Weekly Read - A Bright New Boise by Samuel D. Hunter

Your weekly read this week is A Bright New Boise by Samuel D. Hunter.

Winner! 2011 Obie Award for PlaywritingNominated for the 2011 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play

"While the play delves into big existential questions about religion and the search for meaning, Hunter's story is heartbreaking and humorous. The play takes place in employee break room of a Hobby Lobby, a fictionalized big-box crafts store in Boise, Idaho. The ensemble of employees is a comedic set of misfits, each struggling to find their way. The play's central character, Will, is a piously religious man who arrives at the Hobby Lobby after fleeing his small hometown where his "end of days" church was embroiled in a scandal. He reconciles the disappointing world around him with his belief in the coming rapture."
                                          -PBS ARTBEAT

"Nothing is pretty about A Bright New Boise, a play that marches in the footsteps of Sam Shepard’s acid comedies, set in the weird American West...Hunter has such highly sensitive antennae for the look and rhythm of mundane places that A Bright New Boise develops an authentic texture, separate from other pieces in its genre." 
                                                                                               - The Washington Post 

PHOTOS from previous productions

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company
Washington D.C.

The Wild Project Theatre
NYC

Playwright Samuel D. Hunter

Private Lives Revival on Broadway!

PRIVATE LIVES revival on Broadway!

I love and hate when I come across my favorite shows being put up on Broadway.  It tickles me to see pics of the production, and pains me to know I can't go see it.  One day New York, I know I will be engrossed in your theater world.  But for know I can only share with you my findings and keep us all in the loop of what creations come.  Which leads us to one of my all time favorites, Private Lives by Noel Coward.  I have been dreaming of the day I get to do this show with a competent director.  I did a scene from this, playing
Sybil, when I was at the Academy and loved the comedy of manners style and charm of 1930.  Coward's understanding of human emotions allows this tale to never tire.

This Broadway revival boast leading lady Kim Cattrall (fellow AADA alumni)  and Paul Gross as Amanda and her ex-husband, Elyot.  Both honeymooning in the South of France with new spouses, find themselves sharing adjoining hotel balconies, where they begin to rekindle old feelings.

Directed by Sir Richard Eyre, best known for directing amazing films like Notes on a Scandal, Stage Beauty and Iris which he also wrote, as well as numerous classics stage productions throughout London. This revival started it's run in London's Vaudeville Theatre in 2010 with Kim continuing the role in Toronto and now on Broadway.

Opening November 17 at the Music Box Theatre, with Simon Paisley Day as Victor and Anna Madeley as Sybil.

 

Gertrude Lawrence & Noel Coward in the original play 1930 as Elyot and Amanda

Mr. Coward himself

Playwright Pick

OK...Been gone a while.  But with good reason!  My first original play Keep Me was produced, this was also my directorial debut!  The experience was one of pure reward, to see what was in my head, created into breathing life.  Big thanks to my amazing cast, crew & producers!  I had the privilege of this production going up at the historic Theater Guild of Ancon in Panama for its 61st season.

Enough about me...I am not the highlighted playwright, Roger Kumble would be he.  Kumble graduated from Northwestern University in 1988, and began his career as a playwright and director in 1993 with the Hollywood satire Pay or Play, which garnered him the LA Weekly Theater Award for Best Comic Writing.  His second play, 1997's D'Girl, starring David Schwimmer, earned him four Dramalogue Awards.  In 2003, Kumble competed his Hollywood trilogy with the critically acclaimed Turnaround, again starring David Schwimmer, which sold out its entire run in Los Angeles.  Kumble made his feature-film-directorial debut with 1999's box office hit, Cruel Intentions.  This screenplay transposed the French classic to modern New York.  He followed with the comedies Sweetest Thing, and Just Friends,  two of my favorites.  The New York Post agrees, they made it into their top twenty underrated films of the decade!

His new creation stays with his Hollywood themed trilogy.  Girl's Talk is a play about a once Hollywood writer's struggles as a stay at home mom.  This play was produced in April at the Lee Strasberg Theater starring Brooke Shields.  CHECK OUT THE REVIEW HERE 

I love finding multi-faceted artist.  I found him as a playwright, and in the end discover he has had his creative hand in three movies I thoroughly enjoy.  This is a reminder to me as an artist how I am not limited to one craft, but that when we are artists, we create in all spectrum's.

A Must!

THAT SIDE OF THE SHADOW

 I have to take advantage of the fact that I am writing a blog, even if on theater, to promote hard work.  Some fellow American Academy of Dramatic Arts-Los Angeles alums have written, directed and starred in an incredibly captivating work in film.  I am so excited and inspired by the dedication and time that these creative folks have put into this project, and to see it getting rave reviews and be a finalist in the Big Break Movie Contest is something to be said.

Read the reviews from the Santa Barbra Film Festival
by Jim Burns
by Tim Lopez

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE TRAILER & VOTE FOR THAT SIDE OF THE SHADOW.  IF THEY WIN, THEIR FILM WILL BE SHOWN IN AMC THEATERS!  SUPPORT THE ARTS AND UP AND COMING FILM MAKERS!!  DO YOUR PART!
http://www.thatsideofashadow.com
follow them on facebook!

Musical Highlight

Wonderland on Broadway

Discover Broadway's spectacular and exhilarating new musical... WONDERLAND.  An exciting new spin on the classic story of Alice and her Looking-Glass World, WONDERLAND is about a modern-day woman who goes on a life-changing adventure far below the streets of New York City, where a marvelous cast of familiar characters help her rediscover what's really important. Featuring a fresh, contemporary pop score from the creator of Jekyll & Hyde, WONDERLAND arrives on Broadway this spring following a sold-out, two-city national premiere.


Previews in New York begin March 21 and the show opens April 17 at the Marquis Theatre.

Books to Read

True and False Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor

One of our most brilliant and iconoclastic playwrights, screenwriters, and directors takes on the art and profession of acting, in a book that is as shocking as it is practical, as witty as it is instructive, and as irreverent as it is inspiring.  David Mamet -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Oleanna -- takes a jackhammer to the idols of contemporary acting, from acting schools to "sense memory", from "interpretation" to "The Method". He shows actors how to undertake auditions and rehearsals, how to deal with agents and directors, how to engage audiences, and how to stay faithful to the script. Bracing in its clarity, exhilarating in its common sense, True and False is invaluable.

Playwright Pick

Christopher Shinn

With numerous awards won over a course of 10 years, whose first play, Four  was produced at the Royal Court Theater at the tender age of 22, he is forced to be reckoned with.  The 34 year old play write from Connecticut ,  has a prolific writing style.  His play, Dying City, first produced in 2008, is about an Iraq War widow who is visited by her dead husband’s twin brother. It deals with war, betrayal, love, torture, child abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder. Ben Brantley of the New York Times described the play as an “unsettling study of domestic sadism and subterfuge” that “brought the war home.  


When on the Daily Show, John Stewart asked him what sparked his idea of the play, Shinn replied, "I try to structure my plays intuitively because, at the deepest level, any work of art represents the movements of the psyche in grappling with trauma. We do not plot out our sufferings in a logical manner in real life—we merely suffer.

The play was structured like a trauma, and the trauma was disguised in three characters. It looked at the profound questions about the links between sexuality, violence, deceit and the truth. I wanted the work to inflict a trauma on the audience—to be something they’d have to struggle with rather than passively experience."

His newest play, Picked, is about a young actor whose life undergoes radical change when he is chosen to star in a big-budget Hollywood action movie. Think of “Entourage,” but with an emphasis on psychology, not sex. Michael Wilson directs. (April 20, Vineyard Theater)