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Making Money $150 An Hour

If you’re still interested (this later in the day), in my head as I was assembling these were a couple ideas: tying Chekhov’s death from tuberculosis to the beginnings of the Russian revolution (because the coincide so closely in time and so interestingly in history — and seem to reflect a particular tide of current events), and the difficulties of translation (with its correlated problems of representation of death, violence, reality, etc.).

However, I doubt you’d be interested, if only because you qualify your request for a review with the word “unbiased.” I’m a deeply biased individual, and I’ve never seen much point in pretending otherwise.

If you agree we will send you a product sample so that you can try it and then write a review about it.

Please let me know if you are interested.

Thank you

I was fortunate enough to see both the first and second performances of this astonishing production.

(Full disclosure: i have worked with its director on stage in the past.)

I can gladly confess that i was moved to tears both times.
The array of Goddesses invoked — from a lithe and powerful young Artemis; a beautiful Yemaya undulating through the waves; a frightening and joyous Medusa; a solid and lovely Mother who wants her son off the cross, at long last (and whose song i defy you to hear without weeping); and a Crone, whose acceptance and welcoming of what is now and what is to come touched my spirit to its very core.

The ensemble is just one note short of perfection as they blend and weave and tell us the tale. Moment after moment after moment, each a richness in and of itself, like a slice of apple dipped in honey, or a glance into the Goddess who is in us all, recognized or not. Deep truths, being spoken beautifully.

The three musicians add a perfect background of sound and silence to that which is unfolding. And the actors themselves use incidental rhythm on an astonishing variety of found objects within their movement and play and dance and song and story, all to a wondrous effect. It is spell-binding in its cumulative effect, haunting in the finest sense of that word.

I must congratulate (and most heartfeltedly thank) my former colleague Ms. Givens for what she has inspired and birthed, and her cast and musicians and techs for the great joy, energy, and inspiritedness they brought to fruition in the performances i saw.

It was a Chinese-food experience: an hour later, i was wanting more.

I still am.

I’m touring a show this summer called “All Rights Reserved: A Libertarian Rage.” It features, among many other things, a cast gallivanting about in its underwear, hot girl-on-girl action, zombies eating people, copious use of words like “fuck,” “nigger,” and “chink,” and a female priest stabbing the baby Jesus in effigy. I can say, easily and without hesitation, that this script would not even be considered for production in this festival. Yet I maintain that it represents as clear a statement of my social, ethical, and, yes, spiritual beliefs, as anything that I’ve written.

I’m not articulating this well, but this is precisely the thing that I’ve been struggling with in the various incarnations of this Festival over the past several years: it face the strange challenge of having to be inclusive (as an inter-faith festival) and simultaneously exclusive (or else the festival fails to make any sense). That’s why its existence as part of the Fringe (a non-juried festival) never really made sense to me.

Not that I have a great answer to that challenge; but I do wish that the festival had one that was at least clearer to me.