The Gun Show - west coast premiere opens Nov. 1

The west coast premiere of THE GUN SHOW opens tomorrow for a six week run in Los Angeles, at my old home theater company, Moving Arts.  The show is directed by Darin Anthony, and produced by Cece Tio.  It stars Chuma Gault.  Hope you can make it out to see the show, Los Angeles friends!

More information and tickets available at www.movingarts.org.

The Gun Show Is Now Up on Stage at 16th Street Theater

The Bottom of the Box. 15 JULY 2014

My second full-length play production occurred in 2007.  Darin Anthony directed the world premiere of my hostage drama "Heads" at the Blank Theater in Los Angeles, California.  It's a dark little story, about four civilian westerners who are taken hostage during the early years of the war in Iraq.  The play has had five or six more productions, but that first one came to mind the other day.  I remember having a discussion with Darin about the ending of the play.  Specifically, he was asking me about the final stage direction, in which (spoiler alert!) the two surviving hostages are thrown together into a single cell.  Both of them are grieving.  One approaches the other with a tin of food; he slaps it out of her hands.  She tries again.  My final stage direction read something like "she holds out the tin again - lights out - end of play."  And Darin asked me if I thought that Michael might reach out and take the tin from Caroline, the second time she offers it.  We talked about it a lot.  I think we might have tried the scene both ways, with the actors.  I ended up choosing to end the play with Michael accepting the tin from Caroline.  It was a small change that made all the difference.  How you end something is really important.

I was thinking about the end of "Heads" because I've been thinking about the end of "The Gun Show."  It's my seventh or eighth full-length play to be produced, and as always, I have found myself having intense conversations with my director about the play as we work together to bring it to the stage.  The original ending (before the last 20 or 30 rewrites) had the actor abandoning the audience after the last story.  He leaves the stage.  Leaves the audience to think what they think and feel what they feel.  And the play still kind of ends that way, but my director, Kevin Fox, asked me if I thought that a conversation with the audience about the rather intense subject matter of the play -- guns and gun violence and gun control -- might be a natural follow up to our performances here at 16th Street Theater in Chicago, especially since the play explicitly asks, at one point, "Can we have this conversation?"  We talked about it a lot.  I was nervous about the idea, but Kevin had a carefully thought-out plan.  I ended up choosing to let him try it.  It was a small change that has made all the difference.  People have been sharing their own gun stories, and listening to each other, really listening to each other.  I have felt both humbled and supported by their willingness to take part.  How you end something is really important.

And I realized that maybe what both of these directors were asking me to do, with these dark little plays of mine, was not to step back from the darkness, but to keep reaching inside until I got to the furthest point that the plays were trying to take me to.  The bottom of the box.  

Don't close it until you let the hope out, Ellen.

The Car Plays race into Costa Mesa and San Diego!

I love starting the new year with a couple of new productions!

In January and February, Moving Arts -- my home theater company in Los Angeles -- is reprising what has become its signature event, The Car Plays.  After successful participation in last year's Radar Festival, we've been invited to participate in two more Southern California festivals -- the Off-Center Festival at the Segerstrom Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, and the Without Walls Festival at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego.  I'm proud to have a play in each production.

The Car Plays roll into Segerstrom Center for the 2012 Off-Center Festival.

The Car Plays are a unique event.  When you buy a ticket, you have just purchased one row of five cars -- and there is a ten-minute story in each car.  There are usually three rows all together -- fifteen short plays.  Ushers escort you from one car to the next when each play is done.  Paul Stein brought the concept to Moving Arts, and continues to be the artistic director and producer of the event, along with producers Steve Lozier, Kim Glann and Cece Tio.  You need great producers -- a really great team of everybody, really -- to make this event work.  It requires precision, clock-work timing, and a lot of heart and hard work from all the writers, directors, actors and ushers to bring you the most intimate theater experience you'll ever find.

"Car Plays is a brilliant and inventive concept, a kaleidoscope of situations that draw snapshot portraits from life, with soulful acting and cinematic details that's so close to home and physically intimate that it blurs the distinctions between theater and life."

-L.A. Weekly

Now playing in the Off-Center Festival at the Segerstrom Center

Bohemian.  Like You.
Written by EM Lewis
Directed by Darin Anthony
Featuring Peter James Smith, Daria Balling and Warren Davis

Richie has known Melody and Don forever.  But he didn't know they did this...

The cast of "Bohemian. Like You."  Warren Davis, Daria Balling and Peter James Smith heat up the front seat!

This car is our stage.  "Bohemian. Like You."  Written by EM Lewis and directed by Darin Anthony.

More Information:  Segerstrom Center "The Car Plays" site

Press:  LA Stage Times (article by Don Shirley)

Coming soon to the Without Walls (WoW!) Festival at the La Jolla Playhouse

Reveille

Written by EM Lewis

Directed by Sam Woodhouse

Featuring (TBA)

Leonard's only son has signed up for the military.  He leaves for boot camp this morning.

More Information:  La Jolla Playhouse "The Car Plays" site

Press:  U~T San Diego

The Car Plays ZOOM into Los Angeles this weekend...

This is where I'm going to be this weekend. Hope to see you there, Los Angelenos! My play is called "Leonard's Voice." It's directed by Darin Anthony, and features Michael Lorre, Helen Slayton Hughes and Stephanie Erb.

If you don't know about The Car Plays... well, where have you been? (Just kidding!) The Car Plays are the most intimate of site specific theater -- short plays that are performed in cars, for an audience of two people at a time. You buy a ticket for one hour's worth of plays -- five all together -- and move from car to car to experience each one. There are multiple rows of cars, all with plays happening inside them. All the plays were written specifically for this event. It's pretty darn cool!

FROM THE PRESS RELEASE: The Car Plays, originally conceived by Paul Nicolai Stein, is a unique, theatrical event that puts both actors and audience INSIDE actual vehicles.

In Los Angeles, we constantly break up in cars, make up in cars, live, die and laugh in cars. Moving Arts explores these moments through a series of original ten-minute plays written by their Resident Artists and other local playwrights.

"This is the best thing that’s happened to cars since the invention of the wheel!” –Review Plays

MOVING ARTS PRESENTS THE CAR PLAYS 2009
Originally Conceived by Paul Nicolai Stein,
Event Producer Matt Scarpino
Artistic Producer Terence Anthony

THE CAR PLAYS is a unique, theatrical event where audiences see five 10-minute plays in five different cars. Choose between four different simultaneous series of plays (Ventura Blvd., Hollywood Blvd., Figueroa Ave., and Ocean Ave.) that run nightly at 7pm, 8pm, & 9pm. Tickets can be purchased for Individual Performances (One Hour, One Series) or Multiple Performance (Three Hours, Three Different Series.)

DATES: Friday, June 26th and Saturday, June 27th
TICKETS: $20
LOCATION: Woodbury University in Burbank, CA

Tickets can be purchased by phone at: 1-866-811-4111 or online: www.movingarts.org.

Thank you and see you at THE CAR PLAYS 2009!

DIRECTIONS TO WOODBURY UNIVERSITY: Coming from the North on the Golden State Freeway (5): Exit Hollywood Way north to Glenoaks and turn right. If you're coming from the South on the Golden State Freeway (5): Exit Buena Vista Street north to Glenoaks and turn left.

Pictures, violas, rehearsals -- oh, my!

Oh, what a busy week it is, when you're making theater! Here's an update on recent events.

Rehearsals are well underway, now, for Song of Extinction. Relationships are being explored, characters are being investigated, and I'm sitting in when I can, watching my little play come to life. What a delight!

My cast consists of the following outstanding souls:

Darrell Kunitomi as Khim Phan, the biology teacher
Will Faught as Max Forrestal, the boy composer
Michael Shutt as Ellery Forrestal, a biologist and Max's father
Lori Yeghiayan as Lily Forrestal, a writer of science text books and Max's mother
Tristan Wright as Joshua Dorsey, a young doctor
Trey Nichols as Gill Morris, a land developer

The first set of publicity photos was taken this last week. Some were of Khim and Max in the classroom where most of their battles take place. The rest were of the Forrestal family, taken out in Griffith Park (standing in for Bolivia!).

I had my own publicity photos taken on Tuesday evening, after work. Tom Sanders was hired by LA Stage Magazine to take my picture, so it can go along with a little upcoming article about me and the play and such. He was very nice. I was very nervous. I felt the need to get new clothes, lipstick and unmentionables the night before, and to wear boots, for courage. I always feel more courageous in boots. Perhaps I should become a biker... Whether or not he was able to do anything with ME remains to be seen. But I like the photos on his website -- particularly the series on WWII vets.

Hmm... what else? I had lunch this week with Darin Anthony, who directed HEADS last year at the Blank. Another night, I had dinner with Jeremy Gabriel, who starred in HEADS last year at the Blank, and was also in INFINITE BLACK SUITCASE at Moving Arts. Great to see both of them, and catch up. Darin has been directing in Santa Cruz, and now is working on US DRAG for Furious Theater Company in Pasadena, and is about to have his first kid. Jeremy got married! I'm very happy for them both. They are good guys.

Tomorrow, I am meeting with Jack the violist (as opposed to Jack the Ripper, Geoffrey the composer told me on the phone, laughing). I'm very excited about this, because Geoffrey has written an entirely new draft of "Disembarking," the piece of music he wrote for Song of Extinction. Now I get to hear it! If I have notes, Jack will interpret them back to Geoffrey in musician-speak and rewrite. Then we plan to record the piece, so it can be used in the production. There's been all the requisite back and forth, trying to coordinate schedules and details and needs. It will be lovely to spend time listening to the music and thinking of it in terms of my character, young Max, who "composes" this piece through the course of the play.

Two more random bits:

Go check out my talented friend Johnna Adams' myspace blog, and read Herb Gardner's "On Playwriting" missive. I really, really liked it. It felt appallingly true.

I got one of Those Letters yesterday in the mail. One of Those Letters, that's from a theater. I did my usual mojo -- "It's a rejection, it's a rejection, everybody hates me" so it wouldn't bother me so much when I open it and it IS a rejection. But it wasn't! Well, it wasn't an acceptance either. But Stage Left in Chicago wants to hold HEADS for consideration for their upcoming season. So I e-mailed them back today, and told them by all means to consider it, and sent them all our nice reviews from the LA production. They look like they'd be a good fit for the play, from their website. Fingers crossed! I think somebody should put Heads up again, and soon. It's going to have a reading in Detroit in November, too, which could lead to something. We shall see.