Overtime heads into limbo with 'Anesthesiologist'

By Deborah Martin for MySanAntonio.com Blog - Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Tadeo Garcia plays the lead in the Overtime Theater's "For the Love of an Anesthesiologist." Courtesy Overtime Theater

Bryan Ortiz was sifting through scripts with other folks at the Overtime Theater when he happened upon “For the Love of an Anesthesiologist.”

“It's such a weird, interesting little play that I fell in love with it,” Ortiz said.

And that's how he ended up directing playwright Brad McEntire's comedy, which premieres this weekend at the theater.

In it, a guy (Tadeo Garcia) wakes up one day to find himself in a 1960s tiki lounge somewhere between life and death. He's also caught between two very different women from his life.

The script reminded Ortiz of “Defending Your Life,” Albert Brooks' 1991 movie about a guy who dies in a car accident and ends up in Judgment City, where he and a legal team look back at his life to determine whether he has progressed enough to move on to the next level of existence, or whether he's doomed to return to Earth.

“‘Anesthesiologist' is very silly and nonlinear,” Ortiz said — so much so, he was grateful that McEntire gave him a timeline to clarify what happens when.

Folks who enjoy it might want to return to the theater next weekend for “Chop,” McEntire's solo show about a guy who just might have found a place for himself among amputation fetishists.

As for “Anesthesiologist,” it's a quickie: It clocks in at around an hour.

“It kinds of goes back to the roots of the Overtime Theater,” Ortiz said. One of theater founder John Poole's guiding ideas initially was that no show would run more than an hour.

Nodding to that part of the theater's history is especially appealing now, Ortiz said, given that the theater is preparing for its next big move.

Renovations to the Blue Star Arts Complex are causing the company to leave its current home by the middle of next month; its leaders are hunting for a new space and nearing the end of a Kickstarter campaign to raise $15,000 to cover expenses of the move, including renovations.

The deadline for the Kickstarter campaign is Monday.

Original article: HERE