Congratulations to Protect MN - The Gun Show

Congratulations to Josh Campbell and the folks at Protect MN on their benefit on Monday night in Minneapolis! Josh used some excerpts from my play "The Gun Show," interspersed with music, for the event.

Cherry and Spoon had this to say: "Similar to the benefit I attended two years ago (I missed last year), the evening was structured as performances of songs from musical theater and pop culture, interspersed with relevant readings. The text this year came from a play called 'The Gun Show' by EM Lewis. The excerpts (read passionately and emotionally by Ann Michels, who didn't sing much because she's saving it for her other job) made me want to see the entire play. EM Lewis is one of those people who is in the middle - she grew up with guns in rural Oregon and still owns a gun, but recognizes that there needs to be some changes in the way we think about, legislate, and handle guns. The play is funny, honest, and thought-provoking."

If you're interested in bringing "The Gun Show" to your community, email me or my agent, Samara Harris Anderson. The play had great response at 16th Street Theater in Chicago, Moving Arts in Los Angeles, and Passage Theatre at the Mill Hill Playhouse in Trenton. I'm actively seeking its next good home. Let's talk about this.

Excerpts from The Gun Show in MN

On Monday, June 29th, excerpts from "The Gun Show" will be read as part of a benefit for Protect MN in Minneapolis.

For more information about the event, visit their website:  ProtectMN.org

THE GUN SHOW NJ - 3 Feature Articles!

After an exciting world premiere production in Chicago over the summer and a sold out run of a second production in Los Angeles in the fall, THE GUN SHOW is having its third production in eight months right here in New Jersey.  This play -- which is about guns and gun control, and my own personal experiences with both -- is playing at Passage Theater in Trenton from January 22 - February 8.  It is directed by Damon Bonetti, and features Trent Blanton.  I will be there for all performances... so if you do come, please say hello!  


Details and ticket information can be found here:  http://passagetheatre.org/gun-show/


And check out these three feature articles about the show.  (Beware of spoilers, though!  They got 'em.)

Feature article:  Finding Middle Ground
http://www.centraljersey.com/articles/2015/01/21/time_off/entertainment_news/doc54bf47412afd0238184058.txt

Feature article:  Ellen Lewis has a Gun Story

http://www.njartsmag.com

Feature article:  Gun Play Opens at Trenton's historic Mill Hill Playhouse

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2015/01/theater_the_gun_play_opens_at.html

The Gun Show - Endings and Beginnings

I've never had a show close in one city and open in another on the same day.  But that's what's happening today.  "The Gun Show" is having its final performance at Moving Arts, in Los Angeles, this evening.  And it's opening night for the Passage Theater Production of "The Gun Show" in Trenton.

Beginnings and endings.

Endings and beginnings.

It couldn't be more appropriate, really.  Because this play is all about endings and beginnings.  Beginnings and endings.  I go back and forth on the order, in my head.  This play is a door, and... I think I get to decide which direction to go through it.

Ellen Lewis and Juan Francisco Villa, in the 16th Street production of "The Gun Show."

I started this play in the middle.  By which I mean Chicago.  But maybe I mean more kind of middle than just that.  (Everything is a metaphor today.)  It's a rather intimate and personal play, and when it premiered at 16th Street Theater, I was still, in many ways, figuring out what it wanted to be, and how to manifest it up on stage.  I was very lucky to have Kevin Fox dramaturging and directing and occasionally holding my hand and propping up his overwrought playwright (do they teach that in directing school?).  I was very lucky to have Juan Villa up on stage, telling my story with all of his skill and empathy and humor and charm.

Chuma Gault in the Moving Arts production of "The Gun Show."

When I went to Los Angeles, to work with director Darin Anthony, and actor Chuma Gault, and producer Cece Tio who were putting the play on stage at Moving Arts, I knew more about how the play worked.  But it is a city where some of the major action of "The Gun Show" took place.  It is a place where I lived for a long time -- first with my husband, then alone.  It is the place where I lost everything, and began again.  It is the place where I became a playwright.  It is a place where a lot of people know me, and it was difficult to tell people I know and love this story.  But I'm glad I did.  Thank you, Chuma, for bringing all your ferocity and grace to my gun show.

Trent Blanton in the Passage Theater production of "The Gun Show."

Some of the action of "The Gun Show" occurs in New Jersey and New York, too.  I lived here for three and a half years, and made strong and enduring friendships.  Passage Theater in Trenton premiered my play "True Story" last season, directed by Damon Bonetti, and it feels very right to now be working here, with Damon, on this play, which *is* a true story.  (Funny how that works.)  We've had two previews, and already it feels uncomfortably revealing to be sharing this story with people who I know and love.  (Why are strangers easier?  But they are.)  Edward Albee once said that theater should afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.  I've always liked that.  Playwright Robert O'Hara once remarked that he was trying to create theater where everyone was welcome and no one was safe.  I like that, too.  And the playwright herself shouldn't be exempt from being welcome and afflicted and unsafe and comforted.  So it's very right to be doing this play here, and now.  I'm feeling all of those things.  I'm also feeling grateful for yet another wonderful actor who has taken up this story and made it his own.  Thank you, Trent, for the fearlessness and vulnerability and intelligence that you are bringing to "The Gun Show."

Here I am, standing in the doorway.

Open the box, Ellen.

Light a match.  For light, not for burning.

Begin a conversation about this.

Choose the direction that is forward.

WWEAD? (Thoughts on The Gun Show, continued)

There's a war going on inside me.

There are a hell of a lot of wars going on outside of me right now, too…  and I'm not sure what to do about those, either.  The whole world seems to be falling apart.  The center cannot hold.  (Why do I wind up back with TS Eliot so frequently?)

My small war is between humility and hubris, between agency and inaction, between process and product, between past-tense and present-tense.

"The Gun Show" is up, now, at 16th Street Theater in Chicago.  We are in our third week of performances, playing to strong houses and pleased about receiving good reviews.  We've extended.  What the hell do I have to feel conflicted about?  I have a show up!

Every full-length play I've written has been the creative expression of me grappling with a question I don't have an answer for, and desperately need to.  My plays are all very different from each other in form and subject, but like most writers, I tend to circle the same set of questions on a pretty regular basis.  "How do we go on?" is a favorite for me -- taken from both existential and practical angles.  "The Gun Show" asks (amongst other things) how we as a society are going to choose to deal with guns, these dealers of death or security (depending on who you ask) which seem to be intrinsic to our American identity in a way we're no longer entirely comfortable with.  How do we go on?  Philosophically?  Practically?  With them or without them?

"The Gun Show" isn't just about guns, though.  It's about me trying to figure out how to integrate a difficult, messy, violent piece of my past into my present self.  I've been dragging it behind for a long time -- separate, heavy, albatross-like.  But at a certain point, going forward in pieces is no longer a very successful defense mechanism, but rather an impediment to progress.  

Progress hurts a bit.

I knew that it would, going into this.  It's all right.  I'm tough as an old tree, really.  I can do this.  And for the most part, I'm staying in the game -- feeling all the feels, only occasionally breaking for a Law & Order marathon with a Ben & Jerry's and bourbon chaser.  Because what good is all this art crap if it's not going to get me anywhere?  

I want to get somewhere.

I want to get somewhere farther than I am.

Personally and professionally.

I keep see-sawing between thinking the play is good and thinking it's self-indulgent crap.  I keep remembering things from the past that this play is dredging up, while trying to navigate the present and BE present and let what comes up come in, not slam the door on it like I have before.  Because it's part of me.  It's part of me.  It's part of me.

The play is going well.  People are coming to see it.  Two more theaters want to produce it.  So it's time for me to work to promote it.  Now.  Right now.  Not in a few weeks or month, but now, while it's up and running and growing and becoming.  Some people are going to hate it -- disagree with it, be appalled at it.  I am actively grappling with it myself, still.  Art isn't about the easy questions, after all.  Right?  I'm not entirely sure what to do with the people who LIKE it.  

It's at times like this that I ask myself, "WWEAD?"

I don't know Mr. Albee.  I have heard him speak a few times, and am in love with his plays.  How do you do better than "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"  How could you be more difficult and provocative than "The Goat" or "The Lady from Dubuque" or "Zoo Story?"  He has written difficult plays his whole life, and he has stayed in the game for a long, long time.  The Mr. Albee in my imagination is a grappler with angels, like Jacob in the story, when everything is at stake.  So...

Stay in the game, Ellen.

Send out the play, to the theater and the agent and the director you want to work with.

Don't stop wrestling with the play until it's done wrestling with you.

KEEP GOING.

THE GUN SHOW begins rehearsals at 16th Street Theater in Chicago

28 JUNE 2014

I arrived in Chicago late last night, and Ann picked me up at the airport -- Ann Filmer, artistic director of 16th Street Theater in Berwyn. I'm here because I wrote a play, and because Ann is producing it. The play is called THE GUN SHOW.

I will be here all month, participating in not only the rehearsals, with my director and actor, but also in the show itself. It's a "one-man, two-person show," in its current iteration at least. That's how I've been describing it, anyway. The actor plays me, and once in a while he talks to me. I'm all over this one. Part of the story in a way that I've never been part of the story before. Tangled up in blue, to borrow a phrase.

The play is about guns.

This is its first production. I've been working on it for about a year and a half, and it's new and raw. Part conversation about guns and gun control and part stories about guns, pulled from my own experiences.

I grew up in rural Oregon, on a farm, and we had guns. Not a lot, not a stockpile, not for show, not for machismo. They were a tool, to be used to kill creatures that were preying on the chickens, if creatures happened to be preying on the chickens, or to defend ourselves if we needed to. Because we were far from things like civilization and law enforcement. Not super far. But far enough. Everybody had guns, and dogs, and fences. Most everybody out there still does.

I didn't stay in the country, and I didn't stay a kid. As I moved out into the world, my thoughts about guns became more complicated. My experiences with guns became more complicated.

I've waited a long time to tell this story. Which is the wrong way to put it, because I never thought I'd ever tell this story.

Why now?

Things collide. That's part of it. It's impossible to NOT think about guns right now. Right? There's one story after another in the newspaper lately, and the debate is hot and emotional and immediate. All this public story crashed against my own personal stories, and when you're a writer, there really are moments when you HAVE TO write. Fish or cut bait. Grow or die.

I saw a friend recently, who I hadn't seen for a while, and she asked how I was, and how the play was going… the usual questions. I would usually say "fine, how are you?" automatically, automatically, automatically. Like a math equation that I knew the correct answer to. But this time, I didn't say fine. "Good," I said. "Strange. Like a snake shedding its skin. Ugly and patchy and vulnerable."

She's a writer too, so I think she understood. She patted my arm reassuringly.

I don't know how this is going to go.

Rehearsals begin tomorrow. We'll see.

It begins.