Kate Mulley

At the suggestion of a good friend, I spent this afternoon in line for returns for Veritas, the much-hyped fringe play about students at Harvard who were expelled in 1920 on the basis of being gay. Whenever something comes with a large amount of hype I usually try to take it with a grain of salt. Probably because theatre doesn’t often live up to my expectations. I found this play compelling and very well-acted, but I also found its earnestness grating and its use of meta-theatricality uneven. The costumes were lovely, the lighting was nice, the use of live music was fine. All in all, I would say it was an above average Fringe play that could definitely have legs elsewhere, but would need a cutthroat dramaturg in the meantime. I’m very aware of plays that are too clever for their own good, partly because it’s something I’ve been accused of. And maybe it sounds snobbish, but when I feel like the literary and Shakespearean allusions are going over my head, chances are 75% of the audience feels the same way. And I couldn’t help but wonder, if a play like this were written about, say, lesbians at Wellesley, would it get the same hype? I’m going to go with no. If I were to grade it, I would say B+.

All was not lost today though, I also read Apologia, a terrific play by Alexi Kaye Campbell (I’m on the hunt for a contemporary British play for NyLon to produce, if anyone has any ideas), and went to a reading of a very odd, yet fun, musical that a friend has been collaborating on.

In June I made a list of plays to read. My co-workers at the book shop gave me MANY suggestions and I made a syllabus (that I’m not quite following) of about 40 plays to read before the end of the summer. It’s basically like my American Drama class from sophomore spring, except the plays are a little more obscure. I’ve enjoyed mostly all of the plays I’ve read, though I’ve definitely noticed a trend of dysfunctional family dramedies. I remember my tutor, John, making this generalization about American plays when I studied in London and it appears that he’s not all wrong.

In the flurry of all this reading I also realized that I had to pick a play of the week for the bookshop. I had just read Two Rooms by Lee Blessing on a plane ride and loved it. Even though it’s an older play, it’s very very timely and well-written. So I’m linking my review here. Just in case any of you would like to buy/read it. I’m only slightly biased, as I worked with Blessing at the Sewanee Writers Conference four years ago. He is an inspiring writer and a very smart man.

Once I’ve finished my summer reading mission (not that that’s really possible), I’ll make a list of plays that I would consider must-reads. Stay tuned.

One of the problems with being a writer is the inevitable feeling of “what next?” when you’ve finished something. When Sezze Sun ended I felt like I had accomplished something monumental, but was also ready for a break. And then I had a 4 month writers’ block. I could not come up with a single original idea to write about. Until I was sitting on my couch reading an unpublished manuscript for a job that I didn’t get and came up with a title for a new play: “The Reluctant Lesbian“. And then I got excited and I started planning and scheming and figuring out what that play should be. In the past 6 months I’ve written some of it, I’ve researched a little, but mostly it has sat in my back pocket.

In the meantime, I started the NyLon Fusion Writers Collective and began writing my new play The Tutor. After last night’s reading, I realized that it’s not actually a one-act play, that it needs to be longer and much more fleshed out. I’m not sure I’m capable of writing a one act play, they always seem to be shadows of what they could be, rather than fully formed short pieces.

And then there are my dreams of renting a cottage somewhere with no internet or 3G network and banging out the witty romantic comedy I’ve been throwing around for a year or so.

So maybe ideas are like men and buses. You wait and wait and wait and then 3 arrive at once (the latter part of this analogy usually only rings true in London).

As promised, I’m posting information about the the new reading series for the writers’ collective that I started back in March. Please come on by to support new writing and a host of theatrical talent! No admission, donations welcome!

Nylon Fusion Collective is pleased to announce its first Reading Series, featuring eight new plays currently being workshopped by the Nylon Fusion Writers Collective. The plays will be presented as staged readings at 8pm on Monday and Tuesday evenings (June 21, 22, 28, 29) during the three-week run of the company’s summer production of Fuente Ovejuna at the Flamboyan Theatre at CSV Cultural Centre.

Monday June 21
In the Center of the Fire
by Alisha Silver

A Hasidic man falls in love with a drag queen as his son is finding out just how far you have to go to outrun your family connections. A story about seeking and searching and watching and finding and loosing.

Uh Fairy Tale
by Joseph Wright

In Uh Fairy Tale Jack is pulled from his lackluster life into Grimms’ Fairy Tale where he is needed to wake the Princess from her 100-year slumber. Unfortunately, Princesses aren’t really his thing.

Tuesday June 22
Sleeping with Strangers
by Jack Karp

In this absurdist comedy, two lovers find out that we don’t fall in love with another person as much as we fall in love with what we make up about them in our imagination.

Cake Light
by Courtney Brooke Lauria

A play about people’s connection to one another. A play about people’s connection to theater. A play about people’s connection to electronics. All lit by the glow of birthday candles (kinda).

Monday June 28
E = (mc)^3
by Calla Videt

1905. Einstein discovers relativity. 2029. Mrs. E is born. 2055. We await the results of a new scientific experiment. A surreal meditation on time, science, measurement and medicine, E = (mc)^3 delves inside several incarnations of one of the world’s most celebrated minds.

The First Settlers
by Kelly Davis

Reverend Julius Blevins and his wife Oletta move to 1960′s Queens and secure themselves as part of a newly-formed black middle class shortly before new gender and racial norms begin to tear their solid marriage apart. Oletta must decide if she wants to keep the vestige of her perfect life or venture into 1970’s New York armed only with women’s intuition and a possibly false sense of independence.

Tuesday June 29
Slouch
by B. Walker Sampson

Skye, Summer, and Ritter are trying to do things from their to do lists: learn the violin, go to the supermarket, stop slouching, and somehow stop comparing their lives to Larry’s.

The Tutor
by Kate Mulley

Meredith doesn’t turn tricks, she teaches them and Greg wants a girlfriend as badly as he wants a perfect score on the SATs. A play about the commerce of sex and intellect and the fine line between the two.

Complete bios for the writers can be found at:http://www.nylonfusion.org/writerscollective.html.

NyLon Fusion Collective is a New York and London based Theatre Company dedicated to inspiring the community and its collective of artists through the exploration of classical and contemporary works and seeking to shed new light on the artistic process.

Life and its many responsibilities have gotten in the way of actually posting anything here for almost a month, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been seeing plenty of shows that I have opinions about.  Brief notes follow:

Restoration: I thought this play was completely lovely. A clever, poignant story about redemption and Italy and art. Anything about Michelangelo totally captivates me, ever since I read The Agony and the Ecstasy in high school.

Oliver Parker: Something about Oliver Parker rubbed me the wrong way (see Behanding, actually, I think the reasons are similar). I laughed, I got why it was relevant, what the “drama” was, but I think it got stuck in a place where no pay-off could be satisfying. And it’s messiness did not serve me as an audience member, which is odd, because I usually like a bit of messiness.

Metal Children: A fine example of why I never want to direct my own work. Theatre is about collaboration. And the things you learn from having other people work with you on your script. This play started out with a great premise (it’s about a children’s author whose book is banned in a Midwestern town), but devolved into confusion and too many scene changes. But Billy Crudup was pretty excellent, so all was not lost.

Red: I think I would have preferred this play in London. The Broadway audiences laughed a bit too broadly for my tastes and I love the Donmar’s intimate space. But it’s a well-crafted play about art and mentorship and the changing of the guard, artistically speaking. Some stunning performances and one exhilarating painting scene.

The Libertine: This play was perfect for my role as dramaturg of an upcoming production of The Country Wife. It was a really ambitious off-off production with a high production value, a consistently good cast, creative use of a funny space (it used to be a courtroom) and lots of bawdy humor.

A Behanding in Spokane: Despite the bad reviews, and accusations of racism. I had to see this show. Martin McDonagh has consistently been my favorite playwright since I saw The Pillowman in 2005 and the buzz around the book shop has been pretty positive. So while I enjoyed it, I found it pretty inconsistent, stuck in one place and more of a vehicle for Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell than a play. Which is too bad. I definitely laughed, but I think that McDonagh’s humor is much more striking when it’s not trying to make itself American. And I noticed inconsistencies with BrE/AmE that threw me off (and could have easily been changed by one of the four American cast members). I’m glad I saw it, but it hasn’t been seared into my brain in the way his other plays have.

As for things that I’m working on… I’m dramaturging two plays this summer. Fuente Ovejuna opens on June 17th, The Country Wife opens on July 10. More info on those will follow.

There will also be a reading of my new play The Tutor on June 29 at CSV. I just need to finish writing it first.

And I’ve made a list of the 36 plays I should read before the end of the summer. Am in the middle of David Lindsey-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole to kick it off.

Speaking of state of the nation plays, I saw ENRON last night after hearing that it is closing at the end of the weekend. After reading Brantley’s review and seeing the Tony nominations and weekly grosses, I can understand the decision to do so. There were very high expectations for this show to do well on Broadway and it appears that the money and the Times did not follow those expectations.

I, however, had a great time and found it to be an exciting, yet bizarre, piece of multi-media theatre. As someone who was not really paying attention to “business” when Enron collapsed, I was especially impressed with how well the show told the story, made it dramatic (almost Greek–9/11 as deus ex machina anyone?) and explained what everyone did at the company. The first act was a little too episodic for my tastes, but I liked what was done with the dance sequences once I got used to them. Norbert Leo Butz as Jeffrey Skilling was great from start to finish and the use of lighting and sound was very impressive. By the end of the play, I was a fan of this outsider’s view of American business from a city that has its own share of financial woes.

Of course, previous knowledge of the show closing made me examine the play more carefully in an attempt to reconcile why this play probably shouldn’t have been transferred to Broadway (I think BAM may have been a safer bet, the play needed a more intimate venue to pack the necessary punch). Theatre in London tends to succeed (especially recently) when it exposes society in a negative light. Jerusalem and Posh are great recent examples (see previous posts) of plays that show an unflattering mirror to society but have been critically and financially rewarded. That’s not to say that plays need to be dark to succeed, just that these plays seem to do better commercially in London than in New York. Add to that the fact that the play casts America and the 90′s bubble in a negative light and a lot of paying audience members don’t want to see it. And certainly don’t want to shell out hundreds of dollars to be told something they don’t want to hear. Americans don’t wallow as much as Brits do. And Brits certainly like ribbing Americans every so often.

It seems like a good time to break out my go-to difference between America and Britain. We haven’t come to terms with losing our power yet, while Britain lost an entire empire in the past hundred years. And while it might be an oversimplication to equate that to the differences in commercial theatre, I think for this particular show (and this particular theatre season) it seems quite apt. We’d much rather see uplifting stories about overcoming adversity or fantasy worlds than an indictment of bad behavior that continues not in Houston, but just on the other end of the island of Manhattan. Brits have been dealing with their nation’s loss of power for years, so a play about it doesn’t feel like a slap in the face anymore.

An exception to this might be Bruce Norris’ work, but it hasn’t quite made the leap to Broadway yet so I can’t crunch the numbers as easily.

In Sunday’s heatwave, I broke away from a day of birthday celebrations and culture to catch the new show at the Atlantic, Gabriel by Moira Buffini. It’s about a displaced family on the island of Guernsey (which was occupied by the Germans during World War II) and what they do when a naked stranger washes up on their shore. The play explores the role of women during an occupation when all the native men are fighting or dead and many of its moments are very poignant and subtle. It’s a fine play and the design is absolutely gorgeous, but I kept thinking that it was, perhaps, too earnest. And some of the actors seemed a little bit off with their lines, which always throws me. The play was produced at the Soho Theatre in 1997 and I’m not sure what the process behind putting it up here 13 years later was. Ever since my freshman year of college I’ve been very interested in the decision making behind “subsequent performances” and this is one that I would be interested to know, because either the cultural relevance is too subtle for me, or they just liked the play and wanted to do it.

In the meantime I’ve been reading Laura Wade’s play Posh because it arrived at the book shop last week and the cover image(on the left) is excellent. I’m pretty disappointed that I won’t be able to see it (and I highly doubt it’ll transfer across the Atlantic, it’s too timely and British), but reading it has been an absolute delight. It’s equal parts hilarious and scathing. I found myself laughing on the subway while reading it and horrified by other sections. There’s a good review of it that’s just been posted on the NY Times website, but it’s essentially about the members of an Oxford club (modeled, supposedly, after the club that David Cameron and George Osbourne were both in as students– though I’m sure there are others like it) on a night that they get together and get drunk and postulate on their position in the world and the decline of the Empire. It’s a state of the nation play, much like Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, but from a very different side of it.

I’m always intrigued by state of the nation plays, and while I’ve never really attempted to write one for America, I would like to try some day.

I hadn’t ventured out to BAM in about 4 years until last night, which is shame because they really have some great shows. A lot of them, admittedly, are things that I have already seen in London (a trend that will be less true with time) or things that have sold out before I’ve had a chance to get tickets. They also have a slightly ageist rush policy, so I haven’t been able to try to go at the last minute to anything.

Last night, I met up with two friends I hadn’t seen in almost 9 months to see Creditors, a transfer from the Donmar Warehouse (can they do anything wrong?) directed by Alan Rickman* and translated by David Greig. It’s a darkly comic melodrama about relationships and jealousy and the art of moving on from one relationship to the next. Strindberg’s misogyny is pretty well-documented and it shows here, but in this production it’s a point of humor. I found myself laughing out loud fairly frequently and the slower parts only amped up the tension between the three characters (I won’t give anything away, because it’s rather well-crafted and I’d hate to spoil it). Rickman’s taut direction (documented here in this article by my favorite displaced American, Sarah Lyall) gives the actors the opportunity to really explore the dramatic and fiery scenes without “acting.” It’s a very subtle show with some killer lines. Definitely worth the trip out of borough, especially since the bar we went to for a drink before had $3 beers.

*Rickman’s one of those actors I see all the time out and about and was a little disappointed to not see him last night.

Last night, NyLon Fusion Collective had a benefit, hosted by Paul Haggis, with music by Wynton Marsalis and friends. It was quite a surreal experience to sit about 5 feet away from the trio, sipping sangria and occasionally taking pictures on my iPhone.

I was also expected to say a few words about the writers group that we’ve started and I thought I would share it on my website today. I was not nearly as eloquent in real life as I hope to be (probably because I did not take my friend’s advice of taking beta blockers beforehand and hadn’t had time to actually memorize it), but I’d like to think that I got the message across. We’ve even promised Paul and John Patrick Shanley spots in next year’s group (I suppose we’ll have to change the description from “emerging writers” to “award-winning writers”).

One of the most important needs for writers, specifically playwrights, is a friendly yet critical sounding board. When I studied playwriting in London, my classmates and I had the perfect mix of camaraderie and criticism. Afternoons in class blended seamlessly into evenings at the pub and 3 years later we are still one another’s best dramaturgs. When I returned to New York after three years in London, I became involved with Nylon and pitched to Elliot and Ivette that I create a similar group for writers in New York. They took me up on my offer and the Nylon Fusion Writers Collective was inaugurated in early March.

The writers collective is comprised of eight emerging writers with a diverse range of experiences, styles and influences. My criteria for selecting the writers included commitment to a life in the theatre, a genuine interest in self-producing and, most importantly, a sense of humor and groundedness. I wanted to create a group of writers who could be critical in their feedback, but also become friends with one another. Three sessions into the collective, I can happily report that so far we’ve spent productive time discussing our new play ideas, reading and critiquing the first pages of these new plays and engaging in a healthy amount of theatrical gossip.

We will be holding readings of the plays during dark nights of Fuente Ovejuna and later on in the summer are planning a festival of full productions of the play and we’re incredibly lucky to have a talented pool of Nylon Ensemble actors to work with when we start rehearsing. We all agree that getting the plays on their feet, rather than subjecting them to a long development process is the best way to grow as writers.

Creating a theatrical community where risk is rewarded is intrinsic to fostering emerging talent and my goal as literary manager of Nylon is to give emerging writers that opportunity. I’d like to thank Ivette and Elliot for giving me free rein to do so and also you for supporting our mission.

That all said, I encourage you, my readers to consider making a donation to NyLon Fusion for our summer season. We’re producing Fuente Ovejuna this June-July and while last night we raised the money we need to rent the theatre space, we still have more to raise. Please click through here to get to our fundraising page on Kickstarter.

I’ll leave you with what Wynton said last night in hopes that it will inspire you further, “By virtue of your being here you’re making a statement and every artistic statement is a large statement.”

This weekend I caught two plays that at first didn’t seem to have much in common, but in hindsight are very much about different takes on spirituality and religion.

The first was Rescue Me (A Postmodern Classic with Snacks) by Michi Barall and produced by Ma Yi Theatre Company. It’s a remix of Iphigenia at Tauris, a Greek play I’m not familiar with. Luckily, the production anticipates this lack of knowledge and provides a wealth of information in the program and an interval with snacks and a short Q&A session with a Classics scholar (it changes each night). But the text itself also does a great deal of explaining the story through metatheatricality and cartoons of off-stage characters on a stack of televisions downstage. Some of the technical wizardry is off-putting, some of it is clever and it occasionally moves the story forward. I felt that way about many aspects of the script as well. There were elements of true humor and wit, but also uses of fairly tired cliches (the one that bothered me the most-while still making me laugh slightly-was portraying Thaos, the ruler of Tauris, as Elvis– a trope that is put to good use in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, but rarely works elsewhere).  The acting was, on the whole, quite strong, but my favorite part of the play was an ironic pas de deux between Orestes and Pylades, two men who have ventured to Athena’s temple to return her statue to Greece but have discovered that only one will live to return home. I found it to be the most contemporary and touching part of a play that was filled with a lot of contemporary references and images.

My other theatrical adventure this weekend was A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick by Kia Corthron. I’ve seen a good number of shows at Playwrights Horizons this season and this was by far the messiest. I usually applaud theatrical messiness, because I believe it shows an ability to take artistic risks and challenge the audience, but the messiness that I encountered in Crick seemed more dramaturgical than risky. The play follows an African man studying ecology and theology in the United States. In the first act he’s living with a woman who has taken him in after a church trip to Ethiopia and her high school aged daughter. Her son and husband drowned during Hurricane Katrina and she suffers from visions and hallucinations. The second act takes place seven years later when he returns to America, disappointed in his inability to accomplish what he set out to. But the play takes a circuitous route through religious fervor and expectations and baptism and reunited love and dream sequences. The political nature of the play also leans more towards preaching facts to the audience rather than creating dramatic situations between the characters, which I suppose is the burden of writing a character who is a preacher and an ecologist. The use of water as a metaphor is powerful, but isn’t enough to sustain a long play. Again the acting and design are very strong, but the play falls flat a little in its desire to tie too many story lines together with too many facts about water consumption in the world.

I believe I’m also being harsher on these plays now than I was while watching them. I sat through both plays and truly appreciated both of them. It’s only after dissecting them with other people who have seen them that I’ve refined my opinions. Both of them were solid pieces of work with very good elements within them, but the final product fell ever so flat.

Sunday I’m seeing Annie Baker’s new play at Rattlestick, which I’m quite excited about and Monday is the NyLon Fusion benefit, hosted by Paul Haggis and featuring Wynton Marsalis, which I have to say I’m a little more excited about (no offense to Ms Baker, whose work I really like). I’ve also been reading some good plays in anticipation of my next turn writing Play of the Week at the Book Shop. It’s quite a fierce competition amongst the staff to see whose play sells the best and I’m hoping for a dark horse victory. Will be sure to link to my review when it’s posted online.