Tag: quig’s pub

Michael Moore at Quig’s on 6/30/12

Michael Moore will speak at Plays & Players Theatre in Philadelphia on 6/30/12. Details here.

And don’t forget…

Still SiCKO After All These Years
 

June 30th, 2012 @ 7 PM
$40 Minimum Donation.  
First Come, First Served. 
Michael Moore’s documentary SiCKO was released in 2007 to widespread acclaim. A straight-from-the-heart portrait of the crazy and sometimes cruel U.S. healthcare system, SiCKO is told from the vantage point of everyday people faced with extraordinary and bizarre challenges in their quest for basic health coverage.
Join filmmaker Michael Moore, Health Insurance Industry whistleblower and Deadly Spin author Wendell Potter, and American SiCKO’s real-life cast for a Q&A about the film’s impact and their lives five years after its release.
See Michael Moore and Wendell Potter on the same stage face-to-face for the first time since Wendell spied on the film’s release back in 2007 while working for Cigna. Celebrate how SiCKO changed the conversation on healthcare reform in America, and hear the latest on the movement for healthcare justice from leaders around the country.
Proceeds to benefit Vermont Public Assets Institute (publicassets.org) 
and Healthcare-NOW! (healthcare-now.org).

Plays and Players Theatre
1714 Delancey Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103

 

Travesties

Thrilled to be attending Tom Stoppard’s mind-bending Travesties on opening night this Thursday 6/7/12 at 8pm at Play & Players. Drinks in Quig’s afterward. See you there. Tickets just 15 bucks. Not bad at all for a professional quality production of a terrific play.

Thrilled to be attending Tom Stoppard’s mind-bending Travesties on opening night this Thursday 6/7 at 8pm at Play & Players.  Drinks in Quig’s afterward. See you there. Tickets just 15 bucks. Not bad at all for a professional quality production of a terrific play.

With Cathy Mostek, Jim Ludovici, Bob Stineman, Andrew Carroll, Kaki Burns, Eric Wunsch, Kristen Norine and Tim Rinehart. Directed by Candace Cihocki.

James Joyce

Travesties takes you on a stylistic joy ride through an imagined meeting between James Joyce, Vladimir Lenin and Dadaist Tristan Tzara who all lived in Zurich during World War I.

Vladimir Lenin

When Joyce casts British consular official Henry Carr in a performance of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnestin the lead role of Algernon, Carr finds himself immersed in a wacky and wonderful world of Wildean wit, Joycean limericks, Leninist ideology, and sheer Dada anarchy.

Tristan Tzara

 

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The Plays & Players organization began in 1911 as a social club devoted to expanding and developing new theater experiences for and by its membership. The first President, Maud Durbin Skinner, was the wife of the famed American actor Otis Skinner.  What is now the Plays & Players building at 17th and Delancey, originally called the “Little Theatre of Philadelphia,” first opened its doors in 1913 to produce “American plays of ideas,” an underrepresented genre at the time.  The building later became  the official home of Play & Players.

 

Dang. Sadly No EVP.

Please enjoy my 2nd Rep Radio interview. This one happened on 1/7/12 at midnight on the stage of Plays & Players, and it’s the aforementioned live ouija board session in lieu of a traditional interview, in hopes that interviewer Kristen Scatton and I could contact one of Plays & Players’ 3 resident ghosts, and we did with help from my frequent Philly ghost pal Mala.  Sadly the recording contains no voices from the dead, aka, electronic voice phenomena.  Why does it always work so well on Ghost Hunters?

 

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Ghost Boy

Last night my ongoing Ouija-as-theatre experiment continued for another round. Kristen Scatton of Philadelphia’s Rep Radio, who had already interviewed me several months ago for my 2011 Philly Fringe show, BZ:ABOTD, interviewed me again, this time in the context of my being one of this year’s 3 PDC@Plays&Players playwrights-in-residence (along with playwrights Brian Grace-Duff and Jeremy Gable).
She didn’t want a repeat of my first interview in August so I suggested something different — how about meeting me at midnight on the mainstage of Play & Players on the set of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (which opens January 19th and which is not to be missed) to see if we can contact the ghost of the small boy who has been spotted on the stage over the years. He’s one of 3 spirits said to haunt the hundred-year-old building.

Photo by Iggy Rocketboy.

Last night my ongoing Ouija-as-theatre experiment continued for another round.   Kristen Scatton of Philadelphia’s Rep Radio, who had already interviewed me several months ago for my 2011 Philly Fringe show, BZ:ABOTD, interviewed me again, this time in the context of my being one of this year’s 3 PDC@Plays&Players playwrights-in-residence (along with playwrights Brian Grace-Duff and Jeremy Gable).

She didn’t want a repeat of my first interview in August so I suggested something different — how about meeting me at midnight on the mainstage of Play & Players on the set of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (which opens January 19th and which is not to be missed) to see if we can contact the ghost of the Small Boy who has been spotted on the stage over the years.  He’s one of 3 spirits said to haunt the hundred-year-old building.

My 1917 original William Fuld Ouija Board.

You can soon hear the full Rep Radio interview and the complete audio of our Ouija session so I won’t go into full detail here. In summary, MALA showed up again in her usual insistent way (MALAMALAMALAMALA) and confirmed that she indeed knew me and had last spoken to me upstairs in Quig’s Pub on 11/6/11.  I asked her if she was doing okay and she said NO.  I told her I wanted her to try and be happier in 2012 because she always seemed sad, and she said OK.

We asked Mala if she knew the Small Boy and whether he was hanging around onstage with us.  He was.  In fact he was standing directly to my right, upstage center, according to Mala. The Small Boy’s initials are AE and he talked about PLAYS and that he was in a play on that stage in 1945.  Does he enjoy living at Plays & Players? NO.  Why doesn’t he leave?  LALALALA (a frequent Ouija answer in my experience, which I interpret to mean la la la la I’m not listening/can’t discuss it).

Broadway and silent film star, early screenwriter and Plays & Players co-founder Maud Durbin Skinner is also said to haunt the building.

In the end, chronically lonely little girl Mala confirmed that she liked the Small Boy and thought he was nice, so I asked if she’d like to stay on at Plays & Players and be friends with him.  She said YES, so I felt good about finding her a much-needed playmate. Apparently in the process I’ve also brought another ghost into Plays & Players’ otherworldly fold. I hope Maud and Leon are okay with that and don’t get angry with me for crowding them out. It’s getting downright lousy with ghosts in there.

Proof of a spirit world, or proof of characters from mine and Kristen Scatton’s fevered imaginations conveyed via subconscious ideomotor impulses?  Take your pick. I’m equally fascinated by both phenomena.  For further reading I highly recommend James Merrill’s epic poem The Changing Light at Sandover.

See you all at Live Arts Scratch Night at the Live Arts Brewery on Thursday 1/12/12 at 7pm. It’s free, there’s cheap beer, and you can RSVP here.

[Maud Skinner photo via findagrave.com]

Real Paranormal Activity on 11/6 in Philadelphia

A post-crypt to Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead will be happening on Sunday 11/6/11 when in my first official act as a PDC @Plays & Players Playwright-in-Residence I will use my 1917 original Fuld Ouija Board to try and contact one of the ghosts believed to be haunting the historic, century-old Plays & Players Theatre on 17th Street and Delancey Place in Philadelphia, PA.

A post-crypt to Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead will happen next Sunday 11/6/11 when in my first official act as a PDC @Plays & Players Playwright-in-Residence I will solicit audience volunteers to use my 1917 original Fuld Ouija Board to try and contact one of the ghosts believed to be haunting the historic, century-old Plays & Players Theatre on 17th Street and Delancey Place in Philadelphia, PA.

I am told that many of the bar staff who work on the 3rd floor in the private Quig’s Pub have spotted the ghost of deceased longtime bartender Leon passing through the room on occasion. Many actors over the years have often encountered the ghost of a little boy standing on the main stage, and others insist that the ghost of famed Broadway actress and Plays & Players’ first president Maud Skinner haunts one of the dressing rooms. We shall see…

The shenanigans start on November 6 at 6:30pm at Plays & Players’ 3rd floor Skinner Studio & Quig’s Pub (RSVP required, see below) as they welcome playwrights Jeremy Gable, Brian Grace-Duff and myself as the three 2011-12 resident playwrights and bid goodbye to the three 2010-11 residents Joy Cutler, Greg Romero and Quinn Eli. There will be a meet-and-greet happy hour from 6:30pm-7pm with a toast to the outgoing residents, brief presentations from the new playwrights (this is where the Ouija board comes in) from 7-7:30pm, and a pizza party celebration from 7:30pm-8pm.

The competitive residency at Plays & Players aims to provide artistic development for Philadelphia’s professional playwrights. The playwrights utilize the Plays & Players Theater to undertake personal explorations of their work, ranging from traditional table reads to finding a quiet space to write and draw to listening to the dreams of visitors.  All activities are playwright driven. So…

Who knows what this year will bring? Find out with us.  RSVP REQUIRED.  Please email Plays & Players Artistic Director Daniel Student at dstudent@playsandplayers.org.