all would be swashbucklers & tragedians!

2007-12-03T11:22:00.000-05:00

The Tragic Swashbuckler Playdate: Tuesday, Dec 11 (evening)

The Stolen Chair Theatre Company invites all interested male collaborators to join us for 2 hours of collective creation as we begin developing The Tragic Swashbuckler, the third installment of our critically-acclaimed CineTheatre Tetralogy, a 1930s swashbuckler by way of Aeschylus, exploring how susceptible morality can be to the conflicting pulls of loyalty to self, lover, family, fraternity, nation, and god. This comic mash-up will feature rapier duels and rapier wit as it satirizes humanity's dependence on moral codes, however flimsy they might be.

We're starting from scratch on this and we need your help. If you're a fan of classic 1930s Errol Flynn swashbucklers (or even the more contemporary Princess Bride and Pirates of the Carribean), have had some experience performing Greek tragedy, enjoy a good stage fight, or just want to wile away 2 hours playing pirates, we hope you'll join us. While the evening will by no means be structured like an "audition," participants will be the casting pool for the two all-expense-paid creative retreats (the weekends of Dec 15 & Jan 5), the staged reading (the weekend of Feb 2), and the production itself (running for 4 weeks beginning April 18).

Please contact info@stolenchair.org with a letter of interest if you'd like to attend and please note if you would be interested and available for either or both of the retreats, the reading, and the production.

About the CineTheatre Tetralogy: In 2005, Stolen Chair debuted The Man Who Laughs, a live silent film for the stage. The play was met with popular and critical acclaim and has since been published in Playing with Canons, inspiring Stolen Chair to launch an ambitious 3 year program to adapt 3 other classic film styles to the stage. The next installment of the series was 2006's Kill Me Like You Mean It, an absurdist film noir for the stage which was called an "intriguing" "clever" "high-styling" "must-see" "stroke of genius" by an assortment of critics. The company plans to run all four of the installments in repertory for its 8th season in 2010.

About Stolen Chair: The Stolen Chair Theatre Company is a critically-acclaimed award-winning collaborative theatre laboratory dedicated to the theft, recycling and re-examination of historical performance styles, and the creation of visually stunning and uniquely contemporary work where the earnest and ironic happily co-exist. Stolen Chair was featured in New York Press' Best of Manhattan 2007, is a recipient of NYtheatre.com's People of the Year award, and has been praised by TimeOut, Flavorpill, nytheatre.com, Backstage, and PBS' New Theatre Corps. The company's 6th season is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Pirates of the Aegean

2007-11-22T00:45:00.000-05:00

Stolen Chair's back from hibernation and the above post title is the very silly working title of our newest piece, set to debut April 18, 2008.

Here's the blurb:

The Stolen Chair Theatre Company presents the third installment of its CineTheatre Tetralogy (4 years, 4 productions, 4 classic film styles adapted for the stage): Errol Flynn meets Oedipus in a 1930s swashbuckler by way of Aeschylus and Homer, exploring how susceptible morality can be to the conflicting pulls of loyalty to self, lover, family, fraternity, nation, and god. This comic mash-up will feature rapier duels and rapier wit as it satirizes humanity's dependence on moral codes, however flimsy they might be.

If you think you should be a part of this show as a performer, designer, choreographer, weapons specialist, et al, please email me at jon@stolenchair.org.

"Continuing Education" : SCTC in Backstage

2007-11-10T16:15:00.000-05:00

So, while it doesn't look this is the weekend that I catch up on my blogging (it usually takes me a month or so to jump back into the game after a big show!), I wanted to let you all know that there are big big things happening over at Stolen Chair HQ. In the next couple of weeks, announcing our exciting 2008 season, patting ourselves on the back for some very good news, and restructuring the entire way the company creates new work.

But until then...content thyselves with this week's Backstage article about alumni-founded theatre companies, featuring a section about Stolen Chair's Swarthmorean history and quotes from yours truly.

More Kinderspiel in the blogosphere

2007-10-26T00:56:00.000-04:00

In a recent post on the nytheatre i, Martin mentions Kiran's name (and Stolen Chair's Kinderspiel) as an example of the many sociopolitically engaged playwrights working in New York's indie scene.

On the blog "next door," Michael Criscuolo's nytheatre mike, Michael extends his congratulations for Stolen Chair's New York Press "Best Of..." Award.

Finally, in some random googling for "stolen chair kinderspiel," I found this fantastic essay on Kinderspiel by Stephanie Vella over at Blackbox. Given the fact that it's a critical essay, we will not likely be pulling quotes for our press pages, but it's truly a great read and a terrific companion piece to the production. Here's a snippet:

"As it turns out, people with nothing to live for will pay good money for the opportunity to waste there time on meaningless frivolities. It also turns out that a thorough grasp of dialectical materialism can be more useful to the seller than the sold."

She had me at "dialectical materialism." :)

Just two shows left. Get your name on the waiting list now by emailing me.

We're the best!

2007-10-24T23:12:00.000-04:00

In this week's New York Press (links are mine):

BEST GENRE-BENDING NONPROFIT THEATER
Stolen Chair Theatre Company

Every creative artist thinks their über-wacky parody of noir is one for the ages. Not Off-Off-Broadway’s Stolen Chair Theatre Company, which gave such pretentiousness the bird when it premiered Kill Me Like You Mean It earlier this year, the second installment in its “CineTheatre tetralogy.” Their trick is the opposite of being derivative: They smash genres in a theatrical supercollider and see what happens, such as noir being fused with the idiocy of Ionesco in Kill Me. Stage Kiss, meanwhile, fused Charles Ludlam’s theatre of the ridiculous with Elizabethan blank verse; The Man Who Laughs was a silent film for the stage. Stolen Chair’s latest, Kinderspiel (subtitle: “all art is useless”), currently at the Kraine [CORRECTION: Under St. Marks], is yet another genre-bender: a drop of Weimar cabaret in political drama.

Thanks, New York Press!

Ausverkauft

2007-10-24T11:59:00.000-04:00

Google tells me this is how you say SOLD OUT in German. I don't trust Google's translations all that much, but I do trust SmartTix's box office report which says we are now officially out of tickets for Kinderspiel. Do not despair, though, because we usually end up releasing between 5 and 10 tickets at the door. So, if you want to catch one of the final three performances, please arrive at the theatre at 7pm to make sure your name gets on the waiting list for no-shows or overflow seating.

We're #2! We're #2!

2007-10-22T21:29:00.000-04:00

Check it out over at indietheater.org.

Now all we have to do is find a way to dispose of those Jersey Boys :)

Just 12 tickets left for the run. Buy your tickets online this instant!

I'll be posting a photo album of our "Get Drunk and Play" night in the next few days. Good times...we'll definitely have to throw another one of those sometime very soon.

4 Stars from Time Out NY

2007-10-17T11:37:00.001-04:00

UPDATE: The online edition is up. Read it here.

Though the TONY online edition hasn't yet been posted, here's a snippet of Raven Snook's 4-star review of Kinderspiel:

"The inventive folks at the Stolen Chair Theatre Company explore the [Weimar] era with the existential KINDERSPIEL; think NO EXIT decked out in fishnets and Art Deco decay...Jon Stancato directs Kiran Rikhye's unsentimental script with a minimum of fuss...The overall effect is haunting. Watching these slightly cracked adults play with desperate abandon reminds us that the worst of times may bring out the best in artists, but in the end it's the politicians who get to rule (and ruin) the world"

A flavorful pill to swallow

2007-10-16T13:43:00.000-04:00

Pardon the painful pun, but here's what Flavorpill's Mr. Paschalides had to say about Kinderspiel:

"There's a delightful irony in watching Kiran Rikhye's delectable frolic of a play Kinderspiel: audiences sit in a musty — yet appropriately atmospheric — basement to watch a play about a bunch of Weimar-era demimonde oddballs who sit around and play like children while customers pay to watch. The playwright provides insight into a glorious era of Berlin history, contrasting it with the economic depression and political upheaval of its time and drawing parallels to contemporary affairs. The childlike idiom is brilliantly developed and performed by the talented cast, leaving Under St. Marks' crowd wanting more."

Pick of the Week

2007-10-15T23:22:00.000-04:00

Kinderspiel marks Stolen Chair's third "Pick of the Week" over at nytheatre.com.

Check it out here.

Thanks, Martin.

Get Drunk and Play w/Stolen Chair

2007-10-14T10:43:00.000-04:00

"GET DRUNK AND PLAY" NIGHT
Thursday, Oct 18 @ 10pm

Remember transforming your family's old refrigerator box into a dungeon?

The Stolen Chair Theatre Company has spent the past 6 months training to play like kids for KINDERSPIEL ("Child's Play"), a provocative and playful new production running every weekend in October. We've had such a great time "kinderspieling" that we want to invite everyone we know to come join us for a playdate. We've got loads of free wine and a stage filled with fun objects, and we invite you to get drunk and play with us. Or skip the drinks and just play with us. Or skip the playing and drink all you want while you watch other people play with us. Or sit in a corner and play by yourself while knowing that there are people drinking and watching you play.

$10 gets you the open wine bar and about two hours to recapture your youth in the company of friends and complete strangers.

Space is extremely limited so please RSVP by contacting jon@stolenchair.org.

You can find out more about Kinderspiel at www.kinderspiel.us, where you can also click through to SmartTix and purchase your ticket for the show that Martin Denton calls "required viewing for the theatrically adventurous and those in search of the most provocative and thought-provoking work that indie theater has to offer."

Rants and Raves

2007-10-12T00:12:00.000-04:00

Martin Denton from nytheatre.com calls it "required viewing for the theatrically adventurous and those in search of the most provocative and thought-provoking work that indie theater has to offer." (Read more...)

Jerry Portwood from Backstage calls it "obnoxious." (Read more...)

Come to the show and decide for yourself. You can buy your tickets here.

FREE WINE and rave review

2007-10-11T10:37:00.000-04:00

If you're dance card's not too full, come on down to the Village tonight and catch the 7:30pm performance of Kinderspiel. We're bringing a case of wine in and we want to leave empty handed so it's your civic duty to come and drink our free wine.

And while you go order your tickets, make sure to browse Aaron Riccio's rave review of the show over at New Theater Corps. A snippet:

Stolen Chair bills itself as a company dedicated to the "theft" of "historical performance styles," but it's a crime for which they'd never be convicted. Between this and their recent Commedia dell'Artemisia, they're dramatic Robin Hoods, stealing from a rich theatrical past and producing for a poorly educated present, and I look forward to their next production.

Open for business

2007-10-05T14:25:00.000-04:00

Nice loud house last night and we have a big Friday night crowd waiting for us tonight.

I'll post thoughts on the weekend as a whole this Sunday, but here is what the esteemable Mister John Clancy had to say (full disclosure: in addition to being the co-founder of FringeNYC, an Obie-Award winning director, the author of the totally kick-ass Fatboy, and the first winner of the Edinburgh International Festival Award, John and his wife Nancy have been Stolen Chair's consultants for about a year now, advising us as we move forward to the company's 2nd five years):

"Once again, Stolen Chair demonstates what a company can achieve when it commits to the discipline and sacrifice of the laboratory process. Kinderspiel has all of this company's burgeoning trademarks: exquisite, surprising language, fluid, meticulous direction and mesmerizing and courageous performances from an outstanding ensemble. It is a pleasure to watch this young company grow in strength and confidence."

Only 11 performances left! Buy your tickets now...

My goodness that Jon Stancato is a handsome fellow

2007-10-03T23:07:00.000-04:00

Check out the Horse Trade roundtable from NYtheatrecast, featuring Stolen Chair's director Jon Stancato chatting about Kinderspiel (have you bought your tickets yet? We open in a few hours...) and the rest of Horse Trade's October productions with tech god Justin Sturges, director johnmichael rossi, and writer/director Todd Michael.

8 weeks of tech rehearsals

2007-09-28T15:00:00.000-04:00

So, to give you some light reading material while you BUY YOUR TICKETS to Kinderspiel, I thought I would muse a little bit about what's going on in our final stages of rehearsal (we open Thursday, people!).

After what was positively the most pleasant cue-to-cue we've ever had (after what has easily been the most challenging rehearsal process we've ever had), Emily had this simple but brilliant realization:

In the lead-up to the past nine shows which have, as Jimmy Comtois says, since gone to the great production in the sky, we spent almost all of our last 20 hours of rehearsal dealing with tech issues, principally trying to figure out the most artful and least stupid ways of transitioning from scene to scene, a task made especially arduous by our CineTheatre projects, which usually have short scenes alternating between quite a few different locations, each with their own set. This time around, our evil-genius-set-designer-David has surpassed his genius if not his evil in providing us with a devilishly organic set which requires no interscene physical transformations (which is not to say his last 4 sets weren't brilliant cuz...um...they frickin' are!). What this means, however, is that we've spent every rehearsal since day one working out how the stage action itself can creatively transform the set over the course of a given scene. So, essentially, we've had about eight weeks of the logistically maddening what-goes-where-wait-when-was-that-supposed-to-be-preset rehearsals as we've simultaneously tried to develop a new work (with an original script) from the ground up.

The good news: instead of spending each minute up until opening night's curtain trying to work out how to cover the sound of dropping venetian blinds with a trumpet riff, we get to spend these last few hours delving even deeper (does anyone ever use the word "delve" for anything but that cliche?) into understanding the play's rhythms. And this is good.

Rehearsal in the morning tomorrow. An excerpt of the play performed at the Fourth Arts Block Festival in the afternoon. Rehearsal all day Sunday. A little brush-up on Tuesday and then we'll see some of you for Thursday's opening night.

Oh, and by the by, if you or someone you know is an artist (of any breed) whose work draws inspiration from the aesthetic, politics, or literature of 1920s Berlin, please let me know as we'll be kicking off our interview series next week.

Kinderspiel website launch and press photos

2007-09-17T00:25:00.000-04:00

Jeez it's been awhile since I've posted. If you haven't already figured it out while browsing stolenchair.org, we are in the thick of final rehearsals for Kinderspiel. This piece has challenged us to go to so many new places that my mind will continue reeling well into the winter. There's so much I've wanted to write about but I'm reluctant to run my mouth off and reveal too much about the show now that audiences are about to close the creative circuit with us...and it's about time! After 6 months of fooling around in a basement on St. Marks Place, I'm really curious about how the heck this fruit of our collective loin is gonna feel in front of an audience (heh heh heh, we're going to feel our loin's fruit while you watch!)

The official website with snazzy flash bling by Aviva Meyer is at kinderspiel.us.

You can buy tickets there or here.

You can look at some pretty photos here, also courtesy of Aviva Meyer.

Kinderspiel opens October 4 and I'll hopefully get back into my once-weekly posting schedule.

All art is quite useless...

2007-08-31T03:28:00.000-04:00

Finally finalized the final drafts of the postcard image and blurb. Enjoy!

In the seedy and seditious demimonde of Weimar Berlin, five lost souls find each other (and sold-out audiences) when they create a scandalous club where adults play like children...and customers pay to watch!

Tickets will go on sale soon...stay tuned!

A ditty on development

2007-08-07T01:36:00.000-04:00

Sung to the tune of "Band on the Run":

Well, we've been busting our butts, for 5 long years, trying to get some dough.
And, though the orgs all said our applications were strong, it was always no after no.
Grant number 1, we just got grant number 1
Grant number 1, oh yeah, we just got grant number 1
And the DCA we'll thank everyday for giving us their funds.
[They gave us] Grant number 1, oh yeah we just got grant number 1

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

...you'll be seeing that logo and reading that credit line all through June 2008 so get used to it! :)

Final Commedia Round-up: Photos and Press

2007-08-06T00:06:00.000-04:00

The DVD's coming out soon, but in the meantime...here are all of the reviews and the photo highlights:

"...the result of putting genres into an aesthetic supercollider and pressing the trigger...supple, smart...daring."

-Leonard Jacobs
...more @ The Clyde Fitch Report

"[I]t's important that this newly written old-school hit be recognized. That rape could be funny, not tragic, who knew? The producers and writers of Stolen Chair, that's who. With swagger and grace and a man who's ribald, the show woos us and flatters us, we're never appalled...[T]his show's a must see...The only sad part about Commedia Dell' Artemisia is that it's condensed to stay under an hour."

-Aaron Riccio
...more @ PBS' New Theater Corps

"Kiran Rikhye's script is clever...witty...and gives the audience rich food for thought. Cameron J. Oro...has an amazingly commanding voice and precisely the light quality of movement needed for such demanding work. David Bengali...is a true virtuoso...The company is clearly on the right path."

-Ishah Janssen-Faith
...more @ NYtheatre.com

Clyde Fitch Report on Commedia

2007-08-01T20:47:00.000-04:00

"...the result of putting genres into an aesthetic supercollider and pressing the trigger...supple, smart...daring."

Read the rest of what Leonard Jacobs has to say about the show on the Clyde Fitch Report.

All of us at Stolen Chair thank Leonard for giving us a great soundbite to describe what it is exactly we do: "Just as contemporary subatomic physics is all about what happens when you smash protons, neutrons, neutrinos and all kinds of indescribably small objects in order to simply find out what makes them tick, Stolen Chair will take genres you don't necessarily think of as inextricably wedded...and link them up, smashing them together to see what, if anything, happens, and what we can learn about what makes each of those genres/styles/elements/aesthetics tick."

So, if you didn't get a chance to see what an assortment of critics called an "exquisite," "dizzying," "supple, smart...[and] daring" "must see...old-school hit" which "gives the audience rich food for thought," now's the time to start crying because after 3 separate runs in 3 separate theatres in the months of June and July, the show is going to take a little rest...

...but we hope we'll be back rhyming and raping by the winter as we try to put together a college tour for spring semester 2008! If anyone has any leads on how to go about doing this or would like to book the show (and accompanying Commedia workshop) for their school or performing arts center, please contact me.

I imagine we won't be posting much on the show until then (except a li'l slideshow when the last round of pictures comes in and, perhaps, a YouTube clip once the DVD is mastered), as we'll now be turning our full attention to Kinderspiel.

A rave for Commedia!

2007-07-28T02:54:00.000-04:00

"[I]t's important that this newly written old-school hit be recognized. That rape could be funny, not tragic, who knew? The producers and writers of Stolen Chair, that's who. With swagger and grace and a man who's ribald, the show woos us and flatters us, we're never appalled...[T]his show's a must see...The only sad part about Commedia Dell' Artemisia is that it's condensed to stay under an hour."

Read more from PBS' New Theater Corps critic Aaron Riccio or BUY TICKETS!!!

Pluggity plug plug

2007-07-26T15:31:00.000-04:00

Two more chances to catch Commedia dell'Artemisia in NYC before we pile our masks, costumes, and props back into the repertory closet...to accumulate dust...alongside Hugo the nearly decomposed corpse (The Man Who Laughs) and Lyly the disemboweled stuffed reindeer (Stage Kiss).

Sad thought, huh? Need to be cheered up? Well, I have an idea: buy your ticket for this weekend's encore performances of Commedia dell'Artemisia right now and you'll take comfort knowing you have 45 minutes of nearly-nonstop rhyming raping delight awaiting you!

Finger on the pulse...

2007-07-18T06:43:00.000-04:00

"They are all part of an emerging downtown trend, as cabaret acts superimpose a risqué German style onto the performance art and theater scene below 14th Street. 'The Weimar aesthetic has taken over,' said Justin Bond..." (read more here)

Just before Commedia dell'Artemisia opened in 2005, the Great One Man Commedia Epic opened a few doors down and Commedia/Clown was suddenly everywhere.

Just before Stage Kiss opened, Measure for Pleasure, a pseudo-Elizabethan gender-bender opened at the Public, and everyone from "off-off" to "on" was dabbling in the Ridiculous aesthetic.

Just before Kill Me Like You Mean It opened, there were about half a dozen plays trafficking in noir themes and styles, and "film noir" had become practically synonymous with "parody."

Despite the best of our iconoclastic intentions, Stolen Chair always seems to get swirled up in the same zeitgeist that's sucked in everyone else. What does this mean? Well, I'd love to think that we here at Stolen Chair have our finger on the pulse on what's hip and happening in NYC theatre and that someday we'll find a way to be the first one out of the gate, setting trends instead of following them...More likely, however, is that in the midst of our obsession with our own current idee fixe, we see resonances of it everywhere we look. For me, this used to be a paranoid endeavor, constantly looking over my shoulder to protect our precious (intellectual) property. Once I started the blog last November, however, I realized that a much better way to process this energy was to launch an interview series with the people who have beat us to the punch, often with much higher-profile productions, allowing Stolen Chair to be in dialogue with their work instead of in (imagined) competition with it.

So, here's to Weimar taking over downtown! If you're an artist associated at all with one of these Weimar-inspired events or if you're dabbling with Weimar as a period and/or style in your work, please contact me and we'll set-up an interview...

Language of Play: Kids, Dada, Expressionists, etc.

2007-07-08T21:30:00.000-04:00

"Her lips trembled, colon, quotation marks, Eleanore, dash, Eleanore, dash, quotation marks, quotation francs, quotation dollars--going, going, gone!"
-From Alfred Doblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz, 1929

"The little girl comes. The mother comes. The daddy. The brother. A dog. They go to sleep. They wake up. They have breakfast. Then they eat lunch. Then they eat dinner. They brush their teeth. They go to sleep. They wake up. They eat breakfast."
-a 4-year old's story as transcribed by Vivian Paley for her book The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter

**********
"Dada doubts everything. Dada is an armadillo. Everything is Dada, too. Beware of Dada. Anti-dadaism is a disease...But the real dadas are against Dada.'
-Tristan Tzara, co-founder of Dadaism

"There's a no-helicopter in my story. A not-helicopter. It's a not airplane. My helicopter is in it. The helicopter goes up to the sky. Then crash! This helicopter. Crash! Then I fix it. A not-airplane story."
-Another 4 year-old in Paley's classroom

I've spent the past few days with my head alternately buried in 3 Kinderspiel-related books: Paley's The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter (hat tip to Liza for pointing me to her work!), Doblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz, and Lucy Lippard's dadas on art. Musings on storytelling in the classroom, a Weimar-era expressionist novel, and an anthology of dadaist manifesti...While it's truly amazing how the mind naturally seeks to make coherent sense of stimuli it's fed (my favorite dream theory, activation-synthesis, posits that dreams are just the narratives our minds try to develop around the automated synapse firings that our brains perform as part of their nightly 100-point check-up inspections), I think, in this case, there's a strange and beautiful bond between these three source materials which have been commingling in my wee little brain of late.

The moments in which Doblin's masterpiece transcend formal modernist linguistic play and ease towards a glorious sort of post-modern jouissance send me immediately towards the often unintentional post-structuralist puns of the under-5-year-old set, each, in its own way, celebrating language's slippery nature. Children, not yet having gained mastery of their language, incorporate allusions, repetition, and poetic devices like assonance, alliteration, and rhyme in ways strangely reminiscent of such 20th century wordsmiths as Joyce and Nabokov and even Tom Robbins. Are these modernists cum post-modernists emulating kidspeak? Doubtful. Have these writers internalized and reprocessed the decades-long obsession with the "brilliant naivete of the child" that the dadas championed? Possibly. Do I need to come up with an answer to these whys and wherefores? Nope.

Because that's what Stolen Chair tries to do, right? We try to find these unholy hybrids (film noir and absurdism, commedia and rape, "Ridiculous" drag and Elizabethan boy-actors) in the hopes that mashing them together teaches us something about their commonalities and their divergences. In merging the worlds of dadaist Weimar cabaret and children's literature we are hoping to uncover parallels which can shed light on questions of art's role in times of distress (be they the terrifying uncertainties of childhood or post-war Berlin), capitalism's power to absorb and commercialize all transgression, and the ways in which nihilism always seems to give way to another -ism. On a formal level, we get to explore the relationship between chaos and control, between spontaneity and precision. And we get to play with language and in language and on language to the point at which the rules of language become as improvised and fluid as those of play.

The new news (July 7, 2007)

2007-07-08T21:09:00.000-04:00

A new e-blast was just sent out to our newsletter subscribers. Have you signed up yet?

E-blast summary: plugs for Commedia's encore performances, a link to the production stills from Commedia @ the Brick, and the announcement that Stolen Chair's love affair with Layna Fisher has now been officially consumated.

Pretentious Accolades

2007-07-02T18:51:00.000-04:00

Stolen Chair's Commedia Dell'Artemisia has officially won the Pretentious Award for Most Powerful Use of Cognitive Dissonance!

...and, if you don't know what that means, you are, as one of the festival's mottos claimed, simply unworthy.

Sadly, that last barb is likely the end of my pretentious posturing, or at least the expiration of my festival-bestowed license to alienate. From here on in we will be resolutely low-brow and appeal to the public's baser tastes.

And so:

If you want to see a SHORT play about GREED, LUST, RAPE, FAME, and TORTURE, featuring not one but TWO WOMEN WHOSE BOSOMS HAVE BEEN AUGMENTED BY DUCT TAPE, check out Commedia dell'Artemisia at the Underground Zero festival in late July.

Pretentious Pictures and Encore Performances!

2007-07-01T01:02:00.000-04:00

Enjoy Joseph Belschner's stills from Friday's show...

...and if you haven't already picked this up off our website or from the press release that's been circling the blogosphere, Commedia dell'Artemisia will have 2 encore performances as part of the Underground Zero Festival in July at Collective: Unconscious. We're excited to be sharing the bill with the Flying Machine, a Lecoq-inspired group whose theatricalization of a French author's suicide should be very simpatico with our theatricalization of an Italian painter's rape trial. And our partners in pretension, Mssrs. Trav SD and Ian W. Hill, will be hosting an open mic night called The Moxie Show!

The whole shebang is being put together by Paul Bargetto, Artistic Director of East River Commedia and co-founder of the League of Independent Producers, the advocacy group trying to reform the equity code. The festival's mission is to bring productions back from (sorry James, gonna quote you again) that "Great Production in the Sky" and its intent is to put forth a model of repertory performance by which indie theatre shows might live past their initial runs and continue to build audience.

Incidentally [warning: pride bordering on boastfulness shall follow hereafter], this will mark the 5th incarnation/iteration/permutation of Commedia dell'Artemisia and I think that's something to pat ourselves on the back for. Along the same lines, I realized that by the end of our 2007 season, Stolen Chair's work will have been presented in at least 6 different theatres, none of which we rented!

The company is officially on vacation until the 3rd week of July. Between the 10 of us we have a pretty impressive travel roster for a bunch of starving artists; Kiran and I will be heading to Stolen Chair's Parisian HQ to rewrite Kinderspiel, popping over to Berlin for a few days for some research. Blogging for the next few weeks will be irregular, dependent entirely on the nature of our my internet connection...if you really miss me, feel free to check out my food blog, Three Little Truffle Pigs.

7pm, Brick Theater: BE THERE!!!

2007-06-29T12:44:00.000-04:00

TO-NIGHT

^the Stolen Chair Theatre Companye

will perform

a Comedie

3 Partes

wherein a certain Paynter

fuffers a

mofte Horrid and Atrocious

RAPE

and other similarly Hilariouf Antickes

ensue

Messymaking on the 6th Floor: Kinderspiel's staged reading at the Ohio

2007-06-26T09:16:00.000-04:00

As I've written in earlier manifesti, Stolen Chair is a laboratory theatre and, as such, we often try to use the metaphor of a pharmaceutical lab (as they often both have non-profit and commercial components) to articulate our relationship to the ideas of process and product. In such a lab, one works out ones experimental drug as fully as one can before subjecting poor unsuspecting humans to the nasty side effects. With a theatre's lab reading, however, a script/production concept is tested out in front of an audience (hopefully of colleagues and intimates) long before it's fit for human consumption. Sure you can learn a lot from testing your drug/play on humans while it's still really rough around the edges, but is it a good idea?

In the past, Stolen Chair has had a very rickety relationship with the notion of a reading. The very first public reading we had (Virtuosa in late 2004) was 2 years into our company history and, strangely enough, about 6 months after we had produced the play itself. Not exactly the traditional path of play development.

Since becoming resident artists at Horse Trade, lab readings (of the chair and music stand variety) have been par for the course. But because these plays have been written specifically for an ensemble of actors, scripted on their bodies, and already tested out in rehearsal, I can't say that these readings have been extraordinarily enlightening for Emily, Kiran, or me; primarily they've served to bring our designers, board members, and co-producers into the process.

When we submitted Kinderspiel to the 6th Floor Series, we literally had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. Not only was the production just a microscopic zygote of a conceit at the time we applied, but we had never even had a chance to see another company tackle the 6th Floor format as many of us work on Monday nights.

We entered the space at 5pm on Saturday night with a box full of props and roughly 20 pages of text, neither of which the cast had ever seen before as most of our R&D on this project has centered around developing character, exploring the Weimar setting, and experimenting with the notion of child's play. All we knew was that we had 10 hours to create some forum in which we could, as a creative team, actually make discoveries about this project rather than, as we had in the past, simply use the reading as an opportunity to clue our collaborators in.

So, the traditional chair & music stand format wasn't going to work for us as one of the most importants things we needed to learn was how an audience would respond to the play's kinderspieling moments, the indulgent expanses of child's play that the production's entire conceit rests on (and, incidentally, the carry-over from the very first exercise we did after warm-up in our Kinderspiel retreat in February).

We began trying to roughly stage the entire play, to do a sort of first pass and establish a few marks to hit in each scene. Dee-zas-ter. It's one thing if you're doing pychological realism and can create enough solid ground just by scoring when people enter, when they exit, when they stand, and when they sit, but to do the physicality of a Stolen Chair production half-way would just make us all look bad (and, for what it's worth, also made the text's meaning less discernible). Like oh so many rehearsals for this challenging project, it was only in the last 45 minutes of Saturday's rehearsal that we began to hit upon a way to make this work.

We came in on Sunday with a clearer plan for action: Emily and I selected a list of about 2 dozen stage directions (roughly 1/4 of which were kinderspieling episodes) that we could actually direct on stage, as it were. We intentionally picked textless moments to stage so the actors could leave their scripts at music stands, fully commit to the staging, and then return. In order for the actors to have the opportunity to fully invest in their characters physicalities, we ditched the chairs and had 4 of the 5 characters standing. When we were done it certainly didn't look like any reading I'd ever been to.

Roughly 15 people showed up for Monday's reading, almost half of which were newcomers to Stolen Chair's work and had heard about it through Soho Think Tank's emails and the listing in the Onion. The 20 pages of text ran over an hour in performance and we made a big ol' mess on stage (forcing us, with great relish, to realize that our set will likely be destroyed by play's end each night). Though it was by no means ready for the masses, I was really proud with how much spaghetti we were able to throw against the wall after only 10 hours of rehearsal, and, based on the feedback we received afterwards, it seems as though some of it actually stuck :)...People really responded to the way in which we used the conceit of child's play and fairy tale-ish prose to approach some rather dark material (to paraphrase a comment from Vanessa Sparling, the series' curator: "Sexualizing children is disturbing; sexualizing adults who are playing like children,is very disturbing!"), to the questions the play poses about rationalizing art, about class, and about mainstreaming the marginal, and to the gusto and commitment with which actors involved in this project must throw themselves (Layna smashed not one, but two props in the heat of the action; to be fair she broke one of the props on the other so it was kind of a twofer).

We also learned a lot about what didn't stick. We obviously still need to develop the plot and the play's emotional arc more clearly. The balance between monologue and action needs to be tinkered with and we're likely going to alter the conceit of the text, as well, losing the Germanic syllables while keeping the German grammar.

If you happened to catch the reading and have more feedback you'd like to offer, comment away.

And now we get to go switch gears again and focus on the upcoming Commedia dell'Artemisia performance at the Brick's Pretentious Festival on Friday. Have you bought your tickets yet?

NYtheatre.com review of Commedia dell'Artemisia

2007-06-25T00:17:00.000-04:00

"Kiran Rikhye's script is clever...witty...and gives the audience rich food for thought. Cameron J. Oro has an amazingly commanding voice and precisely the light quality of movement needed for such demanding work. David Bengali...is a true virtuoso... The company is clearly on the right path."

Read more of Ishah Janssen-Faith's review here.

Busy week for the Chairs!

2007-06-23T12:18:00.000-04:00

[Begin plugging in 5...4...3...and...go!]

Just a reminder that in just a few days (Monday, June 25th, 7pm) we'll be previewing our newest collective creation, Kinderspiel, in a (free!) staged reading at the Ohio Theatre as part of Soho Think Tank's 6th Floor Series.

Here's the blurb:

Set in the demimonde of Weimar Berlin, one cabaret offers access to the ultimate taboo: watching adults play as children. Stolen Chair presents the world's greatest children's story, told exclusively for an adult audience. After all, why should childhood be wasted on the young?

Please come and help shape this bizarre new creation while it's still in its infancy.

And, if for some reason you're unable to attend our Kinderspiel reading, you can make sure to get your June Stolen Chair-fix at our 2nd and last performance of Commedia dell'Artemisia at the Pretentious Festival (Friday, June 29th, 7pm). You can buy your tickets here.

"Jon Stancato is f***in funny"

2007-06-15T14:37:00.000-04:00

...at least according to the venerable Mssr. Leonard Jacobs. Thanks, Leonard! It's been a blast doing Stolen Chair's PR for the Pretentious Festival as it has let me play-act with a publicity persona, as evidenced by my uber-pretentious interviews here and here. It's easy to forget (for some of us, at least) that publicity is performance and those among us who do it best are those who have chosen a clear character, not just for their companies, but for themselves. As the co-artistic director of the SCTC, I must confess I'm often guilty of making up words (it's true; my most frequent sin: turning intransitive verbs into transitive ones like "we evolved the idea"), mixing metaphors, and struggling to pitch to too many audiences at the same time. As an uber-pretentious auteur...jamais! I'm more than a little sad that I just have 2 more weeks to be pretentious...what's next? Neurotic introverted genuis? Bombastic vaguely abusive guru? Cool detached intellectual? You be the judge: comment below! :)

(Now, for what it's worth, I'm sure I would have had a much harder time with both of these interviews if they were conducted face-to-face or--god forbid--on the phone; as Kiran says, "We don't talk good." )

Wallowing in Pretension

2007-06-14T13:32:00.000-04:00

Our partners-in-Pretentiousness over at the Brick have just posted an exceedingly erudite interview with yours truly on their blog.

Here's a sample:

The late Roland Barthes once wrote "For the theatre one needs long arms; it is better to have them too long than too short. An artiste with shortarms can never, never make a fine gesture." Explicate.

Too many artistes take the current artistic climate at face value, somehow naturalizing the stylistic idiosyncrasies that define it. These short-armed simpletons somehow believe that naturalism is actually natural and that realism is real. Stolen Chair uses its long arms (collectively, our company's arms span approximately 60 feet) to reach deep into the past and around the world to remind ourselves that style is always a choice.

Swarthmorean Sojourn (w/slideshow!!!)

2007-06-13T23:31:00.000-04:00

The show always goes on, doesn't it? After what was one of the most difficult tech weeks Stolen Chair ever had, we somehow managed to pull off last weekend's gig performing Commedia dell'Artemisia at Swarthmore College's Alumni Weekend. In the week leading up to our departure, David and I probably slept a combined total of 6 hours, staying up far too late to build the set in my apartment (my neighbors must looove me!). And if it wasn't for the kindness of a Rosebrand associate named Marco, the two hours we spent in traffic just blocks from the Holland Tunnel might have prevented us from picking up the backdrops that were central to the design. But we made it to Swarthmore, PA with the set and the cast in about as many pieces as they were supposed to be.

The weekend was Kiran and my 5th reunion and Stolen Chair's 5th anniversary all wrapped up together. Our directing mentor, Allen Kuharski, arranged the event as an opportunity for us to perform at the school that has been so generous in its support of the company for the past 5 years. It was also the show's "out-of-town trial," an opportunity to put it up in front of a large audience before bringing it to the Pretentious Festival this weekend (have you bought your tickets yet?!). We had great turnout from class years '42 through '02 and brilliant Swarthmorean feedback from the audience; the performance simultaneously whet my appetite for the upcoming Pretentious shows and began the countdown towards the inevitable post-pardum depression that will set in when this fabulous show goes, as James Comtois says, to that Great Production in the Sky. Luckily, even before Commedia closes on the 29th, we'll be kickstarting Kinderspiel in earnest at a June 25th reading for Soho Think Tank's 6th Floor Series.

Stressful though it might be to spend every waking moment with the same group of people, all of us dealing with pre-show jitters and sleep deprivation in our own ways, I was really excited to live and breathe theatre and only theatre for 48 hours straight. No day jobs. No cell-phone signal (at least for me...damn T-mobile!). Just Commedia dell'Artemisia. Again and again and again. The weekend had me lusting after the possibility of a future college tour circuit. (Any colleges out there want to book Commedia? Cross-lists with both Art History and Gender Studies...any takers? Email me if you want to chat about it...)

I'll let the 31 pictures below speak the remaining 31,000 words I had originally intended for this posting. Some on stage, some backstage, some far off stage on Swarthmore's lovely campus. Enjoy!

LEFT: 1px solid; BORDER-BOTTOM: 1px solid; COLOR: #333333;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" width="400" height="267" flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&RGB=0x000000&feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Fjonstancato%2Falbumid%2F5075645773684406129%3Fkind%3Dphoto%26alt%3Drss" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer">

Commedia dell'Artemisia Interview #3: Christopher Bayes

2007-06-11T22:29:00.000-04:00

Ask any of the country's best clowns how they learned to do what they do and they'll likely answer: Christopher Bayes, a veritable household name in the physical comedy world. He has been a company member at Theatre de la Jeune Lune and the Guthrie, been a faculty member at Julliard, Yale, and Tisch, and has staged work at nearly every theatre in the city.

Here is Christopher's take on Commedia, Moliere, and more:

How do you define Commedia dell'Arte?

Commedia is the art of the virtuosic actor. It is a celebration of the art of the actor as well as a celebration of the theatrical form itself. It is the on-going playful tragedy of the underdog trying to "stick it to the man".

What do you think is the most common misconception of Commedia?
That it is dated. It is a living form that continues to evolve as the rich get richer and the poor do all of the work to help them do so.

Why do you think Commedia dell'Arte is an important training for contemporary actors?
It encourages "physical psychology" and playful abandon. It teaches actors to think with their bodies and appetites. It removes the possibility of the "polite or appropriate" body. It is deeply vulgar and violent. It kills realism or naturalism by encouraging the actor to play in grand scale with truth, fun and poetry. You can't play commedia unless you can listen with your body.

Do you have a favorite Commedia character to play?
Pantalone. Why? He is such a skeevy, tragic bastard.

How does your background in Commedia influence your directorial choices when you work on a Moliere play?
Moliere trained with a commedia company and shared a theater with one. He was deeply inspired by the Lazzi and the lengths that they might be pushed. He brought his own sense of poetry to a comic/tragic world but kept the root of the characters in the commedia. The misconception is that Moliere is polite. So…I try to uncover what inspired him so that I
might be inspired as well. More hitting!

While Commedia-inspired groups like the Mime Troupe have been around for decades and while some elements of Commedia-esque satire have been absorbed by the sketch comedy world of SNL and such, do you think that we'll ever see a traditional masked travelling Commedia troupe dealing with contemporary material?
No one can afford to have a company anymore. The producing structure has killed the company system. And television has seduced the artists. How long can you pass the hat?( God I' so cynical.)….. Sure. god bless'em! How can I help?

What can Commedia and its legacy teach us about creating contemporary satire?
Look at the Simpsons. It's commedia.

As the soon-to-be-head of the Physical Acting program at Yale Drama, can you give us a sneak peek at the syllabus?
More squirrelly fun.

Anything you'd like to plug?
Yes, but it would be impolite and vulgar to actually write it down.

The new news (June 5th, 2007)

2007-06-05T20:45:00.000-04:00

The latest newsletter just went out today. Read it here.

And for Jon's sake (why should Pete get all the love?), please sign up on our e-blast list.

And, um, HAVE YOU DONATED YET?

No? Well then, er...HAVE YOU BOUGHT TIX FOR COMMEDIA DELL'ARTEMISIA YET?

Commedia dell'Artemisia Interview #2: Verse Playwright Kirk Wood Bromley

2007-06-02T23:45:00.000-04:00

I'd like to introduce you all to a man who surely needs no introduction if you have been a working indie theatre artist in NYC for the past decade or so: verse playwright Kirk Wood Bromley. As Artistic Director and founder of Inverse Theater, Kirk has written and self-produced 8 verse plays and 2 musicals, one of which, Want's Unwisht Work is published in Playing with Canons alongside Stolen Chair's The Man Who Laughs. His awards and accolades are far too many to mention, but you should get to know this playwright's work as soon as you possibly can. I'll give you two options: either a) go to his website and download one of his e-texts or b) see the remount of No More Pretending that kicks off this years Ice Factory Festival at the Soho Think Tank.

And now, the questions...

1. When did you start writing in verse? Are there any prose plays hiding in a box under your bed?

I started writing in verse when I discovered that the rhythms in my head had to come out or I’d eat my fingers off (a habit only slightly abated by such release), somewhere around 19 years old. But my plays are only half in verse, so I have tons of prose lying around. Too much, in fact.

2. What do you find the greatest challenges and delights of the playwriting constraints you've given yourself?

The greatest challenge is the greatest delight – doing it well.

3. While Inverse's website is quite compelling in its elucidation of your mission, why do you feel it's important to create new verse work now?

I don’t really think it’s important for others to create new verse work. n fact, I generally can’t stand what’s come to be called a “verse play,” which is mostly some run-off of Seneca or Yeats. I think it’s important for me to create new verse work now because if I don’t do it I get incredibly sad.

4. How did you find the transition from writing a verse play to a verse musical?

I found no difference between writing a verse play and a verse musical, save that certain passages are meant to be sung, so I pop into “lyric” mode, which is more structurally diverse than the normal iambic pentameter in which (for some reason) I continue to slog.

5. Have you found more playwrights tackling verse in the years since you emerged? If so, how do you feel about the trend?

I’m not really sure. Some people have said this is the case, but I can’t say. And to be honest, I don’t feel anything about the trend, not only cuz I’m not sure there is one, but cuz I think people should write what they want and so be it.

6. NO MORE PRETENDING received rave reviews in its last incarnation. How has it changed from the version you presented earlier this year?

It is completely different, mostly because the beginning, middle, and end are completely different. Mobad still rants and rants, but the reason he’s ranting has changed big time, and given it, I think, a deeper bang. Though to be honest I strongly suspect I’ve ruined a good thing.

And, a few silly ones for kicks:

1. What's your favorite poetic meter? Free verse is my favorite poetic meter, I’m just not free enough to do it.

2. How do you feel about rhyme? I love rhyme, as long as I don’t hear it.

3. What's your favorite word you've invented? Vachina, from “Made in Vachina.”

4. Shakespeare or Moliere? Good question. I have never met anyone who shares my feelings about Moliere, which is that he is an absolute waste of stage. So, Shakespeare, though I hope to hell I feel different soon.

[Editorial comment: but Moliere is so fabulous!!! How could Mr. Bromley say such a thing? That said, we fully respect his opinions and would love to hear more about his complaints against the great Moliere...]

Why should you see Commedia dell'Artemisia?

2007-06-01T11:33:00.000-04:00

“Audiences will dig it,” Stancato assured, “because it's a biting and vicious diatribe about history, hypocrisy, rape, romance, art, and artifice all dressed up as a cute little sex comedy.” The Stolen Chair theatre company has been performing variations of this piece for over three years and presents it again at The Pretentious Festival as a means of collaborating with The Brick and continuously re-orienting the themes to modern day relevance.

Stancato believes “Commedia Dell’Artemisia,” presented on June 17 and 19 [CORRECTION: June 17 & 29], holds its own in the festival because it’s “the only piece that has masks, the only piece in rhyming couplets, the only piece based on an obscure trial transcript, and the only piece to wring humor from the horrible real-life experiences of an Italian female painter.”

Read the full article from the Courier for more...or, you know, you could just go and BUY YOUR TICKETS NOW!

(If you need more convincing, you could always come to the Opening Night Cabaret tonight at 7pm at the Brick, wherein we'll be presenting scene one of the play.)

A very pretentious cabaret

2007-05-27T18:48:00.000-04:00

A heads up for next week: Scene 1 of Commedia dell'Artemisia will be making an appearance at the Pretentious Festival's Opening Night Cabaret. The festivities will be this Friday night, beginning at 7pm at the Brick Theater.

Check out their website or more info...

Our "Music" Rehearsal

2007-05-25T12:04:00.001-04:00

For those of you who needed a good reason to GO AND BUY YOUR TICKETS for the Pretentious Festival appearance of Commedia dell'Artemisia, look no further than the exquisitely awful cell-phone video shot by evil genius set-designer/performer David Bengali at our "music" rehearsal:

Hey, David, do you have a version of that with sound?

Commedia dell'Artemisia Interview #1: Mask-Maker Jonathan Becker

2007-05-21T23:43:00.000-04:00

Long time blog readers will remember the film noir and absurdism interview series we conducted in the weeks leading up to the opening of Kill Me Like You Mean It. Well, as we countdown to the opening of Commedia dell'Artemisia at the Pretentious Festival, we wanted to bring in some of the country's leading experts on mask design, commedia dell'arte, Moliere, and verse playwriting to share their thoughts.

Today I'd like to introduce you to Jonathan Becker: actor, teaching artist, dancer, puppeteer, puppet designer, dancer, fight choreographer and...mask-maker! I've been teaching Commedia and directing with Jonathan's neoprene masks (purchased at theater-masks.com) since 2004. The masks have been dropped, kicked, left out in the sun and in blizzards, and forced to absorb gallons about gallons of actor-sweat and they still look like they've been freshly cast (unfortunately, they've since lost that new mask smell...). In addition to the complete set of Commedia masks he offers, Jonathan has a variety of other character and decorative masks available. (I might add, that his Commedia masks do double duty as my living room's wall decorations.) And if you don't like anything he shows on the site, you can do what Disney and Lincoln Center did: order a custom mask.

And here's what he has to say...

1. How do you define Commedia dell'Arte?

Hmmmmm… The Commedia is so many things. I would define the Commedia as the ultimate human comedy. It is an outrageous celebration of the foibles of humanity. The Commedia is forever contemporary given that it is based on archetypes and universal themes. It is trickery at its finest.

Everything in the commedia is a ruse even the act of story telling. One thinks one is off to see a play but in the end it is what the characters of the commedia choose to give that evening that is the experience of the audience.

As a style, in the commedia, it is the style itself that’s in play. It is different in other forms of theatre. For example, it is the text in Shakespeare, the story in a melodrama, and the characters in Contemporary American Realism. The style itself is what is important in the commedia.

In commedia you have an actor playing an actor playing a character having a direct conversation with the audience.

2. What do you think is the most common misconception of Commedia?

That it is an historical form of theatre that needs to played as such and that it is based completely in improvisation.

3. Where does the inspiration for your Commedia masks come from?

The masks are based on both the historical forms of the traditional commedia masks but also on the animals that are closest to the charters in personality and temperament.

4. Tell us about Neoprene. What are the advantages of working with this material as a sculptor and as an actor?

Neoprene is an industrial latex compound that cures to a mostly rigid form. It’s original application was as an additive for adhesives. Someone figured out that it could be used to make masks. I wish it had been me then I’d feel like a smart person.

In a neoprene mask the wall of the mask turns out to be about 1/8” thick and is slightly flexible. This material has been being used by mask makers here in the US for about 18 years. It provides for a very professional grade working mask. Its greatest asset is that the masks can be made in an affordable way.

The weight and feel of the mask is similar to that of a leather mask. The masks are padded and strapped. The wear on the mask will depend on the care that it gets and how many times it is exposed to extreme cold and extreme heat. For the most part, neoprene masks are pretty much indestructible. I toured with a company that had to make changes so quickly that the masks were often thrown on the floor over and over again and those masks would last a year or more of constant touring and playing 250 or so performances a year.

5. Why do you think Commedia dell'Arte is an important training for contemporary actors?

Commedia is an important training tool because it involves the use of masks which are designed as living sculpture. This means that in order to support the mask and maintain the life of the sculpture the actor must always be in a constant state of honest discovery. It is impossible to lie under a mask. Learning to play commedia is like learning to play the violin. One has to be a virtuoso to pull it off. It is hugely technical and an absolute mastery of the technique must be had in order to play.

The actor must have a true mastery of the principles of the craft of performance to succeed at the commedia.

6. You teach workshops which fuse both Grotowski-based and Lecoq-based actor training. How do you reconcile the two distinct styles in your own work and pedagogy?

Do you have an hour… here is the short answer:

I fuse them. Lecoq is all about space and rhythm which involves a relationship to the audience since they are part of the space. The physical conditioning of the plateau work and the attention to the kinesthetic and intuitive sense of physical impulse is second to none in the Grotowski work. I use the two at different points in the training process and to accomplish different goals depending on the outcome I am reaching for.

7. Do you have a favorite Commedia character to play? Why?

I most often play Pantelone because he is closer to me in real life but I love playing Tartaglia. The simple stupidity of this character appeals to me.

8. While Commedia-inspired groups like the Mime Troupe have been around for decades and while some elements of Commedia-esque satire have been absorbed by the sketch comedy world of SNL and such, do you think that we'll ever see a traditional masked traveling Commedia troupe dealing with contemporary material?

I would hope so. But I’m not sure that it can happen in our culture. We in America do not have a tradition of masked performance and so have a difficult time relating to masked styles of performance. The masks of our culture are Darth Vader, Freddy from Friday the Thirteenth and evil clown masks for Halloween. It’s difficult. Maybe if we tire of the virtual world we will long for something else and truly theatrical forms of performance will begin to flourish.

9. What can Commedia and its legacy teach us about creating contemporary satire?

Situation is the basis for comedy and the universal is what is funny. That it is ultimately the physical nature of the comedy the rings true and is most exciting. I always think of Lucile Ball, Bill Cosby, Rhett Skelton, Archie Bunker (all of the characters in this sit com) oh and
stupid and ridiculous are a good place to start when solving most problems.

10. Anything you'd like to plug?

Sure… Buy lots of masks from www.theater-masks.com or just send me all your money. That works too.

...In addition to today's interview, you can look forward to hearing from Christopher Bayes, one of the country's leading teachers of clown and Commedia and Kirk Wood Bromley, New York's most prolific verse playwright. Have another interview suggestion? Comment away...

Kinderspiel's Dramatis Personae

2007-05-21T01:31:00.001-04:00

Down below are the characters we explored on Saturday's rehearsal as we tested out the konceit detailed in Kinderspiel Korrections: Part 2. We used the "dropping-in" exercise I picked up from Larry Sacharow in 2001 to find the characters' physicalities and then the ensemble created a very long but very brilliant composition which staged how these characters might deal with the 4 tropes of child's play that I wrote about on Friday. Finally, the ensemble spent some time trying to stage Kiran's very first zygotic stab at the play's language, a fabulously demented mix of English words following German grammatical rules, German/English hybrid words, and nonsense words made out of strange English or German compounds. You can read a little bit of this in the excerpt section of Kinderspiel's finally posted show page on stolenchair.org. And while you're navigating away from the site, feel free to take a gander at the production's webpage placeholder at www.kinderspiel.us. (I know, I know, we couldn't get dot-com...)

If you've navigated back to blog (or never left at all), I hereby present to you, in no particular order, the possible dramatis personae for Kinderspiel:

"Anita" played by Alexia Vernon

"Max" played by Cameron J. Oro

"Heinrich" played by Sam Dingman

"Anna" played by Elisa Matula

"Sylvia" played by Liza Wade White

(You might have recognized some of the above pix. They are all photos or paintings of famous writers, painters, and performers from 1920s Berlin.)

Kinderspiel Korrections: Part 2

2007-05-18T16:21:00.000-04:00

(If you haven't read Part 1, please see below.)

Last we saw our fearless Co-Artistic Directors, they were in the middle of a dual to the death with the Dionysian forces attempting to overthrow their pet project Kinderspiel. Will their partner in criminally brilliant theatricality, the Dramaturg, step in and save the day? Stay tuned...

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(trying to live up to the vicious insult that Alexia launched at me: blog tease. Can you believe that?! The nerve!)

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............okay, I can't take it anymore. Our new and improved and more than slightly demented vision for Kinderspiel takes its lead from Hedwig and the Angry Inch (the play, not the movie). Through the structure of various musical acts, each fully genre'd, Hedwig tells his/her origin tale: how he became she and then he again (more or less. kind of. it's complicated. see the movie). Similarly, we'll present an evening cabaret performance composed of acts, moderated by an MC, which, combined with banter and monologue, will explain the origin story of the Kinderspielers and how they came to do what they do. Except our acts will be sequences of child's play, consisting not of play-acting, but the following tropes:

Questions & Answers:

ex. Q: "Why is the sky blue?" A: "Because if it was black we wouldn't be able to see anything during the daytime."
These questions can be stimulated by real world phenomena or by imaginary constructs from the below tropes. They are often deadly serious and carry the force of logic.

Role-Playing:

ex #1: "Let's play house! You'll be the daddy and I'll be the mommy and we'll be poor because you can't get a job and I'll let in strange smelly men and give them a tour of the bedroom while you wait on bread lines."
ex #2: [5 year old talking on pretend cellphone] "Hello, honey. I'm at the station! Can you hear me? I need you pick me up. I'm at the station. Can you pick me up at the station? I'm by the train."

These simulations of "adult" life often boil down stereotypes of domestic life and ones community in ways that only the sharpest of satires can mimic.

Games:

ex: "Okay, so each time you walk past the bench you need to jump twice and say the name of the person behind you but unless you say it backwards you have to walk backwards."
These games often have so many invented and/or improvised rules than no adult can comprehend how they could possibly be fun. But they are probably the truest example of direct democracy...assuming, of course, that there isn't a bossy 8-year old barking out all the rules herself!

Experiments:

ex: magnifying glasses on ants, salt on slugs, stacking things so high they fall and break, and designing and building a robot of scrap metal in the dumpster in the hopes of creating a friend who will clean your room, do your homework, and get you a girlfriend (not that I ever did that. Because I didn't! And I definitely didn't try to plug it in and get electrocuted! Who would be that stupid?! Stop looking at me like that!).
These experiments can often be destructive and cruel but they can also be the way kids learn about life, death, gravity, electrocution, and many of the other truisms that will govern their adult lives.

Now, we ain't no psychologists (though I've been home-schooling a 10th grader in AP psych so I'm not totally clueless. At least I hope not...wait, am I?), but, as far as we can tell from our playground and playdate studies, these discrete activities and their overlap cover the gamut of child's-play that is infused with the same sort of glorious kid-logic as great children's literature.

(Cry for help: if anyone out in the blogosphere knows of actual studies that categorize and or analyze kid's play, please comment or email me directly so we can be better informed. Emily, can you cast about for this, too?)

So, if the piece is essentially the interwoven biographies of 5 kinderspielers, who are these Weimar-era men and women anyhow? Check back on Monday for details as we present Part 3 of Kinderspiel Korrections.

In the meantime, comments are eagerly solicited, especially on one troublesome subject in particular: how do we develop this piece in such a way that it is read as a riff on how childhood is processed by adults rather than just a celebration of the oft-cliched "wisdom of the child"?

Kinderspiel Korrections: Part 1

2007-05-18T12:25:00.000-04:00

So, we spent about 3 weeks toying with a concept for Kinderspiel that just doesn't look like it will either a) actually address the questions we want to address or b) actually be possible to do.

Fortunately, we learned a lot in those 3 weeks of experiments. It can be awfully frustrating for all parties involved to flail about in unknown territory only to come to the conclusion that nothing has been concluded. But such is the valiant and commendable mission of a laboratory theatre company! The alternative is what? We would only do plays that were already written or develop ideas that we were 100% certain we could pull off. Where would the fun be in that?

As it stands now, Kinderspiel PR reads: "Set in the demimonde of Weimar Berlin, one cabaret offers access to the ultimate taboo: watching adults play as children. Stolen Chair presents the world's greatest children's story, told exclusively for an adult audience. After all, why should childhood be wasted on the young?"

In our rehearsal experiments, we had been interpreting "play as children" to mean "play-acting as children." Putting aside for the moment whether or not the nature of our ensemble's play-acting was or was not faithful to actual child's-play, this interpretation forcibly skews the play too far towards the Dionysian on Nietzsche's artistic spectrum (Um...can you tell I've been spending too long doing PR for Stolen Chair's gig at the Pretentious Festival?). While about 8 years ago, in the thick of my Grotowski-worship, I would have bribed, maimed, and killed for the opportunity to direct a paratheatrical experiment, Stolen Chair's whole formula is based on reinvigorating classical (or classic) structures. We make perversely-conceived and aesthetically-preposterous well-made plays. And...we tell stories! Good stories. We just couldn't find the Apollonian structures necessary to keep the play-acting component and find opportunities to forge those into a well-made play and a good story.

The chief problem play-acting poses is that it fully negates character; part of play-acting means so fully committing to the spirit of the moment that the social clues that reveal character just disappear. And it's reductive: while there's room therein for wild creativity, the plot tropes it seems to force (Grotowski similarly noticed that in his early paratheatre experiments, most of the improvisations revolved around certain banalities like pseudo-tribal conflict and group celebration) won't give us the opportunity to explore the questions which originally gave rise to this piece.

But, where does that leave us? Ah, well that's part two, coming to an RSS-feed near you in about 3 hours...