Pullins: The sound, the fury, the war

Yeah, yeah. We all know theater is a collaborative venture, that productions change because outsiders can see something in the work that the playwright cannot because he is too close to it, that actors and directors can clarify the work by fumbling over it in rehearsal — and that, more often than not, the work is better because of the process. But, still, whether they will admit it or not, some playwrights, a sensitive breed, get the jitters as they pass off their "babies" to "outsiders." Not that Ron Pullins is admitting to any of this. The Newburyport playwright is a big believer in the process. But he did confess to a little separation anxiety about "Red Star," a short piece staged last month at the Playwright's Platform in Cambridge. Actually, the playwright said he was "curious" about how they would approach the piece, and that amounts to the same thing. Specifically, he was curious about how they would approach one of the characters because he drew it loosely, allowing the production team plenty of freedom to fiddle about — and because the character (or characters, depending on how you play it) is so unconventional.

Noises of War has the look and feel of a human prop, but is written as a character. It's a one-man war-time noise machine, but it can be played by two, three or more actors who provide special effects — bicycle wheels that sound like machine guns, a drum or tin that sounds like bombs exploding and so on. But the role can also be "played" with a light and soundboard on stage or a multimedia show. "There's no pretense that this is real," he writes in the stage direction. "It is a human imitation of war. The more animated and crazier, the better." But NOW, as the character's pals know him (and as Freudian a slip of an acronym as possible), is meant to be taken seriously. During the reading at the Playwrights Platform, a Boston-based developmental theater for new plays, kind of like the North Shore Readers Theater Collaborative, they played him for laughs. Which is one way of looking at it/him. The character, at first blush, does sound a little like a one-man band — fascinating to watch, but difficult to take seriously, at least at first. The problem is, "Red Star" is not about laughs. It's about people in the trenches, about people ill prepared for war being thrown into the middle of it — and being slaughtered.

"It didn't quite work," says Pullins. "They were really into it, and that was good, but they played it like war-gamers. It played against text. I think they misinterpreted it. But I liked their enthusiasm. It's a delicate line, separating the energy from comedy. It felt like it needed a human voice, not being a monster in the machine."

The play — and the character of NOW — gets a second spin on Feb. 20, when it is staged during the New England Russian Theater Festival. The four-day festival, which boasts 25 Russian-themed one-acts, will also include two full-length productions. Interestingly, the two full-lengths, which dig, TMZ-style, deep into the love lives of the Russian literati, were staged in Newburyport over the past two years — Ludmila Anselm's full-length "Chekhov's Last Love," which was produced last year at the North Shore Readers Theatre Collaborative, and Wendy Lement and Firouzeh Mostashari's "The Woman With the Red Kerchief," which Theater in the Open put on two years ago in Maudslay State Park.

The work was prompted by a Pullins family discussion about whether war is ever justified, with the idealistic "no-never" position being confronted, perhaps overwhelmed, with the grim reality of jackboots on mankind's collective throats, when it's a matter of survival, but it is informed by the work of Kazimiera Cottam, who has written and served as editor of several collections of essays and biographies about the role of Soviet women — as soldiers, partisans and leaders of urban resistance — during World War II, including "Women in War and Resistance: Selected Biographies" and "Defending Leningrad: Women Behind Enemy Lines," a collection of stories detailing the activities of Russian women soldiers in World War II. Focus Publishing, which Pullins owns and operates, brought out four titles by Cottam during the 1990s.

The play takes no overt position on the moral question, focusing, instead, on a bunker-eye view of the issue: As total war grinds the qualities we understand as human into dust, as the world shrinks to surviving the next few minutes, an ordinary shlump in the ditches is elevated into a hero — an ascension caught up in historic fact (and necessity) and, of course, political reality. NOW churns through it all. "The rest," Pullins says, "is just mud and dying.”

Pullins' next production will be "The Dollartorium," which will be get a staged reading May 5 at Whistler in the Dark, at The Factory Theatre in Boston. The play is a loose reinterpretation of Aristophanes' "Clouds," a Greek comedy that took aim at philosophers in general and Socrates in particular, only this time it's our hi-finance corporate cockroaches in the sights — a necessary adjustment, the author says, because "there's no compelling reason to make fun of philosophers any more since they have no impact on American society."

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: The New England Russian Theatre Festival runs Feb. 18 to 21 at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Ave., Boston. The festival boasts 25 Russian-themed one-act plays and two full-length productions. It will also include interactive educational workshops in Russian-based acting techniques and playwriting. More than 100 international artists will be participating. Ron Pullin's "Red Star Rising" will be staged Feb. 20 and 21, during the short play series. Tickets for a half-day are $15 for adults, $12 seniors and students. All-day tickets are $25. A portion of the festival’s proceeds will be given to Wide Horizons For Children. For the complete schedule and ticket information, click here.

MORE, MORE, MORE: Check out a video for the Boston Russian Playwright Festival here.

More familiar faces at Russian theater festival

Ron Pullins won't be the only familiar face for local theater-goers who attend the New England Russian Theatre Festival. The four-day festival, which boasts 25 Russian-themed one-acts, will also include two full-length shows that dig, TMZ-style, deep into the love lives of the Russian literati and were staged in Newburyport over the past two years — Ludmila Anselm's full-length "Chekhov's Last Love," staged last year at the North Shore Readers Theatre Collaborative, and Firouzeh Mostashari and Wendy Lement's "The Woman With the Red Kerchief," which Theater in the Open put on two years ago in Maudslay State Park. That's them on the left.

Mostashari and Lement, former educational director of the Newburyport Children’s Theater, look at Leo Tolstoy’s late-in-life obsession with a 23-year-old married woman named Askina who was a serf on the so-called nobleman’s estate and who became pregnant by Tolstoy not long before he tied the knot with his more class-suitable financee Sonya Behrs, but whose son was never acknowledged by the literary big shot and hypocrite as his own. Such things, of course, are not so uncommon. And, if you believe his journals, Tolstoy never saw her again after he married. He just wanted to ... a lot. He returned to the issue of the pretty serf girl in his stories and his journals, touching directly on these events, but the character of the temptress changes over the years. The carefree and coquettish girl in the early stories becomes something of a gold-digger in the later work. Tolstoy later immortalized this John Edwards-like chapter of his life in “The Devil,” which has two endings: In one, the nobleman kills himself. In the other, he kills the girl.

Amselm's piece explores the relationship of Anton Chekhov and his actress wife, Olga Knipper, and the creation of the legendary Moscow Art Theatre. The play takes audiences through the days when Chekhov wrote "Three Sisters" and "The Cherry Orchard," in which Olga was to perform. It is the latest in a series of works about homegrown writers for the Russian-born playwright, who studied at Leningrad State University and worked for two decades as an experimental physicist before beginning her career as a writer. Her “Rehearsal of ‘The Idiot’” deals with the relationships of F.M. Dostoevsky and his first wife, Maria Dmitrievna, a likely model for Natalya Phillipovna, a major character in “The Idiot.” Amelm is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and Boston Playwrights’ Platform. The Chekov play had its first reading at Shadowboxing Theatre Workshop in Boston. It got a second reading just about a year ago at North Shore Readers Collaborative Theater.

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: The New England Russian Theatre Festival runs Feb. 18 to 21 at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston. The festival will include interactive, education workshops in Russian-based acting techniques and playwrighting. More than 100 international artists are participating. A portion of the festival’s proceeds will be given to Wide Horizons For Children. For the complete schedule and ticket information, click here. For a peek at the trailer for the festival, click here.

Faigen back with a 'Simple' play. Sort of.

Don’t get tripped up by the irony: Joshua Faigen’s new play, called “A Very Simple Play” is anything but simple. Even the playwright isn’t exactly sure what’s he’s got, as far as form goes. It is not, strictly speaking, a play and it’s not a recital. It’s a performance, he says, in which the music is spoken as words and the words are played as music. It alternates between music and dialogue, with one informing the other, but it’s not musical theater — not by any stretch of the imagination. It’s built around Robert Schumann’s “Davidsbundlertanzes,” a glorious piece by a fabulously insane Romantic composer, written for a group, a society, called the League of David, whose purpose was to defend the cause of Romantic music against the revanchist forces, the classical creeps lurking in the wing — a group whose personnel included, at one point, a guy named Brahms as well as two people (Florestan and Eusebius) who didn’t actually exist, but who had the good sense to manifest the different sides of the composer’s personality. Yeah, it’s always something with this guy.

The Merrimac Street playwright is certainly capable of writing nice, straight-ahead plays, like “Gail Can See for Three Days,” in which a woman facing execution tells her story in an exploration of passion, loneliness and broken taboos. But Faigen seems just as happy sticking his finger in the eye of the conventions of the form, like conventional, linear plots, or even in terms of content. Like his psychologically complex “Docent’s Son,” which tells the story of a museum volunteer trying to come to terms with the death of her son, through the language of an abstract painting. Or ”Home/Office,” in which 14 unorthodox scenes convey the complexity of marriage and work. Or the almost novelistic approach he takes in “Porch/Dusk,” a short about a Marine bereavement specialist whose job it is to deliver terrible, terrible news — a piece that ended up as an old-timey radio play. Or “Sikyatki,” a play about Hopi mythology, of all things — a collaboration with Tim Rubel and Rhode Island Theatre Expansion that ended up being as much a dance piece as play.

In “A Very Simple Play,” Schumann’s ”Davidsbundlertanzes,” which is, at turns, brooding and joyous, simple but beautiful, is performed in its entirety. The music is interwoven with the story of two people whose lives revolve around music, the piano. They talk about the melancholy of the past and the sadness of love, they talk about their lives, but, as in many Faigen plays, a lot of the heavy lifting, the specifics about who they are and what their story is, will be done by the audience. The two characters are connected in a deep and long-term way, although not necessarily happily. They have an intimate knowledge of each other. They may or may not be married. They look and sound like a married couple, with issues — perhaps trust issues. They mention a son. Faigen sees them as middle aged, but “the audience can make up its mind about that, too,” he says. “God forbid I be specific about anything.”

The production will feature Missy Chabot and Sandy Farrier as Man and Woman. Barbara Flocco will be at the keyboard. Sarah Chrestensen will be the page-turner. The pianist and page-turner are not named as characters, have no spoken lines and are not directly addressed by the actors, but their presence, the playwright says, is important to setting the tone of the play. Sherry Bonder directs.

The project “kind of chose me,” says Faigen, after he caught Anton Kuerti at the 2007 Rockport Chamber Music Festival and picked up a 1990 recording of “Davidsbundlertanzes” on the product table. The music “took me over,” he says. “It’s very magnetic. It attracts you, it sucks you in.” And the storyline? That’s not so easy to pin down. “I don’t know where this came from,” he says. He acknowledges that the production will be something of a risk. “In my head, it works perfectly,” he says. “We’ll see how it goes on stage.”

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: North Shore Readers Theatre Collaborative will stage Newburyport playwright Joshua Faigen’s “A Very Simple Play” at 10 a.m. Feb. 13 at the home on Stephen and Deidre Faria. The show features performances by Missy Chabot and Sandy Farrier. Sherry Bonder directs. Barbara Flocco is the pianist and Sarah Chrestensen is the page-turner. The show is free, reservations are recommended. For more information, check out the Actors Studios web or call 978.462.1229.

Clopton's curiouser production of 'Alice'

No, this is not the Alice you grew up with. Or the 10-foot tall one that Grace Slick sang about back in the day, in a lost era so perfectly suited to the absurdity of the story. No, this Alice is someone else entirely — several people, in fact. It’s Alice times three, a little girl falling through the looking glass and being placed under a magnifying glass as she encounters all of herself, all aspects of her curiouser and curiouser self — a new Alice for a new generation. And, equally curiouser, the Stage Three production of “Alice in Wonderglass” will be the first time that Marc Clopton, a virtual institution on the Newburyport theater scene, has ever staged a full-length production of his own work in the city. Ever. Despite the fact that he’s been teaching, directing and writing — even publishing a scene book for actors — for close to two decades here. So, then, what’s the deal, Marc Clopton? Why the big holdup?

He laughs. “I don’t know,” he says. “I got distracted? Life got in the way?”

Fact is, he says, “Alice” is the first full-length play he’s written that he feels passionate enough about to deal with the frustrations and challenges of actually bringing to the stage. And there have been plenty of challenges, beginning with the fact that the play appropriates characters created by another writer, Lewis Carroll, from another world, another time, the late 19th century. Meaning that he’s had to take a classic piece of literature, a staple from our youths, and drag it into modern times, which is always a dangerous thing — something that can irritate people as much as amuse or enlighten them. Then there’s also the fact that it deals with complex psychological and spiritual issues and worldviews, which, if not done with a deft touch, can smother the whole enterprise.

“Wonderglass,” which opens Feb. 11 at the Actors Studio, follows the teenage Alice through the Looking Glass, but the character divides into three characters competing for dominance: Prima, the young girl as defined by her parents, who is locked into their worldview; Secunda, who wants to grow up and change, but is she ready?; and Tertia, the third Alice, a shadow self, who is flatly denied by the other two and who holds all those dark feelings that the others do not want to acknowledge. The role is split among three actresses — Christina Beck, Allegra Larson and Katherine Hall. Anna Smulowitz is co-directing with Clopton, who tapped her, in part, because of her strength working with physical plays. And because, as both acknowledge, because Clopton knew that, as playwright, he might be a little too close to the work and not be able to assess issues that come up in the course of getting the production up and running. “I needed another eye, someone who could look at it critically and make changes,” he says. “Anna doesn’t hold back, she’s someone whose opinion I can trust.”

Yeah, they’ve got history, theatrical and otherwise, going back to the early 1970s, when Smulowitz taught in the theater department of the University of Maryland, and Clopton was one of her students. The campus became a theatrical playground. They worked on many shows together. The collaboration led to marriage. When the curtains closed on the marriage, Clopton headed to the Left Coast, where he studied with Gene Bua in Burbank and taught in Bua’s expanding studio. He also taught for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences at Paramount Studios in Hollywood and in the UCLA Continuing Education Program.

Smulowitz moved to Cambridge and, eventually, Newburyport, where she founded the Newburyport Children’s Theater, which would eventually become Theater in the Open. Clopton moved to the Port City to be closer to his son, Aaron, who is also involved with the current production, working on special effect set painting with Deirdra Corbelle and Ellen Sklar. “It was good then,” Smulowitz says, laughing “... and better now, nearly 40 years later. I know it sounds really schmaltzy, but we really do finish each other’s sentences. It’s a remarkable piece of writing. It looks like a play for children, but the language is beautiful and poetic and musical. It feels like a showcase for something for the future, something bigger. It’s just a great piece.”

Down the rabbit hole
Actually, the concept for “Wonderglass” has been kicking around for a long time, since Clopton’s LA days, where the piece started out as a 10-minute short. He’s used that version through the years as a workout piece for students at the Actors Studio. “I’ve wanted to explore its themes for a long time,” Clopton says. “It kept tugging at me.” Then about three years ago, he took the plunge and started developing and expanding the ideas of the piece, and has gotten “intense about it” over the past year and a half. He rolled it out, with a little trepidation (“It’s risky, personally risky as well as risky as a writer,” he says. “You don’t know how the world is going to respond to it.”) last year at the North Shore Readers Theater Collaborative — just to see how it would fly. The response was strong enough, he felt confident enough to work out the kinks.

It’s a Stage Three production, the last stop before actual, official world premiere — a process that begins with cold readings at Writers and Actors, Ink, and is followed up by North Shore Readers Theater treatment, but it’s a completed work.
The production will take the Tannery theater way beyond its well-defined role as edgy, alt-stage black box. The show is front-loaded with the kinds of bells and whistles from, well, more financially well-endowed theaters, beginning with Gordon Przybyla’s multimedia magic, which will take the audience, as well as Alice, through the looking glass. Barbara Keiter’s set pieces complete the multimedia, multidimensional effects. Dan Hanson created set designs, Shari Wilkinson and Kathy Schenk created the costume designs. In addition to the three Alices, the cast includes Alan Huisman and Danny Gerstein.

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: “Alice in Wonderglass,” a new play by Marc Clopton, will be staged Feb. 11 to 27 at The Actors Studio of Newburyport, Mill #1, Suite #5, at the Tannery. Anna Smulowitz directs. Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Thursdays and Sundays, and 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Tickets are $15, $13 for seniors and students. For more information, call 978-465-1229 or check out the Web page.

Ooh-la-la: Romance and seduction, the French way

Who would have thought that first thing in the morning, before finishing the first cup of coffee of the day, I’d be talking about girlie stuff like sexy lingerie and the French art of love with the lovely, curvy Jamie Cat Callan, and ... No, no, no, snookums. I had a legitimate reason for chatting her up while you were still asleep. She’s the author of (we need to pause here for a chuckle en Francais: hoh-hoh-hoh) “French Women Don’t Sleep Alone: Pleasurable Secrets to Finding Love,” and she’s coming to town next week to talk with the ladies from the Port City Women’s Club, and, like it or not, for the overwhelming majority of French filles Callan interviewed, undies are a key part of Aphrodite strategy.

Now, we’re not necessarily talking about the kind of frilly and sexy (and very uncomfortable looking and quite possibly dangerous) items that you might find in a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog, or so we’ve heard. But the pieces have to be nice — and they have to match. And you’ve got to turn yourself out, knicker-wise, every day, no matter if you’re anticipating, or hoping for a romp — er, a night of romance, or just popping into the car to run an errand. Not just because it makes you feel pretty or because you’re worried (thanks, Mom) about being seen in tattered underoos if, God forbid, you’re in an accident, but because it’s the first thing you put on in the morning, it is the first step in how you present yourself to the outer, physical world and, in essence, is an indication of how you relate to it. Immediately. And, beyond that, a simple step like lingerie choice helps build inner confidence. And that, the author says, not the bloomers, is what really gets the pheromones jumping.

During her February talk at River Merrimac Bar and Grille, Callan will serve up the straight Continental dope on flirtation and romance (the French raison d’etre) as well as marriage, deconstructing the French fairer sex’s rep for being so sexy and mysterious and intriguing — so ooh-la-la — and explaining why accessories like scarves, boots and skirts (and lingerie, of course) are essential building blocks for romance. And what makes her such an expert on the subject? With a name like Callan, she’s obviously not French. True enough. The author, whose middle name, Cat, is actually a nickname from her teen years, is half-Irish and blond. But her maternal grandmother was very definitely French, and looked the part. ”She was tall and slender with black hair, just a stunning woman,” Callan says, “She always dressed so beautifully, so elegantly, always with scarves, always turned out in heels, stockings. She was incredibly stylish.”

As a young girl, Callan spent her summers with Grandmere, who schooled her in the ways French women find and keep love, but she didn’t put it all together — the ideas about romance and seduction and style — until she started working on “French Women” a couple of years ago. She had been bouncing around a bit, writing three young adult novels in the 1980s, chasing after a master’s degree in film at UCLA, writing some screenplays and serving as an assistant to Meg Ryan in the 1990s, returning home to Connecticut to teach writing to adult students at Fairfield University (which is where she met her hubby, William Thompson, a climate change scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, who was taking a class). Then, in one of those “light dawns on Marblehead” moments a couple of years ago, Callan, who just celebrated her 56th birthday last week, realized that she has always loved to travel, that she’s always been fascinated by French culture and that she’s a writer and that she could put it together into one enjoyable package: Travel to France and write about French topics. “My only regret is that it took so long to put these things together,” says the writer, who will be heading back to France in the fall, to research (“It’s not a vacation,” she says) “Bonjour Happiness,” her next book. “I just wish I had thought of it earlier.” She’s also working on a memoir about being a femme d’un certain age, growing up with an “impossibly French” grandmother.

The book, called “adorable” by literary sexual provocateur Erica Jong, isn’t all garterbelts and push-up bras and makeovers. It also looks at the French art of flirtation, explains why French women always feel sexy and where and how they meet their men, especially since they don’t date. Huh? Nope, instead of the usual expensive (and very high-pressure for both parties) date, they go to dinner parties, which tend to be casual affairs, so to speak, allowing the time and space to do the romantic, emotional stripteases they do so well. Or so we hear. Or fantasize about. (Oops, sorry, snookums. Just speculating. But, you know, I think French girls would be more understanding about things like that.) It also gives them the chance to duck out if it isn’t going to work out. The book also includes recipes — for food and, perhaps, seduction.

The book “connected the dots in my relationship with my grandmother,” says Callan, who teaches popular fiction at the University of Southern Maine’s Low Residency MFA Program at Stonecoast. “I had no idea that my grandmother was going to be my muse.” And, for the author, it’s all good: “I’m having the time of my life,” she says.

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: Jamie Cat Callan, author of “French Women Don’t Sleep Alone: Pleasurable Secrets to Finding Love,” will speak at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 1 at River Merrimac Bar and Grille at the Tannery. The event is free and open to all area women. The Port City Women’s Group came together four years ago, evolving from a small group of women sharing stories about themselves to a business networking group. They meet the first Monday of every month.

MORE MORE MORE: For more information about the author, check out her Web page. To watch a short interview with the author, check out this video.

The Big Three at Governor's Academy

Symphony by the Sea pulls into The Governor's Academy on Sunday for its second performance of the season, with a program of Romantic works by the Big Three of 19th-20th-century England — Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten and Edward Elgar. But the interesting thing about "Fantasia: Gems from the British Isles" is not the program itself, as impressive as it is, but how it demonstrates the versatility of the 30-piece orchestra, which practically reinvents itself for every piece. Britten's "Simple Symphony, Op. 4," as the name implies, is a pretty straightforward piece, but in Williams' "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
," the orchestra incorporates a separate string quartet. And in Elgar's "Introduction and Allegro, Op. 47," the quartet remains, but the orchestra will split in two pieces, with the smaller part, roughly 10 players, echoing and adding detail to the first. The program also includes Gerald 
Finzi's "Interlude for Oboe and Strings, Op. 21," with its uncommon instrumentation, reaching back to the Baroque, despite its Romantic pedigree, and a piece perhaps destined to be lost in the long musical shadows of his contemporaries — or, as Symphony by the Sea music director Donald Palma puts it, "exquisite, unique and unknown, which, paired with the three big names, seemed like the right piece" for the program.


Jonathan Knox, principal oboist with Symphony by the Sea since 1985, is the soloist for the Finzi. Conspiro Quartet, which comes out of New England Conservatory, where Palma is a faculty member, will perform with the orchestra in the Williams and Elgar. The man with the baton, a native New Yorker, started out on double bass and has built a serious resume: Juilliard School of Music, Leopold Stokowski's American Symphony Orchestra at 20, Los Angeles Philharmonic at 24. In addition to his regular duties at New England Conservatory and Symphony by the Sea, he is also a faculty member at the Yale School of Music and a founder and regular performer with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. "Yeah," he says, "I'm pretty busy." Palma was named Symphony by the Sea conductor in 2008, replacing Jonathan McPhee at the podium. He had been special guest conductor for Symphony by the Sea six years ago, leading a program that included Mozart's "In Nomine Domini" and Tchaikovsky's "Rococo Variations," so making the new gig was a no-stress event. "I felt very much wanted," he says. "I didn't feel nervous taking over, I didn't feel like I had to prove anything. It was like coming back to a friendly family. "

The work bridges the 19th and 20th centuries. It's late Romantic and is "very accessible, very lovely," says Palma, but the musical touchstones come from Central Europe, not England. (Think Dvorak, Suk, Martinu). Then as now "someone writes a good piece and everyone jumps on the bandwagon," says Palma. "Music is not made in a vacuum. Influences come from all over the place. Of course, it was a much slower assimilation. You couldn't just pop onto YouTube and see what was happening. England really took off with it. They made it very personal ... with its own kind of sounds. It's very British (and) evocative of all things English."

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: Symphony by the Sea will perform "Fantasia: Gems from the British Isles," at 8 p.m. Jan. 23 at First Universalist Church, 211 Bridge St., Salem, and at 3:30 p.m. Jan. 24 at The Governor's Academy's Performing Arts Center, Center Street, Byfield. The program will include Ralph Vaughan Williams' "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
," Edward Elgar's "Introduction and Allegro, Op. 47;" Gerald 
Finzi's "Interlude for Oboe and Strings, Op. 21
," featuring Jonathan Knox on oboe; and 
Benjamin Britten's "Simple Symphony, Op. 4." A pre-concert talk with conductor Donald Palma will begin at 7:15 p.m. in Salem and at 2:45 p.m. in Byfield. Tickets are $30 and can be purchased at the door or on the symphony's web.

At New Works, proof's in the 'pudding'

Like old Forrest Gump says, “Life's like a box of chocolate pudding.” Except, of course, he didn’t actually say that. Maybe he should have, but he didn't. Gump was talking about a box of chocolates, not chocolate pudding. And we're not talking about Gump, we're taking about Michael Tooher, whose play about the subject — pudding, the creamy comfort food that Bill Cosby is always prattling on about, not Gump — kicks off the second weekend of the New Works Festival this year. The Maine playwright doesn't especially like pudding, but understands feel-good dessert as a metaphor for love, not life, although, it turns out, the two are closely related ... Actually, just so there's no confusion, here's what he said: “I like the idea of pudding,” he said. “It's light and messy. It should be messy. Pudding is a messy business. Like love, like life. There are no rules, there are no instruction manuals. No matter what you do, you're going to get some of it on you. And that's how it should be. Pudding should be messy and love always will be.”

Pudding, the food, is the glue that holds “pudding,” the play, together. It's how our reluctant hero, John, relates to the world — and how he hides from it. He mails boxes of chocolate pudding randomly as gifts: closing his eyes, stabbing a phone book with his finger, taking down the mailing address, sending out the anonymous gift. It seems like a lovely and selfless, if somewhat perplexing activity, and it is, but it’s more acutely observed as a daily act of desperation designed to conceal an all-consuming desperation. He has been doing this for years, since his wife of 31 years died and left him alone in the world. It’s his way of reaching out, but never having to connect. It becomes more than that after Mary gets involved.

Mary? A strange bird, who kicks in John’s doors, emotionally and physically, while trying to track down Fernando, a hot Latino stud who scored absurdly high on the compatibility chart for a computer dating company. She immediately senses something is going on but fails to grasp its significance as she tries to turn private pain into profit and, perhaps, transcendence. She shakes his tree, luring him into an economic affair — a cheap ad campaign — that misundersands the act entirely, turning it into mere product, profit, allthough deep down she senses that there may be something else going down. It doesn't quite work out the way anyone expects.

Explosive stuff
Tooher has been writing for about five years and has seen some success. His moody short "In a Clearing Quiet," in which a seemingly innocent 10-year-old girl pursues a mysterious agenda — "a creepy little tale," says Tooher — has been staged by four companies in three states over the past two years. "The Sentry," a short that focuses on a TV reporter interviewing a soldier on a surprising mission, was featured at last year's Boston Theatre Marathon and the Seven Short Play Festival in Albuquerque, N.M. But the Portland author's main gig has been as a stage hand, a job title that doesn't really cut it. What he actually does is blow stuff up, or make it look like stuff has been blown up — like his work for the National Geographic Channel's "Dirty Bomb Attack," part of its "Naked Science" series, in which a radioactive car bomb goes off in a busy area of Portland. He also does pyrotechnics for sports teams and stage shows.

He treats stage-writing as a job, tries to produce a page a day ("setting the bar really low," the playwright says.) He doesn't plot, he doesn't outline. "I'm not that good a writer," he says. All h needs is a title, or a first line, or both, or a notion where the thing is going. The first line and concept of "pudding" is "Come in," which doesn't seem like much but, Tooher says, sets he stage. "I'm a great believer in sitting back and letting the characters talk," he says. "Pudding" is the first full-length play Tooher has had staged. The production, which will kick off the second weekend of the New Works Festival, stars Jennifer Wilson, Terry Blanchard, Mary Shapiro, Kathy Isbel, Sherry Bonder, Julie McConechie, Myron Moss and Sam Szabo. Maureen Dailey directs.

While the current production seems to have come out of nowhere, Tooher says "pudding" may be a action to his ironically named, still-unproduced full-length "The Perfect Sameness of our Days," a ripped-from-the-headlines look at a returning soldier in need of mental and medical care who is all but abandoned by his country — a dark story written quickly and in anger. He was looking for lighter material when the idea came to him.

Ultimately, the play is about loneliness, about grief that has numbly metastasized and leaves a desperately empty human shell — and that's the modern tragedy. “The biggest disease is loneliness,” says Tooher. “ We fumble around trying to find one another, trying to connect — or reconnect. John's wife dies and his world collapses. He needs to feel again.” The play is also about fame, which has become an end in itself. “It's hollow and it's wrong," he says. "It used to be a means to an end. Now it's the end itself. It borders on the sociopathic.”

THE FACTS, THE FOLKS: The New Works Festival runs Jan. 22-23 and Jan. 29-30 at the Firehouse Center for the Performing Arts, 1 Market Square, Newburyport. The first weekend will open with “Dead and Buried,” the new full-length play by James McLindon. The following night will feature half of the 14-shorts accepted into the festival. The second weekend will open with a staged reading of “pudding,” a new full-length play by Michael Tooher, followed, the next day, by the remaining shorts. Show times are 8 p.m. Tickets are $12. A limited number of four-day passes are available for $35 each. For information, call 978-462-7336 or go online to firehouse.org.

Friday, Jan. 22: "Dead and Buried,” drama by James McLindon, starring Astrid Lorentzson, Ashley Risteen and Eliot Johnson. Directed by Sherry Bonder.

Saturday, Jan. 23: “Soldier Boy,” drama by Leslie Powell, starring Kate Bossi and Jesiah Hammond; directed by Tim Diering. “No Strings Attached,” comedy by Kara Sorenson, starring Jennifer Wilson, Phil Thompson, Eric Lamarche and Steve Sacchetti; directed by Lois Honegger. “Knowing,” comedy by Gregory Hischak, starring Pam Battin-Sacks and Danny Sklar; directed by Cynthia Arsenault. “If You Love,” drama by Marc Clopton, starring John Sheedy and Jesiah Hammond; directed by Anna Smulowitz. “Sleeping with the Cat 1963,” drama by Daniel Sklar, starring Maureen Daley and Mary Shapiro; directed by Alan Huisman. “Jock Itch,” comedy by George Sauer, starring Sandy Farrier and Brad Ritchie; directed by Jack Rushton; “Touching Elephants,” drama-comedy by Stephen Faria, starring Gloria Papert, Dennis Flynn and Victor Atkins; directed by Diana Kerry.

Friday, Jan. 29: “Pudding,” comedy by Michael Tooher, starring Jennifer Wilson and Terry Blanchard, with Mary Shapiro, Kathy Isabel, Terry Donohue, Sherry Bonder, Julie McConechie, Myron Moss and Sam Szabo; directed by Maureen Daley

Saturday, Jan. 30: "Egg Whites and Miracles,” comedy by Stephen Faria, starring Missy Chabot, Irene Sanders and Fontaine Dollas Dubus, directed by Kimm Wilkinson. “Free Will and Kat,” drama by Deirdre Girard, starring Kayt Tommasino and Teddy Speck; directed by Stephen Haley. “Last Dance,” comedy by Kerry Zagarella, starring Bruce Anderson, Tracy Bickel, Kari Nickou and Jack Rushton; directed by Suzanne Bryan. “A Simile,” comedy by Robert B. Boulrice; directed by David Frank. “A Crooked Chapatti,” comedy by Priya Tahiliani, directed by Kathy Isabel. “Amenities,” comedy by Gregory Hischak, starring Stephen Faria, Kari Nickou, Irene Sanders and Steve Turner; directed by Anne Easter Smith.

Bryan surveys dance floor at New Works

No, it isn't your eyes playing tricks on you. Or an apparition - the ghost of theater past or something. Or proof of a wormhole or some kind of weird tear in the space-time continuum. It's just Suzanne Bryan, who enjoyed a nice run on the local scene as the head of Persephone Theatre, but dropped off the radar about eight years ago. She was in town to direct "Dancing in the Dark," a short play by George Cope and Bruce M. Menin, at Random Acts, the play-in-a-day series at the Firehouse last November, and she has been around the past couple of weeks to rehearse "Last Dance," a comedy by Ipswich playwright KerryZagarella for the New Works Festival, which opens Friday with a production of three-time winner James McLindon's "Dead and Buried." But, no, it's not a revival. Bryan is retired. From nursing, at least.


She left local theater – and the city - about eight years ago to work full-time at Dna Farber, shortly after staging "Fully Committed" in 2002. But she hasn't retired from theater. She staged several productions, including "Wit," at Dana Farber. And she's also volunteering at Dorchester Academy, an after-school theater program at Dorchester High School that, like many schools in the state, has had to deal with tough cutbacks - especially to arts programs. "They don't have any other options," she says. And, of course, dashing in and out of the city from her just-north-of-Boston home.

Right now she's on the phone, en route to Home Depot, with a carload of material to build "special props" for the play. What exactly those might be, she's not saying. She's not talking much about the play itself either, saying only that the 10-minute short has strong comedic and physical acting - "a comedy with a soupcon of noir," she says – and promising that "jaws will drop" when the lights come up.

The playwright, a kindergarten teacher in the Ipswich public schools, is a little more expansive about the play, her second at the New Works. "Last Dance," which will be staged Jan. 23, the last day of the festival, is "another comedy ... I hope." The father, who has disappointed the daughter her entire life, ups and dies just before her wedding. He was supposed to give her away. Figures, right? All that's out the window, of course, but his selfish death does not necessarily
negate his role in the wedding entirely. The story takes place in a funeral home - after business hours, without the consent of the owner, who doesn't know, or the father, who doesn't care. Awkward? Perhaps. Illegal? Yup. But that doesn't mean that father and daughter can't work things out, finally. The show will feature performances by Bruce Anderson, Ritza Elizabeth, Kari Nickou, Tracy Bickel and Jack Rushton.

Unlike "The Odor of Existech," the first play she ever wrote, which found a spot in the new play festival four years ago, Zagarella will be relegated to sitting quietly in the audience. Bryan will direct. "I guess I have to trust her," she says. Not that this is a bad thing. Zagarella has spoken to Bryan on the phone and knows that "she gets it." And the playwright, who is co-founder of the long-running Wail! Magazine and a former touring member of Boston's First Slam Poetry Team, says that "Odor of Existech," her last New Works entry "became so much better" because of the collaboration with the actors. It was a dark comedy ("Is there any other kind?" she asks) that used household recycling efforts as a metaphor of how to process memories and thoughts in our own lives - all of our history, whether good or bad, makes us what we are - "and how you choose to reuse and recycle these memories dictates who you are and how you lead your life," she says. "A lot changed. It made it a much better play because of the collaboration. "Still, she says, letting go is difficult for a self-described control freak. "At first, I'm sure I'll be hyperventilating."

JUST THE FACTS: The New Works Festival runs Jan. 22-23 and Jan. 29-30 at the Firehouse Center for the Performing Arts, 1 Market Square, Newburyport. "Last Dance," a comedy by Kerry Zagarella, will be one of six short plays closing out the festival on Jan. 30. Show times are 8 p.m. Tickets are $12. For information, call 978-462-7336 or log on at firehouse.org.

Band full of punctuation ... and surprises

Trying to get a fix on Fox? What Time Is It, Mr. Fox?, that is. The band that has more punctuation in its name than any group in any genre, driving copy editors everywhere crazy, and a performance style that does the same thing to anyone trying to nail it down. Yeah, well, good luck with that. Even Fox frontman Brian King, who will perform as a solo act Jan. 28 at Governor Dummer, er, The Governor's Academy, finds it a challenge. He makes a joke about the band’s striking “the perfect balance between gloom and glam.” Which sounds good and feels right, but doesn’t quite get there - - like the phrase “acoustic noir,” an attempt to summarize the sound on the Gloucester-based band’s Web page, or fan-suggested similes like “the Eurhythmics at a carnival.” The sound, again summarizing the band profile, is rooted in folk and blues, but filtered through cabaret and alt-rock. Think Dresden Dolls, maybe Tiger Lilies, but, don’t get comfy with the descriptions or think yourself clever for coming up with them. They hit the mark, but only in a broad sense. Nah, this isn’t going to be easy.

Read more at North Shore Art Throb.

Sandy Farrier: Telling still-unwritten stories

Marc Clopton’s “Pie Boys” is one of those rare shows that emerge fully formed, that is so clearly a gift from the Muse, that a truly honest person wouldn’t take credit for creating it. And that’s exactly the approach that Clopton, founder of the Actors Studio, is taking. Not because he doesn’t want to bask in the glory, but because he didn’t write it. Because it doesn’t exist, despite the poster advertising its month-long run at Lincoln Center. The poster is a fake. Or, somebody cue the intro for “The Twilight Zone,” maybe it’s a portal to alternative reality, a signpost for the next theatrical stop, because this is definitely a story meant to be told. “I know, I know,” says Sandy Farrier, a graphic artist and self-described “acting wannabe,” whose play posters, both real and imagined, are on display through the end of January at the Firehouse gallery.


We should be clear about that: Farrier is a wanna-be who does it — as an actor and a playwright. For the past few years, he’s been a regular at the Firehouse and Actors Studio. He performed in “The Mediator” and “Coming Clean,” two edgy, sexually charged comedies that won honors at the 2009 Fringe Festival and were clearly crowd favorites at the Actors Studio during a follow-up production in November. His play “Mating.com,” which explores the notion that hope springs eternal and the fact that people lie, especially in the their online dating profiles, was staged at the New Works Festival two years ago. But he pays for his groceries with a paycheck from Endicott College, where he serves as head of the visual communications department, and as a graphic artist. He moved to the city in 2004. Three years ago, Hailey Klein, one of the founders of Random Acts, the Port play-in-a-day series, convinced him to take an acting class. He’s been a “theater addict” ever since. And the posters? They’re like methadone, or maybe piles of candy — something to take the edge off the jones.

But back to the fake posters or, if you will, advertisements for still yet-to-be-written stories. Farrier says the goal is to coax an idea from a combination of images, illustrations and other graphics. Sometimes he gets a clear vision, other times just a clue, a hint. “I start out with an idea and build on it,” he says. ““If there’s a spark, I see what I can do with it.”

With “Pie Boys,” the scenario emerged “in a minute, in a flash,” when the artist came across the photograph that dominates the poster. It shows a group of boys standing behind a long table in what appears to be, or what Farrier imagined to be, a Depression-era summer camp. It feels like Maine. It looks like the photo was taken moments before a pie-eating contest. The story came to him in a flash: He imagined a hazing incident that resulted in a young boy’s death. All of the boys know what happened. So does one adult witness. But nobody speaks about the “incident” until 35 years later, when they have a reunion. The play looks at how they lived with themselves, with what they’ve been carrying around with them. He doctored the image, adding blueberry schmutz around their pie holes. An eerie glow emanates from one of the boys, presumably the one who died. Contrasting type, messy and elegant, names the play while serving up a heaping helping of irony with the Maine state slogan, “The Way Life Should Be,” just above a solitary flying bird (a harbinger?) and the name of Clopton and other local scribblers, which Farrier says is meant “as a kind of homage” to the people who have helped someone who has “timidly observed and sometimes hung around the fringes” of the Port theater scene.

Other posters, other stories include “Lemon Wars,” which, with its combination of old photographs, calligraphy and maps, suggests an old-school imperialistic attempt to corner a particular market, and, a second story line that evolved with the discovery of an intriguing image of a younger woman, a love triangle that could bring the entire thing down. And “False Document,” which could either be a period piece or a modern-day monkey trial smackdown between creationism and evolution, focusing, as the poster does, on Chuckie Darwin but, perhaps, casting some doubt on documents that make up the big book itself.

The exhibit also includes work from real shows, created under a variety of circumstances: Straight-up design work, like the elegant poster for Michael Wainstein’s production of ”Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris” at the Actor’s Studio; work for shows the so-called wannabe actor was involved in, like Michael Frayne’s “Democracy,” which was staged at the York Readers Theater; and in-betweens, like the striking and kinda creepy poster for the 2008 production of Gregory S. Moss’s “House of Gold,” which, if you remember the production, was based loosely on the Jon-Benet Ramsey case, may dredge up some memories that you have been finally able to repress. The work, real or imagined, is all mixed together and only the designer, and perhaps the local theater hardcore, know for sure.

JUST THE FACTS: Sandy Farrier’s posters from real and imagined plays will be on display through Feb. 1 at the Firehouse Center, 1 Market Square, Newburyport. The exhibit is free. For more information, call 978.462.7336.