Voices in print and on the air

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

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

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

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!

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

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!!!

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!"

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

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...

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!

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"

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

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!

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

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

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

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!

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

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!

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.