Showing posts with label nyc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nyc. Show all posts

SEEN BY/EVERYONE - Talkin' Broadway Review

Everything about the production works.


You might expect Seen / By Everyone, the new work at HERE by the collective known as Five On A Match, to be a comic satire, drawing as it does from actual postings on various forms of social media. Even the physical setting, a karaoke bar with the audience members seated at club tables on two sides of the performance space, suggests a fun evening of catty eavesdropping. Surprisingly, however, what unfolds through disjointed conversations (its creators refer to it as a "collage" rather than a play) is an emotionally powerful portrait of love and loss, and of individuals coming to grips with both. 

 Kudos, to begin with, to the members of Five On A Match (Matthew Cohn, Amir Darvish, Meg MacCary, Enormvs Muñoz, and Jen Taher) for both the tremendous amount of effort they must have put in to pull together a coherent whole from the world of sources available to them. And even more plaudits for the respect with which they have treated the revelatory material, representative of real if unidentified people trying to make sense of their lives in the public forum of social media. 

 The bar where the evening unfolds is called Acheron, named for the mythological "river of pain" across which souls are ferried to the underworld. Two of these souls, each of whom has died suddenly and unexpectedly, are seated at, or, in the case of one of them, sprawled across the bar among the living mourners. The conversations that unfold around them tell of shock, pain, fear, and longing over the deaths, as well as other stories of loneliness and failed relationships.

Fortunately, not all is unrelentingly bleak. There are touches of humor, foolishness, self-indulgence, bar gossip, and karaoke singing to mitigate the core of sadness. The production is also blessed with a pitch perfect cast that includes the members of Five On A Match, along with another half dozen performers, almost all of whom are experienced Equity actors. They have done an excellent job of developing their characters out of the raw material of Twitter, Facebook, and other messaging sites, so that we are able to differentiate among them and follow their separate story lines through the evening. 

Everything about the production works because everything has been carefully planned, down to the monogramed matchbooks, flowers, and candles on the café tables, along with the physical movement of the cast members across the stage, the selection of the karaoke numbers and appropriately non-professional singing, as well as Oana Botez's costumes, Ray Sun Ruey-Horng's video projections, and Christopher Heilman's set design. All told,Seen / By Everyone decidedly rises above its non-linear performance roots to tell an emotionally honest and compelling story that sticks in the mind long after viewing it. 

Theatre Review by Howard Miller - June 7, 2016

Workshop and Ars Nova Reading

How do we to survive family trauma? This documentary verbatim theatre piece explores one family that has had more than its fair share: addiction, rape, neglect, and 12 year old boys getting shot in the head.

Through a very collaborative process creator/director Aubrey Snowden worked with Leah Anderson, Amanda Dolan, Megan Gaffney, Brough Hanson, Judy Molnar, Annie Worden, and Jens Rasmussen to disassemble and reassemble the piece and explore the narrative structure.

The result of those 4 days of work was then presented in public reading at Ars Nova.



Giving Back to Brooklyn

Thanks to Urban Outfitters, BreakThruTV's Chelsea White got to take a paddle with Jens Rasmussen, founding member of the North Brooklyn Boat Club, and learn about their programs.

Watch the video below for a quick and humorous peek into to this surprising and scrappy community organization, dedicated to getting people on the NYC waterways and protecting those waters.



To see more about Jens' outdoor adventures in NYC and beyond check out the videos and links on this page.

'The Rebuild' World Premiere

The Rebuild at NYLA International Film Festival
Catch Jens Rasmussen's most recent film performance at the NY-LA International Film Festival. This world premiere screening of The Rebuild will be on May 9th at the Producer's Club in New York City. Get tickets here.

The Rebuild is the story of Erin (Paige Barr), a young widow who wants to move forward by scattering her late husband's ashes on New York's East River. She falls for local carpenter Jake (Jens Rasmussen), who paddles her out on the river, but soon learns she's not the only one trying to rebuild her life.

Directed by the award winning Okke Rutte, and also featuring Tony Wolf, Debargo Sanyal, and Malorie Bryant.

NY Times Review: Alexandra Collier’s ‘Underland’ Mines Rich Performances

Jens Rasmussen and Georgia Cohen
Anyone who has ever lived in a deadly dull town will understand why two bawdy-mouthed Australian schoolgirls dig a hole to China in Alexandra Collier’s “Underland.” It’s the only way out, they decide, from stone-quarry country. But they’re bad at geography, so the nice man who crawls out of their tunnel one day is from Tokyo. Back at school, the girls’ physical education teacher turns into a crocodile.

Ms. Collier, who is Australian-born and New York-based, has created six vivid, droll characters. In Terra Nova Collective’s polished production of “Underland” at 59E59 Theaters, Mia Rovegno has directed six assertive, beautifully delineated performances. The meaning of the play, however, is swathed in enough metaphor to suffocate Samuel Beckett.

Some motives are obvious. The tunnel diggers, Violet and Ruth (Angeliea Stark and Kiley Lotz), seek escape, sometimes through drugs. Taka (Daniel K. Isaac), the Japanese visitor, just wants to go home, as soon as someone brings him a glass of water, please. His Tamagotchi pet dies.

The teachers are less transparent. Miss Harmony (Georgia Cohen) is new in town, and no one can figure out why she’s there. Mr. B (Jens Rasmussen), whose instructional style suggests Marine boot camp, is also literally a killer. There are sightings in town of a real crocodile, but maybe it’s just Mr. B after his nighttime transformation.

Mrs. Butterfat (a very funny Annie Golden), though, appears to be the theme-speaker, while talking to her dead husband, Glen. “Crocs. They’re just down there, waiting,” she says. She dismisses a divine-retribution explanation of why so many locals are dying: “It’s not God; it’s the land. It’ll swallow you whole.” Aha! Living in a horrible place can eat your soul.

Rasmussen... as ruggedly, athletically entrancing as he is dangerous

Jens Rasmussen and Angeliea Stark
Underland, director Mia Rovegno and playwright Alexandra Collier's new play on stage now at 59E59 Theaters, starts as any coming-of-age teen story might. Two girls, Violet and Ruth, clad in school uniforms, light up a joint behind their school, share gossip and insults and curse words, brag about how little they care, and plot their escape from the humdrum, backwater Australian town in which they live. The rest of the play’s backbone is similarly recognizable: a beautiful young art teacher, Miss Harmony, comes into town and wants to inspire the students, catching the eye of the world-weary, cynical gym teacher Mr. B. But then the familiar façade begins to slip, and the crass but endearing normalcy of the high school scene quickly gives way into something far more sinister and dark, as this coming-of-age tale in the outback spirals into a backwoods nightmare. A Japanese businessman crawls out of a hole that Violet and Ruth had been digging out behind the school, and people start turning up dead in the gaping quarry.

Georgia Cohen is naively sweet as the fresh-faced, hopeful Miss Harmony; it’s understandable why both the younger and older generations are drawn to her. Violet, played with convincing teenage angst by Angeliea Stark, falls for her in a big way, in part because Miss H encourages her artistic ability and gives her a camera, suggesting that her art could be her escape to somewhere new. Mrs. Butterfat also falls for her, recognizing her younger self in the woman. Annie Golden's portrayal of this unapologetically eccentric religion teacher -- who doesn’t seem particularly religious at all -- may be the highlight of the play, in part because she’s laughable in her oddball ways, from carrying on conversations with her long dead husband to zipping up her bright yellow windbreaker and heading out on long bike-rides in the dark of the night. She does her best to help Daniel Isaac’s very lost businessman Taka, and console Kiley Lotz’s confused and fearful Ruth, but they may be beyond saving. Her vigilance and endless quirks might be what it takes to survive in a desert town of extremes, from the scorching heat to the frigid cold of night, where crocodiles roam the streets and from which it seems there may be no escape.

In true horror story tradition, supernatural forces jar loose to wreak havoc and seem poised to drag us all down to hell, or at least to far, far away places. Yet it isn’t all impossible, and part of Underland’s depth is its ambitious commitment to remaining a vague, unsettling allegory about the things that are out to get girls alone at night and the terrifying allure of monsters. As Mr. B, Jens Rasmussen plays this ambiguous role well, and with surreal choreography that adds elegance and seduction to the play’s threats, he is as ruggedly, athletically entrancing as he is dangerous.

The intimate scale of the space makes way for Elisheba Ittoop's sound design, which pairs the natural, sans-microphone vocal performances with eerie a capella lullabies, the insidiously maddening drone from the quarry creeping throughout, from a subtle background hum to a piercing shriek. Burke Brown’s lighting and Gabriel Hainer Evansohn’s set design create a space that transforms through subtle, powerful shifts, from the metallic, prison-like confines of the schoolyard to a suggestion of the incongruously vast, beautiful expanse of the outback's open sky.

These elements weave together into an impressively immersive environment that is, in a word, scary. But Underland is the best kind of scary. It's the kind of scary that's so hard to describe but so easy to recognize. It's the kind of scary that you don't notice at first, that creeps in around the edges, capable of capturing the audience in its jaws and swallowing them whole.

by Emily Galwak for Stage Buddy

Rasmussen is both a dangerous and erotic presence

Jens Rasmussen & Georgia Cohen
The Australia of TV commercials: the Great Barrier Reef, the Sydney Opera House and swoon worthy landscapes, is nowhere to be found on the stage at 59E59 where Underland has opened. Instead this is the industrial desert of the outback, all red earth, tin buildings, the throbbing of the quarry and a vague undercurrent of dread. It is this Australia, by turns comedic, tragic and a bit confusing, in which Underland plays out.

In this landscape, a school is the one place that offers the possibility of something unusual happening. And waiting for that unusual thing are two school girls, Ruth and Violet. Violet is small town mean girl, playing at being a rebel. Ruth is her long time friend and co-conspirator, happy to be part of a group but always worried about the consequences. Angeliea Start as Violet and Kiley Lotz as Ruth bring these characters effortlessly to life. They both want, desperately, for something to happen in this tiny hamlet. And something does.

Two strangers arrive at school. The first, Miss Harmony, is a new Art Teacher that spies promise and talent in Violet. They slowly begin a mentor relationship that gives Violet hope for a better life. Georgia Cohen gives life to Miss Harmony, a teacher hoping to reach her students. Violet responds well to the attention of this new, enthusiastic teacher. However Miss Harmony has another vying for her attention, the school alpha-male teacher, Mr. B. As portrayed by Jens Rasmussen, Mr. B is both a dangerous and erotic presence.

Ruth finds her own stranger in the form of Taka, a Japanese salary-man who arrives in the middle of nowhere via a tunnel from Tokyo. Taka is confused and lost, but Ruth is ecstatic to have found something completely new. Daniel Issac as Taka does an amazing job by pretty rapidly helping the audience move past the bizarreness of his appearance in Australia and care about this man. But Ruth has a competitor for attentions of Taka, the long widowed Mrs. Butterfat. Mrs. Butterfat is excellently played by the veteran Annie Golden; she walks Mrs. Butterfat right to the line of caricature, without going over.

If this makes Underland seem confusing, just wait. Writer Alexandra Collier throws in salt-water crocodiles in subterranean rivers, late night biking, a killer in thrall to the hum of the earth and ruminations on the choices we make when growing up. The result is often confusing but always involving. Director Mia Rovegno never lets the story slip into farce or fantasy, always preferring an honesty that someone makes the whole story hang together.

I am not sure I understood Underland, but I am sure that I am rooting for Violet and Ruth to make the right choices. And that engagement with characters makes for a satisfying trip to the theater.

See original review at Whats on Off Broadway.

Jens Rasmussen is quite striking

Jens Rasmussen & Georgia Cohen
It's not often that a playwright sets out to mystify an audience as resolutely as Alexandra Collier does in Underland. The setting is "a small, dusty town in the middle of Australia," and believe me, this Underland is no wonderland. Drought conditions prevail. There are warnings about crocodiles, reportedly moving ever closer to town in search of water. People have a way of turning up dead or disappearing altogether. And what about the man who staggers on stage at the opening, looking disturbed and pulling a bloody tooth from his mouth?

Following this ugly display, the play switches gears, focusing for a while on Ruth and Violet, a pair of adolescent girls who dabble in smoking pot and gossiping maliciously about everyone they know. Violet is the prettier, more dominant one, to whom Ruth anxiously kowtows, but they make a perfectly matched pair of hellions, amusing themselves by sitting in the back of art class and making annoying meowing sounds while their new teacher tries to introduce herself.

The teacher, Miss Harmony (Collier favors names right out of Restoration comedy), is new to town; in one of the play's sharpest, funniest passages, her easygoing, let's-be-friends manner is contrasted with the scalding, hard-ass approach of the gym and math teacher, Mr. B. ("You're like flaccid wombats, the lot of you," he says, offering his own special brand of motivation.) It's not long before a little B-Harmony romance is in the air; at the risk of giving away too much, let's just say that she discovers that passion has its price.

Then there's Taka, a Japanese salaryman sitting in his Tokyo office, listening to exercise audios and playing with his tamagotchi, a tiny little digital pet that, in this case, meows like a kitten. He finds a hole in his floor and, getting inside, begins crawling along it until he exits -- in the Australian town inhabited by Ruth, Violet, et al.

As Ruth and Violet, Kiley Lotz and Angeliea Stark offer hair-raisingly accurate portraits of the kind of sullen, rebellious adolescent who makes one think fondly about reviving corporal punishment, but each of them gradually reveals layers of uncertainty that make them more than just caricatures. Jens Rasmussen is quite striking as the furious, tough-talking Mr. B., who harbors a powerful, all-consuming passion for Miss Harmony, and is also in possession of a terrible secret.

-Read the whole review by David Barbour at Lighting & Sound America

Chatting at the E:Bar with... Jens Rasmussen

What’s something unexpected or surprising that you learned about Australia through doing this play?
There are crocodiles in Australia’s interior AND that digging “to china” is inexplicably universal even though digging through the center of the earth from the Australian interior really lands you closest to Puerto Rico. So where do kids in China dig to?
What word do you say to key in to your Australian accent?
Two words actually - Don’t Smile. But just to be clear, I do actually smile in the show - well, not that much come to think of it…
Describe your childhood imaginary friend or foe. Can you draw a picture for us?
I had a reoccurring nightmare: in the dream my mother and I would finish saying my evening prayers in my bed (a bed which came from a nunnery by the way), she would tuck me in and close the door to my bedroom. Behind my bedroom door was a gun cabinet (for real - not just in the dream). When the bedroom door was closed the gun cabinet was revealed and in the reoccurring dream a demon would be sitting on top of the gun cabinet. I was trapped with no way out. I would wake up screaming. Good times.
image
Drawing of my reoccurring childhood nightmare 

Where is your home town? Did you ever want to escape from it?
My home town is Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I actually didn’t ever feel trapped there. We lived by one of the largest lakes in the state, and my folks got me a second hand windsurfer. Windsurfing is one of the most incredible feelings of freedom a person can experience. We also spent lots of time on the small farm my father and grandfather owned together. When we didn’t have chores, my younger brother, Hans and I would crawl through the woods and swamp making up adventures. Lastly, and maybe most importantly, my parents always had international guests staying with us: people from Iran, Israel, South Africa, New Zealand, Finland, South America, and many more. My folks always gave us a good view of the horizon beyond out little town, and the tools to tackle it on our own when we were ready. All my siblings and I went out on our own at 18 and never came back.
What’s your favorite Australian animal and why?
If I had to pick just one one it’d be the Dingo - misunderstood, intelligent, loyal, survivor now hunted and endangered. A close second would be Sugar Glider - can you handle the cuteness? https://youtu.be/FSx__5yIrmc
This interview was originally published on the 59E59 blog

People You Should Know... Jens Rasmussen


An UNDERLAND interview by Zack Calhoon, originally posted on his site


UNDERLAND at 59E59

When did you know that you wanted to be an actor?
 
I had one of those magical Catholic high school choir teachers who loved Rod Stewart, believed in me, and gave me opportunities to grow. If it hadn't been for her - I shudder to think what might have become of this boy from Oshkosh with buck teeth and a Lego obsession.

Tell me about UNDERLAND. How do you feel rehearsals are going? What do you love most about the show?

UNDERLAND is wonderful. It's part Jerusalem, part Mean Girls, with a dash of Alice in Wonderland and Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. Rehearsals have been an absolute joy. Mia runs a beautiful room and brought together an amazing group of artists. Every designer and every actor has impressed me. I'd be excited to do any project with this group of artists. What I'm loving most about the show right now, is the moments we're building that bend time and space, in surprising, and I hope, compelling ways.

What kind of writing inspires you?

I adore writing that feels natural yet elevated and Ally's writing has this kind of muscular lyricism. My absolute favorite experiences in the theatre is when a piece moves me, and yet I can't verbalize why. Then I know the writer has peeled back a layer of my experience at the very edge of my understanding. It's exhilarating and maybe a little scary.

Who or what has been the biggest influence on your work as an actor thus far?

I think of actors like Michael Lague, who I looked up to when I was an apprentice over 20 years ago, or Michael Chekhov's writing, which I went back to over and over again, or brilliant actors like Mark Rylance, whose work constantly inspires me. But oddly enough, at this point. I think students have influenced my work the most. It's really true that teachers learn and students teach. Being in a studio with young actors has been a great facilitator to my own understanding of my work and process, as well as a tremendous source of inspiration.

What else are you working on right now?

In addition to UNDERLAND at 59E59, I'm in pre-production for THE LITTLE PRINCE which I'll be directing this summer in Georgia, and doing initial prep for A WINTER'S TALE which I'll be performing in at the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival.

New York Times Feature

Jens Rasmussen
Photo by Julie Glassberg for The New York Times

Teaching City Dwellers How to Make It in the Wilderness


Jens Rasmussen is an actor who is equally adept on the Shakespearean stage and in the great outdoors.
So on the side, instead of waiting tables, he teaches backwoods skills, including lessons on how to start your own campfire from flint and steel. Put away those matches, city slicker, and learn to cook outside on the open flame, right in the middle of the city.
Mr. Rasmussen, who grew up in Wisconsin, does this on the waterfront across the East River from Midtown Manhattan, in a narrow lot in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, at the edge of Newtown Creek, under the Pulaski Bridge.
It is the home of the North Brooklyn Boat Club, of which Mr. Rasmussen is a founding member. Last Sunday, he pointed to an assemblage of tan bricks at the water’s edge and said, “This is our hearth.”
His students — Victor Calvo and Amreen Quadir, both internists at Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn — sat on a thick wooden plank between a chain-link fence topped with razor wire and a concrete wall covered with colorful graffiti tags.
The doctors, who are engaged, told Mr. Rasmussen they had booked the lesson partly to learn some skills “in case, in the future, we do Doctors Without Borders-type work and the bus breaks down — that kind of thing.”
Dr. Quadir saw Mr. Rasmussen’s Groupon listing offering a workshop (at $100 per person) for “Fire Crafting on a Wilderness Adventure” teaching “how to build fires in the wilderness before you cook a delicious campsite dinner.”
That is how they wound up spending a frigid Sunday afternoon cutting vegetables with woodsman’s knives, and then whittling curly shavings from wood slats for fire-starting. They were instructed by the theatrical Mr. Rasmussen, who seemed impervious to the cold, as he doffed his tan rancher’s jacket and tended the camp, wearing a smart outfit of heavy woolen Army-surplus garments.
“Now, if the chips were down, and you really needed to start a fire,” he said, and he went about demonstrating how to elicit a spark, briskly swiping a stone against a piece of iron.
Soon, Dr. Calvo was coaxing sparks from his stone, and had his flammable char cloth smoldering. He then pushed this into a ball of shredded newspaper and blew sharply upon it. When it blossomed into flame, Dr. Calvo dropped the fiery handful into the fire pit and heaped those wood shavings atop.
Mr. Rasmussen fed the crackling fire from a big pile of urban-foraged kindling — old packing crates and castoff scraps from local businesses — and he put a blackened coffeepot on the grill over the leaping flames.
He stoked the fire and the conversation, poured the pair a cup of tea, and began readying the meal on a rough-hewed wooden plank that served as his outdoor kitchen counter. He put a pan on the grill and heated some olive oil and spices, then some vegetables and finally some rice and beans. Then he whipped up a batter of sourdough and cornmeal to deep-fry some hush puppies in a Dutch oven full of hot oil.
Self-reliance is the theme here. Mr. Rasmussen wore around his neck a woodsman’s knife from Sweden in a leather sheath with copper rivets he tooled himself. He cooked with wooden utensils he carved himself, and pulled materials from a woodsman’s basket that he made by felling a black ash tree in Maine. And that ax, he made the handle. And that wanigan wooden box he kept opening for supplies? Made that, too.
Mr. Rasmussen, who is married and lives nearby in Greenpoint, said he grew up partly on a farm near Oshkosh, in a “back-to-the-land kind of family.”
“We have a nature deficiency here in New York City, and so there’s a real profound connection when we participate in these elemental experiences,” said Mr. Rasmussen, who has spent weeks at a time sleeping in the woods, survivalist-style. “With this, we’re tapping into something that goes back millennia and connects us with our ancestors.”
The doctors cut some apple slices, which Mr. Rasmussen dipped into flour and batter to make apple fritters in the hissing and spitting pot of boiling oil.
He sat the couple near the fire to “discuss the priorities of survival” should the city one day descend into chaos. Building a fire could help provide drinkable water, a safe sleeping spot, heat and food, he said, pulling out a pocket survival pack that included a sewing kit and dental floss for stitching wounds.
By dusk, the spot had become a chuck wagon scene. The falling snow hissed as it hit the fire.
After eating, the doctors headed back to civilization, and our urban pioneer poured out his cowboy coffeepot into the campfire, dousing the flames till next time.

By Corey Kilgannon

PlayTime Developmental Studio

Clockwise from top left: Barbara Hammond, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Susan Mosakowski, John Walch and Jenny Schwartz
It's been an honor to spend the last two weeks at New Dramatists, an artistic home and creative laboratory for talented, professional playwrights, for the twelfth annual PlayTime Developmental Studio
This was my second invitation to participate. The PlayTime Developmental Studio is an in-house retreat for five New Dramatists resident playwrights. Designed to give them the time and space they need to explore, workshop, rethink, and revise in the company of fellow playwrights, artistic collaborators including directors, designers, and actors and New Dramatists staff. Set within the context of their seven-year residencies with New Dramatists, PlayTime offers these writers one of the most extended, intensive developmental processes possible within our year-round artistic program. PlayTime is part of New Dramatists’ commitment to giving its writers more workshop time to experiment and refine without the pressures of production. This year’s playwrights are Barbara Hammond, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Susan Mosakowski, Jenny Schwartz and John Walch.
Time and space to explore, workshop, rethink, revise
Additionally New Dramatists residents Carlos Murillo and Julie Marie Myatt participated as resource playwrights, supporting the developmental process for the five PlayTime playwrights.
The five projects rehearsed on a rotating schedule, with time off for rewrites. Surrounding the rehearsals were group events – meals, yoga classes, collaboration meetings, and daily artistic cross-pollinating tea-times – to foster community and exchange.
It has been absolutely invigorating to watch these plays spring forth! And every artist present; from those who are brand new in town to folks who've been treading the boards for decades was brilliant, warm, and generous. I felt especially lucky to get to work with Barbara Hammond, whose play Norman & Beatrice captivated me years ago, and director Tea Alagic whose work I first encountered at what I consider one of NYC's most important companies - The Women's Project

Thank you New Dramatists, one and all! Till next time!


Scandinavian American Theatre Company & Chekhov International Theatre Festival



The Fundamentalist first opened to rave reviews in Finland in 2006 and subsequently went on to win the prestigious Nordic Drama Award for Best Play in 2008. The Scandinavian American Theatre Co gave it it’s US premiere, last season at the New York International Fringe Festival, where it opened to rave reviews and was chosen as one of two highlights out of the festival’s 200+ shows by The New Yorker Magazine. This month it was remounted with Jens Rasmussen in the lead role for performances at Scandinavia House on Park Ave in NYC and at the Chekhov International Theatre Festival.

The Fundamentalist tells the story of Markus, a reformed Minister turned public critic of the church, is approached by Heidi, his former student and now a member of religious extremist sect, who wants to save Markus from going to hell. THE FUNDAMENTALIST is a suspenseful two-character drama that offers an astute and nuanced investigation of the inner workings of fundamentalist belief. It questions the appeal of fundamentalism next to modern-day pluralism and tolerance, and encourages us to reflect on our values, worldview, faith and human responsibility to each other.

Juha Jokela is one of Finland and Scandinavia’s most renowned modern writers. The Nordic Drama Award jury wrote: “His witty and surprising humor, compelling narratives and nuanced characterizations are tightly bound to the present moment. Whether focusing his sharp vision on the world of business or the spirit, he writes with deep understanding of the personalities involved.”


Scandinavian American Theater Company is the 2011 recipient of the American Scandinavian Society’s Honorary Cultural Grant. The company was founded in 2009 to promote the new generation of Scandinavian playwrights and produce innovative interpretations of the classics. SATC also produces the SATC Contemporary Scandinavian Reading Series at Scandinavia House, in which they present five staged readings annually of new Scandinavian plays. For more information, visit www.satcnyc.org.

Off Broadway with the Working Theater

Working Theater presents the Off-Broadway production of The Best of TheaterWorks!: Stories from the 99%. The production will feature six of the best short plays to come out of Working Theater’s TheaterWorks! program. The 10-year old program teaches working men and women (bus drivers, doormen, 911 operators, DMV workers etc.) to write and perform their own short plays about their experiences at work. The classes end with a stage reading style performance where the students are teamed with professional actors and directors. This production however will be fully realized by a professional cast and crew.

Directed by Tamilla Woodard the cast features: Maria Helan, Andrés Munar, Tony Naumovski, Jens Rasmussen, Gabriel Sloyer, Jeanine Serralles and Nikki E. Walker.

The playwrights are: Gail Baskerville (clerical worker – Department of Education), Mirsada Damms (Building Service Worker), Bernadette Elstein (911 Operator), Michael O’Hara (Building Maintenance Worker), Julian Pimiento (Doorman) and Eric Sposito (former laborer in NY Daily News print shop).

Set & Props Design: Deb O, Costume Design: Emily DeAngelis, Lighting Design: Christopher Weston, Sound Design: Jeremy J. Lee,Production Stage Manager: Amy Francis Schott , Assistant Stage Manager: Nicholas Betito.

Now in its 27th season, Working Theater is New York's only professional Off-Broadway theatre company dedicated to producing plays for and about the working men and women of New York. Past productions include Lisa Ramirez's play about nannies, EXIT CUCKOO directed by Colman Domingo, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's KING OF SHADOWS, Stefanie Zadravec's Honey Brown EYES; Israel Horovitz's HENRY LUMPER ; and Rob Ackerman’s CALL ME WALDO, TABLETOP, and DISCONNECT.

The play will run from June 14th – June 17th, 2012: Thursday – Saturday at 7, Saturday at 2 and Sunday at 3. Dorothy Strelsin Theatre at Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex (312 W. 36 St.) in Manhattan.



Tickets are $15 at smarttix.com or by calling 212.868.4444. For more information call 212-244-3300, email mark@theworkingtheater.org or visit www.theworkingtheater.org.

Rasmussen has a menacing air of self-satisfaction that's quite effective.

REVIEW: The Other Man at Theatre Row

In "The Other Man," their first produced play, authors Bryant Martin and Mark Botts have written an often taut if not always convincing thriller-cum–love story, in the process giving Martin a savory meal of a role. The actor plays Tom Donaghy, a young thug from England just released from a New York prison. Facing deportation, Donaghy is desperately searching for his vanished drug-addicted girlfriend Lisa. Not only does Martin's Donaghy sport a tangy cockney accent with generous amounts of rhyming slang; he can be violently threatening one moment, barking orders in a booming voice; funny and sexy the next, gently but confidently flirting with a woman he's just met; and then crushingly sensitive, recalling his early years in an orphanage. Martin melds it all into an impressive performance.

As the play begins, a gun-wielding Donaghy storms into the office of Raphael Cardozzo, a big-time drug dealer, demanding to know Lisa's whereabouts. It seems that Cardozzo not only sold Lisa drugs but also had a ruinous affair with her, and apparently his office has up-to-date records on all his old customers. While Angelica, Cardozzo's secretary-mistress, searches in the next room for information on Lisa, Cardozzo, captive in handcuffs, and Donaghy chat it up. The ex-con rhapsodizes about his love for Lisa, and in flashback we see their romance developing and then collapsing as Lisa sinks deeper into addiction. He also forces Cardozzo to telephone his wife and confess his affair with Angelica and periodically threatens to harm Cardozzo's two young daughters. The men further manage to go at each other in a nicely staged brawl.(Choreographed by Rasmussen.)

Toward the end questions of blame come up—who's really responsible for Lisa's downfall—but they seem perfunctory. The play runs a scant 70 minutes or so, but some of the talk has the feel of obvious filler, despite Kimberly Faith Hickman's well-paced direction and a skillful cast.

Jens Rasmussen's trim, well-spoken Cardozzo may not be the most brutish mob boss around, but he has a menacing air of self-satisfaction that's quite effective. Kara Durrett believably limns Lisa's journey from fresh young thing to wretched addict, and Lucy Sheftfall imbues Angelica with an appropriately scary hard edge. But it's watching Martin bringing his own script to life with relish that gives the show its raison d'être.

Reviewed by Ron Cohen

The Strangest at HERE's CULTUREMART


Midway through Camus's classic "The Stranger," an unnamed Arab is killed. Leaping from this moment and working backwards through possible histories of tangled romance, ethnic conflict and random violence, Betty Shamieh has crafted a new play inspired by this unknown character. The Strangestis an absurdist murder mystery about three Algerian brothers who vie for the love of the same woman, one of whom will be inexplicably gunned down by a French stranger. Infused with elements of Middle Eastern storytelling traditions, audience members enter into a simulation of an Algerian coffeehouse where masters of the oral tradition once told tales. Directed by May Adrales.

Two Intensive New Play Development Programs

New plays are the lifeblood of American theatre, and Jens is thrilled to be participating in programs at both New Dramatists and terraNOVA.

Read on to learn more about these fabulous companies and their programs.

PLAYTIME DEVELOPMENTAL STUDIO
New Dramatists presents the 10th annual PlayTime, a 2-week developmental lab for five plays-in-progress designed to give playwrights the time and space needed to explore, workshop, rethink, and revise ambitious new work in a collaborative company of directors, actors, other writers and New Dramatists staff. PlayTime offers our writers one of the most extended, intensive developmental processes available within our year-round artistic programming. This year’s writers are Tanya Barfield, Marcus Gardley, Rob Handel, Dan LeFranc, and Chiori Miyagawa.

PlayTime will begin with two days of play readings and preparatory discussion between the five playwrights, their collaborators, and ND’s artistic staff, including resource playwright Sharon Bridgforth. A company of actors will join the lab, and the five projects will rehearse on a rotating schedule, with time off for rewrites. Surrounding the rehearsals, there will be group events – meals, yoga classes, collaboration meetings, and tea-time – to foster collaboration and exchange.

The Projects:

Untitled New Play by Tanya Barfield
directed by GT Upchurch

The House that will not Stand by Marcus Gardley
directed by Patricia Mcgregor

Untitled New Play by Rob Handel
directed by May Adrales

Untitled New Play by Dan LeFranc
Directed by Kip Fagan

I came to look for you on Tuesday; I'll come back again in two days(working title)
by Chiori Miyagawa
directed by Alice Reagan

Final presentations will be held December 15 through December 17. Some readings may be open to the public. Please call for the schedule of readings, as reservations will be required.


terraNOVA Collective's GROUNDBREAKERS is an annual developmental playwrighting lab, in which 6 playwrights receive the unique opportunity to work on a specific project with the goal of creating a completed draft. Each playwright brings in their play 3 times over 18 weeks for a round-table reading with professional actors, receiving feedback from the Groundbreakers playwrights group and special guests, along with the artistic staff of terraNOVA Collective. terraNOVA assembles a diverse group devoted to creating theatrical, original, innovative, socially relevant new work for the stage and welcomes submissions of new plays and solo shows in various stages of development that will benefit from collective feedback and further terraNOVA Collective's artistic mission. They are especially interested in playwrights who, in addition to working on their own play, have an interest in attending weekly workshops to give other playwrights in the group feedback.

You can meet the 2012 Groundbreaker playwrights here: http://www.terranovacollective.org/2012-season.html

Queens Odyssey: The Internationalists’ Which Direction Home?

On a warm day in June, in an overheated rehearsal studio in Bushwick, peppered with sawdust on the floor and punctuated by garage door openings and exitings, an experiment in theater is underway. Stage left sit Athena, Poseidon, and Zeus with a MacBook on their desk, calling the shots for the now immortal mortals, Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus, and other beings from a tale that has been passed down through the millennia. The rehearsal proceeds as many others in this early stage: at times the crew, including director Jake Witlen, break into a chorus of, “ring, ring, ring, ring,” providing the necessary telephone cue; lines are forgotten and remembered; a song is sung with sparing accompaniment; at its conclusion a conversation of further scoring is had. While the story of The Odyssey is re-made, re-shaped and re-created in this room, the real odyssey for these artists and for artists the world over will begin in July. Today’s piece will then become but one of a slew of odysseys making up Which Direction Home?, a theatrical event conceived and created by The Internationalists, a collective of theater directors from around the world.

In Which Direction Home?, eight of the member-directors have created new shows which will be brought from six different countries and are, according to their website, “inspired (more or less) by Homer’s epic poem.” The shows are split into two different programs, presented on alternate evenings. There will also be one marathon performance in which the audience can view both programs in a single day. The individual pieces easily fall into the over-used category of “experimental,” or, as producer Cathy Bencivenga says, “I hesitate to call them all plays. Many of them are performances.” A sampling: from Germany, Dina Keller is bringing an event that will begin every evening by inviting the audience to sit with cast members, enjoy food and drink, and enter into discussion about “foreignness” and a journey, setting the evenings to sail. Witlen’s production has a text that was “wiki”-ed by 10 playwrights from around the world. Doug Howe, in from Paris, invited six playwrights from all over the world to create a piece based on the theme of home—who, where, and what is it? Sama Ky Balson, from Australia, has created a piece of documentary-theater, taking the stories of boys from around the world who grew up without fathers as a way to prism into the story of Telemachus, Odysseus’ son. And one evening will feature an environmental theatrical event, created by Romanian director Ana Margineanu, in which a single audience member at a time will be led to five different site-specific locations, blindfolded, to experience theater (theatron: seeing-space) sans the thea part. But the real experiment underpinning all of these experimental theaters is The Internationalists.

The Internationalists was founded by a group of directors who met during The Lincoln Center Theater’s Directors lab in the summer of 2007. While living and creating in different places on the globe, the directors came together, becoming unified with the mission “to create a more open, sustainable, and interactive global theatrical community.” Over the years the members of the collective have found ways to collaborate across borders. They’ve traveled to collaborate on projects, experimented with producing work in two locations simultaneously, and hosted artists from disciplines ranging from Burmese Butoh dancers to commedia dell’arte and site-specific work. Annual events include “Around the World in 24-hours”: a marathon, 24-hours of theater with live performances from different artists in New York and simulcast performances skyped in from locations around the world. The collective also hosts a New Year’s Eve party, “New Year’s Eve(ry) hour” with the ringing in tracked across the globe. And they are one of the few organizations in the city that hosts “World Theatre Day.” (There is one, it’s March 27.) Artists interested in global theater congregate and hear the World Theatre Day Message read aloud in various languages by member-artists around the world. While all of these events have various obstacles to overcome—language and cultural barriers, systemic differences, technological hurdles—Which Direction Home? is The Internationalists’ most ambitious project yet.

The event is a culmination of a year-long residency that the collective is concluding at the La Guardia Performing Arts Center in Queens. “It’s one show’s worth of residency over eight people,” is how Bencivenga sees it. The difficulties of producing any single production are here multiplied by a factor of eight. Add to this the incorporation of four productions that have been in development in other countries over the past year. Their creators are arriving a month before the event to add their works to those created by the artists who are based in New York. In weaving these pieces together, the “designers have been like dramaturgs,” says Witlen. Lighting designer Stephen Arnold adds, “Creating a lighting language that can serve all the widely spread ideas has been a fun challenge.” 

This challenge has been necessary in order to achieve the most important goal of the event: learning about each others’ work. The members will get to experience the pieces as a whole, but even more importantly, they will get the rare opportunity to watch each other work. In order to best achieve this, each of the directors was given very little in terms of guidance. While The Odyssey is a story that is well known in the Western world, these pieces are, as Howe explains, “Not based on a reinterpretation of The Odyssey but truly inspired by it.” The result, he says, was that, “everyone latched on to the things that were interesting to them.”  The diversity of pieces created due to this inspirational freedom shows the various backgrounds that each of the artists are coming from, the way this shapes their view of the world, their art, how they create their art and what is important to them in their art. Over the next month the artists will be able to communicate about their work and learn from each other in a way that technology simply doesn’t allow. As Howe explains, “Having everyone in New York gives the opportunity to be in the same room to create.” 

One of the other theatrical experiences audiences and artists will be able to have will be something that the group is calling “Instant Theatre.” In this experiment the directors will collectively create pieces of theater with participating audience members before each show. This poses the question, Witlen and many others may ask, “Can two directors work at the same time? Can six?”  

“Hopefully, by the end of this,” says Howe, “we have the ability to define the questions,” — questions that Witlen describes as “never-ending. They continue to grow and get deeper and more intimate.” 

The most worthwhile experiments start out with questions. Expect The Internationalists to continue to ask questions of the international arts community, expanding and shaping its possibilities well into the future. In the near-future a world of theater will be in Queens and for those who make The Odyssey Howe declares: “July is Odyssey month. A kumbaya of theater.”

Nightlands Workshop at New Georges

Jens was delighted to join fellow Acclaim Award winner Kelly Hutchinson, Karen Kandel, Hubert Pont du-Jour, along with the rest of the company and Director Tamilla Woodard to work on Sylvan Oswald’s latest play.

The play has interesting challenges for actors and audience, including men in the company playing both male and female roles without camp, juxtaposed with intensely real relationships, set against the starkly abstracted world of Philadelphia in the race charged 60’s.

I’ll be in Cincinnati doing Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries during the Off-Broadway Premiere, so I’ll have to miss it, but I wish everyone well!