2010 IT Awards Presented Sept. 20; Lisa Kron Hosts By Adam Hetrick  September 20, 2010 Tony Award-nominated playwright and actress Lisa Kron hosts the 2010 IT Awards, recognizing achievements in the Off Off-Broadway community, Sept. 20 at Cooper Union. Astoria Performing Arts Center artistic director Tom Wojtunik directs the 7 PM event, which also presents special honors to playwright Lanford Wilson, the recipient of the Artistic Achievement Award; Dixon Place, the Stewardship Award recipient; and the New York Neo-Futurists, recipients of the Caffe Cino Fellowship. The 2010 IT Award nominees follow: OUTSTANDING ENSEMBLE Christine Rebecca Herzog, Itsuko Higashi, Jubil Khan, Fêtes de la Nuit, WeildWorks Kaela Crawford, Julia Giolzetti, Caitlin Mehner, Alison Scaramella, Stephanie Strohm, Pink!, Down Payment Productions Marc Bovino, Joe Curnutte, Michael Dalto, Stephanie Wright Thompson, Samuel and Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War, The Mad Ones Jenny Bennett, Melissa D. Brown, John Graham, John J. Isgro, Courtney Kochuba, Kyle Minshew, Amanda Nichols, Katherine Nolan Brown, Jed Peterson, Sean Reidy, Miranda Shields, Douglas Taurel, Nate Washburn, The Disorder Plays, Milk Can Theatre Company Joie Bauer, David Bishins, Gina Nagy Burns, James Patterson, Chris Skeries, Harris Yulin, Janet Zarish, The Glass House, Resonance Ensemble Daniel Abeles, Craig Jorczak, Jacob Murphy, Anna O'Donoghue, Laura Ramadei, Claire Siebers, Too Little Too Late, Red Elevator Productions

 

FringeNYC 2010 Festival Review
WEST LETHARGY

nytheatre.com review
Martin Denton · August 18, 2010

The whole point of the New York International Fringe Festival, as far as I am concerned, is to hear new voices, to tune in to new perspectives, to go on journeys you never expected to go on. West Lethargy, written and directed by Stephen Kaliski and produced by Page 121 Productions, exemplifies all of this: it's a play that's full of surprises and defies simple categorization; it's lyrical and it's odd, and it challenges you to appreciate its own strange rhythms as it meanders through an exploration of (among other things) the idea of home, and how it's defined by the notions of staying and leaving.

A simple summarization of the situations and characters of West Lethargy will not do the play justice, but it does give me a place to start discussing it, so here goes. Ellie and Turner are a married couple, dressed in old-fashioned clothes and living in an apparently spartan cottage in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of America; they have stopped here, possibly temporarily, on their way West to California. One day, Turner goes out to find some food and instead finds Nugget and Ringle, another married couple, who have just moved in nearby. Nugget is installing pipes for a shower (which she'll eventually do for Turner and Ellie's home, too). Ringle gives Turner an enormous replica of the Empire State Building, about four feet high. (It's a spare; they have their own at their home. "We don't make them," Nugget explains. "We just fill them with all the shit that never came true.")

Stuff happens, as it will; but the driving force of West Lethargy isn't its plot but rather its restless mood. Turner wants to get back on the road to California. Ellie wants to grow old in her cabin. Nugget wants to find her brother, who has disappeared, apparently also on his way to California. Ringle wants to comfort himself by telling the stories of each of the stories in the Empire State Building.

West Lethargy's characters sometimes seem like they should be archetypal, but they're not; they're as individual as Americans are supposed to be, and they each have their own strong desires to invent themselves and their own mythologies. Sometimes this allows for connection among them and sometimes it makes for an ineffable kind of aloneness.

There's a fifth character, by the way, a postman who happens by during a dinner party that Turner and Ellie are throwing for Nugget and Ringle. He arrives in the midst of a game that all four are playing that involves the Empire State Building replica. He has some mail to deliver to each couple and thus is the catalyst for the play's completely foreseeable yet nonetheless unexpected conclusion.

Kaliski's writing and staging grafts the absurd onto the familiar and the contemporary onto the historical; it seems to be about shifting our perspective not so much to teach us something new but to let us appreciate something old in a new and surprising way.

It's performed by a cast of five: Joie Bauer and Mikaela Feely-Lehmann are Ringle and Nugget, Graham Halstead and Suzanne Lenz are Turner and Ellie; and Jeffrey Feola (who is also the play's producer) is the Postman. All fit neatly in the world evoked by Kaliski. Halstead and Bauer make particularly strong impressions, perhaps never more so than in the brief but hilarious scene in which Turner teaches Ringle one very effective way to kill a chicken.

I don't think West Lethargy is going to be loved by everyone who sees it, but I am happy it's found a home in FringeNYC this year, to introduce us to Page 121's interesting band of artists. I look forward to what they come up with next.

 

Film/TV:
I was featured background for a new music video shot on Red One cam and I also recently shot a regional commercial for Pike County Development in which I was the lead, playing a small business owner. As soon as I have a link to the commercial I will send it out.

Voice Over:
I just finished recording voiceovers for a couple radio dramas. I also just auditioned for a set of Macy's industrial voice overs.

Theatre:
As you know I spent August in Edinburgh, Scotland performing in a new play called, West Lethargy. It was amazing. I really want to go back. The show and I got some really nice reviews in NYC and Scotland. There is talk of a possible revival in the NY Fringe this summer.

I just finished a new show called Jump Jim Crow. It was my eighth show in NYC so I'm very excited to continue to get work. The music and lyrics were by the very talented Justin Levine, who I worked with on Man of La Mancha. Justin has a show called Bonfire Night that the producers of Xanadu are workshopping right now. I did some promo recording for the show earlier in the year. The writer for Jim Crow is Jesse Cameron Alick, the assistant to Oscar Eustis and Susan Lori Parks at the Public Theater. They were both in attendance at one of the shows.

I am currently working with a composer friend of mine on a new theatre/musical piece.

I don't have an agent currently. I've met with a few and the general consensus is that they like me but they can barely find work for the clients they have so they are hesitant to take on new ones. They all keep saying let us know what you’re up to and keep inviting us to stuff. Persistence is key I guess. I had a manager for about a year but we aren't working together anymore. We had different ideas about where my career should be going. He thought "Man in Yellow Hat" in Curious George Live! The Musical national tour was going to be good for my NY career...needless to say...I didn't. In the end he saw dollar signs and I saw my artistic integrity waning.

Not being Equity is hurting me right now. Over the past year auditions that I normally could have submitted and/or auditioned for are now posting straight out "Submit only if you are Equity" or "Equity Submissions Only". A lot of them won't even see EMC/Non-Union anymore. So that is a top priority for next year.

Tech:
I’ve been working at the Irish Arts Center and doing a lot of freelance tech work to pay the bills.

My goals for 2010 are Agent (preferably David Cash from Henderson/Hogan), Equity, Off-Broadway, New Headshots, and a Bi-Monthly Newsletter (proving more time consuming than I thought. It should be out by the new year.)