REVIEW
Paual Vogel’s The Long Christmas Ride Home appeared in 2003 at the tail end of a resurgence of interest in puppetry in the mainstream American theater that might have begun with Basil Twist’s New York production of Symphonie Fantastique in 1999. Though puppet theatre persists in many forms throughout the US and the world, the use of puppetry as a performative element in avant garde and mainstream theater goes in and out of fashion cyclically, at least in this country. Philadelphia’s own MumPuppet Theatre (where both I and director Aaron Cromie have worked), explored the highly permeable boundary between puppet theatre and mainstream theatre for 23 years before closing suddenly in 2008. As a sometime-puppeteer, puppet designer and director who also works regularly in the mainstream theater, I follow the ebbs and flows of puppet popularity with great interest.
Vogel subtitles The Long Christmas Ride Home as “A Puppet Play with Actors.” It seems to be the other way around. In the first act, the audience’s focus is primarily on the non-puppet characters, especially “Man” and “Woman”–the mother and father whose disintegrating marriage drives the action. The puppets are constrained to sitting in the back seat of an imaginary car. In act two, when the children become grownups, puppets appear as their adult lovers. I don’t think the audience really cares, but I found the change in performance and narrative convention jarring. One thing playwrights often don’t understand about puppets is that they are most interesting when they do and least interesting when they talk, especially if they are constructed without moving mouths. Vogel’s specialty is obviously the words.
Master Bunraku performers create an amazing illusion of life in their puppets through the coordinated, highly-detailed actions of four performers manipulating each puppet simultaneously. Vogel describes the puppetry required for the piece as “…one Westerner’s misunderstanding of Bunraku.” I’m glad she admits to misunderstanding the form, though it makes the puppets in the piece more of a gimmick in my opinion than a necessary part of the dramatic storytelling. If she had been more concerned about the values of the form she was inspired by, she’d have a more effective play.
The Long Christmas Ride Home borrows some of the conventions of Japanese Bunraku puppetry to tell the story of a painfully dysfunctional family trip during the Christmas holidays, and the harsh consequences of that time on the future lives of the children, Steven, Rebecca and Claire. Though the parents are the engines of the play’s conflict, Vogel doesn’t give them names–they are listed simply as “Man” and “Woman”. The first act follows the tense car ride to the mother’s parents for Christmas dinner. The second act takes us an indeterminate time into the future, where each of the children, now fully grown, deliver monologues to their lovers, either as cuckholds or adulterers. We discover in the final monologue that Steven died of AIDS. In the third act, Steven returns as a spirit just long enough to show us how the long Christmas ride ended–in a moment of bittersweet unity for the three children.
Nonetheless, in the hand’s of Director Aaron Cromie’s gifted cast, the play’s various flaws don’t interfere with the emotional impact of the Azuka Theatre production. The primary ensemble is strong, composed of often-employed Philly actors of diverse experience and acting style. Keith Conallen gives an emotionally wrenching performance as Steven, especially the monologue that opens the second act. He is not as effective as the disembodied spirit of Steven in act three. Charlie DelMarcelle transforms at a moment’s notice into a variety of amusing character roles. He takes an outstanding turn as an awkward Unitarian minister offering a Christmas sermon accompanied by prints of classical Japanese pornography. DelMarcelle may be Philadelphia’s most gifted character actor, and is always a joy to watch.
Seth Reichgott excels both as the philandering father (“Man”), and as part-time narrator and occasional ventriloquist. Amanda Grove (“Woman”) is believably repressed as his justifiably cynical and crestfallen wife. Allison Heishman brings a booming voice and zesty earthiness to Claire, the youngest sister. As always, Janice Rowland performs with charm and grace, though she lacks the edge to make the ambivalent, alcoholic Rebecca believable. This is forgivable, as Vogel’s focus is on Steven, the character who most resembles her own brother. The sisters are sketched in with the barest of necessary character detail–they’re actually more believable as puppets than people.
In a piece that changes style as frequently and rapidly as this, it is a tribute to Cromie’s direction that the ensemble is so consistent throughout the production. The supporting puppeteers, a group of Drexel University undergraduates, perform competently, though the puppetry in the piece would have more effectively served the story with experienced puppeteers.
The design team has done a remarkable job transforming Drexel’s rather plain and static Mandell Theater into a dynamic, breathing theatrical space. Craig Vetter’s set, composed of Japanese-feeling paper screens, surrounds the audience, and continues to transform throughout the course of the piece. One moment, a paper panel is a window, later a projection screen, or a site for a dance in silhouette. At key moments, these black and grey panels glow and flash with bright, passionate colors, thanks to Terry Smith’s lighting design.
Sound Designer and Composer Chris Colucci’s most striking contribution is the live hand bell music provided by the ninja-like student ensemble, which reinforces the idea of the Christmas season while simultaneously creating an otherworldly, ghostly feeling. Cromie’s bunraku-style puppets are more like dolls than children–somewhat crude and awkward. It’s hard to tell if this was a stylistic choice, or the result of their construction by the Drexel students. Cromie is a highly-skilled puppet and mask designer (he seems to be good at just about everything), and these figures get the job done, but not with the usual attention to detail that I’ve seen in Cromie’s other work.
The Long Christmas Ride Home is a very promising start to Azuka Theatre’s 10th Anniversary Season. Cromie has created a very unified and compelling ensemble production in spite of the limitations of Vogel’s script. The staging and design are highly dynamic, the acting is believable and the story is told about as well as humanly possible. I don’t think any other currently active Philadelphia theater company could have achieved a production like this.
The Long Christmas Ride Home, produced by Azuka Theatre in conjunction the Drexel University’s Mandell Professionals in Residence Project, runs through November 15, 2009 at the Mandell Theater, 33rd and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia.
Making it Scary: Designing & Composing “Slasher”
October 24, 2009
For the last few weeks, I’ve been working intensely on the sound design for the Philadelphia production of Allison Moore’s dark comedy, Slasher, produced by Luna Theater and directed by Greg Campbell. Slasher follows Sheena, a feisty young Texas waitress as she connects with a d-list horror movie director on the outs who’s mortgaged everything he owns to make his last film, Bloodbath. Sheena’s psychotic, radical feminist mother goes on the warpath to stop the film, and things get a whole lot scarier than anyone involved can imagine. The show runs October 22 through November 8 at the Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5. More info and tickets are available here.
This is my third show with Luna. Greg Campbell tends to choose scripts that are dark and intense, this is certainly no exception. Underscoring has played an increasingly important role in the designing I’ve done for Luna. Underscoring of scenes and monologues is commonplace in film, but not very common in the mainstream American dramatic stage. I’ve seen underscoring used in many English productions, to both positive and detrimental effect. As a musician as well as a theater artist, I’ve always been interested in the way that actors can interact with music, and how that synthesis in performance affects the audience.
Because Slasher is rooted so thoroughly in the conventions of horror films, Greg and I made the decision to use horror movie music not just in the transitions between scenes, but also to enhance the tension (and comedy) of key scenes and monologues. I drew inspiration what I consider to be classic horror soundtracks from the 70s through the present, including the work of John Carpenter (Halloween, Halloween III), Pino Donaggio (who was responsible for many films, including Carrie, and one of my favorites, Don’t Look Now), and also Charlie Clouser (Saw).
Horror soundtracks from the 1970s and earlier tend to rely on orchestral arrangements and dissonant piano or violin sounds for their creepiness. In the late 70s, monophonic synthesizers started to dominate, and that trend continued through with more sophisticated synth textures in the 1980s. Jumping ahead into the last 10 years, that the influence of ambient electronica and trip hop is strongly in effect in horror composition. Synthesized and sampled sounds interact with more traditional orchestral timbres. Distorted, sampled percussion sounds (borrowed from trip-hop, drum n’ bass, trance etc.) have been very in, from what I can tell. What it all has in common, from my perspective, is the juxtaposition of low-pitched percussion and drones in the bass register, and high-pitched drones and dissonant melodies in the treble.
For me, the most satisfying part of this process was the composing of horror movie music that reflected the specific style of the last 30 years or so. Here’s a link to my website with some of the music I composed for the production:
“Psycho Pill Smash” is probably my favorite. In the play, Sheena’s mother, Frances, decides to destroy the painkilling pills she’s addicted to and focus on saving her daughter. The opening violin figure is an homage to the famous shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”, and I think the cellos add some nice suspense.
“Frances Attacks” underscores a climatic fight scene between Sheena’s mother, Frances, and Marc, the film director who is exploiting and threatening her daughter. The insistent percussion keeps the intensity up, and the ascending piano figure builds tension. The bass/tuba line in the last section sort of reminds me of the theme to “Conan”–an unintentional homage, but one that amuses me.
Finally, “Marc’s Horror” underscores a scene where Marc, with his film becoming a comic disaster, finally loses it, puts on the slasher mask, and starts to cross over the line between making a movie and living in a fantasy of male aggression. I was aiming for a feeling of fragmentation here, something more atmospheric than the very composed-sounding orchestral stuff I composed for Frances. This piece has more in common with 21st-century horror scores, using distorted sort-of trip-hop beat and manipulated and reversed samples. Still, I can’t get away from some of the older devices, like the high violin, and the hint of chanting chorus, which makes me think of “Omen”, which terrified me as a kid.
All music posted here is copyright Aaron Oster, 2009, all rights reserved
When Words Fail
October 13, 2009
REVIEW
I came to the Lantern Theater production of Happy Days, by Samuel Beckett, with curiosity and high expectations. Though I had read the play several times, I’ve never seen it produced. I am a fan of Beckett, though not a fanatic, and I was hoping this production would move me even more on the stage than on the page. I was disappointed.
The action, such as it is, concerns Winnie (Mary Elizabeth Scallen), a chatty and optimistic woman of “about 50″ who is buried up to her waist in dirt. She keeps her spirits up by talking…and talking…and by performing banal daily routines: brushing her teeth, applying lipstick, and attempting to engage her barely visible, nearly mute, and paraplegic husband Willie (Brian McCann) in conversation.
In the second act, Winnie is buried up to her neck, and Willie finally crawls to where Winnie can see him, only to stop moving and most likely die. Despite the bizarre situation, Winnie does her best to maintain a positive attitude–but sometimes the reality is just too much.
The script of Happy Days is filled with very direct, descriptive stage directions. Beckett knew exactly what he wanted his plays to do, and his estate has historically shut down productions of his work that don’t meet the playwright’s stringent guidelines. Still, there is room for interpretation and debate. Among my colleagues who direct and perform Beckett’s work, there is a stark difference of opinion about Beckett’s attitude towards humanity and the way his work should be performed.
One group, whom I’ll call the Formalists, see Beckett’s characters as clownish automatons, at the mercy of personal repetitive rituals and external signals. The formalists believe that imposing real emotional life on Beckett’s characters is a travesty, an affectation of a slavish dedication to realism in theater.
The other group, I’ll call them the Humanists, feel that Beckett really did have a deep sympathy for and appreciation of humanity and the difficulties of the human condition. The humanists are generally not concerned about the formal rhythms of actions, silences, and repetitions that make up the score of any Beckett play to various degrees (including Happy Days).
The most effective Beckett productions I’ve seen feature recognizably human characters responding to unbearable and confusing circumstances. They struggle to reaffirm their humanity in the face of the fragmentation of language and the silences that always seem to bring them a little closer to death. It’s the contrast between form and feeling that makes Beckett’s work dynamic, even though very little actually happens in the conventional dramatic sense.
This is where this production of Happy Days misses the mark. Mary Elizabeth Scallen is extremely vivacious as Winnie, at the expense of emotional subtlety. I found her moments of doubt and confusion unconvincing. Was this the Formalist approach, or just very presentational acting? I suspect the latter, but it’s hard to tell.
In the first act, Winnie is peppy, present and pretty. I think too pretty–Winnie talks throughout the play about losing her youth and her looks. We have to believe she’s past her prime. She is, in effect, dead from the waist down after all, as is Willie. With her brightly-dyed auburn hair and short sleeves, Scallen looks entirely too young and vital (bearing a striking resemblance to Maureen O’Hara). 50 isn’t all that old today, but in 1961, when the play was first produced, it was a lot further from youth and closer to death.
Where O’Connor’s direction fails the piece is in the absence of the shadow of death, which hangs over Winnie and Willie from the first moments of the play. Winnie keeps talking because if she doesn’t, she fears she will cease to exist. Silence brings her that much closer to the reality of passing time and the end of her life.
O’Connor seems to be afraid of the pauses that Beckett specifically wrote into the piece. I kept waiting for the moments when the words would fail, and Winnie and the audience would suffer in awkward silence until she picked up a new thread of words to prolong her life. Scallen never lost the words for long enough. O’Connor conducted the piece at a lively, audience-friendly pace at the expense of what I think to be Beckett’s desired dramatic effect.
In the second act, Scallen plays Winnie as manic, tense and shrill, showing the strain of maintaining her optimism in increasingly dire circumstances. As Winnie’s humanity is almost completely covered up by earth, what’s inside her should come shining through. Scallen’s mask-like facial contortions buried any possible emotional vulnerability, and Winnie became almost expressionistic in her extremity. The Formalist won, in this case, and the audience loses.
The set, by Meghan Jones, is impressive and detailed. It is composed mainly of a pile of simulated sandy rocks, much like a habitat you might see in a zoo or natural history museum. A circle of light on a white scrim behind stands in for the Sun. The effect is accented by the suggestion of a glassed-in cage on either side of the stage.
Visually impressive as the set is, it is not the “mound of earth” which Beckett calls for. A woman half-buried in a mound of dirt automatically conjures up associations with death in a audience. A women stuck in a rock crevice is something else entirely.
Happy Days isn’t what it could, or should be. Audience members who’ve never read the script likely won’t notice. Scallen’s charisma and energy coupled with O’Connor’s tight pacing make for a lively, off-kilter night at the theater. The production has succeeded in making Happy Days very accessible to an audience possibly unfamiliar with Beckett’s work. For the Beckett fanatics, Formalist and Humanist alike, this production will not make the grade.
Happy Days runs through October 18 at the Lantern Theater in St. Stephen’s Church, at 10th & Ludlow in Philadelphia. Tickets range from $20-$35 for adults, $10-$25 for students and $20-$32 for seniors.
Click here to buy tickets and find out more about the show.
5 Plays on the Drexel Fringe
September 27, 2009
5 Plays on the Drexel Fringe
was a project initiated by Drexel Theater Program Head Nick Anselmo and playwright/screenwriter Bruce Graham, who is on the Drexel faculty. It ran September 24-25 at the Mandell Theater Center on the Drexel campus.
The production was to serve as a showcase of the work that was being created under Graham’s mentorship, and as a tool to generate interest in Drexel’s Theatre Program among new students and incoming freshmen. The piece was composed of short plays and excerpts from longer works written by students in Graham’s classes over the preceding academic year. I was invited to work with Graham on selecting and revising the pieces, and direct the resulting production.
Perhaps the greatest challenge in the process overall was dramaturgical. Rehearsals started in mid-July and continued through the end of August, then went on hiatus until September 20, when Drexel students returned from their post-summer session break. Four of the five student playwrights involved were not on campus, and were involved in jobs or internships elsewhere. All of the pieces needed revision, but it was difficult and often impossible to nail the students down to rewrites.
And so I found myself in the uncomfortable position of making cuts and alterations to the playwrights’ works without their express knowledge. This situation happens often in my experience at the undergrad and high school level in playwriting programs that lead to anthology performances. There’s often a point where the goals of the producing institution (a representative performance with the best possible production values) run counter to the educational goals of instilling a feeling of ownership among writing students of their own work.
As both an educator and a professional director and dramaturg, these situations always give me pause. Having worked with many playwrights in developing and refining their work for performance, I feel I have a strong sense of what will work effectively on stage. I always contextualize my analysis in terms of achieving the playwright’s original intention. My suggestions for revision are always subject to the playwright’s volition–at the end of the day, they have the exclusive right to accept or ignore my suggestions.
In this case, Graham, Anselmo and I had the final say about how the pieces were presented. The playwrights were notified that their work had to be modified in order to fit the format of the evening. Three of the playwrights ultimately did provide revisions, though they largely chose to ignore most of the production team’s feedback. That not every word is precious is a lesson that is hard for all aspiring writers to learn. The process of “throwing the baby off the lifeboat” is always painful–and almost always necessary to some extent.
Ultimately, the student playwrights received professionally-directed productions of their class work, the student actors gained an introduction to a development-through-rehearsal process, and the final productions showcased the best that the Drexel Theatre Program had to offer at that specific point in time. The institutional and educational goals for the production were largely met.
The process and the production it led to also revealed one of the dirty little secrets of the professional theater world: that as much as we promote the sanctity of the playwright’s words and vision, the plawright’s work is always subject to the realities and difficulties of production. There are always a group of people involved at some level who feel they know better than the playwright what their work can and should do on the stage.
Jayanti Tamm Reviews Salvation Road
September 18, 2009
Jaynti Tamm is the author of a memoir, Cartwheels in a Sari (Harmony Books, a division of Randomhouse, 2009), which chronicles her life as the chosen disciple in the cult of guru Sri Chimoy from her birth through the age of 25. The book has received glowing reviews from the New York Times Sunday Book Review, People Magazine, The Forbes.com Book Review, and Booklist. She is currently an English professor at Ocean County College, and has published pieces in numerous literary journals and on the Op-Ed page of the Washington Post. Visit jayantitamm.com for further information about the author and her work.
Ms. Tamm attended a performance of Salvation Road at the invitation of the producer, and was a panelist after in a fascinating and well-attended discussion about cult-related issues. In this entry from her blog, she reviews the play and discusses her experience.
September 12, 2009
One
of my favorite things to do is to see live theatre. Seated in a crowded theatre, when the lights go down and the curtain rises, I feel an exhilarating sense that anything can happen, that I’m suddenly departing to an unknown destination. The immediate and unfiltered experience of actors interacting with the audience, of radical departures from even their intended directions, always feels adventurous. It is truly something that I love, and something that I wish I had the time to do much more than I currently do.
Therefore, a few weeks ago when I received an email from Charles Breinig, the producer of a brand new play about to have its world premiere at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, I was immediately intrigued. The producer wrote that he had heard me interviewed on NPR, and he believed the subject material would be of interest to me—it’s about a young woman in a cult.
I have to admit that I was skeptical about the play and imagined that it might be nothing more than a clunky anti-cult tract presented by some religious group with its own agenda to push, or perhaps even worse—just plain bad theatre. I can happily certainly report that the play was neither.
Presented at the Walnut Theatre’s Experimental Studio in Philadelphia, Salvation Road is written by D.W. Gregory and directed by Aaron Oster. With a minimalist set and costumes, Salvation Road successfully dramatizes the story about the decisions and consequences that affect a family after a young woman joins a Christian cult. I watched the play on its closing matinee performance to a packed house. A small but wonderfully talented cast portrayed the complicated issues of choice and faith, control and freedom without feeling pedantic or preachy. The playwright clearly had researched key elements of cultic groups, and the audience was immediately engaged, as was I.
Directly following the play, I had been invited to speak as part of a panel on cults, and alongside two therapists who specialize in counseling former cult members in their recovery, we answered questions and connected some of the issues from the play to our own experiences. Although the play closes tonight, the producer is intent on having the show go on, so if you happen to see a notice for the play Salvation Road, I recommend that you travel that road. It’s a worthwhile journey.
via JayantiTamm.com Blog.
It Aint Easy Being Irish
September 13, 2009
REVIEW 
God, I’m glad I’m not Irish. Underneath their sunny, fun-loving exteriors, they all harbor dark secrets, dangerous longings, and the predisposition to settle matters of honor by spilling lots and lots of blood. At least, that’s the way the Irish are typically portrayed in a number of plays I’ve seen on Philadelphia stages over the past few years. The Wilma’s production of The Pillowman and Inis Nua’s excellent Skin Deep and Made in China come to mind. Clover, a new play by actor/director/writer Christopher M. Bohan, does nothing to buck the trend.
Desire, jealousy, betrayal and deceit are rampant in the tiny town of Clover, somewhere in Northern Ireland, circa World War II. Dylan O’Donovan goes off to fight with the British at Dunkirk (or so he says), leaving his temptingly attractive wife, Elizabeth, in the care of his brother Fergus and his best friend Mick. He instructs his brother Sean to keep an eye on all three of them, and then disappears for 2 years.
As you might expect, with Dylan mysteriously incommunicado, Elizabeth gets lonely, buried passions come up to the surface, and everyone gets into deep, deep trouble. On Dylan’s surprise return, Sean discovers Fergus stabbed to death in a pub and Nick is suddenly prime suspect. But he won’t say a word. The play alternates between scenes where Sean and Dylan interrogate the reticent Nick and flashbacks that cover the events of the years Dylan has been away.
It’s a structure that works reasonably well, though I was confused by the timeline at various points in the story. The only indication of passing time is a line from Elizabeth, where she berates Sean for lying to her about how long Dylan was really going to be away: first two weeks, then six months, now two years. How recently did the events portrayed in flashback occur? Were they concentrated in time, or spread out over the two years of Dylan’s disappearance? The playwright doesn’t offer much clarity here.
Plot is paramount in this piece, while character and the texture of life in tiny Clover take a back seat. By far, the most vivid character is Dylan. He has a ready wit, and his genial nature is at odds with his propensity for violence. Not that surprisingly, he turns out to be a bit of a psychopath, and his stint in the service is motivated by his radical Republican politics.
Fergus owns a pub, fancies Elizabeth, drinks too much and cries a lot. Nick is schematically described as a writer. Elizabeth is desperate for male attention. Sean is a cipher–is he a policeman? An IRA operative? I found it impossible to say for sure. In a play that relies on the ties between brothers, friends and lovers for it’s dramatic tension, the individual characters and their relationships are not sufficiently fleshed out.
Nonetheless, the story moves along at a fast clip. Bohan the director has done an excellent job giving each of Bohan the playwright’s terse scenes a suspenseful rhythm. For my money, the most successful scene in the play is where Elizabeth and Nick begin their dangerous affair. Elizabeth coquettishly suggests that Nick create a story with her, at the end of which they end up in each other’s arms. The moment is light and charming, but it is rudely interrupted by the drunken and accusatory Fergus, who ruins the mood and hints at the mayhem to come.
The cast of the piece is competent throughout. There is a strong ensemble feeling here, and each does his or her best to compensate for the character detail the playwright left out. Damon Bonetti, miscast as Dylan, nonetheless brings tremendous energy and presence to the role, driving the handful of scenes that he appears in. Despite his inspired effort, he’s just not believable as a cold-blooded, remorseless killer.
Adam Rzepka is believable as Nick, and amusing in the aforementioned story-seduction scene. Kristie J. Lang is solid in the supporting role of Elizabeth, showing just the right amount of neediness and emotional conflict. As Fergus, Jeff Luttermoser gives a believable, though not especially inspired performance. It is difficult to judge Mark Robson’s performance as Sean, as the character is so under-written.
Clover is a script that feels like it needs a couple more rounds of revision to achieve it’s potential. The bare-bones production that I saw tonight in the basement theater of the Unitarian Church was engaging and well-paced throughout. Despite the flaws in the script, it’s a very promising first effort for the Places Ensemble Theatre. I’ll be interested to see what this group can do with stronger material that its actors can really sink their teeth into.
Chlamydia dell’Arte: Better than Sex? Almost.
September 9, 2009
REVIEW
A talking vagina. A menstrual Swan Lake. A striptease to STD factoids. Must be a Fringe show.
Flashpoint Theatre Company founders Gigi Naglak and Meghann Williams have devised an extremely raunchy, wide-ranging “Sex-Ed Burlesque” which somehow manages to feel sweet and naive at the same time. That the show works as well as it does is a real credit to charisma of Naglak and Williams, who bring infectious joy to the material.
The show is structured as a series of skits and acts punctuated by video commentary of two kooky old ladies (played by Naglak and Williams) and by excerpts of interviews with women of various ages discussing their first time, giving and receiving “the talk”, and what sex means to them in general. The interview subjects include local theater personalities, like Philly improv doyenne Bobbi Block. The interview snippets have been ably edited together by Aaron Cromie, and provide a quirky, down-to-earth counterpoint to the brassy theatrics of the skits, scenes and dance numbers.
In the latter half of the show, more factual information about birth control and STDs is inserted into the action. Though the presentation is very clever, the scenes that focus on being informational (as opposed to purely sensational), fall a little flat. When you’ve been led from the beginning to expect witty debauchery, public service announcements seem a little out of place (even when accompanied by a striptease, or the aforementioned talking vagina). It’s a small distraction in an otherwise very amusing production which you’re sure to enjoy. Just don’t bring grandma or your kids. Purchase Tickets
Salvation Road–Final Performances
September 9, 2009
Only 4 more performances of D.W.Gregory’s Salvation Road.
Here are the remaining dates
The response to the production so far has been extremely positive. Here’s what the local press has to say:
The Washington, D.C. troupe The Art Riot Theatrical Co. makes their Philly debut with D.W. Gregory’s drama Salvation Road (Sept. 4-12). Inspired by the experiences of former cult members, Road focuses on a young musician who renounces her friends and family and joins a fringe religious movement. The show is directed by Aaron Oster, who helmed last year’s darkly effective Fringe production Bash: latterday plays . —J. Cooper Robb, Philadelphia Weekly (article)
And here’s a comment from an appreciative audience member:
Wonderful play. Well acted. Reveals the painful emotions and confusion families go through when a loved one joins a manipulative group. One powerful scene shows how group pressures can cause somebody to give up what s/he most cherishes. See it. Learn from it. Be moved by it.–Michael Langone, City Paper Reader Comment
True Story: On opening night, an elderly gentleman passed out in the middle of the show. We took an impromptu intermission, and eventually he left under his own power with several EMTs and his family. The next day, all 5 of his family members returned to see the whole show. That’s a good sign, I think…
Thus far, over 150 people have made the trek to the Walnut Street Theatre Independence Studio on 3 to see the show. It’s very gratifying to receive such enthusiastic response to something I’ve worked really hard on.
In addition to dramaturging and then directing the piece, I also designed the marketing materials, composed the score and did the production photography. Here are some photos of the show:
<
<
<
See you at the show…
RSS - Posts