The Wearing Of Many Hats

From the desk of Marc Adam Smith

With this current production of Five Years Later going up in the coming month, I find myself once again having many tasks as a member of POY. Not only am I the Co-Writer of the piece, I am acting in it (on stage for almost the whole show), Assistant Director and Sound Designer as well. As a group, we all do many things for all of our productions, but this time I am in the unique position of having the lines I’ve written said by other people – often they are said to me (my character). Very strange… at times I want to give the a line reading, but one cannot do that nor give notes when one is not the Director, so it has been an adjustment. It has taken me long time to find this character and who he is, but in the past week it all came together for me, so I am chomping at the bit to get it going.

Jeff Love has been great to work with on this and having not collaborated with anyone in the past (some say Marc does not play well with others), this experience has been great and we may do some more writing together in the future. The cast, well, they are amazing. Getting to work with G again is always a learning experience and makes me a better actor. And after all the years we have been friends and in the company together, to finally have scene work with Melanie is a true joy. Johnny, Paul, Alyssa, Tina, Felicia, Brandon, Ian, Meghan and Karron have been awesome and Leslie is a great stage manager. With Sean as House Manager for the run, I am super confident that this will be our biggest and best show yet....

"More space in the space"

That is the phrase that pays with our merry band of actors. We have been rehearsing in a cost-effective venue that is smaller than the actual performance space we will be in come April, so each time we find ourselves cramped on the “stage” during rehearsal, someone invariably shouts “there’s more space in the space” - that someone is usually Alyssa Mann. We have even joked that we should get t-shirts made with the slogan… I am sure many off-off-Broadway performers can relate.

We got a taste of “more space” this past week as we moved into a larger venue to really get the show on its feet. It was amazing how much of a difference the play felt when we had more room to move. Certain “dead spots” with the blocking were found and we are going to make some adjustments accordingly. I am so glad we were able to use a larger space (as much as I love the space graciously provided to us by POY members Gerard J. Savoy and Tina Trimble).

The show felt different in the space… after rehearsing in a certain environment for the past month and a half, it was eye-opening to run the show in a larger venue with fluorescent lighting. I know that it threw me off a little and I am sure others felt the same way. Thanks go out to POY member Marc Adam Smith for giving us the opportunity to work out the kinks in a rehearsal space closer to the actual size of the stage… it is still a little bit smaller, so ultimately, we’ll be saying “there’s more space in the space” a few more times before the show opens.

Three weeks to go!

Scriptwriting – an outsider’s perspective

I have such respect for Jeff Love and Marc Adam Smith as they work on the script for Five Years Later. We have been rehearsing this play since January technically, but the first month was reading through the script and providing feedback to the playwrights.

It is amazing the metamorphosis this play has undergone! It must be so difficult for a playwright to love a scene or concept and then need to remove it for the strength of the overall piece. Originally, Five Years Later used a play with in a play setup featuring two additional characters from the future looking back on our present. We affectionately called them “The Judges.” Through our initial readings and much heated debate, it was determined that The Judges, while intriguing, were not necessary to the piece. The actual story stood on its own and made all the points the playwrights hoped to make.

Through this same process, various plot points were introduced and then discarded. Hilarious scenes were written and ultimately cut. One version of the script had Death dating Plague so she could get War to notice her!

Know that the play you will see in April has undergone hours of writing and rewriting so that we can bring you a quality piece of entertainment with a solid purpose. We hope you enjoy it!

Five Years Later runs April 11 – 28, Wed – Sat @ 8pm at The Sargent Theatre @ ATA, 314 West 54th Street, NYC.

Purchase tickets now!

Comedy is Hard!

I thought I'd take a moment to let you all know that we are hard at work rehearsing Five Years Later, which is set to open a little over a month from now, on April 11th. It's an absurdist comedy, and if you are familiar with that medium, you know that zany things happen to characters who are larger than life - not quite as large as with a farce, but pretty out there.

I have the privilege/challenge of playing Oblivia, the hostess of the evening's memorial (but when you get right down to it, it's more of a party for these characters to flaunt their neuroses than any sort of memorial service). She's not the most outlandish of all the characters, but it is hard to let go of the humanity of the character and just run with it. The last few roles I have had were completely grounded in reality (even though one of them was the fictional Snow White in POY's Fairytale Monologues). I also have to trust that I'll be funny - the writing is really clever, so I don't need to work at being funny, I just need to get the timing right. Wish me luck!

We've got a seriously ridiculous (in a good way) cast of characters in this play:

• A self-absorbed, technology-obsessed executive
• A sexy, vacuous model
• A tragically beautiful ward
• A bull dyke
• A flamboyant male nurse
• A theatre snob
• A sex-starved hippie
• A lovestruck playwright
• A dirty old man
• A debutant (my character)
• War, horseman of the Apocalypse
• Death, fourth horseperson of the Apocalypse

They all interact with each other - they flirt, they fight, they get their 'nads shot off... It's a hoot. We hope you enjoy it! Tickets are on sale now, so please check it out.