Hello blogoshere,We have just completed the 2011 Ground UP, From the Ground UP reading series!
4 weeks
3 plays
1 musical
4 stage managers
4 directors
7 mus
ic stands
2 producers (me and Seth Shelden)
5 stools
10 cases of beer
16 bags of ice
2 cases of Cheerwine
Each play surprised me, and I'll tell you how and why.
Week 1: Falling in Like by Jerry Sipp
This is an example of exactly why we do the series. There was something about this play on paper. We couldn't put our finger on it. It was solid, but how would it play in front of an audience. The answer is, it plays amazingly well. It has a charm about it that recalls Neil Simon (and that's high praise coming from me.) It's quippy, fast, and a ton of fun. And so many great performances.
Week 2: PratFalls, by Holly Webber
The surprise in this experience was all about Victor Verheaghe, who played Roy. Roy is such a great character, a charismatic, huge personality. Victor had the task of setting the tone for the entire piece. Victor is warm, enigmatic, sensitive, and intense. Accordingly the play was warm, enigmatic, sensitive and intense. It was a pleasure to watch.
Week 3: 516, by Katherine Clark Gray
When you pick up this play, you immediately think of Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things, where a woman takes a man and molds him into someone else as an art project. It's a great twist. 516 has a similar twist, plus another big twist, and (wait for it...) another big twist. Having read the script a few times I forgot the power of those twists. The surprise for me was the number of audible gasps. That's drama.
Week 4: Bromance, the Dudesical, by Ewalt and Walker
I'm partial to Bromance. I was in it, and I played Marty. There is no doubt in my mind that we've seen the early stages of what is going to be a huge hit. The Phone Call is a spectacular song. I have had Heartburn and ChiliCheese Fries in my head for days. And I can't tell you the last time I had more fun on stage. The surprise for me was how EVERYONE agreed with me--this is a hit.
So on to 2012. We're already accepting new scripts. Send them to Submissions@GroundUPproductions.org
I hope you got a chance to see at least one of them. This year was a winner.
Here is the poster below. Almost, the poster. Notice the typo where we wrote DUDESICLE, instead of DUDESICAL. So, instead of a musical about dudes, it was more like dudes frozen on a stick. We fixed it.
1 comment:
To echo Guy's sentiments, I agree that this past month's reading series was an overwhelming success. In my opinion, we've never produced four readings more diverse, or more strong, overall, than these four. Our writers, as well as our directors, actors, and stage managers, were all incredibly talented and dedicated, and we couldn't have chosen our participants more wisely.
To add to Guy's inventory, we had a great turnout (my rough guess is around 150 audience members over the four readings) after a fantastic response to our call for submissions this year (we received, I think, around 75 scripts).
It's always a challenge to appreciate the ways in which a script that reads a certain way on the page will change when read aloud. I agree with my co-producer: the surprises for me in hearing these four plays change when they came "off the page" were almost all positive.
Each of them deserves a full production, I believe, and I hope our reading series proves to be a helpful step in making that happen.
I'm very much looking forward to seeing the scripts we receive for the next series.
Seth
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