Alicia Grega-Pikul
Ask anyone in the business and they’ll tell you if Independence Day falls on a weekend, its tragedy for the theater. Audiences will choose the spectacle of fireworks and the drama of family barbecues over most any play they’re apt to produce. The exception to that rule benefits companies known to fill the majority of their seats with weekend tourists.
This weekend’s offerings include
Gypsy at the Ritz in Hawley (see next week’s paper for a review);
Camelot and
Always, Patsy Cline at the Shawnee Playhouse;
Little Women: the Musical at the Pocono Playhouse in Mountainhome; and for the ambitious,
1776 at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival at DeSales University. If you want something a little less summer stock-y, you’ll just have to wait.
Fortunately, it’s worth the wait. There won’t be any fireworks at Paper Kite Press in Edwardsville this weekend, but the literary and visual arts center will explode with activity later this month.
Recently relocated to Marble Hill, N.Y. with his children, actor/writer Richard Grunn has agreed to commute monthly to Paper Kite to present a new theatrical program every second Friday and Saturday and an accompanying workshop when applicable. Next week’s presentation is
Urbano’s Circus or
Il Circo di Urbano, echoes of which may ring familiar to Electric Theatre Company audiences who saw Grunn’s
The Key. (
See “Life by the Strings,” electric city, Sept. 21, 2006. )
Inspired by Alexander Calder’s
Circus, the piece features trash-constructed puppets — Ivan the Iron-Clad Stomach, Clyde the Fearless Clown, and Boris the Elastic Acrobat — performing “death-defying and suspenseful acts.”
“We’ve had him into the studio before and I think he feels at home in the space because it’s not an enormous theater. We have a small stage and seating for a maximum of 30-35 people, so it’s intimate,” Paper Kite co-director Jennifer Hill offered.
As if that were enough, the Studio will follow July 18 with a staged reading of a new play by Matthew Hinton titled
The Quiet Cowboy. Set in rural Pennsylvania, the play uses layered flashbacks to tell the story of a man coping with his father’s death.
“I’m not sure if I read the most recent draft but I’ve read two drafts of it and really enjoyed it,” said Hill. “We’re really excited to have some consistent theater going on in the space. This is something we’ve wanted to do but haven’t been able to connect with anybody up until now that was willing to commit.”
Running simultaneously at the Phoenix Performing Arts Centre in Duryea will be
The Heist and
Herr Doktor, two original one-act plays by Chas Beleski.
“Lee Lachette at Phoenix read them and liked them and thought they’d go well there, so she’s willing to take a chance on them, is what I think it amounts to,” the playwright said.
The 63-year-old Beleski has only been dabbling in theater for about five years and until now exclusively as an actor, but he didn’t let that stop him from taking the director’s reins.
“There are a lot of things to juggle ... but I’m enjoying myself,” he said. “I wish I would have started this 30 years ago. I’ve met a lot of crazy people but they are wonderful people. It’s nice to be part of that.”
In
Herr Doktor, a German army doctor “emigrates to Israel after (World War II), taking with him a secret, which years later threatens to surface and ruin the reputation he has worked so hard to earn.” The Heist, in which Beleski will also perform, finds six criminals who begin to disappear one at a time after pulling off “a perfectly planned heist of some highly advanced technology. But then things start to go wrong, terribly wrong, when they begin to disappear on by one.” Also in the cast are Alicia Nordstrom, Eric VanDuzer, Barb Maxwell and Dave Giordano.
For more information, call Paper Kite Press at 328-8658 or the Phoenix Performing Arts Centre at 457-3589, or see our current event listings at The570.com.
Among this summer’s sweetest surprises is the debut of Ghostlight Productions at South Abington Park in Chinchilla on July 17. Working under the direction of Jonathan Strayer, a company of 10 players will present two weekends of Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night. See next week’s editions of
ec/dc for more.