from the shop

[collisionwork]

The New York Clown Theatre Festival is just over half finished, and if you haven't been to it, you've missed some great shows. Check out the site and some reviews.

I'm home from there tonight while Berit is running tech on this week's cabaret, as I have to study my lines some more for a new version of Ten Nights in a Bar-Room which I'm directing at the Waterfront Museum and Showboat Barge in Red Hook, which goes up this Saturday for one performance at 4.00 pm. This is part of their "Showboat - Comin' 'Round the Bend!" exhibition focusing on 19th-Century Showboat entertainments. Trav S.D. is producing some of the events, including this show, which he asked me to bring back, as I directed it twice in 1999.

Now . . . my 1999 productions, as those who saw them will remember, were not exactly straightforward productions of this 1858 temperance play -- I set it in a post-industrial future, being performed by a company of men, women, and cyborgs interrupted occasionally by attacks from flesh-eating zombies. A review from the original production is HERE.

So, it wouldn't exactly do to recreate that production for the purposes of this event. We've instead created an hour-long version of the melodrama that we are somewhat trying to play as "straight" as we can, but with this text, no matter what, it still comes off as campy and over-the-top as possible. Quite frankly, it's a laff riot, I tells ya.

The cast is Fred Backus, Aaron Baker, Danny Bowes, Maggie Cino, Jason Drago, Ian W. Hill, Robert Pinnock, Dina Rose Rivera, and Trav S.D. And, no, for fans of the old version, Beppo the monkey puppet will NOT be appearing. Sorry.

Hope to see some of you there. It's a bit of a schlep, but not difficult - directions are at the links above to the Waterfront Museum.