John W. Borek PresentsA Eugene Ionesco Double Bill  The Lesson&The Bald Soprano  Directed by Michael H. Arve If you like Monty Python humor, check these plays out! Special preview June 19th 7:30pm $ 5.00 for all between 18 and 25 (at door only) June 20, 21, 22, 27, 28 & 29th @ 7:30 June 23 @ 2:00 pmTicket Prices:$10.00 in advance $20.00 at Door $15.00 for students and seniors.   watch WHEC-TV 10 interview, including excerpt HERE! with Meredith Powell and Michael H Arve The Lesson The play takes place in the office and dining room of a small French flat. The Professor, a man of about 50 to 60, is expecting a new Pupil (aged 18). The Professor’s Maid, a stout, red-faced woman of about 40 to 50, worries about the Professor’s health. As the absurd and nonsensical lesson progresses, the Professor grows more and more angry with (what he perceives as) the Pupil’s ignorance, and the Pupil becomes more and more quiet and meek. Even her health begins to deteriorate, and what starts as a toothache develops into her entire body aching. At the climax of the play, the Pupil is stabbed and murdered by the Professor, after a long bout of non sequiturs (which are frequently used in Ionesco’s plays). The play ends with the Maid greeting a new Pupil, taking the play full circle, back to the beginning.”The Lesson,”  could easily be seen by the politically minded as a grim cautionary tale for today. Beneath the preposterous comic surfaces, Ionesco makes unsettling connections between the corruption of means of communication and the unleashing of man’s basest, most violent instincts. He seems to suggest that the destruction of language leads inexorably to the destruction of life.”The New York Times The Bald SopranoThe Smiths are a traditional couple from London who have invited another couple, the Martins, over for a visit. They are joined later by the Smiths’ maid, Mary, and the local fire chief, who is also Mary’s lover. The two families engage in meaningless banter, telling stories and relating nonsensical poems. At one point, Mrs. Martin converses with her husband as if he were a stranger she just met. As the fire chief turns to leave, he mentions “the bald soprano” in passing, which has a very unsettling effect on the others. Mrs. Smith replies that “she always wears her hair in the same style.” After the Fire Chief’s exit, the play devolves into a series of complete non-sequiturs, with no resemblance to normal conversation. It ends with the two couples shouting in unison “It’s not that way. It’s over here!,” right before a blackout occurs. When the lights come back on, the scene starts from the beginning with the Martins reciting the Smiths’ lines from the beginning of the play for a while before the curtain closes. In “The Bald Soprano” words have all but lost their ability to convey sense, and no one seems to care, or indeed to notice. Mr. and Mrs. Smith sit placidly in their comfortable parlor, rendered here as a riot of chintz by the set designer Loy Arcenas, exchanging casual postprandial chatter about their dinner, the news of the day and a funny family who all happen to share the name of Bobby Watson. The increasing inanity of their conversation – “Yogurt is excellent for the stomach, the kidneys, appendicitis and apotheosis,” Mrs. Smith observes – ruffles neither of them. The NY Times

Read the press about the show!

WHAM-13 interview with Norma Holland, Michael H Arve and Karen Craft here

A Eugene Ionesco Double Bill at MuCCC

MJ Savastano plays “hopelessly dim student” in Ionesco’s “The Lesson” at MuCCC  by Susan Jordan

Canandaigua Academy gave ‘the gift of theater’

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Honeoye Falls actress captures spirit of Ionesco

listen to the Fickle 93.3, ZONE@94.1, Warm101.3 radio interview with Michael Arve, Kevin Sweeney and John W Borek HERE  

MuCCC 5-14-13_warm103interview

John W. Borek presents Slow Parade: an evening of short plays by Louie Podlaski

Pay-what-you-will  $6 donation suggested

An old time television icon gets his due, A terminally ill doctor sees the medical profession from the other side, A couple during a storm reluctantly spend the night in a strangers house, A passenger on a plane sinks her loquacious teeth into her seat-mate, Death-row prison guards question their own morality, A man and a woman years apart find a way to speak in the afterlife, and a band of Superheroes faces their ultimate demise.

These are the stories of ‘SLOW PARADE’ a collection of seven short plays written by local TANYS award winning playwright Louie Podlaski over an exhaustive marathon for most of 2012, written SPECIFICALLY for this evening, with the directing talents of Jean Gordon-Ryon, Mike Stenzel, Jacqueline Moe, Bonnie Meath-Lang, Karen Tuccio and Kimberly Niles and including many of Rochester, NY’s community theatre acting giants. Please come out and support the world premiere of these works.

Cast:

Samantha Allen, Beth Applebaum, Don Bartalo, Daniel Brucker, Kathy Coughenour, Andrew Cowen, Darlando Eanon, Tony Eckel, Peter Elliott, Stephen Elliott, Morey Fazzi, Carl Girard, James Heath, Katie Keating, Bonnie Meath-Lang, Jacqueline Moe, Kimberly Niles, Ben Rand, Marcy Savastano, Mario Savastano, David Spiro, Reuben J. Tapp.

Polite Company presents: Summer Camp

Justin Rielly’s Come Talk to Me.   Staged reading  pay what you wish

A counselor’s secretary is returning to work after a family conflict, but when she meets a young bookseller desperate for help, she must step up to save his life – while trying to keep her own emotions in check.  Playwright Justin Rielly (She Will Have Her Way) returns to the MuCCC stage with this workshop reading of this full-length drama, starring Meredith Powell (Ionesco’s The Lesson & The Bald Soprano) and Spencer Christiano (Heartland).

Jawbone Puppet Theater & Poncili Company present:

PG time is over!  Put the kids to bed, and come out for an evening of adult puppetry you won’t forget!

Experimental adult puppet show at MuCCC

SUMMER PUPPET TOUR 2013

Experimental adult puppet show at MuCCC 

PG time is over!  Put the kids to bed, and come out for an evening of adult puppetry you won’t forget!

Jawbone Puppet Theater & Poncili Company present:

SACRED CANDY

Puppets.  Big masks.  Physical theater.

Including the short masterpiece “Fire Hydrant Woman gets Tooken Away,” written, designed and directed by the 5-year-old, which culminates in a disemboweled t-rex spewing guts and candies, the show quickly spirals into madness, as a clueless girl meets the world through the eyes of Candywoot, a schizophrenic clown obsessed with the reality of a near, but bizarre, dystopian future, while a man with a bad leg tries to make his way home, and everybody prays to the holy mutant cow in hopes of ending their addiction to candy.

Babies will cry, and monsters will lose their shape no matter how many eyes you have to see them.  In the midst of all this, our potty-mouthed biblical scholar will regale you with the tale of “Genesis, Chapter 38,” a funny, dirty retelling of one of the weirder bible stories.  Be forwarned:  this show contains scenes of graphic puppet on puppet sex.

$8 advance/$10 donation (no one turned away for lack of funds!)

And we also have cheap art for sale–hand made prints, small

sculptures, comics and much more!

Jawbone Puppet Theater is a quirky, potty-mouthed, father-son act from Brooklyn, NY, by way of Taiwan.  Poncili Company is a mysterious experimental art collective from Puerto Rico.  We are together again after our triumphant winter tour, “Dinosaur Saints & Humble Robots,” which you can check out here:

http://www.facebook.com/DinosaurSaintsHumbleRobots

Please check out more pictures and videos of our work here:

www.adamende.com

and here:

Poncilidad.tumblr.com

Poncili Creacion : FB

And check out 5-year-old Corn Snake’s Facebook page to see images of

his monster prints and street performance:

http://www.facebook.com/cornsnakemonsterprint

Also, here is a video of Jawbone Puppet Theater performing “Jurassic

Justice” at the Chicken Hut in Brooklyn:

Jurassic Justice -Toy Dinosaur show

Judah Leblang  Finding My Place:  One Man’s Journey through the Middle Ages

Great Lakes Native Son/NPR commentator comes home to share humorous stories about life in middle age

MuCCC welcomes Boston-based writer/storyteller Judah Leblang for a humorous look at life in middle age.

Leblang’s show, “One Man’s Journey through the Middle Ages,” is based on his recent memoir, Finding My Place, which chronicles both his youth growing up in Cleveland, Ohio during the 1960s and ‘70s, his ongoing attachment to that gritty city and its unfortunate sports teams, and his life today as a gay, single, hard of hearing man in Boston.

The show explores Leblang’s misadventures in the gay mecca of Provincetown, Massachusetts during carnival week, an emotional trip to President Obama’s inauguration in 2009, and an episode of hearing loss, in which the author, a former teacher of deaf children and a sign language interpreter, suddenly lost most of the hearing in one ear.

Leblang has performed the show to sold-out audiences in Cambridge and Boston, MA and at various community centers, churches and synagogues in the Northeast and Midwest. The show has been called “poignant,” “rhythmic…his words and voice in synch,” and “totally engaging.” His readings and events have been featured in the Boston Globe, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and in various gay publications around the US.

He is the author of the ‘Life in the Slow Lane’ column for Bay Windows, Boston’s gay newspaper, and a frequent contributor to The Health Show, produced by WAMC-radio in Albany, NY, which is carried on more than 150 NPR and ABC-radio network stations around the US. His radio commentaries and true-life stories have been featured on WKSU radio in Northeast Ohio, New Hampshire Public Radio, and many other stations.

$10 in advance; $12 at the door.

Video clips and his radio pieces are on line at www.judahleblang.com  and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jARFEIdlcfw

His book,  ”Finding My Place: One Man’s Journey from Cleveland to Boston and Beyond” is now available from Lake Effect Press. See  Lakeeffectpress.com for more information.

ShakeCo: The Shakespeare Company presents “ShakeCo Radio Theater: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – A Scandal in Bohemia & The Red-headed League”.

“ShakeCo Radio Theater” will perform two stories from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on Friday, July 19, 2013 at 8:00pm. at MuCCC, the Multi-use Community Cultural Center, 142 Atlantic Avenue, Rochester.  “ShakeCo Radio Theater” shows are “Pay What You Will” productions and all proceeds will benefit the MuCCC.  For more information, visit www.MuCCC.org.

About the stories:

Following the success of the first two Sherlock Holmes novels, A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four, Conan Doyle began a long series of short stories featuring his brilliant detective.  These stories were originally published in “The Strand Magazine” and Conan Doyle would write fifty-six by the time he finally retired.

“A Scandal in Bohemia”, the first Holmes short story, details the fallout of a liaison between the King of Bohemia and an American opera singer, Irene Adler.  What seems to be a simple matter of recovering a damning photograph proves to be more challenging than Holmes expects.

“The Red-headed League” is one of the most-adapted of all the Holmes stories. It details the mysterious “Red-headed League”, an enigmatic group whose sole reason for existence seems to be copying the Encyclopedia Brittanica word-for-word.  When the league disbands unexpectedly, Holmes is brought in to explain it all.

About the production:

Hearkening back to the days before television, “ShakeCo Radio Theater” endeavors to recreate the mood and styles that once dominated the airwaves.  Shows range from dramatic readings to more elaborate audio dramas.  “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” will be presented as fully-cast audio dramas.  Anyone who enjoys old-time radio, audio dramas or audiobooks is encouraged to attend.

About the Company:

ShakeCo: The Shakespeare Company of Greater Rochester is a locally based small-scale production company devoted primarily to the performance of Shakespeare’s works throughout the Greater Rochester area. The Company put on it’s first production, “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark”, in August of 2000 and produced nine shows over the next five years.  Since 2010, ShakeCo has been based out of the MuCCC, where Artistic Director Philip R. Frey serves as an Artist-in-Residence.

For more information and to see an archive of past productions, find us on facebook or visit www.ShakeCo.com.

DVC Presents:  More Than This, a world premiere musical!

Music and Lyrics by Vanessa Carlton

Book by Mario J. Savastano

More Than This, a new musical featuring the songs of singer/songwriter/musician Vanessa Carlton, tells the story of five teens whose lives are intertwined for one transformative year, until they find themselves pulled apart by love, fate, and dreams both shattered and fulfilled.  Over the next seven years the fallout from the separation shapes their journey to adulthood as they navigate through the intricacies of love, careers, sex, and independence, all the while moving  towards an unexpected, yet inevitable, reunion.  The play explores the complexities of love, loyalty and sacrifice, and the struggle to define success and the self in the modern world, all amid the backdrop of Carlton’s beautiful instrumentals and hauntingly emotional vocals.

DVC is proud to bring the world premiere of More Than This to MuCCC, and is grateful for the support of Vanessa Carlton and Brick Wall Management.

About DVC:

Dream/Visualize/Create, a collection of students and graduates of Wilson Magnet High School’s drama club and local artists, is celebrating its 13^thyear of bringing thought-provoking, challenging productions to audiences.  In keeping with the club’s mission to perform meaningful, socially-conscious theatre, DVC has performed shows such as Stop Kiss, The Shadow Box, No Exit, and a double bill of The Trojan Women and Necessary Targets, and club-developed original projects such as Something to Believe In, Reinvented: A Dracula-Inspired Goth Rock Musical and JUNK: the Musical.

Performance dates:

Thursday, July 25^th   @ 7:30

Friday, July 26^th    @ 7:30

Saturday, July 27^th   @ 2 & 7:30

Tickets $5, free to DVC donors.

Title: “Shadows from Can Tho”

Start time: 7:30 pm

Price: $8 advance, $10 at door

Description:

In “Shadows from Can Tho”, Richard Barth welcomes you to the world of a man who was a combat helicopter pilot in Vietnam in the early 1970s, as America was trying to escape the Vietnam War and turn it over to the South Vietnamese.

The tales in this original, 90-minute, one-man theater piece are stories of real people, real places and real events in the life of a young chopper pilot in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam in 1970 and ’71.

Excerpted from his 50-year memoir, A Castle Dark, the stories in this show are hair-raising, humorous, sentimental and frank, accurately reflecting what life was like as the pilot of a Huey helicopter flying troops into hot LZs, making life-saving rescues, and dealing with the ambiguities of day-to-day life in a complex war. Integrated with these true stories are popular music selections of that day, which directly connect the twenty-first century theatergoer to that place and time.

Barth’s firsthand accounts are a rare glimpse of a rare breed of men, the chopper pilots of Vietnam. (Net proceeds from these performances go directly to landmine and unexploded ordnance removal in Southeast Asia.)