Fela! on Broadway

While watching one of my favorite shows, The Colbert Report, he ended his show with a performance by the new Broadway musical Fela!.  With producers like Jay-Z and Will and Jada Smith, not to mention Tony Award winner, director/choreographer Bill T. Jones, this musical features the Afrobeat music of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti to tell the story of his controversial life as artist, political activist and revolutionary musician.  From what I saw on the show, the music was captivating and the hybrid of dance and Broadway musical was refreshing.

Check out the video clips!  And if you are in New York, go see the show now playing at the Eugene O'Neill Theater located at 230 W 49th St!

Cuba and His Teddy Bear

I saw a relatively unknown, well played production of Reinaldo Pavod's Cuba and His Teddy Bear.  Performed at the Underground Theater off Wilton and Sunset by The Actors Collective as their first company production.  If you are unfamiliar with The Actors Collective, they are a group who connect actors directly with agents and some of Hollywood's top casting directors, producers and filmmakers.  Through workshops, the actor can present a scene and pass reels, postcards. ect... directly to established industry folks.  Establishing a relationship with the people who can ultimately get you work, will save you money in mass mailings and start a one on one relationship with them.

The play was explosive and one I still think about. Set in New York's Lower East Side in the 80's with typical father son themes in a not so typical situation.  Diving into the life of a small time drug dealer, his creative son and the battles they have with one other and their own selves.  Cuba played by Brian Burke counters his threatening aggressive tactics with a sincere tenderness toward the well being of his son, played by Dave Alfano.  The intensity of the play was relieved by Cuba's sidekick Jackie. Kyle T. Heffner as Jackie was superb, with all of his one liners repeated throughout the play, we would all have been on the floor crying if we didn't have his comedy.  With 2 pounds of pot on the line, Teddy joins the family business by wanting to distribute the pot through his new friend a Tony award winning playwright and well known heroin junkie.  The idea does not sit well with Cuba and through the transaction secrets are reviled and so is the shame.  Love for his son prevails and you are left with a feeling of compassion for this family.  It reminds us that we are all only human, but when you really love, it can do no wrong.

The play ran one weekend as a preview, but look forward to a five week run after the New Year.  I will keep you all posted, it is a must see.  Plus check out The Actors Collective if you want to get connected.

www.actorscollective.com

The Brilliant, Churchill

Born in London on September 3, 1938, Caryl Churchill grew up in England and Canada. In 1960, she received a BA in English from Oxford University where she wrote three plays: Downstairs, You've No Need to be Frightened, and Having a Wonderful Time. After graduation, she began to write radio plays for the BBC including The Ants (1962), Not, Not, Not, Not Enough Oxygen (1971), and Schreber's Nervous Illness (1972). This genre forced Churchill to develop a certain economy of style which would serve her well in her later work for the stage, but it also freed her from the limitations of the stage, allowing, for example, the freedom to write very short scenes or make great leaps in time and space.

In 1974, Churchill began her transition to the stage, serving as resident dramatist at the Royal Court Theatre from 1974-75. During the 1970's and 1980's, she also collaborated with theatre companies such as Joint Stock and Monstrous Regiment, both of which utilized an extended workshop period in their development of new plays and both of which are generally considered to have had a deep impact on Churchill's development as a playwright. She would later write, "This was a new way of working ... [I felt] stimulated by the discovery of shared ideas and the enormous energy and feeling of possibilities." While working with Joint Stock and Monstrous Regiment, Churchill wrote a number of successful plays including Light Shining on Buckinghamshire (1976), Vinegar Tom (1976), Cloud Nine (1979), and A Mouthful of Birds (1986).

Even after striking out on her own, Churchill continued to utilize an improvisational workshop setting in the development of some of her plays. Mad Forest: A Play from Romania (1990) was written after Churchill, the director and a group of student actors from London's Central School went to Romania to work with acting students there and find out more about the events surrounding the fall of Ceausescu. What finally emerged from this process was a play that revealed the dreadful damage done to people's lives by years of repression and the painful difficulties of lasting change.

As Churchill's remarkable career continues to develop, her plays seem to be growing more and more sparse and less and less inhibited by realism. In The Skriker (1994), she utilizes an associative dream logic which some critics found to be nonsensicle. The play, a visionary exploration of modern urban life, follows the Skriker, a kind of northern goblin, in its search for love and revenge as it pursues two young women to London, changing its shape at every new encounter.

Churchill married David Harter in 1961 and has three sons. Her awards include three Obie Award (1982, 1983 & 1988) and a Society of West End Theatre Award (1988).