baby, it's you in SERIALS and other updates!
theme of this month is Talented Friends Doing Things
hi! it’s me, reporting to you live from a very busy moment in my life! i spent the entire month of april sick (with a terrible cold, and then pink eye, and then pink eye AGAIN because i lost my antibiotic eye drops) and i’ve sprung into may with the force of someone who was bedridden for 30 straight days. a lot is going on!!! this newsletter is half updates, half observations. let’s begin with the updates:
baby, it’s you in SERIALS NYC
i had the privilege of writing for SERIALS for the first time earlier in the month! if you’re not familiar, here’s what that means:
SERIALS is a raucous night of serialized plays featuring some of the hottest actors, directors, and playwrights in the indie theater scene. Five teams perform five original, ten-minute episodic plays with only six hours of rehearsal time. Then YOU, the audience, vote for your three favorites. The plays with the most votes come back with a brand new episode of the same storyline the following week of SERIALS.
my pilot, baby, it’s you, was voted back for a second episode! i’m finally combining a series of things i’ve always wanted to write about: the beatles, beatles fans, reproductive health, and what it means to pursue pregnancy in a body that may not be built for it. i have written about why we need fandom and fan culture before; baby, it’s you can be read as a kind of loose prequel to my fanfiction mafia play, i can fix him, or at least a companion piece.
here’s a recap of what you missed in the pilot:
August, 1965. Four Beatlemaniacs detained in Shea Stadium jail for Beatle-related crimes. One week ago, Evelyn had a really scary doctor's appointment where she learned she'll never have children. That night, Paul McCartney came to her in a musical dream/hallucination to tell her that he is the only man alive who could ever get her pregnant, so she has to come find him backstage at the stadium gig. The other jailbirds, each with their own reasons for doing Beatle crimes, helped Evelyn escape with just enough time to put her plan into motion. Will they make a baby, girl?
i’m having a blast writing for an incredible group of actors (last week: Chance Kester, Jennifer Soraya Rose, Hunter Levi Rothstein, Lilli Stein, and Natalia Mar Urzua; this week: Josh Bloom, Liz Ombrellaro, and Jem Palmieri, with Hunter, Lilli, and Mar returning from the pilot), and Kristan Seemel is directing the hell out of the play. i loved watching everyone’s episodes unfold last week; there were hilarious, sweet, dirty, and silly morsels that i will think about forever throughout The Adventures of Bungo Calamity, Apocalypse Clown by A.J. Ditty, Double, Double by Cody Hom, Flared Base by Ben Schrager, and The Good, The Bad, and the Undead by Kenjiro Lee. i am excited to return with new episodes alongside Bungo and Double, Double, and i am excited to see two new pilots by Paige Esterly and Jack Ventimilia later this week!
also, it is genuinely wild to me that i get to write a play about beatles fans and have my partner, Jack McManus, write the musical pastiches to complement my beatles parody lyrics. it feels like it was always in the cards for my life, and it means the literal world to me and my heart. i meant to write something in this newsletter to mark the fifth anniversary of adam schlesinger’s death back in april, but i didn’t get around to it, so i must say that baby, it’s you is partly owed to him and his incredible talent for loving pastiche. here’s the first one we wrote; there’s another in episode 2! you’ll have to come out and see it for yourself.
inspo for baby, it’s you comes directly from: mr. boop, that thing you do!, walk hard, crazy ex-girlfriend, the righteous gemstones, gilmore girls in the tacit way all of my work is touched by those ladies, a hard day’s night (obviously), and the music video for “they don’t know” by tracey ullman. if you like any combination of those things, you should come out for episode two this weekend!
get tickets here! if you’re not in new york, you can even buy a livestream ticket!
and here’s a little dialogue snippet to further entice you to grab your tickets:
hive mind bookstore event!
this thursday, may 15th, at 7 p.m., i’m presenting a reading from my play collection, river phoenix fugue and other pop culture plays, at Hive Mind Books in bushwick!
my brilliant collaborators Julia Baker, Rachel Brudner, and Romeo Torres will be reading from river phoenix fugue alongside readings from plays by fellow 1319 Press writers Diana Lobontiu, Lillian Mottern, and Lizz Mangan.
the event is free and open to the public! come hang out, hear some new-ish work from queer playwrights, and buy our books! RSVP here!
the comedy of errors
i was lucky enough to get to see stairwell theater’s wonderful production of the comedy of errors down at pier 40 last week, directed by sam gibbs. it was a stylish and physical way in to one of shakespeare’s silliest and lightest-weight plays. performance highlights included an athletic, commedia-style performance from the fearless russell norris1 as antipholus of syracuse; karin hoezl, who played luciana as a joan-cusack-in-Working-Girl, 1980s real housewife of brooklyn; and the wacky but grounded hijinks of twin dromios james soller and su hendrickson. gibbs’ eye for beautiful and dynamic stage pictures elevated the shakespearean equivalent of a good snack to a well-rounded meal. bravo, all involved!
This new, site-specific, immersive production reflected the madcap chaos of New York’s Financial District in the 1980s. Directed by Stairwell Theater’s Artistic Director Sam Gibbs, the farce featured live music and an ensemble cast of sixteen performers.
art gets what it wants
it’s very cool to get to watch a friend’s play go from first draft to ready-for-performance over a couple of years of reading and seeing it. i got to see sean swenson’s ART GETS WHAT IT WANTS, produced by max’s house, at the tank last weekend, and it rocked, and i had a really great time. it’s a play about saying what you mean, and the pitfalls of creating art with another person, and the grief associated with the end of a creative partnership that also may have felt like something more. it’s most compelling to me in those moments of in-between, when the closeness comes from revealing a secret about beheading videos and the distance comes from an unwillingness to admit fault because admission of fault is an admission of investment. it’s a play about insecure people who cannot conceive of their actions mattering to other people, and it’s juiciest when those people are proven dead wrong. i cannot wait to see where it goes from here.
Glen and Julie, two ambitious and unstable friends, try to mine their lives for art and end up hurting each other instead. Then reality begins to unravel...
stray thoughts
i miss twitter but not enough to be on twitter. i feel like i am missing out on pop culture, and the community experience of pop culture! i subscribed to variety’s emails so i don’t miss everything but i get one thousand of them a day and there must be a good newsletter for me to subscribe to that is not one thousand emails from variety every day. if you know of a good pop culture wrap up newsletter, please message me or leave a comment!
the rehearsal is an incredible feat and, currently, my favorite 30 minutes of television of the week. nathan fielder has something very wrong with him, and i feel very lucky he’s using that something very wrong with him to make HBO pay for him to make 20-foot lactating mommy puppets.
i am still looking for work! if you hear of anything and think it could apply to me, please reach out.
jack and i went to see karina rykman for the third time last weekend. that lady puts on an incredible show — and i also LOVED her opening act, boys go to jupiter! she had a special, limited-edition, tie-dyed, branded zabar’s babka (called a babkarina) at the merch table, which i absolutely housed before the show even started. babka should be available for purchase at every concert and event.
other things i have coming up this month from talented friends: the remounting of sarah alice shull’s incredible edinburgh fringe piece something to believe in, justine orlovsky-schnitzler in-person promoting an american girl anthology at the museum of food and drink.
other concerts i have coming up this month: JRAD at the stone pony summer stage (a birthday gift for jack), barry manilow at the wells fargo center!
oh, and PLEASE LAUGH was a finalist for this summer’s Breaking & Entering Rooftop Readings!
that’s all! as always, you can support me by subscribing for free or for money. or you can buy my book of plays!
i must disclose that russell is a friend and collaborator, but i had never seen him do anything like this before, and it was an absolute delight. theme of this month is talented friends doing things!