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bkahn
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Posted: Sun Feb 24th, 2008 06:16 am |
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If you're in NYC in March...
Theater for the New City conjures The Ghosts of 14th Street, an homage to silent movies, vaudeville and romance
by award-winning playwright Barbara Kahn
Theater for the New City proudly announces the world premiere production of The Ghosts of 14th Street, a comedy written and directed by Barbara Kahn. Featuring Jocelyn Adams, Dan Burkarth, Robert Gonzales, Jr., Larray Grimes, Matt Lara, Victoria Levin, Dan McVey, Jake Nicholson, Mallory Portnoy and Kyle Wood.
March 6-30, Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 P.M., Sundays at 3 P.M. Tickets are $12. Information/Reservations: 212-254-1109. Theater for the New City, 155 1st Ave @ 10th St. Subway: L to 1st Ave, 6 to Astor Place. http://www.theaterforthenewcity.net
The Ghosts of 14th Street is set in New York City in 1908, when 14th St. was the entertainment capital of the city. In the Biograph Film Studio, the actors film scenes of a primitive one-reeler, while between takes they reveal their dreams, fall in love and rehearse routines they hope will take them to the Vaudeville stage. A husband and wife acting team are forced by scandal to work in the “flickers,” an immigrant housekeeper leaves her gangster husband from an arranged marriage, a dancer finds love at the gay hangout, his sister laments her unrequited love for the housekeeper, an African-American dancer refuses to perform in blackface, and two stagehands are determined to win the New York Times Limerick Contest. In the Olympic Theatre, the play replicates a typical evening of Vaudeville, including dance, comedy skits, female mimickry (cross dressing), and the song “Yiddishe Yankee Doodle Boy” (lyrics by Barbara Kahn, music by Allison Tartalia), as well as the finished film.
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bkahn
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Posted: Mon Mar 3rd, 2008 04:51 am |
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We are in the middle of what the producer calls "Hell Week." We open Thursday. It's almost at the moment when the whole thing is out of my hands and turned over to the cast and stage manager.
I enjoy directing my own work--I was a director before I started writing. Occasionally, the thought crosses my mind that I should turn over the first production to another director, but it passes quickly.
I used to have an assistant director. I don't know why I stopped doing that.
Anyway, for those of you in the New York City area, please come to a performance and say hello. By that time, my sanity should have returned.
Barbara
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Mary Alice
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Posted: Mon Mar 3rd, 2008 03:30 pm |
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This is wonderful! A reason to go to NYC, see a new play and say, "I know the playwright!"
Mary Alice
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bkahn
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Posted: Tue Mar 4th, 2008 04:46 am |
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and "if I liked it," say "I know the playwright."
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in media res
Member
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Posted: Wed Mar 5th, 2008 02:54 pm |
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LOL, barb.
One evening I was entered a narrow little liquor store on the East side of Second Avenue right up the street from the old Theatre of the New City. An actor of some renown that I knew was gathering about ten little airplane size Smirnoff vodka bottles he had just bought from under the slit in the bullet proof countertop and stuffing them in his various pocket of his winter coat.
We exchanged usual pleasantries. Then, dialogue as follows with me first:
"Having a party or what?"
"No, I'm going to see a play at Theatre for the New City."
"That bad?"
(Gives me a look.)
"Then why are you going? You know an actor?"
"No. The playwright."
(Gives me another look.)
I paid for my stuff, then we walked out together. He downed the first little bottle. Then appropriately put it in a trash container.
"Good luck."
"Thanks."
Then he headed south on Second Avenue, with a lumbering sense of dread and doom.
best,
in media res
Last edited on Wed Mar 5th, 2008 03:16 pm by in media res
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Mary Alice
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Posted: Wed Mar 5th, 2008 04:55 pm |
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Oh my! I will know the playwright, Barbara Kahn, from this site. The play will be "in production," which is an accomplishment. Lots of famous and wealhty playwrights have written plays I haven't liked at all. I belive the object is production, self expression. Of course I expect to be informed and entertained, then I become a groupie!
Mary Alice
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Martin H
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Posted: Sun Mar 9th, 2008 11:44 am |
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| I was there in the wrong March, two years ago when my neice flew from Brussels to be in a dance piece in New York. Hope this went, and is going, well. Sounds like a fascinating play. Certainly as good a reason as any to visit New York (and once you're there the reasons crowd in) if work commitments and financial straits didn't interfere.
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bkahn
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Posted: Sun Mar 9th, 2008 04:33 pm |
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in media res wrote:
"Having a party or what?"
"No, I'm going to see a play at Theatre for the New City."
"That bad?"
(Gives me a look.)
"Then why are you going? You know an actor?"
"No. The playwright."
My response:
Theater for the New City (TNC) has been producing 20-30 new plays every season, some years even more, since 1971. They commissioned Sam Shepard's Buried Child, Harvey Fierstein's International Stud (1st play in Torch Sing Trilogy) and produced Moises Kaufman, Charles Busch, Maria Irene Fornes and many, many other playwrights. They have an emerging playwrights program that presents 10-12 new playwrights annually, as well as festivals that are free to the public, like the Summer Street Theater (where Tim Robbins, Adrien Brody and even Vin Diesel began their acting careers as children). With this volume of new work presented annually, not every play will be a gem or appeal to every audience member.
TNC has been producing my plays annually since 1994, first as part of the emerging playwrights program, now independent of that. Of these 15 plays, I like to think that all are well-written perfect plays, but I am sure that some audience members and some critics disagree. Looking back at some of my early plays, even I disagree with myself.
All that being said, the opening weekend has been going well, except for my having a bad cold, but better me than the actors. I await several reviews with anticipation and perhaps a little dread.
Barbara
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Edd
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Posted: Sun Mar 9th, 2008 05:51 pm |
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Barbara,
I submitted a play to Crystal back in '72 or '73. I was living in B'klyn nextdoor to Julien Beck of the Living Theatre. Crystal, some actors I knew who worked with her and I sat around and read it one night. It had 70 characters. Sort of Under Milkwood meets Spoon River Anthology. It wasn't right for her. It's now one of my lost plays from so many moves around the country and Puerto Rico. I also auditioned for Buried Child. The weirdest audition I'd ever been to. When I was asked if I was familiar with the work of Sam Shepard, I said no and was promptly dismissed without a reading. I've hated Shepard ever since. Crystal goes back. I saw her in Miller's After the Fall. At this point in history she is as well-known and respected as Ellen Stewart. I envy you being there in NYC. I miss it so much I could cry--and sometimes I do. Break a leg!
Edd
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Mary Alice
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Posted: Mon Mar 10th, 2008 12:27 am |
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"I Know the playwright." Gee! A simple statement of encouragement has set off an interesting discussion. My experience of New York City is from the late seventies and early eighties. I was living in Princeton, New Jersey at that time, using The Firestone on the university campus for research on a Masters thesis in theatre history. (The thesis was about John Burgoyne, the general sometimes remembered as "The Man Who Lost America," because of his adventures at Saratoga.)
It took an hour to get to New York where among other adventures I met Herbert Burghof, who spent an hour of his life discussing one of my plays with me. (I had a hard time not genuflecting and wanted to ask a million questions about Bertold Brecht, then and still a vanguard of perception and expression.) Burghof told me to "go away, where ever you have to go; and write and write and write and write."
I have heard those words many times, in memory, when I am sure the result isn’t worth the effort. I have marched, sang, rallied and prayed while the ghettoes of my youth became communities and now marketing niches, with very little change in respect or understanding between or among them. I have been cussed out, had garbage thrown at me, run. And been punched a few times for standing between "us" and "them" when either "them or "us was doing the throwing or punching. And I have kept writing.. Most often about youth, or; those we now call, "homeless." Two enormous groups, which include but are ignored by all of the others.
In those days the trip to the city went pretty much unnoticed and I could do the walk from Port Authority to the subway pretty much on my hands. Wondering how they would ever get my name on one of those marquees and if the letters would be red, or green, which seemed the only choices then: I took in as much as I could absorb. And loved all of it, including the perennial party. Oh, yes! If it’s wrong, I’ve done it, at least once!
If now, nudging sixty, the idea of New York City comes first with an achy response to the trip from home to the bus station, then doddering, lost along streets and avenues I once coursed in blithe absorption; when even "party" stimulates a groan before releasing dearly held memories; I can only beg indulgence. Though I will gladly go, so I can say, in a slightly off-hand an definitely snobby manner, "I know the playwright."
Though the question occurs to me: If the playwright knew the lady, sitting in awe, all absorbed or standing alone during the intermission- - the one with long grey hair who looks for all the world like a well-fed bag lady, would the playwright want to say hello?
A quotation: "The bastard is dead! But the bitch that bore him si still breeding." - Brecht
A reminder: Cervantes, who wrote, "The pen is mightier than the sword;" also wrote, "The sword has never dulled the pen, or the pen the sword.."
A suggestion, could we "present" rather than "submitting" for our next spree?
Love, Peace and Silliness!
Mary Alice
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