Kate Mulley

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.

A rather brash title considering I’m only writing about two shows. I unintentionally booked tickets for two very different musicals back to back, but the experience has me thinking about the “low-brow” form that is musical theatre. Wednesday night’s show was Sondheim on Sondheim and tonight’s was Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. Neither of them “low brow” at all. Well, maybe Bloody Bloody is low-high brow.

Sondheim on Sondheim is hard to describe and also do it justice. It’s essentially a musical revue of Sondheim songs with clips of the man himself talking about his writing process, his life and his songs. When I first heard about it I thought I probably wouldn’t enjoy it and wondered why it was being produced. Did people think they would make money? That there would be an audience? That we would learn something “new” from this experience? I don’t know about the first one, but the other questions get a tentative yes. Studio 54 was pretty full when I saw this show on Wednesday, it’s pretty early in previews, so I can’t say how it’ll be in the upcoming weeks, or once it’s officially opened, but it definitely felt full. And as someone who appreciates Sondheim but isn’t exactly a connoisseur, I have to say I was definitely entertained by his quips and the songs. The cast was very talented, Barbara Cook and Vanessa Williams were both very fun to watch, despite the slightly befuddled nature of the show. It’s a show that could only have been made in the past 5 years. The reliance on technology is very “now” as is a very funny compilation of YouTube versions of “Send in the Clowns” (a song I never understood until I saw it in A Little Night Music last year in the West End– and has an EXCELLENT cor anglais part). But it’s a show that is very self-referential and borderline narcissistic. An old-time show that passes itself off as contemporary and almost post-modern. If you like Sondheim, you probably don’t want to miss this. If you don’t care for him, or don’t really know his work, there’s probably no need.

But I’ll leave you with this….

On the other hand, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is an irreverent, fun look at our 7th President in the style of an emo-rock musical. I loved it. Benjamin Walker is perfect as a petulant, popular Jackson, riding the wave of Populism to the White House. With tongue-in-cheek references to current events, the show is messy, but revels in the messiness. Part rock concert, part history lesson, part cabaret, it’s like the thinking man’s Spring Awakening. I kept thinking that I wanted a CD of the soundtrack during it. The show ends pretty abruptly, I would have been happy with another 20 minutes of it (a compliment, I believe), but I like this direction of the “new (non-jukebox) musical.” It, once again, makes me want to write musicals. But more importantly, it’s a play that I would tell non-theatre people they must see.

I’ll let the creators explain more to whet your appetite, courtesy of last year’s NY Times: