Dada Interview with Johnson Chong

Johnson Chong (who does not seem to be known as "Bob" by those in the know) was with Playlab NYC's first production, The Tempest in June 2008. Johnson is playing a Dada newcomer, Zachary Hicks. Zachary in turn is playing the man of the hour, the Velvet Gentleman himself, Erik Satie.

The remaining members of the Altoona Dada Society don't know much about Zachary. He answered an online ad looking for new Anti-Artists, and he makes his stage debut with them in The Velvet Gentleman.

The members of Playlab NYC could not be happier to have Johnson back with us. During our first rehearsal we asked him to participate in our little Dada Interview.

1.) Finish this sentence: Dada is...

Johnson: Dada is the Virgin Mary, virtuous and holy

2.) What was Anton Chekhov’s shoe size?

Johnson: 10.5

3.) Do we like you?

Johnson: I think you like me. But we can never be sure of these kinds of things. I hope so.

4.) Tell us who your influences are without using the letters "i" or “c”.

Johnson: Shree mata amreetanandamayee, god, mom and dad, patanjalee

5.) Describe the show with either a biblical passage or a passage from Shakespeare.

Johnson: "All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages."
Jacques, As You Like It Act 2, scene 7,

6.) What are we having for dinner?

Johnson: There is no God.

Dada Interview with Molly Garber

Our relationship with Molly Garber predates Playlab NYC, having been a part of The Red Door Theatre Company's production of Macbeth, directed by Kevin P. Hale. Since then she has been a part of The Tempest and Perfectly Natural. In The Altoona Dada Society Presents the Velvet Gentleman, Molly plays ADS member Eileen Crispin and artist Suzanne Valadon.

Molly is one of Playlab NYC's Lab Assistants. The Lab Assistants are associate artists of our company. They are our sounding board, our advocates, and our ambassadors. Molly has done a wonderful job being all three for Playlab NYC, and we might be lost without her.

1.) Finish this sentence: Dada is...

Molly: Dada is a hidden question.

2.) What was William Shakespeare’s shoe size?

Molly: obviously the man was compensating for something... 7

3.) What shouldn't we know about you?

Molly: I love chocolate covered raisins but not Raisinettes.

4.) Tell us who your influences are without using the letters "i" or “c”.

Molly: My influences are Peter, Paul, and Mary.

5.) Explain the show using only the names of exercises and alcoholic beverages.

Molly: Reverse downward facing dog.

6.) What fish did you see today?

Molly: Mamma Mia

Dada Interview with Trevor Dallier

Trevor Dallier is the sound designer for our upcoming FringeNYC production. Jennifer Wilcox and Kevin Hale first encountered the wonderful sound stylings of Mr. Dallier earlier this year when they attended Wide Eyed Productions' Noah's Arkansas.

Playlab NYC is very happy to have Trevor working as part of the design team for the show. The Altoona Dada Society Presents The Velvet Gentleman is sure too be our most complicated sound design so far.

In addition to being a designer Trevor is also an actor. We conducted this interview via email as he was wrapping up a successful run in Henry VI, Part 3.

1.) Finish this sentence: Dada is...

Trevor: Dada is abominable. The way they handled it could have been a little more graceful. And we all know if there hadn't been cameras around, they would have done even less!

2.) What did William Shakespeare taste like?

Trevor: I'm thinking he did not taste much like soap. I would have to say that he tasted like someone who has gone through numerous tech's without air conditioning and without showering. Maybe the most accurate description would be: "sweat."

3.) What shouldn't we know about you?

Trevor: Well, that's none of your business.

4.) Tell us who your influences are without using the letters "i" or “c”.

Trevor: The people and groups who have granted muse to me are: Mojo Johnson, Tom Hanks, Ness, mom, WEP and Seymour Hoffman.

5.) How would you explain the show in three gestures to Playlab NYC's four-year-old Props Artisan?

Trevor: "Piano playing gesture," "eyes covered gesture," "spinning in circles."

6.) What is your Altoona Society Name?

Trevor: That's a tricky question. I would like to say it is black and white, but there some grey area. You obviously have the King of the Jungle, the Lion! But what about the elephant, who never forgets? I even want to throw out any type of primate, most likely the ape or the chimpanzee, who are most like their human brethren. "But what about creatures of the sea?!" you might ask me. Well, the whale, with it's varied, beautiful and extremely complicated language certainly deserves note, as well as their smaller, air-breathing counterparts, the dolphin. In conclusion, please ask someone else. Perhaps a biologist? Or a marine biologist?

Dada Interview with Nicole Smith

Nicole Smith is the stage manager for our upcoming production The Altoona Dada Society Presents The Velvet Gentleman. She comes to us fresh off of her stage management internship at The Juilliard School.

We expect great things of Nicole, which is why we coerced her into taking part in our little Dada Interview.

1.) Finish this sentence: Dada is...

Nicole: Dada is an open mind and the belief that anything is possible.

2.) What was Anton Chekhov’s shoe size?

Nicole: Twelve.

3.) Do we like you?

Nicole: You only work with people you like so I hope!

4.) Tell us who your influences are without using the letters "i" or “c”.

Nicole: Kent Sorensen was my 1st drama teacher. He let me learn to be a Stage Manager on my own. Nature, love, the human world, emoveres

5.) Describe the show as a flavor of Ice Cream.

Nicole: Mint Chocolate Chip. Refreshing with a hint of pleasure.

6.) Why do I keep hearing Billy Joel's "Captain Jack" everywhere?

Nicole: Sometimes all you need to do is relax and go with the flow.

Dada Interview with John-Patrick Driscoll

The Altoona Dada Society Presents The Velvet Gentleman is John-Patrick Driscoll's first show with Playlab NYC. J.P. is playing Altoona Dada Society member Ben Killcoyne.

Mr. Driscoll came highly recommended by Loss of Breath alum Erik Gratton, so if this comes to a bad end we will blame Erik.

We think he must have enjoyed this Dada Interview more than most of the cast because it took him days to get us his answers.

1.) Finish this sentence: Dada is...

J.P.: Dada is correct.

2.) What was William Shakespeare’s favorite color?

J.P.: Red.

3.) Do we like you?

J.P.: Not yet, you should start in about a week or two.

4.) Tell us who your influences are without using the letters "i" or “c”.

J.P.: Robert Downey, Jr.

5.) Explain the show using only names of exercises and alcoholic beverages.

J.P.: Bourbon, absinthe, scotch, sit ups, side bends, stretches.

6.) When in the course of human events?

J.P.: Three pickles.

Dada Interview with Robert Leeds

Robert Leeds ("Bob" to those in the know) is returning to FringeNYC with us having appeared in last summer's Professor Ralph's Loss of Breath. Bob is playing Altoona Dada Society Anti-Artistic Director Frank Rector.

We are very happy to have Mr. Leeds back with us, as long as he refrains from improvising soliloquies from Macbeth during performance. We decided to test his patience by conducting a little thing we are calling our Dada Interview.

1.) Finish this sentence: Dada is...

Bob: Dada is windowsill.

2.) What did Anton Chekhov taste like?

Bob: A cherry orchard.

3.) Do we like you?

Bob: That should correctly read: Do we, as you? And as I, you do.

4.) Tell us who your influences are without using the letters "i" or “c”.

Bob: Osar Wlde, Dorothy Parker, P.G. Woodhouse, Ra Gershwn, Ole Porter, Stephen Sondhem, and Marel Mareau.

5.) Describe the show as a flavor of Ice Cream.

Bob: Rocky Road.

6.) Is the sky blue? Why?

Bob: 42.

Dada Interview with Lisa Altomare

UPDATE: It appears that Lindsey Lane has started blogging!

Lisa Altomare is joining us at Playlab NYC for the first time. She is playing Altoona Dada Society member Lindsey Lane. Lindsey Lane is the Broadway veteran of the ADS, having appeared in Your Own Thing, Rockabye Hamlet, and Merlin.

Lisa on the other hand was most recently seen in Now the Cats with Jewelled Claws , part of Target Margin's Unknown Williams Lab. She has played the role of Mrs. Dilber in the McCarter Theater's A Christmas Carol for four seasons.

We sat down with Lisa at the first day of rehearsal and picked her brain with our Dada Interview.

1.) Finish this sentence: Dada is...

Lisa: Dada is only when I am alone.

2.) What was Henrik Ibsen's favorite color?

Lisa: Gray. (But really - pink.)

3.) Do we like you?

Lisa: Obviously, I'm exceptionally lovable.

4.) Tell us who your influences are without using the letters "i" or “c”.

Lisa: My ats and dog.

5.) How would you explain the show in three gestures to my four-year-old son?

Lisa: Happy Face! Clapping Hands! Tumbling!

6.) Why is the sky blue?

Lisa: Pudding with raisins!

Dada Interview with Jon Steinhagen

Jon Steinhagen is a good friend of Playlab NYC. Artistic Director Kevin P. Hale first met Jon back in 1998 when Kevin helped produce a workshop of Emma & Company at North Shore Music Theatre. Kevin went on to direct the New York premiere of the Judy Freed and Jon Steinhagen musical adaptation of Edna Ferber's short stories at the Wings Theater in 2001.

Since then Jon and Kevin have collaborated a musical based on Charles G. Finney's The Circus of Dr. Lao. Last summer Playlab NYC produced a collection of some of Jon's short plays, Perfectly Natural at the Midtown International Theatre Festival. In December 2009, with Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU), we produced a twenty hour reading of The Arresting Dilemma of Mr. K, a musical written in collaboration with John Sparks.

We recently emailed Jon, who lives in the Chicago area, a little dada interview to get a some insight into man who created the Altoona Dada Society.

1.) Finish this sentence: Dada is...

Jon: Dada is Turner & Hooch.

2.) What was Anton Chekhov’s favorite color?

Jon: Blood red.

3.) What shouldn't we know about you?

Jon: My private life from February 1998 thru August 2001.

4.) Tell us who your influences are without using the letters "i" or “c”.

Jon: Wyll Eno. Neal Symon. Eyerah Gershwynn. Rynne Groff.

5.) Explain the show using only names of exercises and alcoholic beverages.

Jon: Running in place/absinthe/running in place/absinthe (repeat for 18 more cycles).

6.) If you could medal in any Olympic sport, what would it be? And if not, could you medal in a new Olympic sport that you created, and if so what would that sport be?

Jon: I always pay special attention to anything with a 4 and a 7.

The Altoona Dada Society is coming to Cherry Lane

When you produce at FringeNYC you get your venue assignment in mid June. One thing that they ask though is that you not release the information for another week so that the festival has a chance to hear from people about any possible mistakes about the listing.

Last week we got our venue assignment for The Altoona Dada Society Presents "The Velvet Gentleman". This year we are going to at 38 Commerce Street, performing in the Cherry Lane Studio.

This is what the Cherry Lane Theatre's website has to say about history of the 60 seat black box space:

Prior to its present incarnation, the 1,000-square-foot space housed a restaurant in the 1950s that was built and managed by the Carroad family, who once owned and operated the entire block. The yard behind their building at 44 Commerce Street served as an outdoor eating area for the restaurant during spring and summer, and the Cherry Lane boiler once served all the properties on our stretch of Commerce Street. The restaurant, which had a floor dotted with gold-plated fleurs-de-lis, also served as a late-night gay club in the 60s and 70s.

Arnold Warwick, a tenant at 40 Commerce Street since 1950, claims that the Carroad family evicted an old sea captain in order to create a public ante room where our current lobby is located. Kim Hunter’s children, who grew up in the building, tell the story of an excavation next door at 36 Commerce Street in the late 50s that not only revealed an underground river, but also thousands of turtles.

At last year's FringeNYC, we performed at the Connelly Theatre. We couldn't have been more excited about the assignment, the Connelly was the perfect venue for Professor Ralph's Loss of Breath. Even the nytheatre.com review for the show on commented on the space saying:

While many FringeNYC shows may end up in spaces that add little to the play onstage, Loss of Breath is different. In the old Connelly Theatre, with its faux ornate fixtures, small balcony, and rounded proscenium, it is easy to feel transported back to an age when Loss of Breath-style comedies played out on stages across America.

One of the drawbacks that we experienced at the Connelly was that it was very hard for us to fill the 99 seat house. (I can't image how shows assigned to the Lucille Lortel manage to get asses in the seats, but they do it all the time.) The truth is that we never did fill the house and the audience size didn't begin to pick up until the last two shows.

The Cherry Lane Studio on the other hand has a 60 seat house. I am optimistic that with a larger cast size and fewer seats that the actors will see fewer empty seats during the run. Only time will tell.

Making an Icon: The Velvet Gentleman

One of our favorite things at Playlab NYC are the wonderful graphics that Robert Ullman has been providing for us for every production.

During the last year, in which we have been working THE VELVET GENTLEMAN, we have been using Suzanne Valadon's 1893 portrait of Erik Satie. Valadon and her portrait figure predominantly in Jon Steinhagen's script so it was a natural choice.


Once the show was accepted into the Fringe this year, we got in touch with Rob and sent him a couple of different pictures of Erik Satie so that we could get started.


Our hope was to generate a graphic that represented some kind of Rob Ullman style riff on Suzanne Valadon's painting. Because Valadon's portrait of Erik Satie appears in the show as a character, our first idea was to have a graphic that suggested René Magritte's 1947 oil painting The Liberator.


Below is the first sketch Rob sent us of Satie as The Liberator.

It looked exactly the way we had imagined. Seeing it on the page, our fear was that it would be too much like our portrayal of Valadon's portrait on stage and perhaps it was too literal a take of an image for the show.

Sticking with Magritte, we pointed Rob towards The Dangerous Liaison from 1926.

The idea was that instead of the woman, it would be something like a Magritte's recurring image of the faceless man in a bowler hat , hiding his face behind the Satie portrait.

The feedback that we got when Jennifer and I passed the image to a couple of friends was that it looked like the silhouette was too similar to the portrait, and perhaps the clothing needed to be more contemporary. With Satie formally dressed in the picture, but with the man holding the picture to be in a t-shirt and jeans or possibly shorts. A more casual look.

Once we saw the sketch above we were sold. The image seemed to convey the idea of the fringe festival itself, with theater being presented on hot August New York days.

Our final request was that Rob would add a circle to the background of the figure. The other images that Rob had created for us were framed in a circle. While we didn't want the man with the portrait framed inside we were eager to keep the circle in some form.

In addition to a black and white illustration, Rob has always provided us with a color version. The color image is evocative not only the Suzanne Valadon painting but it is a wonderful contrast against the simple background.

We really do love having Rob's work on our website and marketing.

Thank you again Rob, for your all your help.

In the Works: The Velvet Gentleman

On Tuesday we gathered again at Theatre Row Studios to read and discuss the latest draft of Jon Steinhagen's The Velvet Gentleman: Being the Unusual Life of Erik Satie.

A year ago when we had our first table reading, the script had a cast of eight. This latest version has come down to a more manageable group of five. Back with us were Ted Schneider, Molly Garber, Bob Leeds, and Jonathan Wiener. New to the mix was actress Dale Soules. Also on hand to provide her thoughts was Jess Hooks.

I cannot begin to articulate how excited I am to have this group of artists reading and discussing the show. When working on an independently produced show you have to be prepared for inevitable casting challenges. People get paying acting jobs or become unavailable for a variety of other reasons. It is a fact of life and there isn't much you can do about it. But for at least this evening I had assembled exactly the group of people I would want to take right on to the stage.

The script still has stripped away the interaction of the theater company performing the play. It had been my hope to build this troupe from the ground up with the cast. I saw that based on the discussion after the reading with the actors that I could spend a year fleshing out the Altoona Dada Society. I am afraid that I haven't the skill as a director to accomplish this, and am going to have to change my approach to the material.

Jon Steinhagen has become increasingly enthusiastic about creating the cast of characters that make up the small town Dada Society. The plan now is that he is going to spend the next couple weeks working on the group dynamic, creating scenarios that will play out around the edges of the performance of "The Velvet Gentleman." Jon had worked out a short introduction to the show where we meet the Dada Society's members and find out a little about the origin of the show. We didn't get to read the introduction out loud because of the animated conversation after the table reading.

We will be hearing from the New York Fringe Festival in the next couple weeks so the next time everyone gets together we should not only have a new script, but we should know if we will be asked back to participate at FringeNYC for a second year.

In the Works: Loss of Breath

As we prepared Playlab NYC’s Loss of Breath application for the New York International Fringe Festival, Jennifer and I thought it was a good opportunity to sit down and hear the most recent draft.

If you have browsed out website at all you no doubt are aware that back in April of last year we had a two week workshop of Loss of Breath. For two weeks Todd Courson, John Pieza and I took the script apart and began the work of putting it back together again. Armed with Kenn Adams “How to Improvise a Full-Length Play,” Jeremy Whelan’s Tape Technique, and John Wright excellent clowning book, “Why Is That So Funny?” the three of us went back to Poe’s original short story. Using these improv and clown techniques we stripped the story down to its skeleton, allowing me to see which of the actions in the text were superfluous to the story of the play.

After two very productive weeks, I spent the next five months going over what I had learned. In October I had finished a new draft of the show, and decided we should work toward inclusion in the 2009 NYC Fringe.

Wishing to hear this new draft with fresh ears, this past Thursday Jennifer and I met with Jonathan Wiener and Bob Stack. If you saw the Playlab NYC production of The Tempest at Socrates Sculpture Park in June then I don’t need to tell you too much about Jonathan and Bob. Jonathan and Bob as Trinculo and Stephano did a lot of The Tempests’ comic heavy lifting. They had such wonderful chemistry together that I was eager to hear what they brought to the piece.

A casual environment with friends, the four of us sat around a table listening to this new draft. Needless to say the reading went well. I am thankful to Bob and Jonathan for taking time to sit down with us again. We are proceeding with our application. Keep your fingers crossed and check back again for more updates.