Tag: kevin bacon

Theatre History Needs You

Plays & Players turns 100 years old this season. We’ve gotten a matching grant of $10,000 from the Wyncote Foundation. Matching grant means — you got it — we have to match it in order to get it. So we need to come up with $10K in a hurry. Rather than pulling an NPR and demanding “any amount, even as little as $50” during their elitist pledge drives, which makes you want to permanently switch to WYSP for your morning drive, we figure we’ll just ask 1000 people to each give us just 10 bucks, one time. That’s why this campaign is called 10 for 100. That’s not $10 a year for 100 years or anything like that. We just want $10 from you. You can easily and quickly donate your $10 by going to this donation page.

I loved Plays & Players Theatre in Philadelphia from the moment I walked into the 1911 lobby of this former acting school turned theatre back in fall, 2008.  My first thought was, nice place but is there a ghost? Actors are highly superstitious people, and any good old theatre has a requisite benevolent ghost on staff.  I was delighted to learn that Plays & Players is blessed with not just 1 ghost but 3 ghosts.

I also love history; especially US history and especially film and theatre history, so I was naturally drawn to this historic institution first as a fan, then as a board member and now as one of its 3 current  playwrights-in-residence along with Jeremy Gable and Brian Grace-Duff.  Plays & Players has an illustrious history, including bringing the first works of Susan Glaspell (Trifles) and one Eugene O’Neill (Before Breakfast) to Philadelphia back in the 19-teens.  Bevan & Trzcinski’s Stalag 17, a comic drama set in a German POW camp,  premiered here in 1949 before moving to Broadway and then becoming a hit Hollywood film, and then becoming the inspiration for 1960s sitcom Hogan’s Heroes (yep).   Philly native Kevin Bacon also performed one of his earliest roles on this stage back in the 1970s.

Today another facet of Plays & Players that I love is its commitment to producing 1 world-premiere by a Philadelphia playwright every season along with the classics and modern classics you’d expect. This current season features the hit Pardon My Invasion by local playwright Joy Cutler (it got raves) coupled with upcoming hits by August Wilson (Joe Turner’s Come and Gone) and Tom Stoppard (Travesties).

Where was I? Oh right, Plays & Players turns 100 years old this season.  We’ve gotten a matching grant of $10,000 from the Wyncote Foundation.  Matching grant means — you got it — we have to match it in order to get it. So we need to come up with $10K in a hurry.  Rather than pulling an NPR and demanding “any amount, even as little as $50” like they do during their elitist pledge drives, which makes you want to permanently switch to the nearest corporate Top 40 station for your morning drive, we figure we’ll just ask 1000 people to each give us just 10 bucks, one time.  That’s why this fundraising campaign is called 10 for 100. That’s not $10 a year for 100 years or anything like that. We just want $10 from you.  Right now.

You can easily and quickly donate your $10 by going to this donation page.

Many thanks and Happy Thanksgiving,

Jeffrey Stanley

I knew I smelled Bacon in the Blue Grotto

While it was still a functioning school in the late 1960s actor Kevin Bacon was a student here, and his mother Ruth a teacher. Therefore, you should come and see Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead opening 9/7 in the Blue Grotto for only 8 performances. Tickets to this otherworldly Philly Fringe event are onsale now. I bet Kevin Bacon would like it. I bet you will like it.

Randy Dalton is the Community Education Center (CEC)’s long time artist-in-residence and the creator of the Blue Grotto permanent art installation in the CEC cellar. The CEC is a non-profit, community-based arts and education center housed in an 1837 former Quaker meeting house and school in West Philadelphia.  The CEC’s mission is to strengthen the sense of shared community and values among peoples of differing backgrounds and cultures through the arts.  The Meeting House Theatre on the 2nd floor is its mainstage and primary performance space.  Dance studios and rehearsal spaces on the 1st floor and are available for rental.  The CEC recently received a $50,000 community development grant from Maxwell House to make improvements to the historically significant building.  While it was still a functioning Quaker school in the 1920s actor Kevin Bacon’s father Ed was a student here. It was sold to Drexel University in the 1940s and was their main theatre for awhile before becoming the Community Education Center in the 1970s, during which time Kevin Bacon’s mother Ruth was a teacher and community activist there.

Therefore, you should come and see Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead opening 9/7 in the Blue Grotto for only 8 performances.Tickets to this otherworldly Philly Fringe event are onsale now.  I bet Kevin Bacon would like it. I bet you will like it.

[image via wikipedia]