Theater: Mac Wellman festival at The Flea Theater, NYC 2019

http://theflea.org/

Bad Penny

A man and a woman sit in a park. They appear to be a couple, but aren’t. The man is clutching a car tire. The woman has picked up a penny and put it in her pocket. Wait! Is that the Boatman of Bow Bridge coming for the penny? How do we make choices in the face of the end of the world as we know it?

By Mac Wellman

Directed by Kristan Seemel

The Invention of Tragedy

A chorus of students, all alike and all unalike, are trying like the devil to tell a simple story—perhaps the story about the tragedy of the Sandwich Man, with sandwich boards upon which nothing is written, and hence, say nothing. Wellman’s examination of the post-9/11 world and America’s general and genial acceptance of the Iraq war.

By Mac Wellman

Directed by Meghan Finn

More information at the link: https://www.timeout.com/newyork/theater/mac-attack-a-helpful-guide-to-the-mac-wellman-festival-at-the-flea

Theater: "Plano" by Will Arbery, paperchairs 2019

Three sisters.
Three men.
One mother with her own crazy backstory of having been a nun, a wife, a mother.

The paperchairs theater of Austin performed "Plano" by Will Arbery in Sept. 2019 at the Ground Floor Theater. The set design, by Lisa Laratta, was a terrific cube of a house and front porch, projecting like a dangerous missile on an angle toward the audience. The set, like the lives and psyches of the three women on the front porch, frozen in a moment of careening speed as the characters fly through rapid-fire language, confusion and distress. The daughters each embody and elaborate the types of the mother: nun, wife, mother. Each daughter, in turn, defined by the disappointing relationships they have with men. All of this from a show with many moments of humor and delightful surprises, washing over the audience like a bucket of cold spring water.

A fabulous show, beautifully acted, challenging and thought provoking; and all of it set in an American heartland: somewhere near Plano.

Paperchairs actors

Anne: Heather Hanna
Genevieve: Hannah Kenah
Isabel: Elizabeth Doss
Mary: Janelle Buchanan
Steve: Josh Meyer
John/Juan: Harold Fisch
Faceless Ghost: Matt Hislope


Review of the play as performed in NYC recently by Clubbed Thumb:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/theater/review-the-women-of-plano-are-all-about-men.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share