Art and the Zen of Bowling

Live Arts salon helps artists make new work

BY MOLLY EICHEL
Philadelphia Daily News

THE NAME “Scratch Night,” a monthly salon from the good folks who bring you the Live Arts Festival, is supposed to connote performing art at its beginning stages.

Left to right: myself, PDC Executive Director Wally Zialcita, and my fellow PDC@Plays & Players playwrights-in-residence Brian Grace-Duff and Jeremy Gable at North Bowl in Philadelphia; October, 2011.

But playwright and performer Jeffrey Stanley thinks of the evening in decidedly nonartistic terms. “It’s like playing a scratch game in bowling,” Stanley said.

Fun article in the Philadelphia Daily News about this Thursday’s Scratch Night –

Live Arts salon helps artists make new work

BY MOLLY EICHEL
Philadelphia Daily News

THE NAME “Scratch Night,” a monthly salon from the good folks who bring you the Live Arts Festival, is supposed to connote performing art at its beginning stages.

Left to right: myself, PDC Executive Director Wally Zialcita, and my fellow PDC@Plays & Players playwrights-in-residence Brian Grace-Duff and Jeremy Gable at North Bowl in Philadelphia; October, 2011.

But playwright and performer Jeffrey Stanley thinks of the evening in decidedly nonartistic terms. “It’s like playing a scratch game in bowling,” Stanley said. “It’s a game that doesn’t really count. There’s a safety net and it’s a little off the record.”

Scratch Night is an evolution of Live Arts’ 2nd Thursdays, a similarly minded evening of workshopping the arts during which performers shared selections of in-progress pieces. Scratch Nights will also take place on the second Thursday of the month through May, but the new iteration is meant to engage the audience on a deeper level. “A lot of people have trouble understanding and digesting experimental work. Getting people to talk can be a challenge,” said Craig Peterson, director of the Live Arts Brewery (LAB) and Philly Fringe. “People don’t want to sound stupid, but we want to engage them in ways that are less threatening and more fun.”

Peterson said it’s important for the audience to get a glimpse into the creative process. “These things don’t just come fully formed in [the festival],” he said.

At Thursday’s inaugural Scratch Night, Stanley and playwright/actor Justin Jain will perform their separate works, both of which are CONT’D>> at philly.com

 

Jeff Scratch Fever on 1/12

I’m thrilled to have been invited to give a brief performance followed by Q&A at Philadelphia Live Arts‘ first ever Scratch Night at the Live Arts Brewery (LAB) on Thursday, January 12th at 7pm and I would love to see you there.

Scratch Night invites audiences into the artistic process and plays a key role for artists who are testing, experimenting and building new ideas.  I will present a portion of my 2011 Philly Fringe show Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead as I continue to develop it for future productions in Philadelphia and New York City.

You might know the show was originally staged in the nontraditional space that is the Blue Grotto, artist Randy Dalton’s blue-lit wonderland in the coal cellar of the 1851 former Friends meetinghouse that is today the Community Education Center in West Philly. I could have seated 40 but I capped it at 16 to keep it intimate and participatory for the audience:

My question is, how can the show be modified to be performed on a traditional stage without losing its magic and intimacy? How can it be performed not for a max seating of 16 but a max seating of 100?  Doable, or should this thing stay in the basement, wherever that basement may be? Come help me find out.

Read more at livearts-fringe.org

or at broadwayworld.com

or at Philadelphia Gay News.