My 8-week summer course for adults, Playwriting I: The Fundamentals at NYU School of Continuing & Professional Studies begins on Tuesday 6/5. This noncredit, ungraded, evening lecture and writing workshop covers the exact same dramatic writing and theatre history content I teach to matriculated undergrad students in my similar 3-credit, full semester courses at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and Drexel University Westphal College of Media Arts & Design in Philadelphia, only it’s much more affordable. You will write a lot, you will learn a lot, you will have fun. Learn more and enroll.

Sylvia Kauders

Dear Friends,

It’s my pleasure as a Plays & Players board member to invite you to the 3rd and final 100th anniversary reading and fundraiser next Monday 5/14 at 7pm.  All year long we’ve been presenting readings of plays that were performed at Plays & Players 100 years ago during its first season in 1911-12.

Blondell Reynolds Brown

This final reading is the most star-studded of them all.  The play is An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde, directed by Daniel Student, and features  features Sylvia Kauders (Witness, American Splendor, The Wrestler, Sex and the City, The Sopranos); Fox 29′s Good Day co-anchor Karen Hepp, City Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, Revenue Commissioner Keith Richardson, restaurateur Jack Roe, Barrymore Award winning actors Madi Distefano and Amanda Schoonover; Joe Turner’s Come and Gone‘s Kash Goins and Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens creator Isaiah Zagar among others.

Karen Hepp

This final reading and fundraiser kicks off our Next 100 Years campaign to renovate and restore our beautiful old building which is a National Historic Landmark. For the past six months the acclaimed nonprofit Community Design Collaborative has been working with Plays & Players to create a 10-Year Master Plan with recommendations on sustainability and accessibility under the direction of Philadelphia’s leading architectural firm Studio Agoos Lovera.  The May 14 reading will feature raffle drawings, a silent auction, and a chance to hear about the Master Plan.

Tickets: 
$50 VIP – Reading and Meet the Cast post-show reception from 9-10pm at Quig’s Pub

$25 – Reading

$10 – Reading artist/industry ticket

PURCHASE TICKETS ONLINE NOW

Philadelphia’s arbiter of good taste, the South Philly Review, sez don’t miss the 2012 Philadelphia Playwright Showcase April 25-28 @7pm.   Buy your tickets here.

Plays & Players Resident Plots Future

A New York transplant, now residing in East Passyunk Crossing, presents his work to Philly crowds

by Jess Fuerst

On March 27, Jeffrey Stanley workshopped his play “UFOs Over Brooklyn,” which has been in development since 2001.

“The intention is a little more of a showcase, for who in Philly might be interested in producing it,” Stanley said.

Stanley is a resident at Plays & Players Theater, along with Jeremy Gable and Brian Grace-Duff, until September. As such, the writer has access to stages and actors, as well as exposure within the local community.

“Promotion is also part of their agenda. They are not necessarily going to produce all plays residents write,” Stanley said. “It’s an introduction to other professionals in the Philly theater world, so there is a publicity component involved when they showcase us and Plays & Players gets to showcase itself.”

A New York transplant Stanley has spent the past year diving head first into the local community. His debut was a one-man show he wrote and starred in for last year’s Fringe Festival, entitled “Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead.”

“Why I did the Fringe was to announce my presence. It worked.  Well, it made them more aware. The decision makers … put me on the radar. They all came and saw,” the 44-year-old said. “It’s a dark comedy and autobiographical. A close relative of mine died of acute alcoholism, drank himself to death, and it’s about my year spent dealing with that.”

The show, which Stanley performed in a basement in West Philly, involved monologue pieces, as well as audience participation. Stanley asked for viewers to help him reach out to his dead relative through the use of a Ouija board, the result of which is the show’s grand finale.

“It culminates with starting them in another room, trying to make contact with the spirit world on my CONT’D at southphillyreview.com>>

Not the official residency logo. May cause sleeplessness and suicidal thoughts.

Thrilled to let you know about the PDC@Plays&Players Resident Playwrights Showcase (or something unavoidably long-winded like that) happening for 4 performances on April 25-28 @7pm, in which myself and my fellow playwrights-in-residence Jeremy Gable and Brian Grace-Duff will each be presenting excerpts from our newest works-in-progress.

These are not readings or informal workshops but a real night of real theatre for real people. Each of us gets 30 minutes to blow your mind, adding up to an incredible 90-minute show.

Me at the entrance to a 19th century underground crypt at Laurel Hill Cemetery where no one had tread in years, just about to make the descent.

Come early to meet and greet the other artists and me at Quig’s Pub (the private bar on the 3rd floor of Plays &  Players), then step into the hot kitchen that is the Skinner Studio and see what we’ve got in the oven as I kick off the evening.

My macabre, funny, autobiographical piece is called Grave Digger’s Bawl, that’s all you get. Trust me, come see it. It’ll be followed up with a monologue from my play UFOs Over Brooklyn performed by Jordan B. Mottram.

Thine Eternally,
Jeffrey Stanley

WHEN:  Wed. 4/25 – Sat. 4/28 @7pm.  Come at 6:30pm to have a drink at Quig’s Pub on the 3rd floor and meet and greet the playwrights.

WHERE: Plays & Players, 1714 Delancey Place, Philadelphia, in Quig’s Pub and the Skinner Studio on the 3rd floor

COST: $10.00 in advance, $12.00 at the door.  Buy one now.

Read more about my work and the Philadelphia residency here.

Katherine Russell Rich was already an acclaimed author for her cancer survival memoir The Red Devil when she  was my playwriting student for a semester at NYU in ’08. She was toying with writing a one woman show based on her new memoir Dreaming in Hindi which hadn’t been released yet. My fiancee (now wife)  is Indian-American and we wound up getting married in India, so Kathy and I had some amusing cross-cultural stories to swap.

She was also kind enough to introduce me around at the Moth, and I wrote a screen treatment for Dreaming in Hindi but we never could get the ending right…All of these were terrific experiences.

I’ve now more or less relocated to her old stomping grounds in and around Philadelphia so I think of her often. She passed away this week. She once told me she had prayed to Ram for me. Rest in Peace and perhaps we’ll cross paths again next time around.

Turning 30 is enough to drive you crazy.

At the intersection of sex and religion a frantic hipster and his goldfish take the ultimate leap of faith.

Please join me on Tuesday, 3/27/12 at 7pm at Plays & Players Theatre in Philadelphia for a reading of my unproduced play UFOs Over Brooklyn presented by the outstanding Drexel Players, Drexel University Westphal College of Media Arts & Design‘s student-run theatre company. The reading of this work-in-progress will be followed by a brief Q&A.

The wall-to-wall Drexel cast includes Dana Marcus, James Haro, Laurel Hostak, Rose  Koven, John Turnbach and Emily Kleimo.  Go Dragons, baby.

This is my 3rd play reading in as many months, and is connected to my residency as  one of 3 current PDC@Plays&Players playwrights-in-residence.

This particular play has had so many near-misses for production in New York and so many stellar actors reading the roles in public presentations  it makes my head spin (Naked Angels tuesdays@nine, Urban Stages, The Collective, the now-defunct Lightning Strikes Theatre Company, et al) Over the past several years  it took on a life of its own as a favorite for developmental readings (aka “development hell” in theatre parlance) , and also at Amherst College where an early draft was presented while I was a Copeland Fellow there in 2001.

This marks the first time the play has been presented in Philadelphia, and I welcome your feedback.  It’s a very dark, very sexy romantic comedy about two couples and a UFO suicide cult.   See you there.

WHAT:  UFOs  Over Brooklyn

WHEN:  Tuesday 3/27/12 @7:00pm

WHERE: Plays & Players, 3rd floor Skinner Studio; 1714 Delancey Place, Philadelphia

COST:  FREE but please RSVP to Dan Student at dstudent@playsandplayers.org .

Antonio Meucci

In connection with my being a 2011-2012 PDC@Plays & Players Playwright-in-Residence, a reading of my unproduced play Fishing With Tony and Joe will be held at Plays & Players Theatre at 1714 Delancey Place (17th Street between Pine and Spruce) in Philadelphia on Tuesday, February 28th at 4pm in the 3rd floor Skinner Studio.  The event is FREE but seating is limited so please RSVP to Dan Student at dstudent@playsandplayers.org .

Meucci's teletrofono.

The play is an historical drama with a touch of magic realism about opera stagehand, exiled leftie and “back yard inventor” Antonio Meucci, an Italian immigrant who invented a working electric telephone at his Staten Island home some 20 years prior to Alexander Graham Bell.

The plot covers a year in the life of Meucci, his firebrand wife Esterre (Esther) and their house crashing friend Giuseppe Garibaldi, the famed Italian revolutionary.  A love triangle, corporate greed and the dawn of telecommunications ensue.

Garibaldi

This unproduced play was originally commissioned by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York, in 2005-06 (this same pairing by a science foundation and an Off-Broadway theatre  produced my hit play Tesla’s Letters in 1999).

The awesome cast includes Paul McElwee, Michelle Eugene, Mark Cairns, Mike Hagan and  Brendan Norton.  The reading will be directed by Josh Hitchens.

There will be a Q&A of this work-in-progress with the audience afterward and I would value your attendance and your input.  The event is FREE but seating is limited so please RSVP to Dan Student at dstudent@playsandplayers.org .

Please enjoy my 2nd Rep Radio interview. This one happened on 1/7/12 at midnight on the stage of Plays & Players, and it’s the aforementioned live ouija board session in lieu of a traditional interview, in hopes that interviewer Kristen Scatton and I could contact one of Plays & Players’ 3 resident ghosts, and we did with help from my frequent Philly ghost pal Mala.  Sadly the recording contains no voices from the dead, aka, electronic voice phenomena.  Why does it always work so well on Ghost Hunters?

My 10-week spring semester course for adults, Playwriting I: The Fundamentals at NYU School of Continuing & Professional Studies begins on Wednesday 2/8. This noncredit, ungraded lecture and playwriting workshop covers the exact same dramatic writing and theatre history content I teach to matriculated undergrad students in my similar 3-credit, full semester courses at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and now also at Drexel University Westphal College of Media Arts & Design in Philadelphia, only it’s much more affordable. You will write a lot, you will learn a lot, you will have fun. Learn more and enroll.

See you there.

A hoodoo man and a searcher: Damien Wallace (left) and Kash Goins, who meet at a boardinghouse. (DREW HOOD / Throwing Light Photography)

‘Joe Turner’s Come and Gone’: A tale of searching, tinged with mysticism

Joe Turner – brother of Pete Turner, a late-19th-century governor of Tennessee – arbitrarily seized black men off the streets and forced them into slave farm labor for periods of seven years. Herald Loomis (the excellent Kash Goins), the mysterious, half-destroyed visionary figure at the center of Joe Turner, has spent three years since being freed walking with his young daughter Zonia (Lauryn Jones), searching for the wife who vanished while he was captive. They arrive at a Pittsburgh boardinghouse – the perfect locale to represent the comings and goings of the Northern Migration – run by the practical Seth Holly (James Tolbert) and his comforting wife, Bertha (Cherie Jazmyn).

 The other residents are a hoodoo man named Bynam (the thrilling Damien Wallace), who can bind people with a song and spell; Jeremy, a hotshot country bumpkin (Jamal Douglas); Mattie, a sweet, often-betrayed woman (Candace Thomas); and Molly, beautiful and dangerous (Mle Chester). There is a boy (Brett Gray) next door, who befriends Zonia, and a traveling peddler (Bob Weick), the “people finder” who is the grandson of slave traders.
Their lives briefly intersect – as they would in a week-to-week boardinghouse – mingling romance and business and desperation and pain and storytelling. The play powerfully suggests significance far beyond the plot: In the vision Herald Loomis sees of bones walking on the water and of people “shaking hands and saying goodbye to each other and walking every whichaway down the road,” Wilson give us the Middle Passage, to slavery, to the diaspora, to freedom.

The play lays down a solid layer of mundane detail – lots of biscuit-eating and coffee-drinking and dishwashing – allowing the extraordinary to stand out, especially the terrific Juba scene: wild, African-derived dancing after Sunday night’s fried-chicken dinner. The interesting set designed by Lance Kniskern is, suitably, half realistic, half suggestive, allowing the mysticism to mingle with the commonplace.

Get your tickets here.