I am pleased to present this little paperback collection of a few of my one-act plays. These pieces are all available individually in ebook format, but I wanted to make a nice book version that would combine them all. Grab one for yourself. Get a copy... HERE
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Perhaps you would be interested in adding more excitement and romance, adventure and intrigue to your life. If that's the case, I don't know what to tell you. But I would suggest you subscribe to my newsletter. I mean, who knows? Life is full of surprises. I only send stuff out occassionally, but it is good stuff. Hit the button below...
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All my plays currently published as Kindle ebooks on Amazon.com will be discounted to $.99 from December 17th - 24th in celebration of the 2017 Holiday Season. If you have been itching to read one of my wonderfully warped theatrical works, NOW IS THE TIME. I only rarely ever run discounts oon the full collection. For the usual price of a single volume, you can own all three... I BROUGHT HOME A CHUPACABRA, RASPBERRY FIZZ and DINOSAUR AND ROBOT STOP A TRAIN. Get the goods... HERE
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Perhaps you would be interested in adding more excitement and romance, adventure and intrigue to your life. If that's the case, I don't know what to tell you. But I would suggest you subscribe to my newsletter. I mean, who knows? Life is full of surprises. I only send stuff out occassionally, but it is good stuff. Hit the button below...
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Over the past year and a half I have been slowly rolling out a series of my one-acts on Amazon's Kindle platform. The third and last in the series is Raspberry Fizz.
Raspberry Fizz premiered at the 2012 Out of the Loop Festival in Addison, Texas. Directed by Andy Baldwin, it featured Jeff Swearingen, Natalie Young and Shane Beeson (video clip link below). Two following productions of the play followed, one at the 2013 Houston Fringe Festival and then a month-long run at the Margo Jones Theatre in Dallas. These last two productions were directed by me and featured Tashina Richardson and Travis Stuebing. I played the Barker.
The play concerns Ellson, an eleven year old who wants to ask Samantha to the Harvest Dance. It is Ellson's first school dance and the asking out of Sam is not going as smooth as he had hoped. Plus, there is a strange carnival barker on the corner who keeps spinning out a weird bally.
Raspberry Fizz is an exploration of expectations and the potentialities of the future tied up in a tender and humorous slice-of-life coming-of-age encounter between two adolescents in 1949, in small town America.
I'm super-pleased with these wonderful little one-acts, but, not being full-length works, after they have played a few times in a few productions, I was at a loss of what to do with them. So, I decided to make them available to the world as inexpensive Kindle ebooks.
Perhaps you would be interested in adding more excitement and romance, adventure and intrigue to your life. If that's the case, I don't know what to tell you. But I would suggest you subscribe to my newsletter. I mean, who knows? Life is full of surprises. I only send stuff out occassionally, but it is good stuff. Hit the button below...
Leave a comment. If you are a robot or a blatant marketer trolling Blogger, then you will be deleted. Humans only, please.
I had a broad swath year as far as creating new art. I didn't do any really big projects (unless you maybe count DRIBBLE FUNK 380 for sheer ballsiness or DINOSAUR AND ROBOT STOP A TRAIN for imaginative awesomeness), but looking back, I covered a lot of ground. Here's a look back...
In January I did a PrintBomb Project, hiding my print "Anything Is Possible" in a bunch of places at the flagship Half Price Books
In February I directed student actors in a student-written one-act at Tarrant County College
Read my short piece BURDEN OF A LIGHT BLUE SHIRT at Austin's No Shame in March.
In March I also attended the Staple! Expo and sold a few (very few) of my books and postcards
In April, FUN GRIP played the Improvised Play Festival at Austin's Hideout Theatre.
Participated in Rover Dramawerk's One Day Only! XX, a 24 Hour Play event. An event I founded in 2000. My play was SHARK BITES AND SIDE EFFECTS.
In April, I also saw my commissioned play CARTER STUBBS TAKES FLIGHT put on in a wonderful production by Denton's Sundown Collaborative Theatre, directed by Tashina Richardson.
In May, I taught a solo improv workshop as part of the 2013 Big Sexy Weekend of Improv for the Alternative Comedy Theatre.
In June I premiered my play DINOSAUR AND ROBOT STOP A TRAIN at the 2013 Festival of Independent Theatres. Next to CHOP, this play is what I'm most proud of from all of my theatre work to date.
July 1999. Me outside Expanded Arts on Ludlow, the Lower East Side NYC
It is cold and dreary outside. I have spent the whole day inside, cleaning, cooking and playing on the Internet. Because of the freak Texas ice storm, my show of RASPBERRY FIZZ that was originally scheduled for tomorrow has been cancelled. Though the actors, Ruth and myself might be able to make it down there, I hypothesize little to no audience, so I called it. I'm hoping to reschedule.
The weather and my challenges with small-scale theatre enterprises has made me nostalgic today and I sit here remembering back to my younger days as a theatre artist.
In 1999 I lived in New York City. I visited the first time in late 1998 and then returned when one of my plays received a staged reading by Reverie Productions at Walker Space Theatre (the home of Soho Rep) in Tribeca. I stayed throughout 1999 and I returned to visit in the summer of 2000. I went back to live there in the spring of 2001 and stayed until September of that year. At the New York International Fringe Festival that year, where I was producing one of my own plays, I met some organizers of a festival in Austin called the M.O.M. Fest. The full name was Mind Over Money Theatrical Festival. Finding out I was a fellow Texan, they invited me to participate in it, which was going up at the beginning of October. I flew out from La Guardia and home to Texas the night of September 10, 2001. The intention was to rehearse a revue-style show based on thematically-linked pieces from a sketch comedy troupe I was a part of and then return to New York three weeks later. That return did not happen. The next day, some airplanes hit some buildings and I got stuck in my hometown. I, essentially, started all over again career-wise once I found myself back in Texas.
Lower East Side... you can see at the corner at the end of the street - at Ludlow and Houston - is the famous Katz's Deli.
That time period in New York was magical. In the summer of 1999 I directed my own play, an early work called RED PAJAMA BLUES at a small store-front theatre on the Lower East Side called Expanded Arts. Located at 85 Ludlow Street, the space literally opened up to the sidewalk out front. I was told it had been a Chinese brothel before a guy named Robert Spahr and his partner Jennifer Pias converted it. I believe it could seat maybe 40 audience members at a time. They also did "Shakespeare in the Park(ing) Lot" in an empty asphalt expanse across the street every summer. The guy I had the most contact with at Expanded Arts was a flannel-shirted dude with a scruffy beard named Jerry McAllister. He directed a lot of those parking lot Shakespeare productions. My play was part of an annual festival called 94 Plays in 94 Days. In that same theatre, two years before, Joe Calarco had premiered his show SHAKESPEARE'S R & J which went on to an Off-Broadway run. The Lower East Side was a hotbed of small-scale theatre activity in the late 1990s. Across Delancey Street, a block further north on Ludlow one was waist-deep in Aaron Beall's off-off-Broadway empire. Within rock-throwing distance of the corner of Ludlow and Stanton one could hit one of Beall's venues - all small and divey to a fault. There was the Piano Store (which I rented a basement room in for rehearsals), Collective Unconscious, the backroom at the Pink Pony Cafe and Todo Con Nada (which everyone just called Nada). I met Beall once in the offices of the Piano Store. He has at his zenith in the summer of 1999. An impresario known for taking the lion's share of the box office split for his operations, Beall and his empire imploded a short time later when his Pure Pop Fest went up against the New York International Fringe Festival (which he had helped start) and failed horribly.
This anonymous black basement space used to be Todo Con Nada, a semi-legendary storefront theatre space that thrived in the 1990s
A short distance away was the The Present Company Theatorium, a comparatively large space that was the home of the New York International Fringe, which started in 1997. It had been a former automobile "chop-shop." The area was still semi-dangerous with crack dens, prostitution and illegal pawn shops. There was also other performance venues, a place called House of Candles and another called Surf Reality, I believe, in the neighborhood. Seriously, I think that area bordered by Allen, Ridge, Houston, and Delancey streets had around a dozen venues operating, all open to rental by small groups. The whole scene was more grunge than Grotowski. It was filled with artists and soon-to-be-artists. All the artistic directors seemed to have Ahab-like intensity and fanaticism. The hundreds of shows that were put on were definitely of the experimental ilk. Ian W. Hill lived in and managed Nada. Playwrights Trav S. D., Brian Parks, Carolyn Raship and Kirk Wood Browley were some of the emerging artists at the time. Future semi-household names such as John Leguizamo, the comedian Reno, and Blue Man Group all presented at Nada. Actor James Urbaniak and Drama Dept. director Randall Curtis Rand started at that time on the Lower East Side. As did the Target Margin Theatre and the avant garde Elevator Repair Service. Eccentric elf-eared humorist Reverend Jen's Anti-Slam played weekly. The interactive docudrama Charlie Victor Romeo was a hit of the downtown scene. The modesty of the Piano Store was deceptive, but among the hits it fostered were Fun Box 2000 and The Donkey Show. I seem to remember Richard Foreman's Benita Canova playing across from the Piano Store (I don't remember what it was about, but I do remember the lead actress wore a sexy school girl outfit), but I'm not sure if I saw it there or at St. Marks. Radiohole started up around this time. Beall himself put on Faust and Hamlet festivals before his Pure Pop Fest debacle. 1999 was also the year Urinetown put the New York International Fringe Festival on the map.
Collective:Unconscious Theater at 145 Ludlow in 1997
All the theatres have closed by now. The area has undergone quite the gentrification/ hipsterization that is common at a lot of formerly awesome areas (think Williamsburg, Brooklyn). In neighboring areas one can still find Big Cheap Theater. Just north in the East Village, one can catch shows at the Horse Trade trifecta: the Kraine, the Red Room, and the St. Marks Theater. But on Ludlow Street, everything has changed. The area transformed into a mini-Soho during the boom years of the fin de siècle. Upscale boutiques, chic hipster bars, and nightclubs have replaced divey independent arts venues. I look back on this time and place in my past and realize, indirectly, it has had a huge influence on me. I knew at the time I was, even peripherally, part of something special, but the residual effects are what have stuck. I was steeped in independent theatre. Folks like producers Beall and John Clancy (over at The Present Company at the time) were obsessive about theatre. They approached it with a craftsman's diligence and a certain grubby magic. They were capitalistic, but not commercial. Individual voices and novel approaches were valued. New work was welcomed, especially high-energy, bare-bones, intellectually engaging and terrifically contemporary. The Lower East Side in those years when I was there (1998-2001) was the indiest of indie theatre, the kind that is independent to a fault. And I ate it up.
The Present Company Theatorium at 198 Stanton Street, between Attorney and Ridge, ran from 1998 til 2003
The kind of theatre I did and continue to do is of this ilk... weird, funny, a bit experimental, a bit satirical, but hopefully still appealing and accessible to mass audiences. Even the way I have formatted my theatre company harkens back to these indie theatres of the late 1990s. My hope is that the new venue, the Margo Jones Theatre, that Audacity is based in, will be this sort of place, too. And here's the deal. I really barely grazed it. All told, this made up just a few years of my life, but my memories of the LES happened to me while I was young. I was just starting out on this adventure called "a career in the theatre." Everything seemed more intense and jam-packed. Back then, everything happened fast, it seemed, and the experiences were in the form of concentrate. I know this because now I am older and not in such a damn hurry. I try to go back sometimes, but it is never and will never be the same. I have returned five times for the New York International Fringe Festival. Despite the fancy name, when I first went in 1999, I experienced it as a messy, dirty, punk-rock party. That was the epitome of the Lower East Side theatre experience in a nutshell. I went back last year to the New York International Fringe Festival with my solo show CHOP and it was nothing like that. It seemed like the word fringe should be taken out of the title. Too many rules, too much red tape, too much sprawl, too much bureaucracy, too much expense. I look at FringeNYC now and it looks like an institution. A big, unwieldy, out-of-touch, overly-commercial institution. I looked at the kids working the FringeNYC in 2012 and all I thought was, "my god it looks so dull" and "just loosen up and stop going by your damn handbook, we're making theatre here" and "poor miserable bastards, you'll never know the fun and horror of what it used to be like". And it is not just that I'm older now. Sure I'm not the same. But neither is it. But as I write this, it occurs to me... I guess to look backwards from time to time can be, in a small way, a reminder of how we look forward.
RASPBERRY FIZZ at the Margo Jones Theatre, Dallas TX
Nice write-up by Mark Lowry on TheaterJones.com about my "small-batch" theatre company Audacity Theatre Lab. Here's a snippet...
Dallas — Just in case you’re curious how Audacity Theatre Lab has managed to fly under the radar in DFW for more than a decade, and still make some of the most consistently entertaining shows on a budget for which the term “shoestring” seems fancy, you’re not alone. The group, run by Brad McEntire and his wife Ruth Engel-McEntire, specializes in original work, often one-person shows—or at least with a small cast.
In the past month, it has presented three such shows in the new Margo Jones Theatre space in Fair Park, two of them still running on one bill. A.V. Phibes’ play Grading on a Curve, directed by McEntire and performed by Lauren Moore, begins the show as a 25-minute curtain raiser. That’s followed by McEntire’s play Raspberry Fizz.
One of the first shows presented there after the 2013 State Fair closed was under the Audacity banner, an import from Portland, Ore., Kate Mura’s one-person mask show Suburban Tribe. It was performed twice in early November. Mura, the Artistic Ambassador of Portland’s Fuse Theatre Ensemble, wrote the work as a thank you to a New Jersey community that rallied around a family after a “freak accident.” She’s been performing it on the festival circuit for several years. (McEntire also does that circuit.)
Stage Directions Blog AUDACITY'S BRAD McENTIRE TALKS ABOUT THE NEW PRODUCTION OF HIS PLAY RASPBERRY FIZZ
by Christopher Taylor,
Raspberry Fizz at the 2013 Houston Fringe Festival
Brad McEntire is Artistic Director of Audacity Theatre Lab, a small company dedicated to the voices of a small group of individual artists. In the past few years, he has presented his solo show Chop at festivals and venues around the country, completed a commission for Denton’s Sundown Collaborative Theatre called Carter Stubbs Takes Flight, presented a one-act about a vengeful Tiki god and cell phone etiquette called I Have Angered a Great God and produced the scripted/improv hybrid Dinosaur and Robot Stop a Train at last summer’s Festival of Independent Theatres. We cornered McEntire to ask about his current project Raspberry Fizz, playing on Saturday afternoons at the Margo Jones Theatre at Fair Park’s Magnolia Lounge in Dallas until December 7.
Q: Tell us about Raspberry Fizz?
A: Sure. Raspberry Fizz is about two adolescents hanging out on a street corner, a boy and a girl. It is 1949 and they are in a small town. Basically, the boy is working up his courage to ask the girl to a school dance. It is actually really charming and maybe the least weird play I’ve written in a while.
Q: Least weird? No robots and dinosaurs? No tigers fights or rocket packs? No amputation fetishists?
A: Well, it still has some weird sprinkled in. There is a mysterious carnival barker on a corner down the street from the kids. He keeps muttering this strange sideshow bally about expectations and possibilities.
Q: You play the Barker, right? Where’d he come from?
A: I play the Barker. He’s based a little on those Coney Island pitchmen and on Jonathon Pryce’s character in the movie “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” Which is a movie that scared the crap out of me when I was a kid.
Q: What prompted you to write Raspberry Fizz?
A: I had the idea of two 12 year olds talking on a street corner in mind, as an image, for a while. I went through a Norman Rockwell phase, too, and the idea to set it in the late 1940s seemed to fit. Originally, I envisioned it as a two-hander, kind of spinning out a simple dilemma into an interesting yearn. For thematic purposes, I put the Barker in and the play became what it is today.
Q: This is not the first production. This show premiered at the Out of the Loop Festival at Addison’s Water Tower Theatre is March 2012. Why remount it?
A: Yeah, the play premiered at the Out of the Loop. It went up a week after I got married. Usually, I direct my own plays, but at the time I was busy, uh, planning and being in a wedding. Andy Baldwin directed it. It had Jeff Swearingen, Natalie Young and Shane Beeson in it. They did a wonderful job. This past summer I was invited to the Houston Fringe Festival and I decided to take Raspberry Fizz. I recast it with Travis Stuebing and Tashina Richardson. I stepped in to play the Barker, a role I had originally written for myself to play anyway. This show, with different people and slight rewrites, came out different than Andy’s production. Since we had rehearsed it and put so much work into it, and I was proud of it, we thought it a shame just to do it for three shows in Houston and call it quits. Plus, Travis, Tashina and I have a great time working together. So, we are extending the production for these Saturday afternoon shows here in Dallas. Local audiences can get a chance to see the show.
Q: Saturday afternoons? That is not a traditional time for theatre.
A: Seemed to fit the tone of the shows. Plus, it means we can use the venue in the day time while other productions happen at night. Utilizing resources and all. I'll admit, the afternoon slot is a hard sell. That's why I'm trying to get the word out. Like a lot of theatre productions around the area, audiences usually really enjoy it. It is just a matter of initially getting them through the front door.
Q: You’ve paired it with a curtain-opener, too, right? Tell us about that.
A: Yeah. I have this little 20 minute one-woman piece by Brooklyn-based artist A. V. Phibes called Grading On A Curve. It is about a nihilistic woman who goes on extreme fasts and develops cannibalistic tendencies, especially for fingers. Then one day, she meets a man with no fingers, but flashy lobster-claws, and falls in love. It is weird and wonderful and because it is so short, it is hard to present anywhere. The excellent Lauren Moore performs it before Raspberry Fizz. The two pieces go surprisingly well together as companion pieces. Together, the running time of the two shows is just over an hour.
Q: What’s next for you and Audacity Theatre Lab?
A: We’re taking a break during the holidays and will be back in January with Andy Eninger’s solo show The Last Castrato. Jeff Swearingen will perform it. It is a co-production between Audacity and his company Fun House Theatre. The show involves a man born without a penis who falls in love with a girl who was born with her skin inside out. That will also be at the Margo Jones Theatre. Then in the spring we are hoping to produce a solo performance festival, the first of its kind in Dallas. We have some other irons in the fire, too. We’ll see what materializes.
Q: Details on Raspberry Fizz please.
A: The show will be playing Saturdays at 2:00 PM, November 16, 23, 30 and December 7 at the historic Margo Jones Theatre at the Magnolia Lounge, Fair Park, 1121 First Avenue, Dallas, TX 75210. Tickets are $10 suggested donation at the door. More information at: www.AudacityTheatreLab.com
Me performing in my small "fringe" showRASPBERRY FIZZat the 2013 Houston Fringe. Yeah, I'm outdoors. Three actors total. Small but mighty.
Here's a game: Which is more powerful? A lion or a salmon? Now, same question, but this time let us put some context to it. Let us specify that the location is in the middle of a raging river. Get what's going on? I changed the game. I read an article lately that pointed out something everyone in the theatre arts already knows... it is virtually impossible to become wealthy, let alone make a consistent and solid living wage in the theatre. Even so-called "stars" of the industry - Tony winners and the like - struggle to earn a decent living and can spend entire careers floating from job to job. The big payday is rare and hard to come by. The part of the article that sticks out to me is this statement:
For playwrights, that huge payday happens only if their musical migrates from Broadway to a long, healthy life on the road, or their spoken-word play becomes the latest bauble of the regional-theater season.
I don't write plays that usually become "the latest bauble of the regional-theater season." I purposely write small plays, designed to have high impact through strangeness, humor and thematic unity. I write plays designed to be performed by one to five actors on sparse sets. I write plays that are designed to be seen by a few dozen people at a time, not hundreds. So where does that leave me? In a career that is already under-compensated I operate far out on the fringes from the kinds of theatre that even comes close to occasionally making money for its creator. That small slice in the core of the mainstream is already too small to go around in the hyper competitive fields of theatre. Whether a director, actor or playwright, on any given day there will be hundreds and hundreds of fellow artists competing against you for the limited number of productions, gigs, grants, fellowships, residencies and so on. Plus, there's this:
"You soon discover that there’s a small circle of megastar directors whom the critics love and managers employ, who get most of the work. It’s often mysterious the way that some directors suddenly emerge and are lionized, while others languish in obscurity.”
That seems true. The best person doesn't always win. It is a matter of context, I suppose. A lion in freezing rapids is virtually helpless while a salmon on the Serengeti is probably dead. The industry really is who you know and how good your timing is. Sometimes, I think it is arbitrary who breaks through to recognition. It is seldom the most talented or the most individual or the most anything. Often it is just some mediocre artist who maybe marketed themselves a little better than everyone else, or had an uncle who played golf with so and so. So, here I am. A playwright of very idiosyncratic kinds of plays. These plays, I know, are not the kinds that the market usually allows to make it to the top tiers of the industry*. Even if I were to be that sort of playwright, the bulk of jobs go to a small circle of folks who know the right people. This is a dilemma. Think about it. You do, as a profession, something that has little "market" value**. As this professional, you specialize in a particularly far-a-field subset of that industry. How do you make a valid career out of that? How do you make a career out of a game so rigged and undervalued? Me? I change the game. I stop putting energy into trying to compete for regional theatre productions. I produce my own plays. I produce the same piece more than once to expand audiences and hedge my odds of making money back, of making a small, small profit. I resign myself to having to teach and do day jobs to make a living. These jobs have nothing to do with the creation of personal, idiosyncratic theatre. I resign myself to having to make a billion tiny steps instead of big steps to get from one career level to another. I don't just change the game... I make a new one.
* The "top tier" in the theatre is a very narrow market-friendly aesthetic.
** The market favors cinematic acting, domestic content like family dramas or social issues and accessibility.
"That’s the thing you have to understand about the whole process of art (or the work that we do) – you’re only half of the equation. It’s an interaction between you and the person who’s going to experience the work. The person who’s going to experience the work is bringing just as much to it and is just as important as you are."
I listened to a great interview today with writer/artist Austin Kleon. The quote above is a great reminder. I am struggling lately getting the work done. Nothing drastic. Just the usual reach into the recesses of my soul and imagination to see if I can cobble together an original idea. Driving home from my teaching gig just earlier today a whole bunch of thoughts on my theatre activities whirled through my mind. I was thinking about why I do my theatre work, how I want to share it and the connections I hope it makes.
Actually, I've been thinking about my theatre work a lot lately. Part of this is because I've been doing a great deal of theatre lately.
Travis Stuebing and Tashina Richardson in RASPBERRY FIZZ
I've been rehearsing RASPBERRY FIZZ with some kick-ass actors. I'm taking it to the Houston Fringe Festival at the end of the week. As I am directing the play I am reminded by the process that it has been a long time since I have been in a sort of traditional rehearsal process. My eyes go to the details of the performances and I'm torn between what I did a lot in my earlier days (shaping and molding a performance out of an actor) and more recent interests in multiple approaches to acting decisions and an emphasis on spontaneity. It is definitely a workout for some mental muscles I haven't flexed in a while.
RASPBERRY FIZZ is a small play. It is a one-act that times in at under an hour. The process of working on it has emboldened two ideas in me... 1.) I love the size of the play. It is small, close, and intimate. It is not a play to run in a large amphitheatre, but instead would work well in front of a few dozen audience members in a cozy venue. 2.) The size also makes me want to work on something large in scope. This play is like having an appetizer, and I now want to move on to the main course of a mighty feast.
I realize these are two somewhat opposing ideas... the small and the large. I think, though, this can be reconciled. I think I can create a piece that is truly significant working in weighty, important thematic territory, yet at the same time still keep it very intimate. I think of small-cast heavy-hitters like Beckett's WAITING FOR GODOT, Frayn's COPENHAGEN or Stindberg's MISS JULIE. I big/little play. This is what I want to share with audiences.
Travis Stuebing as Ellson and Tashina Richardson as Samantha in RASPBERRY FIZZ
My sweet little coming-of-age play RASPBERRY FIZZ will head off to the Houston Fringe Festival in about a week. If you find yourself in Houston, Texas and wanna see some tender, funny, and slightly weird theatre, head on out to see it! All the info you could ever want... HERE.
I am pleased to announce that my little one-act RASPBERRY FIZZ will be at the 2013 Houston Fringe Festival next month. RASPBERRY FIZZ is an exploration of expectations and the potentialities of the future tied up in a weird, tender and humorous coming-of-age encounter between two adolescents in 1949 small town America. The play was last seen in Addison, Texas in March of 2012 at the Water Tower Theatre's Out of the Loop Fringe Festival. That was a well-reviewed production directed by Andy Baldwin and featured an kick-ass cast that included Shane Beeson, Natalie Young and Jeff Swearingen. I'm thrilled to take this charming little play on the road. I am pleased to team up with two of the cats who worked on CARTER STUBBS TAKES FLIGHT in Denton last spring. RASPBERRY FIZZ will feature Travis Stuebing as Ellson, Tashina Richardson as Samantha and me as the Barker. Directed by me, Brad McEntire. Details: Playing... Friday, October 4 at 8 PM, Saturday, October 5 at 9:30 PM, Sunday, October 6 at 3:30 PM
At Bohemeo's Cafe and Theatre 708 Telephone Road, Houston, TX 77023 Tickets and more info at the Houston Fringe Festival website. Or more info HERE.
In the continuing saga of the Out of the Loop Fringe Festival, I journeyed back over to Addison Theatre Center to see two individual theatre's one-acts. A gusty, cloudy evening made for perfect play watching in their Studio Theatre.
First up was Audacity Theatre Lab and what was described as "A Sweet New Play" by local playwright and founder of Audacity, Brad McEntire. Entitled Raspberry Fizz (playing once more on March 9), a sweet play it was, set in 1949, when Truman was president and minimum wage was going up to 75 cents an hour. Dubble Bubble was the gum of choice, that fizzy soda was only 5 cents, and the worst thing you would ever say to someone was "Go suck an egg!"
A mysterious street corner barker sits in front of a record player and a taped up box. At intervals, he puts the needle on the record and tells passersby to witness "the expected, the unsuspected." Reciting short tales of unusual events, oddities, like those in the back of sensation rags, the barker then returns to his stool and paper.
Ellison has come to that same corner for the last five days, in particular to the stoop where high school friend Samantha has been, with an important question to ask her. But the "cat's got his tongue" and he just can't muster up the courage. Talking about what they want to be when they grow up, "Sam" teases "Ellie," calls him a sap and a square, and generally they both pass the time. Samantha is a flirt who gets poor Ellison to buy her things. As he leaves to purchase gum, he passes the barker, asks him what he's up to, and the con begins. In what McEntire describes as "a heart-warming exploration of expectations and the potentialities of the unmapped future tied up in ... an encounter between two young adolescents in small town America, Raspberry Fizz reminds us of an innocence we'll never see again.
All three actors used their talents to take the audience to that more innocent time -- when dreams were made on the steps of a stoop instead of playing the lottery or getting on a reality TV show. Your future or fortunes could change for just a nickel.
Shane Beeson played the barker with the friendly yet smarmy personality a good con artist needs. Both older than their characters, Natalie Young and Jeff Swearingen played that bygone era's youth with sincerity. Not trying to fake younger, they instead relied on the emotions of great potential all Americans felt coming out of World War II. Young was all smart-alecky, gum chewing, and kidding around as Sam. Swearingen made use of his natural clown/comic facial and body gestures to portray put upon Ellison as a true sad sack.
A thoughtful conception piece, a fun trip down a memory lane I traveled a bit of, and a sweet slice-of-life, coming-of-age play made Raspberry Fizz a tiny wonderment.
I tried to get a little video of RASPBERRY FIZZ. I took a camera I'd never used before and had a hard time using. I did get a nice few minutes that came out pretty steady that gives a good impression of the tone and acting of the piece. Enjoy.
Jeff Swearingen as Ellson in Brad McEntire's Raspberry Fizz
Review from Out of the Loop: Good Actors, Director Bring ‘Raspberry Fizz’ to Life
D Magazine FrontRow Blog - ByM. Lance Lusk - March 5th, 2012 10:34am
Take two of the best actors in North Texas, put them in a fresh play by a local playwright, and give them a director (Andy Baldwin) who knows how to craft and elicit amazing performances, and you got something. It seems like a simple formula, but it is one too often overlooked in a lot of plays. Audacity Theatre Lab provides that straightforward prescription in their delightful and rousing production of Brad McEntire’s Raspberry Fizz at Water Tower Theatre’s Out of the Loop Fringe Festival.
The scene is 1949 in small town U.S.A., and young Ellson (Jeff Swearingen) is trying to screw up his courage to ask his adolescent classmate Samantha (Natalie Young) to the Harvest Dance. Throw in a bizarre carnival barker (an understated Shane Beeson) peddling mysterious wares on the corner who is not making things easy for “Ellie.”
Again, it is a modest setup, but one that is truly magical in these able hands. Swearingen (The Hand at Broken Gears and many plays at Plano Children’s Theatre) captures the essence of a sweet, yet annoying and awkward proto-nerd. He’s a hoot in high pants. Young (Red Light Winter at Second Thought) as the tough and fast-talking Sam is an incandescent ball of gum-chomping charm. She nails the wisecracking smarts and speech patterns of those screwball comedies from the 1930s and 40s.
The right ingredients make this Fizz beyond refreshing.
