I want to be a... director?

Back in 2012, I wrote a blog titled "I want to be a producer". It was my way of announcing that I'd decided to produce the world premiere of my play Kill the Critic! At the time, I questioned my sanity due to the sheer amount of work required to produce a full-length play. And the simple fact that I had never produced one before.

Well, if I was borderline crazy at the time, I must be completely certifiable now because I've just signed up to not only produce but direct my new play, The Last Radio Show.

Why am I doing it? Well, I guess it's because I haven't produced a play since that time and I really want to get back into it. Not only was producing a blast, but sitting in on rehearsals and hearing the audience response taught me more about playwriting than anything I've ever done.

And if producing taught me that much, then directing should teach me a whole lot more.

Plus, I really, really want to do this one. It's a classic farce, my favorite type of play, and yet it should be easy to produce. There's no set. Light and sound cues are minimal. And much of the play will be read from scripts.

Of course, that's not to say that the play doesn't pose its own challenges. There will be plenty of sound effects, after all. It's just that they'll be generated onstage, just like they were in the Golden Age of Radio. There's also a ton of physical comedy, and making sure that part works is always the toughest part of developing a new play.

The process is already well underway. I've booked the theater. I've reserved a rehearsal space. I've set up the ticketing site. A couple of friends have even signed as stage manager and light/sound tech. Now I need to get the actors.

What's the play about, you say? Well, here's the blurb:

It's 1946, and KUKU Radio is in trouble. Their broadcast tower keeps falling over. The electric company is about to cut off their power. And now the station owner is threatening to fire the whole crew. Can this ragtag group of radio actors out together one perfect show? Or will they be shut down for good?

The show runs Jan 14-16 at Black Box Theatre, 1367 Pecan St., Colorado Springs. Tickets are just $15, To get yours (you know this won't be the last you hear about it!), go to thelastradioshow.brownpapertickets.com.

The butler comes home

 

If you're one of my Colorado Springs readers, I want to let you know that The Butler Did It! will be performed at Black Box Theatre, 1367 Pecan St., next month.

Since it was published a year ago, The Butler Did It! has been performed in 17 states and Australia, but this is the first time it'll be produced in my own home town.

When I've got a play in town, it's always tempting to pop in to rehearsal. Last year, I poked my head in quite a bit during rehearsals for Kill the Critic!

But then I had a good excuse. I was a producer and a big chunk of my money was on the line.

My presence didn't help. My spy--I mean my daughter--was in the cast and she reported that--big surprise!--the cast members felt intimidated by me.

For one, they wanted to know why I never laughed. Didn't I like their work?

What they didn't know is that I rarely laugh at my own stuff. Comedy is just too serious a subject to me.

So this time I've decided to stay away, and I have no qualms about it. The production is being directed by my friend Nancy Holaday, who did such a great job with Kill the Critic!, and I have all the confidence in the world that she'll bang it out of the park again.

Just as important, much of the cast of Kill the Critic! has returned to star in this production, and if anyone is going to make me laugh, they will.

The show runs June 5-14. And if it's anything like Kill the Critic!, tickets are going to disappear fast. To order yours, visit the Black Box web site.

Kill the Critic! gets an encore

Good news for those of you in the Pikes Peak region who missed the world premiere of Kill the Critic! in June. The play will get an encore production next weekend--Thursday, August 22 through Saturday, August 24--for four performances only. All performances will be at Black Box Theatre, 1367 Pecan St., Colorado Springs.

This production is directed by Nancy Holaday, as was the premiere, and features almost entirely the same cast. But if you did attend the premiere, there are some key differences that may make it worth seeing again.

For one thing, the venue fixes a lot of the issues we had at the Tri-Lakes Center for the Arts. It's air-conditioned. Trains don't roar past every 15 minutes. The back row is much closer to the stage. And it's a true black box theatre, making the entire stage visible.

This last one isn't always an important consideration, but it is for this play. In case you haven't figured it out yet, one of the characters is dead for most of the play, and when the stage is raised, as it was at Tri-Lakes, people sitting in the back of the house miss much of the all-important floor action (at one point, a cop inadvertantly uses the blanket-covered corpse as a footstool).

And there's one other thing about this production. The actor who plays the hapless kidnapper was unable to make the last two performances so Nancy cast a new actor in the part.

I liked the original lead. Although he struggled to learn his lines, and ended up ad libbing most of them, he delivered them with panache, giving the character a childike charm despite the self-centeredness that seems to define him.

Responses from the audience were more w. Half of the people I talked to thought he was a brilliant comedian, but others thought he was painfully hammy.

Early reports from rehearsal indicate that the new lead is much better, a natural comic who is also much more disciplined in his line readings.

For complete info on the production, visit www.blackboxdrama.com.