I was feeling sad and lonely a few moments ago after pawning my kid off on someone else’s babysitter for a play date and then stopping at the Target in Atlantic Center for some bulk packs of paper towels and TP on the way home from the school’s early pickup–it’s parent/teacher conference day in our world. I was dwelling on the fact that one of the mommies I know has written more plays than I thought she had. Another friend has founded her own theatre company in New Mexico, (I don’t know if she is a mommy but her website is pretty impressive). Me I got nothin’…! So I looked up the website of the Six Figures Theatre Company which is producing the Artists of Tomorrow Festival at the West End Theatre beginning this weekend–which I am in thank you very much. I’ve worked there before in several of Kendall Cornell’s clown pieces. It’s a great space. It’s on the second floor of the Church of St Paul and St Andrew United Methodist Church. I think it used to be a chapel.
As a side note about theatre companies in churches; in my own neighborhood, the Irondale Ensemble Project has finished renovating the upstairs Sunday School room, and mounted a new production in their new permanent theatre space at the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church (which was founded by abolitionists)–where my own baby went to toddler play group several times a week for the first two walking years of her life.–and opened their first show in the new theatre space. Some churches are really cool.
Anyway,
This coming weekend and for the next few weekends I will be on stage in; “Oh My Toe!…Why I Walk So Slow”, an theatrical experiment developed with children in the room, conceived by Lindsay Newitter.
In the same festival I am looking forward to seeing my friends:
Victoria Libertoire…
in “The Should Dream”; “An old vaudevillian illuminates the secrets of humanity. Victoria Libertore, aka Howling Vic, lip-synchs, shimmies and hula-hoops her way through perverse, profane and saucy characters including the crone, prostitute and hedonist. Libertore uses her trademark style of combining humor, sensuality and a touch of the inappropriate in this wild and cheeky montage”.
And
Amy Salloway…
who is from Minneapolis but who I knew when we were both part of the fringe theatre community in Seattle… is performing her solo show “Circumference”; “Ghosts of Gym Teachers Past meet the Fear of Fitness Centers Present and the Obsession with Weight Loss Future in an all-new solo comedy about size, sweat…and exercising your demons. From Minneapolis actor/writer Amy Salloway, creator of the hit touring productions “Does This Monologue Make Me Look Fat?” (Artists of Tomorrow 2004!) and “So Kiss Me Already, Herschel Gertz!” comes the show the Calgary Herald calls, “hilarious, honest and unsparing, with a great sense of pace.” Says The Ottawa Citizen, “…an appealing and marvelously funny performer…you can also add brave and original.” And from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, “A MUST-SEE: poignant, sensitive and hysterically funny.”
And
Jenny Lee Mitchell…
will be in the cast of “Dress”, “The war was over yet Communists were lurking in your backyard. Follow Susie, Ace, Betty, Bill, Madge, Mitch and Ralph the Negro Milkman as they navigate their way through Cold War paranoia and forced morality told in the Technicolor style of a 1950’s sitcom.”
That’s three nights for which I either need to arrange for a babysitter and make it a date-night with The Husband or confirm that he will be home from work in time for me to be able get to my friends’ shows by curtain time…