The State of the Arts

Tonight and Saturday are now technically sold out—there’s a chance you can get a ticket at the door, but no guarantees. If you want to see the show, do buy a ticket ahead of time; remember we only have 49 seats in that theater so when we fill up, we really, truly are jam-packed-full.

A couple more reviews. City Paper is a bit odd, not bad but not great. Strange that he seems to imply that the fabulous design work acts against the play, even though he also writes about how much it helped in story-telling. And that somehow, it was my mistake to “allow” the design to help with the story-telling. When all of that is in Sheila’s script. Sheila’s smart and specific script--which does a magnificent job in creating a world. He makes it sound like we were all working in our own little rooms: director, writer, designers—and that the sum of the parts (which ultimately he seems to like) is in spite of, not because of that work together.

Anyway, I’m in no place to complain. In a period of a few weeks where it seems like every reviewer in town was tasting piss in their cornflakes, we have had a wonderful reception.

This one from Metro Weekly is super. And nicely written, which is always a bonus.

That said—there is a whole lot of other theater going on in which you all should partake. I will too—as soon as I make it home from, ummm, camping this weekend. (But that’s a story for another post. I keep thinking of a line from a reading I did at Theater J earlier this year “Jews don’t go camping”. Maybe some do. But this half-jew certainly never did.)

You have two more weekends to see Jackie Lawton’s play MAD BREED produced by Active Cultures Theater in Mount Rainier, MD. I know sometimes going to Maryland (or Virginia for that matter) can seem as trying to a trip to Delaware, but I’ve done this journey (via bus—WMATA Ride Guide it) and it wasn’t bad at all. I saw a reading of Jackie’s play months ago and it was a sparkling gem—funny, touching, smart, literate—I cannot wait to see it fully realized.

Go.

And in the realm of wonderfully ambitious ventures: DAVID IN SHADOW AND LIGHT and THE ORESTEIA. I have not seen either of these yet, but will. The idea of such gutsy risk-taking being punished by dismissive reviews and then sparse house is devastating to this theater community and the future of what we will be able to create. I mean that.

Go.