CollisionWorks

So, now that the invites have gone out, and mostly have made it to their intended recipients, I can share the invite/show postcard.

Here it is, our card for The Wedding of Berit Johnson & Ian W. Hill: A Theatre Study by Ian W. Hill & Berit Johnson:

We're rather pleased with this. We had the design concept together, and both worked on finding the inspirational research materials. I did much of the writing, with input from Berit, and she did the entire layout, with input from me.

Now onto finishing up the script/planning for the performances . . .

I just realized I never did a proper announcement for the first two shows that have opened here or at the company MySpace . . . so here it is:




NOW PLAYING! - the first in the trio of August 2008 productions
from Gemini CollisionWorks at The Brick:

The Brick Theater, Inc.
presents
a Gemini CollisionWorks production of

Harry in Love:
A Manic Vaudeville

The return of the 1966 comedy by Richard Foreman

directed by Ian W. Hill
assisted by Berit Johnson

Harry Rosenfeld is a big, neurotic, unnerved and unnerving man who believes his wife, Hilda, is planning to cheat on him (and he seems to be right). His response: drug her coffee and keep her knocked out until her paramour goes away. The plan works about as well as should be expected and, over several days, a number of people – the paramour, a doctor, Hilda’s brother, and an “innocent” bystander - are sucked into Harry's manic, snowballing energy as it becomes an eventual avalanche of (hysterically funny) psychosis.

Who wrote this crazed farce? Well, before he became known as the writer-director-designer of his groundbreaking and legendary abstract stage spectacles, Richard Foreman was seen as a promising playwright in a more, shall we say, traditional mode, writing “normal” plays with standard structures, characters, settings, and events, unlike those that he was to become known for from 1968 onward.

In 1966, he wrote Harry in Love: A Manic Vaudeville, which came very close to having a Broadway run, but due to creative conflicts, didn't make it. This “boulevard comedy” as Foreman calls it (he also compares it, accurately, to the 1960s plays of Murray Schisgal) remained unseen for over 30 years, until Foreman gave it to director/actor Ian W. Hill in 1999, for the third of the No Strings Attached festivals of Foreman’s plays that Hill produced at the Nada spaces on Ludlow Street, where it was done to appreciative audiences and got excellent reviews during its very short run, the only run this obscure work has ever had to date.

Now, Harry in Love is back, with half of the cast of the ’99 production, for a slightly-longer run in a slightly-larger production.

While we’re probably lucky and much better-off to have the Foreman we’ve had, it’s fascinating to see this (extremely funny) play which very well might have meant a very different career for Foreman if it had made in to Broadway. It's not what you probably know from him, but it still sounds like the Richard Foreman anyone would know from his later work – almost any line from this play, out of context, would not sound at all out of place in one of his later, more abstract plays. Really.

The cast of this production is
Walter Brandes*, Josephine Cashman*, Ian W. Hill,
Tom Reid, Ken Simon*, and Darius Stone*

at
The Brick
575 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn 11211
½ a block from the Lorimer stop of the L Train
or Metropolitan-Grand stop of the G Train
www.bricktheater.com

August 8, 14, 17, and 22 at 7.30 pm
August 10, 16, 24 at 4.00 pm

approximately 2 hours and 10 minutes long (including one intermission)

All tickets $15.00

Tickets available at the door or through theatermania.com
(212-352-3101 or toll-free: 1-866-811-4111)

*appears courtesy of Actors Equity Association

I'm about to drive off to Maine to get my teeth taken care of - accompanied today by Aaron Baker, Ian W. Hill's Hamlet actor and friend for 24 years, who was going to New Hampshire near I-95 himself and could use a lift.


Rehearsal last night until 10.30 pm, then work at The Brick. Got home at midnight.

Only rehearsed Act I - getting late, and it didn't feel worth it to keep everyone especially late. Scattered energies (including my own, I guess).


Berit stayed up most of the night working on the postcard for the show so we could send it out today. Here's what we have now:





I'm sure I bore people saying it, but I do have to keep remarking on how amazing it is to me, with this show that I've been considering for 18 years and working on (and least textually, off-and-on) for 15 years, to see ideas I've had bouncing around in my head for so long actually coming to fruition. I had the idea for the design of this card sometime around 1994, and here it is, pretty much as I've always imagined it (except I always saw my head more at an angle, and the fire and text levels are more recent additions to the fantasy).


I don't think Berit has the back done yet, so I'll have some notes for her when she's up about typography. Usually, with something like this, I have the design, Berit accomplishes it with her mad Photoshop skillz, then I go in and do the type layout and processing, as I'm very critical of that -- from 4th to 9th grades, I went to a school with a working print shop where you could take "Print" as an elective; I spent years putting movable type into composing sticks and eventually working my way up to linotype machines.

With this trip north I won't be able to do the type myself, so before I fell asleep I wrote out what info needed to go on the card, and where, and in what typeface (Bank Gothic). Now as I look, it needs some filters on that title there, but I wouldn't know what until I played with it. Something to take away the computer-sharpness a bit. I'll call Berit from the road (she's quite out now) and mention it (if she hasn't read this already).


Okay, Aaron's arrived - we should be out the door soon. Next time in Portland.