Something From Nothing

Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative (CPI) and Cincinnati Arts Association continue the New Voices Series of staged readings by local actors, with a two-act play.

Booty of the Year -
       Written by Cisco Montgomery
       Directed by Kevin Crowley

A story of love, betrayal and sibling rivalry, is set in the world of professional wrestling, where two sisters, jealous of each other's careers and in love with the same man, are manipulated by a greedy promoter into wrestling each other in a Realty TV contest that portends tragic consequences . . .

Tuesday, February 12, 2008, at 7:30 PM
Aronoff Center for the Arts, Fifth Third Bank Theater.
Corner of Main and Seventh Streets.

Tickets are only $7 ($4 students) at the door on night of performance.  Reservations may be made in advance at Aronoff Center Box Office, or by calling 513-621-2787, or online at
http://www.cincinnatiarts.org/event_detail.jsp?event_id=753     The Cast:
Khrys Styles as Miss Longcar
Piper Davis as Nasty Girl
Reggie Willis as Big Man
Khisaun Ferguson as Honey Boy

Khrys Styles
Khrys Styles' first love is the stage, but her name is synonymous with entertainment. 
Even if this is the first time you've seen the name, her face and/or voice has more than likely graced the airwaves of your radio or television as a radio morning show host and news anchor, as well as the host of NXS Music and Entertainment on UPN, WBQC & WOTH.  She has also been featured in national commercials and multiple stage productions locally and nationally.  Khrys is the owner of Oneblkwmn Entertainment, providing the voice for many businesses across the country.

Piper Davis 
Piper Davis' recent performances were with The Phoenix Black Theater Troupe, and locally with New Stage Collective Theater, Musical Caroline, or Change.   A token of her numerous stage credits include: Harlem Renaissance, In the Blood, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Riff Raff, A Bag of Groceries, Let My People Go!, Checkmates and Life As We Know It; the list goes on and on. . . .  Piper also toured with Madcap Productions.  Television and film credits include Heaven's All-Star Band (CW), African American Lives with Oprah Winfrey (PBS), Brothers of the Borderline (National Underground Railroad Freedom Center), Rendezvous (BET) and Open The Sky.  Her awards include a Midwest Regional Emmy and a Black Theater Performance Award.

Reggie Willis
Reggie Willis, a Cincinnati native, has performed at the Playhouse in the Park, Mariemont Players, the Know Tribe Theater and Xavier U. Players.  Reggie has also done extensive commercial and film work and was awarded a special category Acclaim Award in 2007.

Khisaun Ferguson
Khisaun Ferguson, born in Detroit, Michigan, relocated to Cincinnati from Columbus to study Business Administration at UC.  He has been acting since he was six and has appeared in television and numerous theatrical and short-film productions.  Aside from acting, Khisaun is an accomplished model, working with brands like Abercrombie & Fitch, Buckle, Gap, and David's Bridal, to name a few.

About the Playwright:
Cisco Montgomery's script for the KET documentary, Jewish Kentucky, is in production by Preservations Films in Louisville.  He is active in the mental health community, a jazz devotee and a frustrated adventurer who has spent time in Cuba and Haiti.  Booty of the Year, Cisco's third play, was work-shopped in the Playwriting Intensive Program at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.    
The playwright resides in Louisville, KY 40203.

About the Director:
Kevin Crowley, a stage, television and movie actor, playwright and director, has long list of credits in Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere.   Local theater credits:  Mice and Men (Actor) at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Opus (Actor) at Ensemble.  The Monkey's Paw (Playwright, Director & Actor) was presented in 2007 Cincinnati Fringe Festival.  CPI association:  The Riverside  (Playwright & Director), Soldiers' Christmas and The Footprints of the Polar Bear . . . (Actor).
Director Kevin Crowley resides in Cincinnati, OH 45227.

For more information about the play, contact:
Cisco Montgomery
502-727-7972.
ahhcisco@yahoo.com

About CPI:
The Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative is a grassroots organization of playwrights, directors and actors devoted to bringing plays written by local playwrights to the Cincinnati stage in the form of staged readings.  Staged readings are an important step in the development of new plays.  The audience is encouraged but not required to join in the collaborative process of bringing a new play to life.  Staged readings allow playwrights, actors and directors to receive feedback from the audience about the play-in-progress.  Plays originally presented in the New Voices Series have been produced locally as well as in New York and Los Angeles.

For more information about CPI, contact:
Phil Paradis at 513-241-5154 or visit www.cinciplaywrights.org.

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Go! review

As in the game of three-card monte that runs through the script, not everything is as it seems in “Topdog/Underdog,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Suzan-Lori Parks now playing at the Know Theatre of Cincinnati.

Brothers Lincoln and Booth (whose father apparently had a twisted sense of humor) are living together in a small apartment, presumably in New York City.

In his younger days, Lincoln was one of the top three-card monte hustlers in the city, running a team of players that would bring in a thousand dollars a day. But when one of his team meets a violent end, he gives up the game and takes a regular job — if you can call it that: He plays Abraham Lincoln in an arcade where people pay to sneak up behind him and shoot him with a cap gun. In a reversal of the old minstrel shows, we see a black man in white face. Booth aspires to the career that Lincoln gave up, and throughout the play he’s practicing his three-card monte patter, and even announces to his brother that he no longer wants to be called Booth, but Three-Card.

The play is about their battle for survival and control. Having been abandoned by their parents, first their mother and a few years later their father, family ties don’t seem to carry a lot of weight between them, just enough to keep them living together, although Booth (whose apartment it started out to be) is always on the verge of throwing his brother out on Thursdays, but by Friday (payday) all is well between them.

Lincoln has just ended a unfaithful marriage in which Booth was the other man and Booth is struggling hard to rekindle his relationship with Grace, but with all the posturing and bragging, it’s hard to say just how well that’s going for him — safe to say, however, it’s not going very well at all.

Both Todd Patterson (Booth) and Derek Snow (Lincoln) give first-rate performances under the direction of Richard Hess, the head of CCM’s drama department.

• WHAT: 2X2: “Topdog/Underdog” by Suzan-Lori Parks and “Red Light Winter” by Adam Rapp
• WHERE: Know Theatre of Cincinnati,
• WHEN: In repertory Jan. 31-March 2
• COST: $18-$22
• MORE INFO: (513) 300-5669; www.knowtheatre.com

 

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Let me get this out of the way up front: Just once, I would like to see a professional theater company present “Romeo & Juliet” with age-appropriate actors. This season has given us a chance to see two fine productions of Shakespeare’s classic tale of the star-crossed lovers, first at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company and now at the Human Race Theatre in Dayton, and both productions feature actors at least a decade older than what the characters are supposed to be, and in both cases, it’s a major distraction. In the Human Race production, CCM grad Elana Ernst brings a lot of charm and energy to Juliet, but she doesn’t seem to even understand that the character is but a child and at times plays the wrong notes, especially in the tragic final scene where she seems downright amused at the irony. Jordan Coughry, a veteran of the Shakespeare Company of New Jersey fares better and at least plays it like a teenager. Put that to the side, however, and this “Romeo & Juliet” is a visually compelling work, taking place on a set designed like an aging European courtyard and costumes that merge period and contemporary dress with non-descript vintage styles of clothing — which works well, for the most part, although the giant scarves seem to frequently get in the actors’ way. Regional favorite Dale Hodges gets all the laughs as Juliet’s Nurse, while Jennifer Johansen and Jim Hopkins also stand out as her parents. But of course, the real star is the poetry of William Shakespeare and the language that elevates a simple story of young love into an epic tragedy.

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One of Corey Smith’s earliest memories is being allowed to hold his father’s guitar. “Dad played in bands and I sang in church when I was a kid, so I’ve been around music all my life,” he said. “I didn’t take it very seriously as a teenager, but because I was exposed to it at an early age, it came more or less naturally.” At age 7 he won third place in a talent show for his Elvis impersonation, but it wasn’t until he went to college and started playing to earn a little money that music took off for him. “I played cover tunes and would work in my original songs,” he said. “It’s a challenging way to go about it, but playing cover songs, I felt like people were plunking quarters into me and I didn’t like it.” After college, he taught high school social studies for four years, married and fathered two children, with the hope of having something like a normal life. But he continued to write and record and the time finally came when he took the “calculated risk.” “I knew I had to make a certain amount of money,” he said, “and once I realized that I could make more money in one sold-out show than in a month of teaching, it wasn’t such a hard decision.” Writing songs, he said, is “a lot like therapy.” “I never thought that making a living at this was an option, so I wrote the songs I wanted to write, about the stuff that keeps me awake at night,” he said. “But I was lucky that people responded to the sincerity, the authenticity, the whatever it is that the artist strives for, to be as open to ourselves as we can be.”

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With “Plaza Suite,” it’s almost like getting three Neil Simon plays in one as each of the three acts tells a different story, all taking place in room 719 in New York City’s famed Plaza Hotel. Greater Hamilton Civic Theatre’s opening night of “Plaza Suite” on Valentine’s Day also marks the 40th anniversary of the play’s Broadway opening at the Plymouth Theatre under the direction of Mike Nichols. This production, however, is giving three new directors a chance at the helm as Joe Nagle, Jane Winkler and Ben Schneider each take one of the stories. Act I, directed by Nagle, “Visitor from Mamaroneck,” tells of a wistful housewife (Cynthia Pinchback-Hines) staking her claim to Suite 719 in hopes of rekindling her flagging marriage (to Carlos Baxley). “She’s very much into having a romantic interlude but he is distracted by his business affairs,” Nagle said. Schneider’s Act II is subtitled “Visitor from Hollywood,” in which a famous Hollywood producer (Rhys Richards) returns to the city and invites his high school sweetheart (Becky Tompkins) to a Plaza rendezvous. Will the wide-eyed suburbanite succumb to his advances or will cooler heads prevail? Act III is “Visitor from Forest Hills,” under Winkler’s direction, centers on a reluctant bride who has locked herself into the bathroom. “The mother and father (Andrew Stern and Dianne Minnick, both making their GHCT debuts) spend most of the show arguing with the bathroom door,” Winkler said. “The bride is afraid that she’ll end up like them, arguing all the time.” The cast also includes Scott Christian, Dick Gentry, Amanda Toth and Jennifer Hartung.

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What would happen if one of America’s sports heroes came out of the closet? That’s the premise behind Richard Greenberg’s Tony Award-winning play “Take Me Out,” making its regional premiere next week at New Stage Collective. Darren Lemming is at the top of his game both personally and professionally when he calls a press conference to make his shocking admission. “Baseball is the dressing around the interpersonal conflicts between the characters, all of the racial, sexual and ‘men’ issues,” said Charlie Clark, who plays Mason Marzac, a business manager and accountant who is assigned to Lemming after the press conference. “He knows nothing about baseball, but becomes interested because of all the multiples of three in the game,” Clark said, “but he begins to understand why it is America’s pasttime.” Mason’s introduction to the game resonates with the 11 actors in the cast who had to learn some of the basics to create a credible team. “There are only a couple of us who have watched it or played it,” he said. “We did a lot of table work to go over all of the references that people who understand baseball will know.” The cast also took a field trip to batting cages so they could learn how to swing a bat, and it’s not unusual to see them warming up for rehearsals with a game of catch, Clark said. Cincinnati Shakespeare Company’s artistic director Brian Isaac Phillips, who performed in NSC’s produciton of “The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?” last season, serves as guest director of “Take Me Out.” Joining Clark, NSC’s “dream team” cast includes Joshua Ryan (“The Full Monty”) and Kenneth Early (“Side Show”), Cincinnati Shakespeare Company’s Ensemble member Justin McCombs and Young Company members Alex Brooks, Billy Chace, and Derrick Ledbetter, Cincinnati theatre veteran Chris Kramer, and newcomers Kai Sato, Brook Allen Stetler, and S. Justin Terry.

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True story: In 1857, Addison White, an escaped slave from Kentucky, sought refuge in Mechanicsburg, Ohio, and made friends with a local farmer named Udney Hyde. Eventually, federal Marshals found out where he was and surrounded Hyde’s home in the middle of the night. The townspeople turned out with pitchforks and torches to chase off the Marshals while White made his escape. Hyde knew that the Marshals would return, so he put on mad airs and spoke in riddles and rhymes to confound them. To complete the cover, he signed over his lands to a neighbor and went into a nearby swamp to live and whenever he came out, he acted like a crazy man. After the Civil War, White returned to Mechanicsburg with his wife and lived there until he died. “His wife lived until 1934 and all of his grandchildren still live in the community,” said Jeff Hooper, playwright for Mad River Theatre Works, who created a play, “Freedom Bound,” in 1985 as the result of a workshop in Mechanicsburg with the school there. Mad River began touring with “Freedom Bound” in 1988 with original music, and the group revives it every three or four years. “It’s proven to be entertaining as well as telling this incredible story about Ohio history,” Hooper said. Mad River Theater Works, based in West Liberty, Ohio, specializes in true stories such as this one, mostly from Ohio, but has also produced plays about Jackie Robinson, Rosa Parks and the first African-American to fly in combat. Mad River has presented multiple performances at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as well as appearing in major cities including Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and San Francisco and at international events such as the Vancouver Children’s Festival.

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Is space the final frontier for art as well as for science? “Space Is the Place,” a traveling group show now at the Contemporary Arts Center, explores artists’ response to space-age issues in 34 works organized and circulated by Independent Curators International. “This is a perfect exhibition to speak about the fact that contemporary art reflects the world we life in,” said Raphaela Platow, CAC’s chief curator, in a press release. “This is also an imaginative show, miraculous, and at times, challenging; a show that broadens our minds about a subject that captures our fascination – outer space.” Highlights include large-scale painting by self-described “space junkie,” astronomer and skateboarder Lia Halloran, who used real-life photography of women skateboarders, re-contextualized into space travel to depict the physics involved. Oleg Kulilk’s life-like wax replica Cosmonaut (2003) wears an authentic Soviet spacesuit and helmet and hangs suspended, grinning wildly and moving slowly in space, representing a space-oriented society in cultural freefall. Adam Ross’ series of paintings “The City at the Edge of Time” combine both realistic and abstract images against bright color fields to represent hyper-technological futuristic civilizations of our imagination. “Space Is the Place” also includes new works from Laurie Anderson relating to her musical/performance pieces inspired during her time as NASA’s first artist-in-residence, highlight the importance of imagination and dreaming in the quest for space travel. “As our nation agonizes over global warming and geopolitical conflict, outer space emerges as a destination of refuge and peace,” co-curator Toby Kamps wrote in the catalogue. “Why at this especially earthbound moment is the art world thinking about space exploration? The future is not what it once was. Can you be nostalgic for the future?”

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French toast with blueberries and the best goetta ever.

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