I don't think many other productions this weekend in NYC featured segments like a Rape Ballet or characters like Sids, aka Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Both play a part in Studio 42's Unproducible Smackdown!, a series of ten-minute plays featuring absolutely fierce actors acting in some of the most ridiculous material I've seen in a long time.
The Smackdown asks six of the Studio 42 community's most unproducible (edgy) playwrights to each concoct a ten-minute play featuring the following aspects:
-Daylight Savings Time,
-Characters without shoes
-Music
-the Eiffel Tower.
Each play gets just six hours to rehearse before going live. Audience arrives (beyond full house) and they drink (delicious beer) and they eat (amazing homemade desserts) and they mingle (lovely NYC artists present). Each play goes up, three industry judges offer their feedback and a winner is selected by both the audience and the judges.
Up first is Crystal Skillman's Up High: The Musical which a French playwright developing a piece entitled Bus Rape (!!). The acting is solid all around, especially by the playwright who spouts phrases like "Things that sook [suck] in real life can be songs in musicals!" The rape ballet is hilarious and the audience is treated to an actress' breasts on full display (!!). "Ahh!" someone gasps behind me. "Ahh!" is right, lady, that's nudity! Within ten minutes! What's next“ Sudden Infant Death... oh wait. Up High has a nice manic energy although it loses isteam by the end - - something I noticed about nearly all the pieces.
Nick Jones' Everybaby is stronger. Lights up on a man in a diaper. If something is funnier than a grown man in a diaper as the lights come up, email me at TheBrettEpstein@gmail.com and I will decide whether it's funnier. We are told this is a medevial morality play for babies. One word: YES. The play follows Everybaby attempting to find someone to speak to God on his behalf. The problem is all the other babies would rather just play and... be babies. The Shakesperean nature hits home and there's something absurdly beautiful about it the whole thing.
Up next is Gregory S. Moss' Make-A-Wish Foundation of Seekonk, MA presents 'night Mother. Right off the bat, I love Moss' subtle turn of making a seductive girl in a green dress 'the girl who sucks an hour out of your life,' cleverly incorporating Daylight Savings Time. Unfortunately, Moss' piece turns out to be the weakest of Act I. The pacing is slower, the dialogue is overdone, the absurdity is... less, somehow. The moments the actors read off papers seem at best boring and at worst cheating -- no other actors in any other play read off papers. As in Skillman's piece, this one starts strong and then meanders. (Side note: Next time, gather the same playwrights and throw them into a 5-minute play festival.)
Intermission. More great desserts (look - a Japanese cupcake!) plus socializing (I meet the parents and grandmother of upcoming actor Will Roland. They're very proud of Will although I don't know how Will's grandmother hasn't had a hernia from the material in these plays. Still, they are all lovely people and Will's father has the best laugh in the audience.)
And we're back!
The fourth play is Becca Branstetter's Heart and Soul Colon I Fell in Love with You. Kudos right away for using the literal word 'colon' in the title. The play faulters a little with Stupid Character Syndrome (The opening dialogue is: "I love brushing my teeth." "Me too." "Me too") but improves to becomes the strongest entry so far. The plot involves a man and woman falling in love as a cocktail waitress pines... and pines... and pines. It ends with a brilliantly choreographed sex sequence featuring all three characters. The pacing is effective, the acting lovely and the music charming. Branstetter hits it out of the park!
Fifth up is Joshua Conkel's Wonders of the World. The story is simple: four dancers take us through how the Eiffel Tower came to be. One of them is the afformentioned Will Roland, whose work here suits him better than the off-off-Broadway play The Bus where he was forced to play it straight. The blocking is tight (nice use of the backstage area as characters come and go and come and go) and the actors are so out-of-control enthusastic, it's contagious. This play also receives the biggest laugh of the nght, a Studio-42 in-joke about how "this seems a little un-earned... you know, like a Rob Askins ending" The applause, the laughter, the uproar this line caused is the reason to see live theatre.
Lastly is none other than Rob Askin's The Boy with the Tiger Tattoo. Askins is a superb playwright whose deliciously quirky work Hand to God plays through April 1st at EST and is not to be missed. Tiger involves a tattoo artist who eliminates a boy's "Fear Lobster" and turns his pussy switch off. It's got some good one-liners and I can see why they'd end the night with such an established playwright, but Boy is not a standout.
The audience members spend $1 to vote for the winner and decide to crown the Most Unproducible of the evening to......... WONDERS OF THE WORLD by Joshua Conkel. Hmm, this play was in my top three but I would have given the award to Jones or Branstetter for their tight scripts. Also, Jones' and Branstetters' feel more like ten-minute plays as opposed to a ten-minute dance with words. But to each his own. The judges pick.... WONDERS OF THE WORLD by Joshua Conkel. Well. To each his own. And by each, it looks like I mean... every single person in the room.
At the end of the night, I can say this: The Unproducible Smackdown is an engaging night of new works by a spirited and bold group of artists. Compliments to Moritz von Stuelpnagel and his talented company for a creative and ambitious one-night-only engagement. More information on this company's future productions: www.Stu42.com.
