These Are Our Friends, See How They Glisten

Greetings from the amazing world of theater friends and colleagues. The Unconscious Collective has been hard at work not just curating material and assembling our creative team for the next "meditation" CHURCHILL, but taking in a wide array of theater across the varied landscape of NYC. We are incredibly blessed with a large community of talented theater artist friends, and we've taken this time off to see their work, pick their brains, and learn more about what makes our friends successful theater projects tick.


Just last night we took in the hit mainstage play at The Flea, The Oldsmobiles starring Richard Masur and Alice Playten. A cute little comedy (yes, comedy) about a middle aged couple who've decided to take their own lives by hopping off the Manhattan Bridge in order to "go out on top." Our creative director, Nicholas, used to be a "Bat" in The Flea's resident acting company and he still has a lot of friends in those downstairs offices - notably their lovel producing director Carol Ostrow - so we felt right at home.
















The previous two Fridays the producing team took in Sticky, a night of 10-minute plays that are set at the bar of The Bowery Poetry Club. Sticky presents the work of some of NYC's hottest young playwrights (last season boasted a play from Adam Rapp), actors, and directors - and the whole evening has a real "family" atmostphere of supportive and diverse talent.

Sticky has been in residence at BPC for over 5 years and is the brainchild of David Marcus and his wife Libby Emmons - founders of Blue Box Productions. We spent some time after the show with David and Libby to discuss one of their favorite topics, the pros/cons of Subsidized vs. Unsubsidized theater. A fascinating topic that we may be blogging about again in the near future.


























We also recently made it out to the landmark event The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later which we were incredibly fortunate to attend. Nicholas assisted the production team on the show for the day at Lincoln Center's Alice Tulley Hall (hat tip to Tectonic's incomparable Tiffany Redmon) and he snuck the rest of the production team in the side door prior to curtain(shhhhh!) It was truly an "event" that touched the entire audience, and Moises Kaufman and co., on top of being visionary theater artists, are some of the nicest people in the business.





















In addition the team took in a play reading, a fundraiser, and a hilarious comedy musical still in development: A Stephen King Hip-Hoperetta aptly titled "School of Castle Rock." Conceived by our friend, the zanily brilliant Jamie King

SHEPARD Post-Mortem

It's been almost two weeks since our debut show, and it finally feels right to add a few last relics from SHEPARD to the blog. We're humbled by the overwhelming support and enthusiasm from our friends and for all the constructive feedback from fellow artists and advisers.

The picture above is of Under St. Marks on the night of the Monday, Sept. 28, the second of two sold out shows.

And the following is a note from the program, framing the evening for the audience.

A Word From The Creative Director

Just a few thoughts as you prepare to engage in what we hope will be a "meditation" on the playwright Sam Shepard and his body of work. For most every play, and specifically every great play there is a question; an issue that pushes at the playwright on a personal level or reverberates on a global spectrum so loudly that he/she decides to write a play about it. In many cases, and with many of the playwrights who have shaped the current state of narrative theater these "questions" are being asked again and again, in new and unique ways throughout the course of their career.

With Sam Shepard the father's journey at first towards towards the family and the American Dream and then eventually away from it, with lightning speed, leaving broken hearts in his wake, sentencing himself to a life of exile, loneliness, pain and regret seems be the catalyst for the large questions at the heart of his work. Looking at it even further this theme seems to be exploring on a deeper level "the gulf that separates men from their true selves."

In addition, our meditation looks at a series of sub-themes that run along the tracks of Shepard's plays:

- The burying of a terrible family secret: How the secret "hitting the air" frees all of the players in the plays from their psychological prisons.

Sam Shepard "It's an amazing discovery when you realize you are living your life as a somnambulist, when that occurs there is kind of amazing thing that takes place: one is despair and the other is sudden awakening"

-The running that all of us do to escape becoming who our fathers or family truly are, to be something completely new, and how no matter how far we run or drive we can never escape this.

Vince in Buried Child "We'd never make it. We'd drive and we'd drive and we'd drive and we'd never make it. We'd think we were getting farther and farther away. That's what we'd think."

-The role of the women in the family structures after the father's absence. How they are left to pick up the pieces of the family and what they do to each other to compete for what's left of the patriarch's love.

Lorraine in A Lie of The Mind "You know a man your whole life. You grow up with him. You're almost raised together. You go to school on the same bus together. You go through tornadoes together in the same basement. You go through a world war together. You have babies together. And then one day he just up and disappears into this air. Did I ever wonder? Yeah. You bet yer sweet life I wondered. But you know where all that wondering got me? Nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. Because here I am. Here I am. Alone. Just the same as though he'd never even existed"

With our piece this evening we seek to deepen these questions, pay tribute to the playwright, and facilitate in you (our audience) a deep introspection upon what these themes mean to them.

Nicholas Job
September 2009