Examiner.com: Jim Crow and The Rhythm Darlings

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Jim Crow and The Rhythm Darlings

What do you get when you combine a forties all-girl black jazz band with one Jewish member, and stir it up with a tour through the Jim Crow South? You get a recipe for disaster, but more importantly discovery. It's 1943...

To read the rest of this article, please click on the link below:

http://www.examiner.com/x-5055-Atlanta-Theater-Examiner~y2009m7d9-Jim-Crow-and-The-Rhythm-Darlings?cid=email-this-article

Become a Facebook Fan

The influence of Facebook in marketing the theatre continues to growth indicatinges how social media continues to enhance and re-define the way arts organizations reach out to audiences.

When we reach a fan base of 1,000, Facebook provides a series of advanced tools and analytics that will enhance our ability to reach those interested in theatre. We can easily achieve this by encouraging our friends on to Become a Fan on Facebook and recommend us to their friends. When you access our page you will see a list of options below the logo on the left. One is “Suggest to Friends.” When you click on this link a box with all of your friends’ photos opens. Simply click on the individuals you believe would be interested in the theatre (local residents, patrons of the arts, etc.). If they’re already a fan of ours their photo will be grayed out, so you’ll know by sight who is already with us. They will get an update from you suggesting they join us. It’s that simple. It’s a very soft ask that can make a huge difference in building relationships in time for the new season.

Clickon on the "Become a Fan" button then follow the link below to suggest that your friends join us. Thanks

The Essential Theatre on Facebook

Here’s a link to our page: EssentialTheatre Facebook Page and while your at it, please become a fan of Actors Express if you have not already done so.

If you’re not on Facebook and would like to be, please let me know and we’ll help you get started.

JC Reilly, one of the Georgia Poetry Society members who will be participating in a poetry reading at 7pm on Saturday July 25th prior to the 8pm "Ice Glen" performance. JC would like to offer this poem for your consideration. We hope you will come a bit early to hear JC's poetry and the work of other GPS members.

Fall, Star City by JC Reilly

The blush has crept into the leaves,
as sunshine, sanguine with the months
of growing, cools its fire. The light
that we get now is maizy, saturates

everything with extract of gold, even
the dogged verdigris of the Sower
filling his bag, even the blacks
of shadow and pavement.

Mornings crisp, like new apples,
glow with that rich, amber sheen,
warm only in its hue. Along 13th,
the maples and Bradford pears leaning

over the walks, buckled with roots,
gleam too, their discarded leaves
like frenzied handprints. You could say
that autumn in Lincoln is tumult

gilded by late September sun, the leaves
stabs of color in over-yellowed air,
so much yellow concentrated here
that spectrums everywhere else are bereft.

(previously published in Stones Throw Magazine: http://www.stonesthrowmagazine.com/pdf/fall.star.city.reilly.pdf)

JC Reilly wishes everything could be written as a poem, including editorials, cereal ads, and weather reports. She is a displaced Louisiana poet living in Atlanta, with two strange cats and a quirky Socialist husband. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in the Xavier Review, the Arkansas Review, Cider Press Review, and three online journals, Ouroboros Review, Sweet: a Literary Confection, and Stone’s Throw Magazine.

National Black Arts Festival Around Town

We are proud to announce that the Essential Theatre performance of Vynnie Meli's "Jim Crow and the Rhythm Darlings" is to be presented during the National Black Arts Festival. For more information about National Black Arts Festival Around Town, click here.

Dexter Speaks Out

Sarah Falkenburg Wallace – Dexter (Food for Fish)
This is the fourth Festival I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in. I have always enjoyed being a part of the festival and have played a voice in the attic, a murderous college student, & a girl who turned into a horse. However, simply being cast as a man has turned into one of the most challenging roles of my acting career. I have enjoyed the process as one of the most truly involved roles I’ve worked to create since Dexter is the complete opposite of me in every way. I have enjoyed really observing and attempting to mimic the posture and movements associated with the male gender. I have also become very aware of how physically expressive I am naturally, which of course Dexter is not, so that has created it’s own challenge in itself. I have enjoyed working to embody and create the role of Dexter. I would like to thank Peter for allowing me this opportunity to grow as an actor and to continue to learn new things in this amazing craft.

FOOD FOR FISH audience comments

Playwright Steve Yockey " strongly suggests that folks in Atlanta check out the whimsically dark, touching and intoxicatingly performed production of Adam Szymkowicz's "Food for Fish" at Essential Theatre."

Fundraising Raffle

Our sponsors have put together and incredible prize package for our raffle. Please check it out.

Guest Poetry Readers

Come support our guest poetry readers as they share a brief selection before selected performances.

• Flora Maria Garcia, Executive Director MACC July 10 8pm
• Jeff Watkins, Artistic Director, Shakespeare Tavern, July 12 7pm
• Bob Farley, Artistic Director, Georgia Ensemble July 20th 8pm
• Georgia Poetry Society July 25th begins at 7pm
• Charles Green, Fulton County Arts Council/Sunrise Bank. July 26th 7pm
• Phillip Depoy, Clayton State, Drama Dept. Chair, July 31 8pm.

Food for Fish: "I wanted to direct it"

As soon as I started reading Adam Szymkowicz’s FOOD FOR FISH, I knew that I wanted to include it in the 2009 Essential Theatre Play Festival, and that I wanted to direct it. I’m not sure I could have articulated why I felt this way, except that found the script to be funny and weird and beautiful (a combination that I always like). There’s a lot of stuff in it about writing, which I’m drawn to, and it also looks at the differences between the way we often try to idealize ourselves into fantasy relationships, instead of dealing with the reality of the people we get close to (another fascination of mine, although it took me longer to recognize how important a part of the play this was.)

So, I didn’t start out the rehearsal process with a firm, fixed concept in mind – I told the cast that I responded to the play intuitively, not analytically, and that I could always explain why I felt that some things should be pla yed a certain way, and that they were all very much the right people for their parts. As a result, our rehearsals have been an evolving series of explorations and discoveries, with some ideas taken up and discarded, and new ones rising up to take their place.

I had the pleasure of meeting the playwright a few weeks ago, and he told me that the play had been written fairly quickly and then produced -- having gone through almost no development process. This didn’t surprise me, and I think he was lucky to have had things go that way – this is the kind of script that the group discussions and second-guessing of most development processes could not much help, and would probably hurt. This is not to say that many plays aren’t helped by such processes – I hope that the development work done by the Essential Theatre with some new plays, over the years, has been good for their writers. But, sometimes, it’s better to go with a writer’s unbridled, unchecked impulses.

What kind of play is FOOD FOR FISH? It’s a comedy, that’s often sad – rather like Chekhov. Which isn’t a haphazard reference – the play is full of Chekhov motifs, from the three sisters who long to return home to New Jersey, to the tormented young writer who throws a dead pigeon at the feet of his lady love. It’s also like a dream play, full of connections that work on the subliminal level rather than in the dramaturgical manner of a well-made play.

Men play women, sometimes, and vice-versa, all the while their characters are trying to figure out why people fall in love, and what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. When you’ve got a male character -- played by an actress, saying that he’s trying to figure out how men should behave -- it throws our whole notions of “how things are supposed to be” into a new, revealing and comic perspective. To the writer’s credit, he doesn’t just play this for laughs – he gives us insights into the ways we trap ourselves by trying to live up to the fantasies we see on television, and read in magazines – rather than trying to understand who we truly are, and how our realities can relate to one another.

I couldn’t ask for a better cast. I’ve worked with all of them before, which makes for a trust that you need when you’re delving into such original and unusual material.

Sylvia, the youngest sister, is played by Kate Graham, who dazzled everybody playing Sally the Homecoming Queen and Princess Sophia the Hunchback in our production of Paul Rudnick’s VALHALLA last summer.&nb sp; Since then she’s appeared in BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS at the Center Theatre, and she’s also the star of the cult horror-comedy film Poultrygeist – the Night of the Living Chicken. Check it out!

Alice, the middle sister, is played by Dad’s Garage favorite Eve Krueger, while Barbara, the oldest, is played by Charles Swint. I’ve known Charles for years, and directed him as Adam in our production of THE MOST FABULOUS STORY EVER TOLD a few years back (but he keeps his clothes on, this time – even if they’re mostly women’s clothes). He also appeared in our hit production of THE BOOK OF LIZ (named one of the year’s best shows by the AJC).

The oldest sister’s husband is played by Sarah Falkenburg Wallace, who was nominated for a M etropolitan Atlanta Theatre Award for her performance in the Essential’s MRS. BOB CRATCHIT’S WILD CHRISTMAS BINGE, and played the title role in our World Premiere of Karen Wurl’s MISS MACBETH (which the AJC called “a doozy of a backstage farce … a delightful laugh-bath”). Having two skillful comic performers like Sarah and Charles play husband and wife (but with the genders reversed) is inherently funny … but not campy. We’ve been going for the heart of these characters, and have found that the more real we can make them, the funnier they are.
Brent Nicholas Rose plays the kissing-bandit-writer, coming of a year where he's worked with Synchronicity Performance Group and Dad’s Garage. Last summer he played the lead role in our Regional Premiere of Gina Gionfriddo’s AFTER ASHLEY, which has been nominated as Best Production of a Play by the Metropolitan Atlanta Theatre Awards. Rounding out the cast is Kelly Criss, having a great time playing (at last count) eleven different characters – both male and female. You may have seen her in THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED at Theatre In the Square’s Alley Stage.

We open up July 5, at Actor’s Express, and there’ll be eight performances between then and August 1. Check out our website at http://www.essentialtheatre.com/ for information and scheduling. Hope you’ll come see us!
Peter

Volunteer Ushers: only a few dates remain open

Essential Theatre appreciates its' volunteer ushers. We have a few remaining opportunities to participate as an usher and great new theatre. These dates are still available. Please email us Essential AT ivf.com if you wish to usher on any of the dates listed below.

7/11 7:15 pm Food for Fish
7/18 7:15 pm Jim Crow
7/19 1:15 pm Jim Crow
7/19 6:15pm Food for Fish
7/25 1:15 pm Jim Crow
7/26 6:15pm Ice Glen
7/29 7:15 pm Ice Glen
7/30 7:15pm Jim Crow
7/31 7:15pm Ice Glen
8/1 1:15pm Jim Crow
8/1 7:15 pm Food for Fish
8/2 1:15pm Jim Crow

Essential Theatre Video Previews

Check out our behind the scenes HDTV video trailers shot during rehearsals shot and edited by Dany Nieves


Food for Fish


Ice Glen


Jim Crow and the Rhythm Darlings

From Artistic Director Peter Hardy

I came to Atlanta in the fall of 1986, hired by the late Michael Horne to direct a Wendy Wasserstein comedy called Isn’t It Romantic at Theatre in the Square, and then sticking around to perform in the Horizon Theatre’s Christmas production of Alan Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings. By that time, I’d decided to stay. In 1987 I was acting in another comedy at the Horizon, Christopher Durang’s The Marriage of Bette and Boo, but already I was wanting to make my own productions happen, and in the fall of ’87 I produced and directed the first Essential Theatre show – two ghost story one-acts by John Pielmeier (author of Agnes of God), featuring Scott Higgs and Bill Murphey (two fine local actors that I’m still friends with today) and a lady named Elin Zimmerman, who came down from New York just to do the show.

Over the next ten years I continued to free-lance with other companies, directing three of the first four productions ever done in Theatre In the Square’s Alley Stage space (we opened that place up with a comedy by local writer Karen Wurl, who I’ve gone on to work with several times since). In the summers I directed the outdoor drama Unto These Hills in Cherokee, North Carolina, working there with many talented people from the Atlanta theatre scene, and I also continued to produce and direct occasional productions with the Essential Theatre: Vinegar Tom and They Dance Real Slow In Jackson and Wandering Desires at the Horizon space; Down the Road at the 14th Street Playhouse; Cinders and A Child Shall Lead at 7 Stages; and my own play Lubricant at a place called the Atlanta Dream Hostel. (Lubricant finally got a New York production last year.)

Some of these productions got good audiences and good reviews, but mostly we were doing new scripts – World Premieres or Regional Premieres – and I found that when you're doing plays that no one has heard of, by a company that no one’s heard of, and you’re only producing once every year or so, and you’re usually performing in a different space than where you were the last time – you tend to fall through the cracks. We got great reviews for Down the Road from the AJC, Creative Loafing and WABE (which was doing theatre reviews back then), but three years later none of them bothered to come see A Child Shall Lead at 7 Stages. This was a beautiful, epic play about the Children’s Crusade, written by my friend Charlotte Fleck (originally from Spartanburg, South Carolina and now in New York City) and featuring a stunning performance by Laurie Beasley. In 2007, both these ladies finally got some of the critical praise they deserve for their work in our production of Night Travels.

Anyway, back in the late 90’s, I was wondering if I should keep trying to make my own theatre happen. I didn’t want to be producing year-round, and I didn’t want to do the kind of “audience-friendly” plays I was bored with seeing at so many other theatres in town. And that’s when the idea for the Essential Theatre Festival first came to me: Instead of doing one play no one has heard of, how about we do three plays no one has heard of? Maybe that’ll get us some more attention.

And it worked, right from the beginning. Curt Holman wrote a feature article about us for Creative Loafing in January of 1999, when we presented our first Festival at the old Push-Push Theater space. That year we did Paula Vogel’s Desdemona, Lynn Siefert’s comedy Little Egypt (recently turned into a musical, out west) and the World Premiere of Only Children by the afore-mentioned Karen Wurl. We decided that we’d produce at least one new play by a Georgia writer every year, and by 2001 that had coalesced into the idea of the Essential Theatre Playwriting Award, a state-wide competition that is still the only one of its kind. We’ve been proud and fortunate to present the World Premieres of new scripts by Georgia writers like Karla Jennings, Bill Gibson, Karen Page, Valetta Anderson, Jean Sterrett and Letitia Sweitzer.

In 2006 we did the first production of Larry Larson and Eddie Levi Lee’s Charm School, receiving critical raves and helping to pave the w ay for a larger, longer-run production by Horizon Theatre – which was so successful they revived it a year later. The play also won the Gene Gabriel Moore prize (part of the Suzi Bass Awards) for best new play produced in Atlanta.

In 2001, the Essential Theatre Playwriting Award when to 18-year-old Lauren Gunderson, a Decatur native, for her family comedy-drama Parts They Call Deep, which was a big hit for us and went on to an Off-Broadway production. Lauren’s continued to have great success, both in Atlanta and around the country, with a new play recently produced in California. Lauren writes: “The Essential Theatre has been fundamentally important for my career …every aspect of my time with them has been full of support, creativity and artistic daring. I will always credit the Essential Theatre with my early success and confidence.”

Along with our World Premieres, we’ve given Atlanta audiences their first chance to see important new work by nationally-recognized writers like Sam Shepard, Christopher Durang, Lanford Wilson, David Lindsay-Abaire, Steven Dietz, Gina Gionfriddo, and Amy and David Sedaris. The common denominator is this: Plays you’ve never seen around here before – exciting and challenging new work -- produced by artists who are doing it for love.

Perhaps my favorite show that we’ve ever done was our 2008 production of Paul Rudnick’s Valhalla -- which (among other things) was about being willing to go mad in order to create something beautiful. I can relate ...

And all that brings us up to today – and the 11th Annual Essential Theatre Play Festival, opening July 5 at Actor’s Express.

More on that soon.