Performance Dates for Confess Your Bubble

Confess Your Bubble will be a part of the Brick Theater's Democracy Festival. Our dates are

Thursday 6/21, 8pm

Friday 6/22, 7pm

Saturday 6/23, 5pm

Sunday 6/24, 8pm

Tuesday 6/26, 8pm

Saturday 6/30, 8pm

These dates are also available in a nicer format. 

It is directed by Kyle Ancowitz and stars Steve Burns.  (Here is Steve on The Moth. It's cool.) 

You can follow Confess Your Bubble on Twitter and also learn about what we are, and what you are, on Tumblr.

 

Take his word for it

Fun stuff going on in Brooklyn this weekend!

A mirror reflecting itself

Confess It.

Confess Your Bubble - Coming Soon

Blast Radius

I took in Mac Rogers's Blast Radius at the final performance yesterday at the Secret Theatre in Long Island City. Really enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to seeing the third and final of the Honeycomb Trilogy, Sovereign, when it lands in the Future. (June, I'm told.)

Blast Radius has an extremely conventional sci-fi plot, in the best way. Rogers knows his influences, borrows from good sources, but offers enough of his own ideas and unique characters that you feel like you're watching something you already know well (that's what genre is for, isn't it) but that feels fresh enough to keep you engaged. Even though the idea of a sci-fi trilogy is borrowed entirely from film, the fact is, the Blast Radius never feels overly concerned with being cinematic. Rogers constructs his effective and theatrical drama from fundamentally sound building blocks: a great ear for dialogue, well constructed scenes, high stakes. He's helped tremendously, of course, by a cast of extremely watchable, talented actors.

I've seen some other geek-theater that is tongue-in-cheek half the way and then asks us to care about the characters near the end of a zippy narrative. The result can be mixed when the tone shifts come that furiously.  I appreciated that Rogers actually avoids that urge to fanboy wink. There's no moment where you feel like he's saying "Hey Look, Other Geeks" and makes overt reference to a comic book or movie or what-have-you. Instead, he is unwavering in his desire to take the play seriously, as he should, and earns serious moments because of it. There's also something nice about not feeling like any of the characters are safe. It's a play, after all, not a mini-series.

Jordana Williams needs a huge amount of credit for the success of the show, of course. It's staged effortlessly, and considering the number of characters, jumps in time, intermittently "pregnant" actors, giant bug arms, and scenes of high emotion, there's just a ton going on. The fact that it all seemed to naturally flow together in performance is a testament to her skill.

If I had any reservations, they're minimal. (There is one moment of stage combat... I've got a whole post half-written that I probably shouldn't post about stage-combat in New York's Indie Theater scene...) All in all, a fine play and a fine production. Someday, when you see The Honeycomb Trilogy at the Drama Book Shop, you'd best go pick it right up.

Repost: First Folio Lecture

This post was written way back in 2005. What? 2005?! That's seven years ago. Anyway, I thought some of you that are new readers to this blog might enjoy it.

First Folio Shakespeare Method - a lecture

Okay people

I haven't heard a new joke in a while. Who's got a good one?

Help the Morbid Anatomy Library!

This is a magical place, and close to my heart. My good friend Joanna Ebenstein's built something amazing. Help her rebuild it.

All That We've Met

My lovely wife Pam is profiled in this interview.

A few words about my new play

Coming up is "Confess Your Bubble" at the Brick Theater's Democracy Festival, their annual themed summer festival. This is a single character piece, performed by Steve Burns, who has quite the weird life, not in small parts because he's a terrific actor (see his performances at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, and also his work in my plays Glee Club, That Old Soft Shoe and Brandywine Distillery Fire). It's directed by Kyle Ancowitz, my perennial partner in mayhem.

Confess Your Bubble is a companion piece, in many ways, to That Old Soft Shoe. That play was a part of the Brick Theater's Too Soon Festival in 2010, and it is, sadly, more relevant today than it was even then. That play featured Burns as Senator Corpuscle, from the Pacific Northwest, who has come to check in on the progress of government agents at an undisclosed location. Their "patient" is a man who refuses to speak and was extraordinarily renditioned.  That play was not about Corpuscle - it was really about the characters portrayed by the exceptional cast - David DelGrosso, Laura Desmond. Joe Yeargain, Maya Ferrara and Carter Jackson.

Corpuscle was a crowd-pleaser and terrorizer, and he returns here. I enjoy writing the character, and I think Burns enjoys playing him. But more than that, I like to write overtly political work, and these are without a doubt political satire and very much of the moment.

Confess Your Bubble, though, is not a screed against the right by a liberal Northeasterner. I take great pride in the fact that Corpuscle is a damnable danger for all, or at least that's what I aspire for him.

So I certainly hope you'll take the time to check out the show. More to come, of course, when dates are firmed up and press releases become available and etc, etc.

In the meantime, here's a little bit of text from the current draft:

Let’s begin. Did I say my name? I’m Carl Corpuscle. I am a United States Senator from the great state of Washington State, which unlike Washington DC is a state and not some third world protectorate. We do not grow anything of value there, but we do have Spokane and Seattle. The names of those cities start with an “S.” We once had all sorts of theater and culture and art in Seattle, but now all we have is Dan Savage, Microsoft and rain.

I was not born in Washington State, so I do not bear the special mark. I was born in Indiana, or Idaho. Probably Idaho. My mother did not tell me much and her records – by which I mean her memories - were destroyed, as was ordered in her will. I did not know my father, which I’m told explains a lot. I would assume that means it explains why I am not constantly worried about male approval. I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about male disapproval. Hence, the tie. See? Red. The color of the lips of a man who is about to kiss my white ass.

Confess Your Bubble at the Democracy Festival

Go and see this!

"...two hours zip by. It’s a credit to the propulsive plotting that amid debates about dissent, love and honesty, the question “Blast Radius” most frequently prompts is simply: What happens next?"

A heartfelt congratulations to Mac Rogers, Jordana Williams and the cast of 'Blast Radius' for this terrific review in the New York Times.

Confess

Announcing my new play

Announcing Porcupine's Rifle In Leipzeig, for only one local show, as a part of the Spanish Armada Theater Company's new festival of plays written for and about animals and firearms. The play's main character, Nicholas Porcupine, recounts his tales as a German Soldier in World War I, a war whose consequences I feel have been largely underappreciated because World War II gets all the good movies and Nazis and Anne Frank and stuff like that. The play will have a cast of Off-Off Broadway favorites, including Matthew Trumbull and David DelGrosso, some thrilling fight choreography, and a mix-tape of terrific music from the mid-90s that we really didn't bother to acquire the rights to use. Tickets are $18, and if you use the code QUILLS at Smarttix the tickets are only $15 for the first performance only.

The Spanish Armada Theater Company is a new company dedicated to new and unexpected works. They embrace the flashmob model, where shows are seen once and then gotten rid of, in order to force audiences to accept and appreciate the liveness and fleeting nature of the stage. You can find out all about them at this site.

I'm really excited to be involved! First and only performance is in three days, so get your tickets now!