Our FringeSTAYCATION

A lot of busy going on lately:

Rehearsals are in full swing now. We are pleased to welcome Megan, our new stage manager, to our crew! We also purchased some necessary props recently. Thank you Eric for assisting us!

We had a photo session with our dear friend and photographer Kate a few days ago. Having good photos on hand before the run of a show can be very helpful in promoting. Last year we waited till we got in the space to take production shots. We're ahead of the game this year!

We are very happy with our Venue assignment again this summer. Venue #3, Los Kabayitos is located inside the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, which is also the home of 3 other theaters participating with FringeNYC.

Los Kabayitos is a puppet theater and when not hosting FringeNYC in the summer, it offers a repertory of Latin American children's classics, folk tales, and traditional art forms.

During the participant walk through, you can't help but notice the depth of the stage, about 6 1/2 feet! Since we'll be working on a table top, this is an ideal depth as the little theaters may get lost in a larger stage. The intimacy of the space and the audience is raked, so it will provide optimal viewing of the show.

FringeCENTRAL opens this week. That means we're are going to drop off postcards and say 'hi' to the die-hard FringeNYC fans that are buying tickets now as well as the volunteers that help make FringeNYC possible. Perhaps we'll start our craft project of little matchboxes and lay them about FringeCENTRAL...

Our FringeSTAYCATION

We're happily spending our summer with FringeNYC again this year with Poe-Dunk - A Matchbox Entertainment. This is our FringeSTAYCATION and we're glad you've joined us! We've been pretty busy since the participant town meeting in June. Gathering marketing materials with the help of long time friend Rob Ullman is first on our list. He really sets the tone to all of our shows we've done in the past.

We launched our Kickstarter this past week and we're off to a great start!

Jennifer put her sewing cap on and the costume should be done by next weekend.

Kevin is plugging away at finishing up the matchbox theaters. Our son Edison has been watching Kevin work for some time now. As Edison watches he gives advice on what Kevin needs to add or fix on whatever he might be working on. This gave us the idea to let Edison create his own matchbox theater. He designed a great little theater and we couldn't be more pleased. So this year has really been a family effort!

Our Venue and dates have been finalized:

107 Suffolk Street

Venue #3 - CSV Kabayitos

Performance Dates: 8/12 @ 7:30P; 8/14 @ 5P; 8/17 @ 6P; 8/22 @ 9:30P; 8/26 @ 7P; 8/27 @ 10:15P

Save the date that fits your schedule!!

A Playlab NYC Manifesto

man·i·fes·to: a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer

A Playlab NYC Manifesto

Stitched together by Kevin P. Hale*

At Playlab NYC we are mad scientists of imagination. We concoct, unleash and support enjoyably absurd and absurdly enjoyable amusements that engage artists and audiences in the spirit of play.

The imagery that guides our aesthetic:

“Mad Scientist” - to be a Mad Scientist, both you and the science have to be mad.

We love to come at things sideways. Putting two concepts on a collision course, even when they don't seem to go together, and even when we can't figure out what their relationship is.

"lah-BOHR-ah-tor-ee" – A laboratory is safe environment conducive to experimentation, investigation, and observation. The lab is the place where the Creations! happen.

“Grave Robbing” – is the primary method of retrieving materials for our Creations!

We seek to unearth defunct or forgotten storytelling techniques, and through our own research and practical work in rehearsal, Playlab NYC tries to find out how they worked when they were living things, to bring them to life again.

“For Science!” – the rally cry of the mad scientist. When a mad scientist says that they do something “For Science!” what they usually mean is that they don't care about the answers to several legitimate questions, for example:

1. Where will I get willing test subjects?

2. Are these experiments ethical?

3. How will I fund my research, and how can I make money off of it?

4. Will it rise up against humanity and/or eat me?

At Playlab NYC our rally cry is “For the fun of it!” and we similarly don’t care about the answers to these important questions.

“Muahahahahaha!” - there are of course many kinds of laughter: polite, nervous, silent, belly, laughing at, laughing with, chuckles, snickers, snorts, cackles, and sniggering, just to name a few. If people aren’t laughing during rehearsal and during performance then we are doing it wrong.

“Patchwork Man” – the Creation! itself, physically built from parts of other works, and literally stitched together.

Our Creations! are amusements, entertainments, and trifles. We seek to make stories breathe; we don’t seek to create theatre.

At Playlab NYC, we are not slick people and we believe that things should look slapped together. We deal in collage and juxtaposition. Our creations are homemade, and the seams should show. “Meticulously messy” is how Playlab was once very accurately described.

As we continue to grow we may become savvier fundraisers, and get better budgets, but we’d still rather see the zipper on the back of the monster and the fishing wire holding up the paper plate UFO.

“Creating Life” - every Mad Scientist worth his blood-stained lab coat has this on their to-do list.

We seek to bring the inanimate to life. Our past works have delved into the inner life of desserts, panda bears, cats, and portraits. Our future works will continue to explore the anthropomorphic and the allegorical.

“Willing Test Subjects” – genuine play must be entered into voluntarily, and be motivated by an interest or enjoyment in the task itself.

It is essential when working on a Creation! that all the participants (performers, designers, audience members, etc…) have genuinely chosen to be there so that they don’t check out of the experience. If someone doesn’t believe in it and thinks it won’t work THEY WILL BE CORRECT!

“Villagers” – what is a mad scientist without a rowdy mob on the loose?

While we hope that Playlab NYC will not be chased from our home with torches and pitchforks, we do want our audience to be users of our entertainments; they are choosers, interpreters, shapers, fellow players, participants and storytellers.

Playlab NYC works to engage the audience, and as a result we have no use for the fourth wall. We toil to create audience inclusion, and sometimes even audience participation.

“What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” – famous last words of any Mad Scientist.

*I am greatly indebted to the work and ideas of Gorilla Rep, Improbable Theatre, Gerard Jones, Charles Ludlam, and John Wright. It is through their inspiration that Playlab NYC exists at all.

2010 FringeNYC Round Up

In the Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing (see how handy it is for theater companies) Dave Sim wrote about comic book conventions:

The basic point is that you can go to a convention, set up your table, and sit there obviously hating everyone and everything within sight, assuring yourself all the while that your stuff is just too good for these lowlife fan boys; or you can decide to take a few positive steps toward creating a core following that you can build on in the years to come.

This is true of Fringe Festivals as well. In 2009, Jennifer and I spent so much time worrying about our show that we kind of missed the whole experience of the festival. We ended up seeing only a handful of shows: Jack and the Soy Beanstalk, Ukrainian Eggs, The Boxer, Scattered Lives, and Viral. Since Jennifer was the lighting designer for Ukrainian Eggs, I’m not sure that it an optional viewing experience.

This year Playlab NYC did a much better job participating in the Fringe experience. I took a couple days off of work to be able to take in more of the shows at the festival. Jennifer volunteered so much that she ended up being named an Honorary Volunteer Staff Member at the closing night party.

Between us Jennifer and I took in nearly double the number of shows from last year. We might not have put much of a dent in the 197 titles available, but we are getting better.

So what did we see? Well…

As You Like It - BAMA Theatre Company

I’m a sucker for Rosalind; she has all the wit of Hamlet without the angst. The BAMA Theatre Company presented such a straightforward production of Shakespeare’s text that I wouldn’t have thought that it was a Fringe show at all. With eight actors and one trunk of costumes and props, the show was very well acted and cleanly directed. The actors, who came out of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival together, worked well as an ensemble. Usually when I see As You Like it I fall for the Rosalind and the others disappear into the background. The BAMA Theatre Company presented me with a Rosalind who was a part of the company as a whole and many of the other characters, including Celia, had their moments to shine.

Bagabones - Jonathan Nosan

Jonathan Nosan is a contortionist who presents audiences with a collection of vignettes that explore confinement. The whole show is presented in around and on top of a black box that Nosan’s assistants roll around the stage. The sound design was amazing and many of the images from the show I will never forget.

Energy Man - Hope Theatre, Inc.

This was the biggest disappointment of the shows I saw at this year’s festival. I felt like it was a bait and switch on the part of Hope Theatre, Inc. Based on their postcard and blurb, I believed I was going to a Fringe show about comic book heroes and instead got a Sunday school sermon about how being a good person isn’t enough if you haven’t accepted Christ as your savior. I had such a visceral dislike of the moralizing of show that I contemplated leaving at intermission, but since the house was only a quarter full I decided to stay.

Good Good Trouble On Bad Bad Island - Endstation Theatre Company

In this well conceived children’s show, a good good girl finds herself challenged by the ruler of Bad Bad Island to complete a series of impossible tasks in order to be allowed to journey home. The script and the production are destined to travel the country in a van like a TheaterworksUSA production. The script could use one more draft, especially at the end when it suddenly turns into Aesop’s fable of the lion and the mouse for little reason.

The Great Galvani - The Magpies

The Chicago based company, The Magpies Project created one of my favorite shows at this year’s festival. Presented as two short monologues, it hit a few of my sweet spots, dime museums, carnies, circus freaks, and a mash-up of historical research and fictional biographies. The opening monologue was about a Bearded Lady who had an encounter with the artist Toulouse-Lautrec. In the second and longer piece we meet Luigi Galvani Junior, the fictional son of an 18th century physicist who was himself an inspiration for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Running of only half-an-hour long, I was glad I paid for a $5 participants ticket. I’m not sure I would have been as happy if I had spent $18 for the show. It seems as though the two monologues are just fragments of a larger show. Perhaps The Magpies cut back on the show in order to easily get it to the Fringe, but I was left wanting to see more. And isn’t that a good thing?

The Hyperbolist - bang-bang-fou!

As much as I had hoped to get to it, Jennifer saw this one alone. She tells me that it was a collection of little Buster Keaton inspired movies, and live puppets, and even a flea circus all performed by Joe Mazza. The evening was built around an investigation of Love. Jennifer was enthusiastic about the show and Joe Mazza as a writer and performer, feeling that he seemed like a good fit with Playlab NYC’s sensibilities. Sorry I didn’t get to it.

Magical Exploding Boy - Chicago Physical Theater

This mime/clown show was written and performed by Chicago artist Dean Evans. The Magical Exploding Boy presents a variety of little stories including: an evil doll with mind control powers, an amoeba struggling for life, and two men in a fistfight. I had a great time, but felt that a number of the pieces were strong enough to warrant a whole show, especially the finale of an astronaut battling a killer plant in outer space.

The Order of Blattaria, A Kid's Guide to Survival - Arimaw Productions

This was my favorite show of the festival. I liked it so much that I brought Jennifer and Edison back to see the show the next day. Built around the conceit of a summer camp orientation, the three main performers have collaborated on a show that plays to each of their strengths: bug knowledge, bubbles, black light puppetry and sing-a-longs. These men have clearly worked with a lot of children and are great at keeping people engaged. Michael Ari Wulffhart as Dr Z in particular is wonderful at teaching while being entertaining. The show becomes a little disjointed, but with a little more focus it could easily end up as the Beakman’s World of the Discovery Channel.

Stripes: The Mystery Circus - Wayward Productions

Sarah Hayward, the writer and star, built the show around one woman’s audition to get into the circus. She reenacts eight different circus acts including a Two-Headed Lady and Burlesque dancer. The character of the Two-Headed Lady was very inventive and funny - the highlight of the show. The character is so iconic that Hayward features her in all of her publicity materials. Unfortunately the character is the first one out of the gate, and the rest of the show never lives up to the image of a woman wrestling with herself.

I could easily name another twenty shows that Jennifer and I had talked about seeing, but time runs out fast.

Stray Observations:

• We seemed to be drawn to shows that were coming out of Chicago. Hyperbolist, Magical Exploding Boy and The Great Galvani were all from Chicago, as were a number of shows on our wish lists that we just never could fit in.

• I found myself watching a lot of shows that were a collection of vignettes as opposed to a whole story.

What We Eat: Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing

Welcome to What We Eat where we take a look at the books, movies, and plays that have influenced the direction of Playlab NYC.

Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing
by Dave Sim

Earlier this year I attended a meeting of the Off-Off-Broadway Community Dish where Nosedive Productions Co-Artistic Director and Blogger James Comtois mentioned that the book that he and his partner in crime, Pete Boisver, used as their bible for theater producing was the Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing by Dave Sim. As a lapsed comic book reader his comment had my immediate attention. At the time the various editions of The Guide were out of print and as much as I wanted to read the book I couldn’t seem to get my hands on a copy. In June of this year Dave Sim published a new edition of The Guide, and I picked up a copy in August.

The June 2010 edition has been updated and expanded, and it is no doubt very different from the slimmer original 1997 book. The 1997 version was expanded from Dave Sim’s Notes From the President column found in issues of his Cerebus comic. I don’t know if it is just inflation or if the new book is significantly different but the original cost $4 and the new edition is $18!

I’ve been through The Guide twice so far, and it turns out that Dave Sim’s advice about self-publishing comic books does, as Comtois suggested, translate very easily into self-producing theater. But the truth is that The Guide probably translates very easily into any one of a number of self-starting enterprises – blogging for instance.

Of course, when approaching the book for theater it is necessary to do a lot of word substitutions. For example: Self-Publishing = Self-Producing, Penciling = Playwriting, Inking = Directing, Publishers = Venues, Conventions = Festivals (at least in Playlab NYC’s case), and an issue of a comic book = a single show.

Some of the lessons in producing that can be learned from Dave Sim include:

“Don’t spend money that you don’t have. Do only what you can comfortably afford to do.” (From page 13) - Amen to that. Jennifer and I would certainly like to spend more money on our productions, but at the same time we are not going to incur any credit card debt to pull it off.

“Enjoy creativity, first, last and always for its own sake. If it isn’t fun, find a new way to do it that is fun. Satisfy yourself every step of the way.” (From page 15) – My reaction to that is a whole different blog entry for another day.

My biggest A-HA! was found on page 96. It not only sums up my reaction to participating in FringeNYC, but in trying to put up shows in an over saturated market like NYC. “It’s a very large crowd and each [theater company] is a unique as a snowflake. In a blizzard that’s a small consolation for the individual snowflake.”

I highly recommend the book to any would-be Off-Off-Broadway producers out there. A lot of the comments in The Guide are common sense I suppose, but it is nice to be reminded of it every now and again. The book is filled with thoughts about needing to overcome your own inertia, creative dead ends, and the pitfalls of relying on other people’s help. I would be curious to hear from any producers out there what they made of the book.