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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
