Category: The Sixth Boro

Beautiful, Beautiful Zion

My new show Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead is staggering to its feet again this Thursday at 3:30pm at Plays & Players in Philadelphia. Please feel free to sit in on this free workshop of a work-in-progress and offer your feedback.

Back in Feb the Philadelphia City Paper’s Critical Mass arts blog said nice things about it,  so you should probably come:

Theatre Preview by Matt Cantor
“It’s a one-man show, but award-winning playwright Jeffrey Stanley isn’t the only one in it. At least, he hopes not. Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead is a 60-minute ‘autobiographical black comedy’ whose supporting cast is made up of ghosts — if they’re willing to make an appearance, Stanley says. An adjunct faculty member at New York University’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts, Stanley is workshopping this free work-in-progress in Philadelphia — his new home — at the historic Plays & Players theater.

“Years in the making, the new play combines elements of earlier works, including another black comedy Stanley performed in New York at the Gershwin Hotel under the curation of Andy Warhol pal Neke Carson. Mix that with ‘inept dream interpretation,’ family history, and a Ouija tent, and the result is Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead. The play is ‘about communication between family members while they’re alive and maybe even after they’re dead,’ Stanley says. Expect humor, but also ‘a lot of death, a lot of suffering, a lot of human misery.’

One-man shows or otherwise, Stanley’s works focus on shared experience: in performing his CONT’D AT CITY PAPER>>

A New Performance in the 6th Borough

If you liked The Golden Horseshoe: A Lecture on Tragedy, you’ll love the followup, Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead. Join me as I try to resurrect a hidden and dangerous history. Which of you will dare to enter the terrifying Ouija tent of the damned and open a channel to the Other Side for me, live onstage?

Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead is a surreal, 60-minute, autobiographical show about the impact of ghosts — the real kind — and of dream interpretation — the inept kind — on one’s past, present and future.  It’s tragic, and it’s also hilarious.

It’s also a work-in-progress. I’ll be performing it with limited set, script partially in hand, followed by a Q&A, one night only, with support from my friends at the historic Plays & Players in Philadelphia.   The Philadelphia City Paper’s ultra-cool Critical Mass arts blog sez it’s probably going to be good, and they’re probably right, so you should probably come.

City Paper, Critical Mass Theatre Preview, by Matt Cantor
“It’s a one-man show, but award-winning playwright Jeffrey Stanley isn’t the only one in it. At least, he hopes not. Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead is a 60-minute ‘autobiographical black comedy’ whose supporting cast is made up of ghosts  — if they’re willing to make an appearance, Stanley says. An adjunct faculty member at New York University’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts, Stanley is workshopping this free work-in-progress in Philadelphia — his new home — at the historic Plays & Players theater.

“Years in the making, the new play combines elements of earlier works, including another black comedy Stanley performed in New York at the Gershwin Hotel under the curation of Andy Warhol pal Neke Carson. Mix that with ‘inept dream interpretation,’ family history, and a Ouija tent, and the result is Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead. The play is ‘about communication between family members while they’re alive and maybe even after they’re dead,’ Stanley says. Expect humor, but also ‘a lot of death, a lot of suffering, a lot of human misery.’

One-man shows or otherwise, Stanley’s works focus on shared experience: in performing his CONT’D AT CITY PAPER>>

Yeah, What She Said

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="299" caption="Brooklynite Theresa Rebeck"][/caption]

Today I’ll let Theresa Rebeck do my whining for me, via her smart discussion about her new play The Understudy now in previews at the Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia; a play in which she says “she has tried to strike a balance among three needs – to entertain; to tell the truth about our lives; and to

Brooklynite Theresa Rebeck

Today I’ll let Theresa Rebeck do my whining for me, via her smart discussion about her new play The Understudy now in previews at the Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia; a play in which she says “she has tried to strike a balance among three needs – to entertain; to tell the truth about our lives; and to let that spiritual thing called drama happen” (Philadelphia Inquirer).

“A lot of what happens in show business is just horrible,” she says, drawing on her experiences in film, TV, and theater, “and with next to no reason for it. Your life is out of your control. Constantly, you’re wondering, ‘Why did they pull the plug on that production? Why did they do that to me? What are people behaving like this for?’

“And after a while I came to see that the capitalist cruelty growing out of the drive for profit was behind it,” she says. “It’s a kind of senseless, dehumanizing, totalitarian force. The New York theater world is very often just as weird as the world of TV and film.”

Couldn’t agree with her more. Looking forward to seeing The Understudy.  Full Inquirer story by John Timpane here.

[image via philly.com]

A Performance in the 6th Borough

WHAT:  Material v. Memory, A Walk Through 11 Perishable Events 

WHEN: Tuesday 9/28/10 at 6:34pm sharp (early start due to loss of sunlight; this is an outdoor event)

WHERE:  UPenn’s Kelly Writers House in the Arts Cafe; 3805 Locust Walk, Philadelphia,  PA 

COST:  This event is free and open to the public; no reservations

WHAT:  Material v. Memory, A Walk Through 11 Perishable Events

WHEN: Tuesday 9/28/10 at 6:34pm sharp (early start due to loss of sunlight; this is an outdoor event)

WHERE:  UPenn’s Kelly Writers House in the Arts Cafe; 3805 Locust Walk, Philadelphia,  PA

COST:  This event is free and open to the public; no reservations required

You will be taken on a short and lovely evening walk across UPenn’s beautiful campus, stopping along the way to see site-specific performances 3-5 minutes long. I have written and will be performing “Dream Me Up a Bartender” in an old trolley car, a darkly comic monologue about fear, fathers, drinking and the meaning of nightmares.   In keeping with the event’s theme all pieces will be performed one time and one time only, then they’re gone forever with the sinking sun.

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Co-produced by the University of Pennsylvania’s Kelly Writers House and the Philadelphia Dramatists Center, and curated by playwright and former ArtsEdge Resident Greg Romero, Material v. Memory is a guided walk through eleven perishable writing events, all designed to be experienced by a traveling audience for three to five minutes, and then to disappear forever. Projects explore questions of space, place, loss, and our infinite/intimate relationship with memory. Also featuring MIKE AGRESTA, BRIGHT LIGHT THEATRE COMPANY, PAULA DIEHL, NICOLE GARMAN, BRIAN GRACE-DUFF and WALLY ZIALCITA, CLIFFORD HALL, SHANE HANSON and ALICIA RODRIGUEZ, GREG ROMERO, and MICHELLE TARANSKY.