Have You Heard The News?

We know holidays are coming, but we’ve still been busily (and excitedly) putting the final pieces together for our 2014 season!

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about our upcoming world premiere of Crystal Finn’s The Faire in the new year.  And I’m sure you’ve seen the IndieGoGo campaign we’re currently running to help finance this incredible show.

But Have You Heard The News?

Fault Line Theatre is proud to present, as the second show of our 2014 season, the world premiere of Breathing Time by Academy Award, Emmy Award and Golden Globe nominee Beau Willimon, writer of Farragut North, “The Ides of March” and “House of Cards.”

We can’t wait to share both of these brand new plays with everyone in the New Year!

IndieGoGo Update

Our IndieGoGo campaign for The Faire is already over 25% funded! This fundraiser is going incredibly well and we couldn’t be happier.  We’re immensely thankful for every single dollar contributed thus far.

We still have a ways to go and need your help to make The Faire possible. If you haven’t already, please take the time to head over to our IndieGoGo page and consider making a donation!

Shakespeare in Development

Throughout the past year David Rudi Utter (Doctor Faustus and Frogs) and I have been developing a Shakespeare project for Fault Line Theatre in which we’re attempting to create a mash-up of Love’s Labour’s Lost and Two Gentlemen of Verona. It started with an idea that co-Artistic Directors Craig Wesley Divino and Aaron Rossini had to create a Shakespeare double-feature evening involving one hour presentations of both plays. After they’d passed the project on to Rudi and me, we saw that there was an opportunity for an even more ambitious project. We noticed that both plays are dealing with themes of love, the declaration and breaking of oaths, and betrayal in very different but complementary ways.  After spending several months cutting together different versions of the plays we recently had the opportunity to work with a talented group of actors to begin to help us make sense of the project. Our most pressing question heading into this series of workshops was “How do we tell two stories simultaneously in a manner in which the audience can take in and understand?” Over the course of our three workshop sessions we spent time at the table and on our feet creating and exploring the potential verbal and physical vocabulary that we will use to tell this story. This process involved everything from having actors play objects in the space to set the scene, to quickly dawning different hats and articles of clothing when switching characters. After spending so much time working on the plays in a vacuum it was very encouraging to learn that the idea can work and that it has the potential to be an exciting and stimulating evening at the theatre. The actors in the room were immensely helpful in posing questions that hadn’t occurred to us and inventing possible solutions and offering ideas that sent us in completely new and unexplored territory. I’m very excited to see what happens with this project in the future, and although I don’t think we’ve answered our big question, our generous and intelligent actors have certainly pointed us in the right direction.

- Matt Clevy

We Need Your Help

As the year is quickly coming to an end and The Faire, our first show of the season, rapidly approaches, Fault Line Theatre is looking to you, our friends, family, and fans for your support.  The NFM group has generously sponsored a match campaign on IndieGoGo to help make The Faire possible.

Please take a moment to visit our IndieGoGo page and consider helping us out!  Pass the link around!  Tell all your friends!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving Weekend full of friends, family, and maybe a little football.

At Fault Line Theatre, we’re thankful for our extremely talented cast and crew for our upcoming production of The Faire!  We are very excited to announce the following artists will be making this wonderful play by Crystal Finn come to life:

CAST

• RACHEL CHRISTOPHER | Angela
• AMANDA SYKES | Ursula
• KELSEY KURZ | Drake
• JENNY SEASTONE STERN | Tily
• GRANT KRAUSE | Olivier

CREW

• AARON ROSSINI | Director
• CRYSTAL FINN | Playwright
• BROOKE REDLER | Stage Manager
• TRISTAN JEFFERS | Set Designer
• JOHN ECKERT | Lighting Designer
• CHAD RAINES | Sound Designer
• IZZY FIELDS | Costume Designer
• JACOB SAMPSON | Props Designer

On Renaissance Faires and Irony

With From White Plains in Ithaca now behind us, Fault Line Theatre is moving full steam ahead into our season’s next show: The Faire.  For those who don’t know, The Faire follows the behind the scenes lives of five performers at a Renaissance Faire somewhere in the backwoods of northern California.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I incorrectly thought that Renaissance Faires were exclusively for children and geeky adults.  My interest was purely ironic.  My opinions were predominantly held due to stereotypes since I hadn’t stepped foot in anything resembling a Renaissance Faire since my 12th birthday party.

However, a few months ago, I accompanied my young niece and nephew on a trip to “Medieval Times”.  If you’re not familiar with Medieval Times, it’s basically a medieval themed dinner theatre.  Like a Renaissance Faire, the event is entirely immersive.  In Toronto (where I saw the show), the building is made to look like an old castle.  Before dinner, there are knighting ceremonies and pictures with the princess of the castle.  For dinner you enter an arena of banquet tables surrounding a large dirt jousting pitch.  Over the course of the next two hours, actors portraying knights ‘compete’ against each other in games of skill and courage.  In the end only one knight is left standing.

The event is obviously rehearsed and none of the competitions focus on realism.  The duels and fights aren’t particularly threatening.  In fact, the entire event embraces a certain element of camp.

I was rapt from start to finish.

At first, my enthusiasm was in large part a performance of its own to make the day enjoyable for my young niece and nephew. But as the show went on, it was difficult not to get swept into the excitement of the event.

I think the key is this: every single performer fully commits to the theme of the event and their specific role within it.  From the actor playing the king to the men playing knights to the waiters serving us food on steel dishware, everyone buys in.  This is the commitment present in all great theatre.  My ironic interest upon entering was in direct opposition to this commitment.  An ironic interest, almost by definition, creates a barrier;  inherent in irony is the act of commenting upon, rather than just the act of participation.

I think there will always be a place for irony, but in this case, I was thankful to be reminded that allowing myself to get swept up in the excitement and joy of an event is often better than attempting to remain a critical observer.

- John Racioppo

What We're Seeing: This Is My Office

Fault Line Theatre’s good friend, playwright Andy Bragen, is having his play This Is My Office produced by The Play Company this month in New York City and it’s shaping up to be an incredibly unique theatre-going experience. This site-specific piece is written for one actor who guides a small audience through an abandoned office space.  However, because of its intimate nature, tickets are extremely limited… so get yours fast!

November 5 – December 8, 2013.
Chashama
210 E 43rd St.
New York, NY 10017

A LITTLE ABOUT THE PLAY

A guided tour through an empty office becomes the unexpected portal to a forgotten New York, and a father’s legacy. This is My Office brings you face to face with a narrator who finds his way through doubt, soul-sickness, and doughnut cravings, by telling you a story. Not the one he meant to tell, but a richer one about family, redemption and love.

CAST:

• David Barlow

PRODUCTION TEAM:

• Playwright - Andy Bragen
• Director - Davis McCallum
• Set – Andrew Boyce
• Costumes - Kaye Voyce
• Lighting - Tyler Micoleau
• Sound - Peter John Still
• Production Stage Manager - David Beller

Farewell Ithaca

After a fantastic run of From White Plains at The Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca, NY, Craig, Aaron, Jimmy, and Karl are heading home to New York City.

Ithaca has been a beautiful home for the last few weeks and all of us at Fault Line Theatre would like to thank the good people at The Kitchen Theatre for the opportunity to share From White Plains with new audiences.

Video Update #2

Last week, Matt Clevy and I rented a car and took a road trip to Ithaca, NY to attend the opening night performance of From White Plains at The Kitchen Theatre.

We present, another Fault Line Theatre video update documenting our journey.

An Interview With Crystal Finn

Even though From White Plains is still enjoying it’s critically acclaimed run at The Kitchen Theatre, there are still plenty of developments with our upcoming production of The Faire (coming in February of 2014).  Feel free to check out our The Faire show page for updates on the production as they develop.

Additionally, I sat down with Crystal Finn, playwright of The Faire, to chat a little bit about her work, her life, and working with Fault Line Theatre:

Tell us a little about The Faire and the inspiration behind it.

I spent a large part of my childhood at a Renaissance Faire, working with my parents selling pottery.  It was an early education in what theater is. Even as a very young kid you had a sense that this place was totally magical and totally absurd. I remember years later reading “Barthalomew Fayre”, the Ben Jonson play, and thinking: I know these people! I became very interested in the idea of a Fair as a kind of in-between place where normal social rules don’t matter. The setting in my play is not the literal Renaissance Faire I grew up in–it’s more of an imagined space.

Many people are familiar with your excellent work as an actor, but perhaps less so with your excellent work as a writer. Was writing something you found later in your artistic life or something you’ve been doing all along?

I was always very interested in writing and did a lot of it on my own. When I moved to New York I took a writing class with Tina Howe at Hunter college and she opened up my thinking about so many things.  She was the first person who I think instinctually knew that my writing was an extension of my acting–that they were part of the same muscle.  But writing is much harder than acting, for me.  You’re alone struggling with this thing–and the thing is basically you.  It’s terrifying.  But also rewarding because of that.

What was your most important discovery about The Faire that came out of the development process with Fault Line Theatre?

I learned so much about the tone of the play.  About how the style reads off the page. Mostly we focused a lot on the main characters journey–an actress who works at the Faire and wants to get out.  Aaron [Rossini, director of The Faire] and I talked a lot about how to make that character’s journey reflect the journey of the structure of the play as a whole. The process helped me make some crucial changes.

Your husband, Andy Bragen, is also a playwright. What’s it like having two playwrights in the house? Do you bounce ideas off one another or do you tend to keep to yourselves when you’re working on project?

We do bounce ideas off each other.  He is very supportive and I think has been the main person who has given me the confidence to keep writing.  He understands what it is to really wrestle with a play and that has been the best model for how to approach trying to do this.

What’s next for you? Do you have any plays that you’re currently developing?

I just finished a first draft of a play about two best girlfriends who are high school debate partners.  The play is interested in female friendship, which I guess is becoming a theme for me. I’m also trying to write this play about a dystopian future where nature has disappeared and some people get to live forever.  I think it might be as bad as it sounds. I have been too scared to re-read it.