Your Social Calendar

So, The Lily's Revenge is quite the eye popping, fun spectacle, I think.  I really have never been in or seen anything quite like it.  So I suggest you see it if you can, since it's only blooming for another week!

www.amrep.org

But there's all these other things going on you should see too:

The Company We Keep, at BPT: an edgy new play by a strong new playwright, Jaclyn Villano.  With Marianna Bassham, John Kooi, Jessica Webb...

...it also has Bill Mootos in it.  But you should STILL GO! 

http://www.bostonplaywrights.org/

Also, ASP is doing the Scottish Play in Medford, directed by the fabulous Paula Plum.  So you can get your spook on for Halloween.

www.actorsshakespeareproject.org

Apollinaire Theatre Company has extended Uncle Vanya thru Nov 11th, and it's a wonderful production with limited seats, so get them now if you missed it the first time!

http://www.apollinairetheatre.com/productions/productions.html

And my good friend Doug Lockwood has directed Escape From Happiness at Brandeis (this weekend only, so go TOMORROW!)

http://www.brandeis.edu/arts/btc/1213season/escapefromhappiness.html

So there's some fun things to do!  Enjoy!

The Company We Keep

I'm not sure how, but Tommy and I managed to see The Company We Keep at BPT right before our opening of Lily.  And we were both very glad!

It's a provocative new play, and it's a lovely production, with some amazing actors and designers.

AND you can get 10 dollar tix, just by following the link below!

So get out and support new plays in Boston!  You will not regret it!

Here's the link:

https://admin.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/917479/prm/10KATE10

Enjoy!

Salt Girl Slide Show

I've been thinking of The Salt Girl a lot lately.  It was a scary, fun, exhausting piece to write and perform, and I'm so grateful for the amazing group of people that I got to work with when it first opened, almost two years ago.  I'm really hoping to perform it again soon. 

Prior to opening at the Boston Playwrights Theatre, BU Today did a lovely little slideshow about the piece by Vicky Waltz, which I've pasted below.  The TV sets hadn't been installed yet at that point, and I'm wearing my street shoes, but it still makes me nostalgic for that wonderful, creative, frenzied period right before the audience joins you...

John Kuntz Sprinkles Dark Humor Through Salt Girl

Solo performance debuts at Playwrights’ Theatre

By Vicky Waltz

In the slide show above, John Kuntz (GRS’05) discusses his one-man play The Salt Girl, premiering November 5 at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre.

John Kuntz likes to talk to himself. “I do it all the time,” he says. “And I have fabulous conversations with myself.”
That habit comes in handy on stage — the playwright and actor has written and starred in six one-man shows. His most recent, a darkly comic drama called The Salt Girl, debuts tonight at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre.
“In my other one-man shows, I generally play between 30 and 40 roles,” says Kuntz (GRS’05). “The Salt Girl is different because I play only one — for two whole hours.”
Told from the viewpoint of Quint, a lonely, middle-aged gay man, The Salt Girl explores the character’s search for identity, acceptance, and closure. The play opens as Quint is about to commit suicide. Moments after he swallows a handful of pills and ties a plastic bag over his head, his cell phone rings.
“Your father was in an accident,” the caller tells him. “His condition is serious.”
Past and present collide as Quint sits with his comatose father and revisits painful memories. Kuntz moves through decades, transforming from embittered adult to awkward teenager, and back. He recalls his older sister, who vanished before he was born, his mother, who died when he was a child, and former lover Ted, who seduced him when he was 15.
“I am absolutely fascinated by Quint,” says director David R. Gammons. “I feel so much for him — for his loneliness and disconnection.”
To emphasize Quint’s detachment from reality, set designers constructed an enormous wall of 25 television sets that play snippets of old movies, commercials, and home videos.
“The screens represent fragments of Quint’s memories, fantasies, and desires,” says Gammons. “Most one-person shows don’t have a set at all, and we’ve created this dense and layered world with lots of props and music and projections.”
Kuntz, a graduate of the GRS Creative Writing Program, has written 14 plays, including the solo show Starf*ckers, winner of an Elliot Norton Award. Another, Jasper Lake, debuted at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre in 2004 and went on to receive Kennedy Center honors, with the Paula Vogel National Playwriting Award of the center’s Michael Kanin Playwriting Awards Program.
He compares acting in a show that he’s also written to being inside a clock. “When I’m writing a play, I see only the face of the clock,” he says. “But when I’m acting in it, I can see all the gears and say, ‘This is too long and this needs to be moved.’”
Being both playwright and actor saves time because “it eliminates the bickering that typically occurs between the actors and playwright,” Kuntz continues. “The playwright has the final say, of course, but sometimes the actor is right. And because I’m both — well, I guess I’m always right!”

The Salt Girl opens November 5 at 7:30 p.m., and runs Thursdays to Sundays at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Ave., through November 22. Tickets are $30 for general admission, $25 for seniors, $10 for students (ID required) and may be purchased online, by phone at 866-811-4111, or in person at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. Performance times vary; check the calendar. This play contains nudity. For more information, call 617-353-5443.
Vicky Waltz can be reached at vwaltz@bu.edu.

Salt Notes

I was just looking through the old files on my computer, and I stumbled across my program notes for my solo show, The Salt Girl, which I performed last year, around this time, at the Boston Playwrights Theatre.

I wasn't prepared to write these notes, so when I did I was rather surprised at what came out:  I didn't consciously know some of these things about my own play; what I was thinking of, what was operating underneath all the words I wrote, until I had to write about them, and that was really weird, so I thought it might be interesting to share them here. 

I can't really express how much the play meant to me, except that it was the most personal piece I ever wrote and performed, that it took a great deal of time and effort to conceive and write it, and that I couldn't have felt more lucky to be working with such a wonderful, supportive group of people at BPT. 

BPT's new season of brand new plays officially opened this week with Five Down, One Across by Michael Towers.   You can go to http://www.bu.edu/bpt  for more info!

Here are the program notes:

When I was a kid I used to get up very early every Saturday morning, pour a big bowl of Alpha-bits or Sugar Smacks, and watch cartoons.
Scooby Doo.
Bugs Bunny.
I am one of those adults who can spontaneously begin singing the Preamble from the United States Constitution, thanks to “School House Rock”.


When I was a bit older, maybe 10 or so, a little girl I knew from my class died right in front of me. She was running to catch the school bus with us and tripped over the sprinkler in her lawn.
She fell.
And she didn’t get back up.
Her heart had stopped.
It could have happened at any time, we were told.


And still later, as a teen-ager, I listened to The Cure and The Smiths. I wore a lot of black clothes and eye-liner. My hair seemed to defy gravity. And I discovered that while I liked girls, I felt that boys were, somehow, cuter.


And a few years after that a man down our street shot his whole family and then himself.


But there was also the amusement park in the summer. And the water slide.
Lobsters and fried clams.
And Star Wars.
And celery.


And then I became an adult, of sorts, and a lot of wonderful things happened.
And scary things.
And infinitely sad things.


As they do.


And this play is about all that.


Some of the events in the play really happened.
But most of them didn’t.
I made them up.
But even the most elaborate invention came from something true, somehow.
And these lies helped me find the truth, somehow, for this lonely man.
Quint.
Who I named after a ghost from a Henry James story.


I began thinking of The Salt Girl about five years ago, and mentioned it to Kate Snodgrass while we sat in an airport together.


She said “I want to produce that play, but you have to write it first.”
And now here we are.


It is rare to meet someone who believes in you like that.
I thank Kate from the bottom of my heart.


As a final(ish) draft began to emerge, over a year and a half ago, I knew that I wanted David to direct it and design it. We had just finished working together on “Titus Andronicus”, where he had cast me, improbably, as a bald-headed, very masculine Queen Tamora.
It was one of my favorite experiences. Ever.


I knew David would translate this play like no one else.
We are both about the same age.
We both like cereal.
We are both gay as wind chimes.


David deeply understands what is funny.
And what is not.
He is a great artist and a great friend.


I want to thank Adam Stone as well, who created the amazing video landscape and sound.
And Jeff Adelberg, who lit this world.
And the stage managers, Adele Traub and Nikki DiLoreto.


I’d like to thank you, as well, for being here.


I tried to write a play that I would want to see if I were in the audience:
I like to be surprised.
I like to be disturbed.
I like to laugh.
I like to cry while I laugh.
And vice versa.


And I like candy.


John Kuntz

Gruesome Playground Injuries and New Plays

Tommy and I went to the Woolly Mammoth Theatre while in DC recently. I had always wanted to see a play there, as I've heard so much about them: fresh, new, exciting, edgy theatre is their speciality, and the one we saw, "Gruesome Playground Injuries" was no exception: a very original script, very well acted, directed and produced.

Like most new plays there is a wonderful creative economy involved (it's difficult for a new play with 38 characters and 11 set changes and period costumes to get produced, even during healthy economic times). Here, two actors play two characters from age 8 to 38, with an inventive structure that leaps back and forth in time. Doug and Kayleen meet in the school nurses' office at age eight. We then follow their increasingly complicated relationship from one accident to the next: some, truly flukes/acts of God, others self-inflicted, and some a manifestation of a deeper, emotional injury that refuses to heal. It was touching, heart-breaking and extremely funny.

I love seeing new plays, it's very thrilling. You feel like you are part of something new, that's never been done before, or seen before.

I should clarify that by "new play", I mean a play in its world premiere. I do not mean a play that was previously produced elsewhere (usually New York) and then brought to Boston (usually a year later), although I think those plays are important to see as well.

I think it's crucial that Boston produce new work. It is, I feel, the only way we will be seen as a theatre town/destination. It is the only way we will be put on the theatrical map.

I wish there was a way to bottle what Woolly Mammoth has managed to do in DC and bring it to Boston. The small theatre was absolutely PACKED with people who all looked like they really wanted to be there. the energy in the room was electric. And the crowd was so YOUNG: mostly in their late twenties/early thirties.

In Boston, new plays are an EXTREMELY hard sell. Audiences seem to prefer recent hits transported from New York. But I think they like this because that has been their primary diet.

And it's just easier, in a sense, to produce a play that already has rave reviews, and/or a built-in following, and/or a New York pedigree.

And I think that's a bit of a shame.

Because if all the plays are from New York, then that is the only type of play we will see. If all the playwrights live and write in New York, then the vision will be New York, the world will be New York, the attitude will be New York, the way of saying and doing things will be New York, the STORY will be about New York. And I don't mean that in a literal way, necessarily. I am just saying that I think where you live effects how you write and what you write about.

Even the writer of "Gruesome Playground Injuries", Rajiv Joseph, lives in New York and teaches at NYU (the major difference here being that it was theatres in Houston-The Alley- and DC - Woolly Mammoth - that gave him the support and believed enough in his work to produce it. So it was the productions themselves that, arguably, made the play special, in the sense that they weren't New York exports.) A Woolly Mammoth production or play is then exported TO New York (like their "Clybourne Park") rather than the other way around.

Now, I love New York as much as anyone. But I don't think you need to necessarily live there to write plays.

Playwrights need to feel that they can live and write and get produced here in Boston.

This is important, because otherwise we lose our playwrights to New York. And if we lose our playwrights, we also lose our directors, and designers, and actors.

And, most importantly, we lose the story of what it means to be living here. We lose a sensibility that only comes from being a Bostonian.

We will lose many theatre professionals anyway: New York is huge, and there is more opportunity there. But we don't have to lose ALL of them. And we also don't need to support this myth that ONLY plays and playwrights and actors and productions and successful plays and directors come from there.

And we do that when we ONLY produce plays that had successful Off-Broadway runs.

When we ONLY commission New York playwrights to write our plays.

When we ONLY hire New York actors, and directors, and designers.

There are, unfortuately, many theatres here in Boston that do one or the other again and again.

So I guess I really just want to applaud the theatres that are taking a great risk by supporting and producing Boston plays and supporting Boston theatre artists.

Kate Snodgrass and everyone at Boston Playwrights Theatre, which continues to be the ONLY theatre in town dedicated solely to new work. I wish that BU, now that they have finished building their immense sports stadium/arena next door, would realize what a jewel they have in BPT and pour a bucket of money on top of them.

Company One over at the BCA is doing a terrific job of supporting new works by local writers, (and with "Grimm" coming up, SEVEN of us!) as well as the Central Square Theatre in Cambridge, which produced "From Orchids to Octopi" by Melinda Lopez, "Not Enough Air" by Masha Obolensky and "Harriet Jacobs" by Lydia Diamond in one season alone!

Greg Maraio over at Phoenix Theatre (that beautifully produced Rick Park and my "Superheroine Monologues" last year, not once, but twice!)

Ryan Landry and the Gold Dust Orphans continue to produce the most inventive, imaginative, inspiring, campy theatre around.

And there are very real possibilities over at the brand new Emerson Paramount, where Rob Orchard has expressed great interest in New Work, starting with an event of new short plays by local writers to kick off their autumn opening.

There's festivals that attract audiences to new works, as well: the BPT Marathon, of course, a Boston Tradition, but also "the T Plays" with Mill 6, the "Village Voice" readings with the Village Theatre Project and others that I know I'm forgetting right now.

I am also very proud that the company I am company member of, Actors Shakespeare Project, has chosen, for the first time, to produce a play by a local writer (Jon Lipsky's "Living In Exile") and to produce the world premiere of my new play "The Hotel Nepenthe" this season.

Producing new plays is a new idea for us: we are dedicated to Shakespeare and classical works, primarily. But our new Artistic Director, Allyn Burrows, believes that supporting new work is an intrinsic part of our mission. Even Shakespeare, after all, was a living, working playwright at one time.

The Huntington has also done an amazing thing by forming the Huntington Playwrighting Fellows (which led to the world premiere productions, among others, of "Sonia Flew" by Melinda Lopez, "Brendan" and "The Atheist" by Ronan Noone and "Cry of the Reed" by Sinan Unel).

"Sonia Flew" is a wonderful example of what I'm talking about: Melinda is a wonderful writer/actor that everyone in the theatre community here knows and adores. We were Huntington Playwrighting Fellows at the same time, and it was thrilling to watch her bring in bits of dialogue, sometimes written on napkins or scraps of paper, that she would eventually shape into her play.

"Sonia Flew" opened here in Boston, and has been produced all over the country since then.

That is something the whole city can be proud of.

The Superheroine Monologues Return!!!!!

Just got the word today that the show I wrote with my friend Rick Park, The Superheroine Monologues, will be produced again in September at the Boston Center for the Arts, in the Plaza Theatre. Very excited to have another run! The show is a sort of riff on The Vagina Monologues, only with superheroines (and a couple villains...and a mortal, even!). It's a lot of fun. We had a run this Spring at the Boston Playwrights Theatre (where The Salt Girl will be performed) and the audiences really seemed to enjoy it. The director, Greg Maraio, also designed all the costumes, which are brilliant and the cast is gorgeous, sassy and kick ass!!!! I'll try to keep you posted!

The Salt Girl

I had a reading of my new solo show at the Boston Playwrights Theatre last week, and now I'm busy with re-writes. I'm very excited about the play: it's the first solo show I've written in 10 years (!) It's called "The Salt Girl", and it's about this man who postpones his suicide so he can visit his estranged, unconscious father on his death bed.

And it's a comedy.

Sort of.

Really.

I swear.

David Gammons, who I worked with on the amazing "Titus Andronicus" (perhaps one of the best theatre experiences in my life), is the director and designer, with Jeff Adelberg on lights and Adam Stone doing sound/original music. Kate Snodgrass is producing. It's just a wonderful group of people, and a really great vibe. I feel very lucky.

We open November 5th, which seems a millions years away right now. I'll try to keep notes on how it's all progressing.