Sunday, April 5, 2009

In the Works: The Velvet Gentleman

Last Monday, playlab NYC got a group of friends together to have an informal reading of a new play, The Velvet Gentleman: Being the Unusual Life of Erik Satie as performed by what's left of The West Scranton Dada Society by Jon Steinhagen.

Erik Satie was a colorful avant-garde composer and pianist in early twentieth century Paris. In the play, a struggling group of artists from Pennsylvania creates a show that examines Satie's life and work.

Reading for us were: Kate Erin Gibson, the artistic director of The Red Door Theater Company; Katie Kozlowski; Amanita Heird; long time friends John Pieza and Todd Courson, who took part in last year's Loss of Breath workshop; from Playlab NYC's production of The Tempest, Molly Garber and Jonathan Wiener. And finally joining us as Erik Satie was Ted Schneider.

The reading was a productive one and we received great feedback from everyone involved. A couple days ago I passed along the actors' thoughts and comments to the author. Playlab NYC looks forward to continuing to develop this new piece.