INAUGURAL DRAMATISTS FESTIVAL
Death As Usual by Brendon O'Neill
Fri & Sat Sept 14-22 at the Apehouse, 417 E 18th St
Sponsored by a grant from the Missouri Arts Council
Coffeehouse readings of this years winning plays
Tue-Thu Sept 11-20 at area coffeehouses
Gorilla Theatre Productions' annual Inaugural Dramatists Festival starts off Sept 11 with a tour of local coffeehouses to present staged readings of the final selection of plays from this year's playwriting contest. The competing plays are To Die for Want of Lobster by Kato McNickle, Bea Why Oh Bea by Tom Lavagnino, and The Ritual by David Hanson. Each play will receive two staged readings and the winning play will be announced at the final performance of Death As Usual on Sept 22.
All readings will begin at 7 pm. The dates and locations of the readings are as follows:
To Die for Want of Lobster, Tuesday, Sept 11, Planet Cafe, 3535 Broadway, 816-561-7282
Bea Why Oh Bea, Wednesday, Sept 12, Muddy's, 318 E 51st Street, 816-756-3121
The Ritual, Thursday, Sept 13, Toto's, 6915 Johnson Drive, 913-722-5494
To Die for Want of Lobster, Tuesday, Sept 18, Muddy's, 1719 W 38th Street, 816-756-1997
Bea Why Oh Bea, Wednesday, Sept 19, Barnes & Noble Starbucks, 400 W 47th Street, 816-753-0078
The Ritual, Thursday, Sept 20, 45th Street Coffeehouse, 1813 W 45th Street, 816-753-0078
To Die for Want of Lobster explores a ménage a trois gone bad when a sultry, manipulative woman invades a brother and sister's life. Bea Why Oh Bea is about a psychiatrist's elaborate scheme to meet the hockey player she's madly in love with. The Ritual, by Shawnee writer David Hanson, is a scathing look at corporate culture with a tribal slant. All three plays are in competition for a $100 prize.
Our annual playwriting competition has provided exposure for professional and amateur writers for ten years and many of our winning plays have been produced by Gorilla Theatre. Past plays that have received a production include: Land's End, The Feast, The Southern Man, Gangs, Halloween, Butterfly, Ghost Writer and The Great FORD Debate.
Death As Usual
Death As Usual, by Lawrence-based writer Brendon O'Neill, is the winner of last year's 2000 Inaugural Dramatists Festival and will receive a full production at 8:00 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, September 14, 15, 21 and 22 at the Apehouse, 517 E 18th Street, Kansas City, MO. This event is free to the public, although donations are encouraged. (Recommended donation $10.)
Death As Usual director/designer Maria Antonia Perez-Andujar worked with O'Neill in a series of workshops to develop the script and custom fit the production to the performers and the performance space. Perez-Andujar has directed collective-writing productions in her native Spain and has worked as a conceptual designer and as an actress in Kansas City, Boston and Spain.
The workshop process uses collective exercises for creativity and team-development and different art media as expression venues. Co-designer Richard Van Cleave helped the script take full advantage of their unique performance space. Five actors – Michael Derting, Lesley Baker, Greg Stanton, Page Conner, and Damien Torres-Botello – participated in the workshop process and noted that, “What we're creating is as unique as it is surprising.”
According to Derting, the Death As Usual workshop has been very rewarding. “This has been an incredible experience thus far. It is truly amazing what can happen when you have an ensemble of actors, a collaborative director, and the young playwright himself working off each other to achieve a unified goal. This has been a learning experience more than anything. Having the playwright right there is wonderful because he can justify what we as an ensemble don't find in our character study. I'm truly honored to be a part of this workshop and hope we can share this with an audience that appreciates what the Gorilla Theatre brings to the forefront.”
For more information or questions about Death As Usual, please contact Gorilla Theatre. Death As Usual is sponsored by a grant from The Missouri Arts Council.
STATES OF SHOCK
by Sam Shepard
Directed by Robin Zeplin
7 pm Thu Fri & Sat Nov 1-17
at the El Torreon, 3101 Gillham
One of the few anti-war plays written in protest of the Gulf War, Sam Shepard's surreal States of Shock is the third theatrical condemnation of war that Gorilla Theatre has produced this year, after Major Barbara and The Trojan Women. States of Shock is suddenly relevant after the events of September 11. Almost everyone in the country is in a state of shock based not only on the loss of American life but on the loss of our former sense of safety and security. With war erupting in Afghanistan, this play reminds us to consider the consequences before we act.
With States of Shock, Shepard became interested in exploring post-traumatic conditions or “shock states” -- where one's identity has been shattered under severe personal circumstances. Shepard's story involves a wounded soldier who is taken to dinner by a veteran colonial to celebrate the death of the colonial's son. It turns out the wounded soldier tried to save the son's life in battle and now is bound to a wheelchair because of his injuries. The private battle that engulfs these two and the rest of the restaurant's occupants explores the loss and states of shock that result from failure to recognize the full consequences of war.
Directed by Robin Zeplin, the cast features Walter Winch, Tom Jones, Dawn Stringer, Carol Leighton, and Wally Leighton. Production design is by Richard Van Cleave, Nathan Powers, and Georgianna Londré. Tickets are $10, or $6 if purchased along with admission to the live music that follows each performance.
MINDS ON FIRE
by Frank Higgins
Directed by Earnest Williams
8 pm Nov 1-3 at the Apehouse, 517 E 18th St
Gorilla Theatre Productions will be hosting an evening of one act plays and monologues entitled Minds On Fire by local playwright Frank Higgins in a development workshop directed by Ernest L. Williams. The cast features Glendora Davis, Taylor Clearman, Charles White, Bob Thibaut, and Michele Newman. Fight choreography is by Shad Ramsey. Minds On Fire starts at 8 pm, November 1-3, at the Apehouse, 517 E 18th Street. Admission is free; a $5 donation is suggested.
Frank Higgins is a professional playwright whose works have been performed by Oscar or Tony winners Gwyneth Paltrow, Blythe Danner, Judith Ivey, and Anne Pitoniak. His play Miracles will open in New York in the spring of 2002. His play Gunplay, which had several scenes performed on Capitol Hill prior to Congress's passage of the Brady Bill, has just been published by Baker's Plays. Locally, his musical play WMKS, Where Music Kills Sorrow, was produced by the Missouri Repertory Theatre in 1999, and continues to be produced around the country.
Minds on Fire will present ten different short pieces, including: Natural Selection, Koko's Achilles Heel, Seize the Day, Cheating Death, The Beauty Bible, Sleeping Beauty's Rude Awakening, Sex in Space, Freaks, Emotional Alzheimer's, and Till Death Do Us Part.
THE DEMON: A LOVE STORY
Adapted from a poem by Mikhail Lermontov
Directed by Caroline Oates
8 pm Dec 1, 6-8, 13-15, 20 & 21 at the Apehouse, 517 E 18th St
Sponsored by Gorilla Theatre Productions
Caroline Oates will present her theatrical creation "The Demon: A Love Story" at the Apehouse beginning Dec 1. This Gorilla Theatre sponsored project is based on a poem by Mikhail Lermontov, "The Demon", and the corresponding illustration, "Demon Seated", by Mikhail Vruble. Working with six performers in intensive, exploratory rehearsals since August, Oates has created a unique piece of performance-based theatre.
Oates explains, "Our task was first to find our voice to tell the story, then the words to express it. My philosophy is that when the actor directly connects to their voice, free from habits and tension, discovery of their emotional truth and the truth of the text is inevitable. This philosophy has been the foundation for our work. We found texts from all over the world and from our own hands. Weaving our words together, this true story which never happened and is always happening took shape."
Both Vruble and Lermontov made "The Demon" their life's work. Lermontov began work on "The Demon" when he was 14. In 1837 he wrote an elegy to Pushkin and was exiled for some time to the Caucasus. It was during this time that his story truly took shape. He completed the final draft in 1841 shortly before his death.
Vruble turned away from the established school of the time to follow his own path, one which led to his development of Russian art nouveau and his own mixture of neo-romanticism and symbolism. His demon paintings became a sort of autobiography, ending with his own madness as he finished "Demon Downcast".
"The Demon: A Love Story" was co-created with Roger Baughman, John Charlesworth, Sally Crawford, Darci Graves, Caroline Oates, Carey Oxler, and Leonard West. This event is free, although a $10 donation is encouraged.
MILLION MONKEYS POETRY SERIES
Winter Readings
Featuring Brandon Brown, Carl McCoy, Tara Blaine, and Justin Petosa
8pm Dec 29 at the Apehouse, 517 E 18th St
Hosted by Gorilla Theatre Productions
Gorilla Theatre Productions will host the third poetry reading in the Million Monkeys Poetry Series. The featured poets will be Brandon Brown, Carl McCoy, and Tara Blaine. The readings will be followed with music by Justin Petosa. Brandon Brown lives in San Francisco and is a Kansas City native. Poetry books and recordings of past readings will be available at the event. The readings are free to the public, although donations are encouraged. For more information contact Gorilla Theatre.
THE CLOUDS
by Aristophanes
Annual Sunrise Show at 7:30 am June 22, 23, 29, 30
Wheeler Amphitheatre, Theis Park, 49th & Oak
Gorilla Theatre Productions' 12th Annual Sunrise Greek Show will be Aristophanes' comedy The Clouds. This scathing lampoon of education, celebrity, and politics will be presented at 7:30 in the morning in Wheeler Amphitheatre along the banks of Brush Creek. Begun as a grassroots effort in 1991, this annual tradition strives to keep the foundations of western theatre alive and relevant to the contemporary world.
Last year's production of The Trojan Women was attended by over 1,100 people, a record for the annual event. The Trojan Women received extensive local television and newspaper coverage and was listed in the Wall Street Journal's outdoor theatre guide. It was also listed as the 15th most significant cultural event in the Kansas City Star's list of the 100 Most Significant Arts & Cultural Events in 2001, ranking higher than any other theatre company outside of the Unicorn. Other nearby attractions include the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Country Club Plaza Shopping District, the University of Missouri-Kansas City, the Brookside Shopping District, the Kansas City Art Institute, and Westport.
“The Clouds” is sponsored by a grant from the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation and is produced in cooperation with the Kansas City Parks & Recreation Department. For more information contact Gorilla Theatre.
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