Medicine Show: Theater Online

History of Productions View Current and Upcoming

Making Money and 19 Other Very Short Plays | Open: 06/12/09 Close: 06/29/09

Obie-winning MEDICINE SHOW, the longest running experimental theatre company in New York, is presenting the world premiere of "Making Money and 19 Other Very Short Plays," by William Saroyan, along with a set of world premiere short plays, two John Gruen pieces, and short pieces by other authors. Saroyan is the author of The Time of Your Life (1939) which won the New York Drama Critics' Circle award and a Pulitzer Prize (which Saroyan refused) as well as popular, pacifist and heartily subversive novels such as The Human Comedy. MAKING MONEY AND 19 OTHER SHORT PLAYS, written in the mid-sixties, question deep flaws in American culture, from the impact of financial and medical practices on human values to the viability of a counter-culture, and are even more relevant today than when they were written. Medicine Show will be presenting, in addition, other comic short plays by critic and memoirist John Gruen ("Ted and Dexter" and "Welcome Back, Jeremiah Tasca!"), Brian Murphy, Lella Heins, Frederick Turner and Kitty Chen. MAKING MONEY AND 19 OTHER SHORT PLAYS is directed by Obie-winning director Barbara Vann and stars Candice Fortin, Felix Gardon, Jason Alan Griffin, Beth Griffith, Renee Hermiz, Norma Hernandez, Richard Keyser, Eva Nicole, Ward Nixon, Charles J. Roby, Peter Tedeschi and Greg Vorob.

Marisol | Open: 10/16/08 Close: 10/26/08

The Dark Ages are upon us. America is heading into the universal ruin, and she is sleeping. Led by her guardian angel, Marisol discovers that it is time to find her own power, to fight for survival, to open her eyes and wake up.

City Attic Theatre, an off-off-Broadway company, proudly opens their fourth season with a new production of José Rivera's Marisol.

The show is directed by artistic director Dianna Marino, designed by Dave Castellano, Eric Dente, Amanda Embry and Ryan Wentworth, and features Maryll Botula, Billia Colombaro, Brian Greer, Brian Marino, Lorraine Mattox, and Agueda Ramirez.

City Attic Theatre provides a home for theatrical artists, creating new opportunities to nurture their craft in a collaborative setting while developing powerful theatrical masterpieces. The goal is to remove the boundaries that dictate the traditional roles of artists, to release and unify the collaborative imagination.

This production was made possible through the support of The Field. Produced through special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc.

Twenty Years of Agnes | Open: 09/29/06 Close: 10/22/06

Winner of the City of San Sebastian Theater Prize in Spain, this highly charged new play unspools a dangerous game of one-upmanship. As Agnes contemplates breaking away from her stagnant home and marriage to Max, she is lured into a psychological battle with her deliciously wicked friend Albertine. What is Albertine's hidden agenda? Does Agnes have the will and desire to leave a comfortable marriage of twenty years? As the twisting plot unfolds, the characters' veneer of conventionality is stripped away, and their violent passions lead to an outrageous and unforgettable ending.

With hints of Pedro Almodovar and Edward Albee, Twenty Years of Agnes is a witty, highly charged thriller. In this sharp, new translation by Camilo Fontecilla, Riquelme's original voice breathes excitement and dramatic tension into the play from start to finish.

The 2nd Annual Chester Horn Short Play Festival | Open: 09/21/06 Close: 09/24/06

Featuring the award-winning directors and authors of last year's event, as well as a host of new talent from across the country, the festival will feature fourteen 10-15 minute plays. It runs at Medicine Show

The festival is performed in two series, each with 7 shows.

Tickets can be purchased at the door for $18 or online
for $15. Go to www.theatrerats.com for more
information.

Festival Listings:
Series A

Bonnie and Clementine, On Their Way to Visit the GrandCanyon, Explore the Limits of the Dramatic Form
by Shannon Reed, directed by Katherine Vecchio

P'Town Christmas '99
by Carl A. Rossi, directed by Daniel T. Lavender

Garlic and Milk
by Robert Daria, directed by Jeff Love

Holy Hell
by Barbara Lindsay, directed by Helen Huff

What Happens in Vegas
by Christopher Lockheardt, directed by Glenn Schude

History
by Steven Bergman, directed by Alexis M. Hadsall

Shakespeare Lives
by Mark Harvey Levine, directed by Brad Caswell

Series B
The Reading
by John C Davenport, directed by Paula J. Riley

Womb
by Kristin Pesceone, directed by Laura Walczak

A Ticklish Situation
by Christopher King, directed by Bill Brown

Dead Cat by Ry Herman, directed by Kevin Jones

Miraculous Day Quartet by Mary Steelsmith, directed by Michael Ruby

Page-Turner
by Justin Warner, directed by Kevin Molesworth

One Last Thing by John Shanahan, directed by Michelle Goltzman

Fire Exit | Open: 04/27/06 Close: 05/27/06

Not seen since its original production in 1952, "FIRE EXIT" modernizes the timeless myth of Eurydice and Orpheus by resetting it in the early 1950s. Eurydice is a beautiful and innocent young orphan who's been raised by a cadre of warm-hearted circus folk, all of whom are anxious for her to "learn an act" now that she's coming of age. But Eurydice yearns for much more in life than just the circus. Her prayers are seemingly answered when she meets Orpheus, a talented young musician, and falls deeply in love with him. He goes on to become a major star of the classical music world and the two are wed. But the career-oriented and egotistical Orpheus has little interest in his new wife, and Eurydice starts to realize that her life isn't the fairy tale that she had hoped for.

The Changeling | Open: 03/02/06 Close: 03/11/06

After the
Valentine's Day roses wilt and the chocolates are all
gone away, seek new satisfaction with love, lust, and
murder at TheatreRats' new production of Thomas
Middleton and William Rowley's timeless tragicomedy
THE CHANGELING. Rising avant-garde director Lauren
Reinhard helms this thrilling classic with vibrant,
contemporary sensibilities. Vince Philip*, Sarah Tillson, Anna Chlumsky, Jess C.
White and Jamie Askew are among the cast of budding
and established talent that bring this exciting and
humorous tale of transformation and sacrifice to life.

Don Juan In Hell | Open: 02/02/06 Close: 02/26/06

Written in 1901 and set in Shaw's idea of Hell (a virtual paradise), "DON JUAN IN HELL" features a most unusual Devil who engages the unregenerate Don Juan in a brilliant debate over which power governs the Earth: Life or Death. Joining them in the argument are Dona Ana, a recently deceased former flame of the Don's who's fiercely proud of her beauty and position, and her father the Commander, slain by Don Juan years ago and a recent escapee from dullness of Heaven. This oddly matched quartet pursues a deadly accurate--and very funny--war of wits that addresses life and death, war and peace, love and marriage, and the Meaning Of It All.

The play, which uses characters from Mozart's opera "Don Giovanni," is rarely seen as a fully-staged production as it will be at the Medicine Show. The company originally presented "DON JUAN IN HELL" in New York and on tour in 1977.

The Last Bohemians | Open: 09/08/05 Close: 10/02/05

A new play that looks at the final summer of poet Frank O' Hara and his circle of friends as they inhabit a house in the Hamptons.

[Warning: "The Last Bohemians" contains nudity, simulated sexual activity and heavy drug use. The production is for adults only.]

Set in the summer of 1966 and inspired by real-life events, "THE LAST BOHEMIANS" paints an intimate portrait of a group of NYC-based artists and poets as they gather in the Hamptons to share a house for the summer. The free-spirited group revolves around poet Frank O' Hara (the chain-smoking, voraciously gay former curator of the Museum of Modern Art) and includes painters Larry Rivers and Jane Frielicher, poet Joe LaSueur, Rivers' mother-in-law Berdie Berger and co-founder of the Paris Review Patsy Southgate. Sex, drugs, campy humor and free love abound (along with passionate debates about art, politics and the meaning of life)...until a sudden tragedy occurs that signals not only the end of the summer, but the end of an era.

The Republic of Poetry | Open: 06/09/05 Close: 06/26/05

"THE REPUBLIC OF POETRY" comprises the work of 11 poets, each of whom has written a short verse play especially for this project ranging from 2 to 20 minutes in length.

Some of the highlights:

Filip Marinovich's "Salient Mourners," in which the Army presents its official policy on fallen soldiers in Iraq with doublespeak and euphemism

Denise Duhamel's "Pituitary Theft," which is composed entirely of fake English subtitles from Hong Kong movies

Harry Matthews' "Trial Impressions," a suite on the changeability of love.

The poets who've contributed to the evening include Martin Espada, who has been called "the Latino poet of his generation" and whose latest collection of poetry received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was named an American Library Association Notable Book of the year. His poems have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Harper's, The Nation, and The Best American Poetry; Arnold Weinstein, librettist for the opera "A View From The Bridge" and lyricist for William Bolcom's "Casino Paradise"; Harry Matthews, whose latest novel "The Journalist" was acclaimed by the New York Times and Time Out; as well as Bayard, Denise Duhamel, Vincent Katz, Roy Lisker, Filip Marinovich, Simon Pettet, Miriam Sagan and Bruce Weber.

Finnegans Wake | Open: 04/01/05 Close: 04/30/05

Set in a Dublin pub, "FINNEGANS WAKE" is a boisterous, mind-bending theatrical experience that traces one night in the life of Finnegan, who dreams of primal guilt and is whirled into a comic nightmare as family history and world history become one and the same. The entire Finnegan clan (along with various denizens of the pub) live, fight, drink, dream, assume the roles of mythic & historical figures, and hope that their lives will eventually lead to some kind of spiritual rebirth. Their stories are brought to life by an inventive cast of 10, who act, chant, sing, dance, stomp and howl the piece. With its juxtapositions of the elevated and the vulgar, "there's lots of fun at Finnegans Wake."

Bruce Morris & Medicine Show | Open: 02/02/05 Close: 02/23/05

Almost 20 years after working together on Kenneth Koch's "Popeye Among the
Polar Bears," Medicine Show and Butch Morris re-unite to will present a
series of performances in which Morris will conduct Medicine Show actors as they interpret texts as a group.