Keeping up with Downtown development can be exhausting

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Cockroach’s Theatre Company’s new Art Square venue already feels like a success

Jacob Coakley

Wed, Sep 26, 2012 (5:24 p.m.)

Want to nurture a healthy theater ecosystem in Las Vegas? Then go see Nurture at Cockroach Theatre.

Photo: Ryan Reason

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Nurture

Through October 7; Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m.; $15-$18.

Art Square Theatre, cockroachtheatre.com

Cockroach Theatre president Will Adamson took the stage for Art Square Theatre’s grand opening Friday night to thunderous applause, and with a knowing smile said, “I’m not gonna lie, it feels good.” And who could argue with him? After 10 years of nomadic life, Cockroach celebrated the opening of its own Arts District space, and it might be just as important to theater here as the Smith Center.
A healthy theater ecosystem needs smaller companies, where artists are free to explore what theater can mean outside of hanging on silks or belting show tunes. A place that supports new work and the community that creates it. Over the past few years, theater in Las Vegas has taken halting steps toward supporting this type of work. With Cockroach’s debut in the Art Square Theatre, all that energy feels like it finally has an outlet.
An intimate black box theater, Art Square occupies one corner of Brett Westley’s artSQUARE complex. The flexible space was explicitly renovated to be a theater, and has the robust infrastructure necessary to stage a variety of productions and designs. And it was all put into good service for its premiere production, Nurture, written by Johnna Adams and directed by Jason Goldberg.
Winner of the 2012 Sin City New Play Contest, Nurture tells the story of the awkward romance between Cheryl (Francine Gordon) and Doug (Erik Amblad), and their tenuous relationship with their children. It starts in standard Everybody Loves Raymond territory, but has more real laughs per minute than your average sitcom. Then, one line at a time, the play takes you further and further into absurdist comedy worthy of Durang. It delves deep into the fears—even horrors—of parenthood, but ends in a hopeful, accepting place. It’s also incredibly not safe for children. It’s grown-up theater of the energy and caliber you won’t see anyplace else in Las Vegas.
There’s more to the human experience than can be explored by Cirque du Soleil. And there are vital emotions too quiet to fill the Smith Center. Cockroach wants the Art Square Theatre to be the crucible to hold those experiences. And if they can keep up the quality of this stunning debut, they’ll have it.

Cockroach Theatre endures a decade of obstacles to land its own downtown performance space

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by KRISTY TOTTEN

Cockroaches are scavengers — pests that can survive nuclear-level destruction. Which is to say, cockroaches might some day inherit the Earth. One thing’s for sure: They’ve already taken a permanent residence in the heart of the Arts District, scoring their own Art Square Theatre.
The location is a huge coup for Cockroach Theatre, founded in 2002 by a group of UNLV theater alums devoted to bringing new, original and underappreciated works to Vegas audiences. When it produced its first play that year — Line, by Israel Horowitz, about five people vying for position in a line — more than 400 audience members showed up for the play’s run. “Horowitz isn’t exactly risky material,” says Cockroach Managing Director Levi Fackrell. “But it showed us that Vegas audiences were hungry for something different.”
Fackrell describes those early days as “fun, guerilla-style theater,” as it scoured the valley for play venues, scuttling about in junkyards, warehouse spaces, hotel bars and the requisite-for-the-times Katherine Gianaclis Park.
Its unique mix of original and unusual performances — Albert Camus’ Caligula, Naomi IIzuka’s Tattoo Girl and a particularly avant garde 2005 production of Richard Foreman’s Permanent Brain Damage, to name a few — kept Cockroach afloat, despite some rough patches, like the tanking of a 2008 Neonopolis deal and the rough economic years that followed. True to its tenacious moniker, it survived and made its way to the city’s cultural epicenter.
Déjà vu all over again
It’s all vaguely familiar, this talk of downtown serendipity — it struck years ago, when the First Friday phenomenon started transforming the neighborhood, drawing unlikely crowds into galleries and black box theaters, many of whom elbowed through the art and talked over the plays. It would take an injection of post-recession creative energy, fueled largely by locals (and maybe some help from a man named Hsieh) to get the downtown renaissance back on track.
By 2010, Cockroach had risen from a brief hibernation to collaborate with Born and Raised Productions, a company co-founded by Vegas native Erik Amblad, and, in 2012, after clandestine meetings and a crowd-funded campaign that raised more than $23,000 in 70 days, Cockroach finally got the chance to pull the trigger on a decade-old dream.
What’s old is new
Exposed brick. High ceilings. Industrial-style charm meets pure, unadulterated potential. “It’s a modern space,” says Fackrell of the renovated Art Square Theatre. “But the space has had a previous life. We’ve kept those elements intact.”
“You can be as creative as you want to be here,” says Amblad, who was named Cockroach’s artistic director in April and who, like Fackrell, speaks of the permanent space the way a new father might boast about his child.
Art Square, just north of the Arts Factory, also houses Artifice Bar and Lounge, several galleries, the First Street ArtGarden and the Josephine Skaught Salon. While its new high-profile digs will likely increase its audience, Cockroach remains committed to doing what it’s always done: taking risks and staging original, edgy and exciting shows.
“The space is the perfect size for us and for the type of plays we do,” says Fackrell. “We chose this size so we wouldn’t have to compromise. We don’t have to fill the Smith Center, we have to fill a 100-seat theatre.”
Judging from opening night, that shouldn’t be a problem.
Nurturing new talent
When Cockroach opened its new space to an enthusiastic, sold-out crowd on Sept. 21, it was a night of firsts: the first-ever performance in Art Square Theatre and the first-ever staging of Nurture, an outrageously dark comedy directed by Jason Goldberg and written by Johnna Adams, winner of Off-Strip Productions’ first-ever Sin City New Play Contest. Having not seen them share a stage since I covered theater in 2005, it was great to see Francine Gordon and Erik Amblad tackle the roles of perhaps the two most painfully and hilariously inept parents on the planet.
The triumphant grand opening was followed by a celebration that spilled into the halls and bars, filling old spaces with new energy and exciting audiences about what’s to come in Cockroach’s 2012-13 season, officially opening Oct. 26 with Paula Vogel’s comedy The Mineola Twins, and ending with Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.
“The season is very particular to this moment in time, and where we all are, professionally and personally,” Amblad says of the upcoming five plays, one of which he’ll direct, and another to be helmed by Fackrell. “We’re growing up, settling down and facing the future.”

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COCKROACH THEATRE photos by Ryan Reason

From Page to Stage

Meet Cockroach Theatre’s radical new resident playwright

Photo by Garfield & Adams

By Aleza Freeman

June 14th, 2012

 

Nothing is off-limits for award-winning local playwright Erica Griffin. She dabbles in conspiracy theories, feminism, greed, corruption, murder, incest, mental illness. It’s possible her plays will offend you. It’s also possible you’ll see the world differently—if you’re brave enough to stick around.

In May, Griffin signed on for a two-year residency with Cockroach Theatre, where she will produce her character-driven dark comedies and spearhead a training series for playwrights. She joins the decade-old company as it moves into a new home, the Arts Square Theatre (1025 S. First St.) in the Arts District.

Griffin, 36, is a stay-at-home mom and no stranger to the Las Vegas theater scene. In addition to a prolific playwriting portfolio, she’s performed in various shows locally, including Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding at the Rio and Caligula with Cockroach Theatre. Her play Spearminted was the 2012 Las Vegas Little Theatre New Work Competition’s winner, and her new play, Roles for Women, just premiered at the Vegas Fringe Festival.

Between chasing around her toddler and awaiting her next creative tidal wave, Griffin took some time to speak about her new residency.

What exactly will you do as Cockroach’s resident playwright?
A residency, in general, guarantees a certain number of full productions over a certain number of years. In professional theaters, residents usually receive a cash award, stipends to attend theater and health-insurance benefits [Griffin won’t receive any of those benefits, but she will receive a full production of one play.] Playwrights don’t have a union like actors equity. What I’ll be doing with my residency is simple: developing my craft, helping other writers develop their craft, and making some sweet, sweet theater.

Why does a playwriting residency matter?
I think it’s a vital investment. If the play does well, and it gets picked up by a publisher, then it’s good for everyone. The play has the potential of going all over the country, with the permanent inscription: originally produced at Cockroach Theatre, at the Arts Square Theatre in Las Vegas, directed by so-in-so, with the following cast. So the entire company becomes part of history.

How did you first get involved with theater?
My mom was an actress and writer; she took me to plays around Seattle and taught me how to use her old blue typewriter. I wrote my first play on it at age 11. It was an adaptation of Rumpelstiltskin, and I staged it on my neighbor’s deck, using kids in the neighborhood. … I remember watching the show, totally blissed out, thinking, “I want to do this the rest of my life!” And so I did.

You’ve described your plays as radical acts. What does that mean to you?
It’s a radical act to challenge the status quo, to present a different point of view than the audience’s belief structures, [to] offend people—whether it’s the copious amounts of marijuana used by a grandma in Mulch or the questioning of the government and anti-privacy acts in Chipped. People have been walking out of my shows since 2001, but they never seem to ask for their money back. … Critics have called my work “screwball tragedy,” which I think has a nice ring to it.

When it comes to writing a play, what inspires you?
Ideas for plays come when an interesting character in my head intersects with an interesting theme I’ve been knocking around. … For instance I see a homeless person with a blanket on their head and I’m reading Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, and suddenly I come up with the dramatic question of Casa de Nada: What if someone were using homeless people to make them money and then exterminating them, Holocaust-style?

What brought you to Las Vegas as opposed to L.A. or New York?
I’d rather be a pioneer than a settler. I moved here after college precisely because there wasn’t much going on, and yet a huge potential for something big to happen. I’ve always believed in theater in Las Vegas, like the little engine that could. I’ve been lucky enough to see minor shifts in the way theater off the Strip has been viewed. I feel like I’ve witnessed a small cultural awakening, and I’ve been proud to be part of the effort.

Photo by Kin Lui The Cockroach crew in their new home.

Cockroach Theatre boldly infests the Arts District

They wandered the desert for 10 years, staging shows wherever they could find space, like in magic shops and yoga studios. Now Cockroach Theatre is putting down roots in the 18b Arts District. Their first home, The Arts Square Theater, will open this summer in Art Square (1025 S. First St., attached to Artifice).
Known for pushing the edge of convention and challenging the way audiences think, the nonprofit Cockroach Theater was formed in 2002 by a group of UNLV theater students. “Up until now, Cockroach Theater has done one-offs, now we are going to be able to present a whole package,” said the company’s new artistic director, Erik Amblad.
With a permanent home, Cockroach Theater will reach a broader audience as it presents a full season of neglected/forgotten works as well as new works by emerging playwrights. “Most exciting, is that fans of Cockroach will be rewarded with a season-long exploration of a theme—an exploration [that] will hopefully get more complicated show after show,” Amblad says.
The first season will be announced in early July and will start in September. The pre-season will begin in late July with the 2011 Sin City New Play Contest winner, Nurture by Johnna Adams. (The contest from Original Works Publishing was previously hosted by Onyx Theatre.)
Cockroach Theater also plans to offer training programs and provide an affordable space for variety acts, contemporary dancers and spoken-word performers from around the Valley. “The idea is that every step of the way, every day of the week,” Amblad says, “you’ll find something interesting at the Art Square Theatre.”

Fringe Fest: The good and the very bad

The perfect part: The actresses of Roles for Women take casting into their own hands.
photo by Richard Brusky

by Jacob Coakley

Roles for Women

By Erica Griffin, produced by Table 8 Productions

I’d say Dick Johnson had the best ensemble of actors ... if it weren’t for the ladies of Roles for Women, playing five women suffering through their most extreme audition ever. Griffin does an excellent job capturing small moments, pushing the characters through them and letting their actions generate the laughs. The actresses embraced this with gusto. You could feel the glee at having fully-formed characters that had nothing to do with “girlfriend” or “romantic interest.” If sometimes that enthusiasm veered a little too closely to self-parody for the sake of a laugh, that was only a slight problem.

Erica Griffin
Playwright takes up Residency at Cockroach Theater

Cockroach Theatre officially announces esteemed local author Erica Griffin as resident playwright. Griffin joins the creative and operations team as they prepare to move into their permanent home in the Art Square Theatre this summer.

"Erica Griffin's voice as a playwright has always been compelling, compassionate, and surprising. We are honored to have Erica join us for our inaugural season at the Art Square Theatre," said Erik Amblad, Cockroach Theatre's Artistic Director. "Personally, I've been working with Erica for years, and I'm excited to see where this new creative collaboration will take us."

According to Amblad, Cockroach Theatre established the Resident Playwright program as part of their core commitment to new and neglected works. A two-year term, Griffin's residency will see her work actively developed and then produced as part of Cockroach Theatre's season of  plays. Additionally, Griffin will spearhead new programming at Cockroach Theatre, including a development series for local playwrights to workshop their own plays.

"As a playwright, I've been growing in tandem to Cockroach Theatre since it first began ten years ago," said Griffin. "Just as they've wandered all over town in the last decade, so have I hauled my original plays from space to space. Feeling it was time to commit to one company in order to allow my craft to grow, it was the easiest decision in my career to put my roots down with the Roaches."

About Erica Griffin:

Erica is an award-winning Las Vegas-based playwright with a special interest in character driven dark comedy. Local credits include: SPEARMINTED (winner, 2012 LVLT New Work Competition), ATROCIOUS TRADITIONS (now available from Original Works Publishing), and CASA DE NADA (winner of "Best of Fringe" at the 2011 Vegas Fringe Festival). Her new play  ROLES FOR WOMEN  will be premiering this June at the 2012 Vegas Fringe Festival.

The addition of Erica Griffin to the creative team at Cockroach theatre comes as they enter the final month of their grassroots fundraising campaign , aimed at supplementing the opening  operational costs of The Art Square Theatre. Donors to the campaign have the opportunity to be a part of the historic opening of this theatre in the 18b Arts District in downtown Las Vegas.

LVTAP REVIEW: Roles for Women

Bonfire of the Vanities

 

Ego trips and satire dominate the 2012 Vegas Fringe Festival

by DAVID MCKEE

As my Dad likes to say, sometimes the best surprise is no surprise. Unfortunately, "sometimes" does not include Las Vegas Little Theatre's Fringe Festival. This year's is not only smaller than 2011's, it's less revelatory. The shows one expects to be good don't disappoint, and those that do are colossal downers.

Without question, the finest Fringe offering is Neil LaBute's Iphigenia in Orem (Olde English Productions), flawlessly paced by director Gus Langley. LaBute's spellbinding monodrama is the confession of a traveling salesman (Shane Cullum) in a Vegas hotel room. Casually, conversationally, this Utah businessman unburdens himself to an unseen stranger about the "crib death" of his first daughter and the tenuousness of his job ... although that's ultimately not what's haunting him. His confessional leads us imperceptibly to a chilling revelation that also elucidates LaBute's arcane title. (Orem is a suburb of Provo; Iphigenia was the daughter Agamemnon sacrificed to the gods when his armada was becalmed en route to the Trojan War.)

Playing a misogynistic, petty and drab man with the face of an insect, Cullum fully humanizes this unsympathetic figure. Behind the buglike spectacles and caterpillar mustache, he finds the universality of a deeply disturbed person, in addition to his furtive monstrousness. It's pure brilliance and not to be missed.

PONDERING PONDEROUSLY

Lurching from the ineffable to the unspeakable, we encounter Fringe's other monodrama, Eugene Markoff's 75-minute Expanding the Relative: Pondering Einstein, presented by aptly named Endless Productions. This catastrophic vanity project stars Markoff himself, over whose "acting" a veil of charity should be drawn. Making matters worse, sloppy tech cues ground last Saturday's performance to a temporary halt.

Nominally, Pondering is a lecture by distant Einstein relative, Ezekiel Beam (Markoff). This disjointed, free-associative harangue is replete with pseudo-profundities like, "What if our yesterdays were today's tomorrows?" If that doesn't make you groan, there's plenty worse in this interminable, smug string of one-liners and faux insights. Markoff comes across as a Beat poet who dropped far too much acid, then hit the vaudeville circuit. Faced with an incompetent protagonist, director Timothy Burris is reduced to reprising sight gags from last year's Wind in the Willows. If he's lucky, the self-important awfulness of Pondering will be mistaken for High Art.

The title of Poor Richard's Productions' Dick Johnson, Private Eye -- three penis references in four words -- makes one expect the worst. Instead, Maxim Lardent and Mark Valentin's nostalgic comedy is very creatively penned and a Fringe smash. Set in the studios of WKZP in 1942, Johnson is couched as a radio serial involving the titular private dick's search for his missing desk. Interspersed are clever jingles touting the healthful virtues of asbestos, cigarettes and such, while Arles Estes nimbly alternates between providing dramatic musical punctuation and atmospheric, live sound effects. Valentin and Lardent wittily use the radio-drama format to comment on the conventions of the detective genre (the omniscient cabbie, the lady in red), as well as on the '40s themselves.

Lysander Abadia brilliantly orchestrates the dizzyingly intricate, quick-change staging, and Kirstin Maki's costuming is the fest's best. Regrettably, Lardent arrogates the title role for himself. His mumbling, arrhythmic delivery does his writing a serious disservice. Much of the cast is drawn from local improv troupes, with Valentin and Kimberly Scott Faubel distinguishing themselves as cabbie and adenoidal Gal Friday, respectively. Flawless period panache is displayed by Benjamin Loewy -- flinging himself with relish into a continent's worth of accents in four roles -- and by Breon Jenay (Femme Fatale). Her plummy, seductive delivery elevates obvious jokes into double entendres. This duo plays it to the hilt and not one scintilla beyond.

TOO MUCH 'DICK'

Watching Johnson back-to-back with A.R. Gurney's The Open Meeting (LVLT) requires superhuman tolerance for "Dick" jokes. Cutesy, Nixon-era agitprop, it's a wan allegory of democracy. The oft-referenced, unseen Dick is unreachable in Washington, spinning sinister plots. In his absence, Gurney's town meeting degenerates into a power struggle between rebellious youth (Dustin Sisney) and the Establishment (personified by Ralph Weprinsky), with vacillating Verna (Teresa Fullerton) representing the electorate. An ostensibly hilarious Oedipus Rex subplot thickens the metaphorical stew. It's even more didactic than was LVLT's Yankee Tavern, albeit funnier, too. Weprinsky's authoritative presence and clarion delivery ultimately prove more sympathetic than Sisney's oafish hollering.

Worse still was Michael O'Neal's flaccid Soul (Chaos Theatre), disparate episodes posing as Something Deep about mortality. Jason Niño's drowsy, disjointed production (more scene changes than action) only sows confusion, as does acting that's borderline-comatose. A totally random set and a cast of mostly too-old actors muddles locations and relationships alike. Except for Michael Drake -- brisk, nasty and dangerous as a drug dealer -- the best performances are given by Jamie Carvelli (in a pre-recorded voiceover) and Kiha Akui, as Death, who says almost nothing.

Theatrical vanities are skewered in Erica Griffin's Roles for Women (Table 8 Productions), staged with manifest affection by Troy Heard. Five actresses are auditioning -- or so they think -- for the meaty role of a cannibalistic murderess. Petty jealousies and one-upwomanship escalate into a full-blown brawl (unconvincingly choreographed, alas). The climactic catfight is provoked by a quintessentially Griffinesque, underlying deception. It's more fully realized than her 2011 "Best of Fringe" winner, Casa de Nada, and just as funny.

Sarah Spraker has the gravy part of the Amazonian, domineering community-theater diva, complemented by Stacia Zinkevich as a hilariously daft, eyelash-batting ingénue. Playing the attitude-throwing, tattooed, wannabe "rebel," Mary Foresta should provoke shudders of self-recognition among certain local actresses, while Carvelli's fascinatingly detailed portrayal of the group's earnest underachiever binds the story together. Natascha Negro riffs amusingly, neurotically on previous tragedy-queen roles but, as the draconian and manipulative stage manager, mild Cathy Ostertag lets the side down.

VEGAS FRINGE FESTIVAL Thursday-Sunday, through June 10; Las Vegas Little Theatre, 3920 Schiff Drive, 362-7996 (www.lvlt.org/FRINGE2012home.htm for showtimes), $12 (single ticket) or $90 (all-show pass).

Last updated on Thursday, June 7, 2012 at 12:07 am

A new space has Cockroach Theatre making big plans

Jacob Coakley

Wed, Jun 6, 2012 (5:07 p.m.)

The gentlemen of Cockroach Theatre—Levi Fackrell, Erik Amblad and Will Adamson.

Photo: Bill Hughes

It’s 10 a.m. on a Monday morning and the heat hasn’t really started yet, so it’s still cool inside the nearly finished Art Square complex, Brett Sperry’s latest addition to the Arts District. I’m standing in a loft in the corner space of the building, looking down at the main floor, a jumble of carpenter’s tools, cans of paint and the occasional art piece. But soon—depending on construction schedules and fire marshal approval—the space will open as the Art Square Theatre, Cockroach Theatre’s new home. And until that happens, the heat is definitely on for the Cockroach team.

“We’re taking a leap of faith on this, that’s for sure,” says Levi Fackrell, managing director of Cockroach. Fackrell, friends with Sperry, was the first to see the empty space and began discussions with Sperry to turn it into a theater. With Sperry’s encouragement, and a generous lease, Cockroach will have its first permanent home—and Fackrell feels the time is right. “The buzz about Downtown has always been, ‘It’s gonna happen; it’s gonna happen’—but now it’s really tangible. It is happening. You can really feel the energy.”
But you need more than energy to run a theater. To help raise that capital, the Cockroach team has turned to the Internet and an Indiegogo (it’s similar to Kickstarter) campaign to raise $20,000 by June 15. Just like the weather, that’s heating up, too. People from Summerlin to Abu Dhabi have donated.

“That’s what’s great about our Indiegogo campaign, you really get a gauge of who’s behind you,” says Fackrell. Also important: Visible support of the campaign has emboldened other backers who might not be able to contribute through Indiegogo, but are just as important to the theater’s success.
“The platform has really helped us get some larger corporate sponsors,” says Will Adamson, producer at Cockroach. “They can have confidence that we’re not just a small group of people.” Cockroach has some specific fund-raising events planned to reach out to those sponsors and to some high-profile donors.

Cockroach isn’t only adding a new space. In April it named Erik Amblad its new artistic director; it has a new resident playwright, Erica Griffin; and its inaugural production in Art Square Theatre will be the winner of the Sin City New Play contest: Nurture, by Johnna Adams. That will be followed by something else that’s new for Cockroach: a full season of plays, rather than one-off productions.
“We get to express a point of view through a series of plays,” Amblad says. “This infrastructure allows us that freedom, and I’m hoping that people will see we have a real dedication to new works and neglected works with a new point of view.”

It’s exciting, and possibilities fill up the room with the rising heat.

“In Vegas, we don’t have the luxury of taking amazing regional theater for granted yet,” Amblad says. “One of our goals is to get to the point that people take it for granted that we’re one of the great regional theaters in Las Vegas and America.

“Ultimately, we want to be seen as Las Vegas’ professional theater company,” Fackrell says.

Fringe Festival full of fare to whet theatergoers' fancies

By ANTHONY DEL VALLE
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

 

I came away from the eight-play Vegas Fringe Festival amazed at how much higher in quality local acting has become. People in the smaller parts often demonstrated the charisma and talent to tackle lead roles. Where have these people come from?
It helps to enjoy the productions if you think of most of them as works in progress. If you are looking for perfection, you will be disappointed. But it's a potpourri of possibilities. I was more excited by what these shows could be than what they were. And that made for an enormously satisfying marathon.
Here's a brief look at the plays in order of preference:
■ Olde English Productions' "Iphigenia in Orem" (part of Neil La Bute's "Bash") contains just about the best dramatic performance I've seen in 15 years of local reviewing. Shane Cullum, under the smooth, unobtrusive direction of Gus Langley, makes small talk to a male stranger in his hotel room. The strained chit-chat soon evolves into a confession of a horrific crime. Cullum makes the monologue seem like a two-character play because he established a relationship with the unseen stranger. He weeps, laughs, fidgets and all the while never seems like an actor going for an effect. Cullum embodies the torment of this man in a way that I suspect few actors could. Grade: A
■ "Asphyxiation/Masturbation," written, directed and co-starring Test Market founder Ernest Hemmings, is a multi-media bit of fun that seems to want to suggest nothing more than that the medium is the message. Two young men (Hemmings and Alex Olson) perform a series of skits involving various kinds of conflict. The challenge is that all the sound effects have been pre-recorded and the actors must stay in sync. Of course, the funniest moments are when the dialogue is a split second off. The performers are blissfully funny, with Hemmings in particular showing a surprisingly wide range of effortless characters. I have never before seen him so free. The evening could use some cohesiveness, and the final 10 minutes or so feels repetitive. But it's a beautiful bit of nonsense. Grade: B+
■ "Expanding the Relative: Pondering Einstein," directed by Timothy Burris for Endless Productions, is a humorous look at a man's philosophy about what is relative. The man, in the form of actor and writer Eugene Markoff, looks peculiarly like Einstein, and there's a good reason why. Markoff's performance is a marvelous blend of academic earnestness and little-boy innocence. Burris gives the script a surprisingly lyrical quality with sound, light effects and two stagehands whose movements have been carefully choreographed. The script could use some serious editing, particularly in the final fifth or so, when its themes become heavy-handed. But the project deserves Markoff and Burris' further attention. Grade: B+
■ "Dick Johnson Private Eye," by Poor Richard's Players, is a mixed bag. The original script by Maxim Lardent and Mark Valentin has the feel of improvisation but doesn't make for much of a play. However, director Lysander Abadia has staged the movement exceptionally well. Trouble is, this is supposed to be a radio drama, so what is all that movement about? I'd love to see this again just for Abadia's stage know-how. But isn't it time we gave Philip Marlowe spoofs a century's rest? Grade: C
■ "Roles for Women," an original comedy by Erica Griffin for Table 8 Productions, is about a group trying out for a community play. There are lots of "in" jokes, and obvious ones. I can't imagine anyone outside the theater wanting to see this. Griffin's plot turns are too carefully planned, and by the time we get to the women screaming at each other and turning over tables, I couldn't figure out why I was there. Director Troy Heard gets a couple of solid performances from a mostly expert cast. Grade: C
■ "Soul," an original drama by Michael O'Neal for Chaos Productions, grabs your attention immediately. A young man stands center stage pondering the big questions. In the second scene, an abusive druggie is forcing a needle into the arm of a homeless woman he hopes to sleep with. The relationship between the two scenes doesn't need explaining; it fits perfectly. But, unfortunately, the story grows obvious and uninteresting. Director Jason Nino gives us some intriguing visual images, but he doesn't tone down the melodrama. Still, this is another of those projects I'd love to see remounted after some work. Grade: C
■ "Fringe Shorts," is three playlettes by different groups, each offering at least one yummy element. "Kissing Hank's Butt," directed by Thomas Chrastka, is an amusing absurdity about an absurd religion. Mick Axelrod makes a likable nerd, and Mario Mendez projects the comic attitude of a masculine Pee-Wee Herman. "Maranatha," directed by Chrastka, features a skillfully subdued performance by Chris Fune, as a man who claims to be - and might well be - the son of God. "Nutshells," an original by Brandon Oliver Jones (with no director credited) explores a conformation between a man and his female shrink. Nichole Unger and Tony Foresta give mesmerizing performances, but Jones' script is too simple. He has an ear for dialogue, but he hasn't yet learned the value of subtext. Grade: C
■ "Open Meeting," by A.R. Gurney, directed by Frank Mengwasser for Las Vegas Little Theatre, brings up the rear. But it's by no means a stinker. A public meeting becomes a free-for-all, with three officials trying hard to cope with an "incopable" situation. Dustin Sisney brings a welcomed, natural presence to his role as the young man. And the script has its share of laughs. But Mengwasser doesn't modulate the performances, so it doesn't take long before you get tired of the screaming. Grade: C-
Anthony Del Valle can be reached at vegastheaterchat@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.

Curtain Call with Erik Ball Fringe Review

Vegas Fringe Festival offers something for everyone

All the world's a buffet. Especially in Las Vegas. But there's one particular buffet that serves up plays, not plates: the third annual Vegas Fringe Festival. Seven short plays, plus one double-header and a scripted finale - appropriately titled "The Final Four" - turn up on the menu of the two-weekend, seven-day theater celebration that kicks off tonight.

Hosted by Las Vegas Little Theatre, the festival features productions (presented in the troupe's Mainstage and Black Box theaters) that "run the gamut" from mainstream to avant-garde, according to festival producer (and LVLT president) Walter Niejadlik .

As befits a wide-ranging theatrical buffet, the festival features "a little sample of everything," he notes. And "if it's not something to your taste, maybe the next show will be to your liking."
LVLT's production, A.R. Gurney's "The Open Meeting" - which, like the other plays, will be staged multiple times during the festival - "is definitely an established piece," Niejadlik says, with "some twists and turns" as mystery surfaces during the title gathering.
By contrast, there's edgy playwright Neil LaBute's dark "Iphigenia in Orem" (presented by Olde English Productions), in which a young Utahan on a business trip to Las Vegas relates a tragic tale to a stranger in a hotel bar.

Table 8 Productions, new to this year's Fringe Festival, will premiere Erica Griffin's dark comedy "Roles for Women," about actresses preparing to compete for "the role of a lifetime."
Other fringe premieres include Ernest Hemmings' "Asphyxiation/Masturbation" from Test Market, an experimental collection of sketches, film footage and sounds that explores everything from time and space to fast food. And "Dick Johnson: Private Eye," from Poor Richard's Players, depicts the comedic adventures of the title character. (Maxim Larden and Mark Valentin wrote the play; Benjamin Loewy contributed songs.)

None of the productions lasts longer than 90 minutes; Found Door Theatre and Chaos Theatre share one time slot for two even shorter plays, "Kissing Hank's Ass" (based on a James Huber short story) and the philosophical comedy "Maranatha," by Nicole J. Cyrus, about a man who thinks he's Jesus - and a reporter trying to expose him as a hoax.

Chaos Theatre's "Soul," by Michael O'Neal, centers on a group of college students and dropouts who must face their decisions as they're shadowed by the play's title character, an embodiment of their own evils.

Endless Productions also goes philosophical with Eugene Markoff's "Expanding the Relative, Pondering Einstein," in which the great scientist applies his theories to "where technology is taking this world" - and its impact on humanity, explains director Tim Burns.

"Expanding the Relative" represents a definite departure from last year's Endless Productions' fringe production: an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's family classic "The Wind in the Willows," which countered the notion that "a lot of times, people think fringe has to be shocking," Burns says.
The sheer variety of plays means that audiences, as well as participants, experience "a diverse energy" generated by "different theater companies with their own particular voice," comments Table 8 artistic director Troy Heard, who's directing "Roles for Women" at this year's festival. "It's a celebration."

It's also a way of reaching out to new audiences "who have never heard of our company," Burns points out. "We all have our own audience base." At the Fringe Festival, however, "we get a lot of new faces."

More than a thousand theater fans attended the first two Fringe Festivals, Niejadlik notes.
And when you're at the Fringe Festival, "you can't help but feel arty," Burns says - whether you're onstage or in the audience.

For those onstage, the short running time of each play contributes to what Burns calls "that kinetic vibe." In part, that's because "we don't allow folks to build sets," Niejadlik explains. There's no time - not with a 10-minute turnaround between performances. "That encourages a lot of interesting staging - and creative use of props," Niejadlik says, recalling a previous LVLT fringe production in which sand-colored tarps doubled as a beach, "because we could set it up in three minutes." But that's part of the festival spirit - a spirit that extends to the fringes of this Fringe Festival, in Burns' view.
"It's a good sign that a lot of us are moving away from our sand-box mentality," he says. "There's a great feeling of pride in working with everyone. We're not rehearsing together - but we're in this together."
Contact reporter Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.

The Gospel According to Cockroach
Las Vegas Citylife's David McKee sat down with Artistic Director Erik Amblad to chat about Cockroach, new Resident Playwright Erica Griffin, and the future.

Talking with new Artistic Director Erik Amblad about the future of the durable troupe

by DAVID MCKEE
During the past two seasons, local producer/director/actor Erik Amblad has staged one Cockroach Theatre production (Danny and the Deep Blue Sea) and appeared in another (The Flu Season). Mainly for the want of a home base, Cockroach has been more spoken of than seen lately. But that’s changing with a dramatic confluence of events. This spring, Cockroach launched an online fundraising campaign to help bankroll the ongoing conversion of a barrel-vaulted space next to Artifice Urban Bar, in the arts district, into a new, 96-seat theater. It adopted the Sin City New Play Contest, orphaned when Sirc Michaels was ousted from Onyx Theatre, signed Erica Griffin (Spearminted) as playwright in residence and tapped Amblad as artistic director. CityLife sat down with him last Sunday, at The Arts Factory’s Bar + Bistro, to learn more. Cockroach had just hit the halfway mark on its $20,000 fundraising campaign, which ends June 15.

What will be the scope of the first Cockroach season?

We’re going to start it in September. We’ll be doing five in-season shows. We’ll end our season in May, and then we’ll do the winner of the Sin City New Play Contest. The [subscription] shows themselves continue the trend of the last 10 years of Cockroach: We get to explore a full point of view, rather than just going show to show, ad hoc. We’ll be able to connect things thematically. Sin City New Play Contest needed a new home, so I approached Original Works Publishing and said that we’d love to offer Arts Square Theater. This last contest had over 400 playwrights from across the nation participate, and the winner, Nurture by Johnna Adams, will be our first production in the space — we just had our first read-through — and Johnna is actually going to Skype into rehearsals [from Queens, N.Y.] so that she can be part of the development process.

What are your responsibilities?

I’m crafting the season and also helping to drive all the Cockroach-produced programming in the space, whether it’s the late-night programming that we’ll do with Erica, trying to bring back some of the original-playwright material that she and I were doing at the [Katherine Gianaclis Park for the Arts], to bring back that ethos to late-night programming. But we’re also going to be driving education. We’re going to do playwright workshops, acting workshops and right now we’re in discussion with a few community groups to do education outreach for youth. That puts a lot on the plate. Day to day, I’ll manage the space with Levi Fackrell, our managing director, and just spread the gospel of Cockroach Theatre.

What was the attraction of getting involved?

I was born and raised here and, when I left, I thought I was leaving for good. I’d go off and do my art elsewhere. But when 9/11 hit, I came back because I wanted to be closer to my family. I thought at the time that I’d be making this sacrifice: no more acting for me. But two years later, I’d just done a show at Las Vegas Little Theatre and came down to this strange place called the Arts Factory in the arts district. I thought, “What is this? This is the town I grew up in?” It changed my perspective, and then I went to a play inside the Arts Factory, produced by this tiny company called Cockroach. It was [Camus'] Caligula. When I walked out of that, it changed everything for me. I realized you can do the theater I hoped to do in this town and, since then it’s just been full-bore for me. Cut to eight years later, and suddenly I’m the artistic director of a theater across from the Arts Factory — and that is Cockroach Theatre. There’s a kind of symmetry there that I can’t ignore.

Why is it important to have a playwright in residence, and why was Erica Griffin the right choice?

Theater in this town can be taken seriously as a discipline, not simply that something people do in their spare time. Part of the way is showing a commitment to someone like Erica, who has shown that discipline in this town for the last five, 10 years. She was in Caligula when I first met her. Erica Griffin is one of the most interesting, compelling and compassionate voices that I’ve encountered. She lives in Las Vegas, cares about Las Vegas and wants to tell Las Vegas stories. We share that passion. So it is an exciting moment.

Theater festival brings on-the-fringe shows to the main stage

By NOLAN LISTER
VIEW STAFF WRITER
photo by Richard Brusky

The Vegas Fringe Festival, the valley's two-weekend live theater festival, is scheduled to return to the Las Vegas Little Theatre for its third year.

Las Vegas Little Theatre President Walter Niejadlik said the festival provides a rare opportunity for people to experience a variety of what the valley's live theater scene has to offer in one setting.
"It's an outlet that is maybe more accessible to folks," he said, "an economically friendly way to fulfill that artistic need."

The festival also provides an opportunity for local artists to network. "It gives some of us exposure to new audiences," said Troy Heard of Table 8 Productions. "We're trying to get our name out to the community, and this is a good way to do it." Isolation can be a problem for some Las Vegas artists, according to local theater producer and director Timothy Burris.

"There's tons of stuff going on here, but we don't always know what the other artists are doing," he said. "From the start, (the festival) has been a band of different groups working together as a community, which helps everyone understand that there is a bigger scene in Las Vegas."

The Vegas Fringe Festival, scheduled for the first two weekends of June, will feature local theater production companies performing established works and new plays written by local playwrights.
Heard is directing the original play "Roles for Women" written by local playwright Erica Griffin.
A number of the companies are performing original works from local playwrights, which speaks to the experimental nature of fringe festivals.

"I often tell friends Las Vegas is the Wild West of theater - anything goes," Heard said. "It is very dynamic and eclectic." The past two festivals netted the Las Vegas Little Theatre approximately $4,000, according to Niejadlik, and each of the participating companies receives 50 percent of their respective ticket sales.
"We'd like to see attendance grow a little bit each year," Niejadlik said. This week, the nine groups will descend on the theater in a last-minute attempt to iron out any technical problems. "The urgency comes (in) wanting everything to go OK with tech work, media stuff and making sure the actors are doing what they're supposed to," said Burris, who has participated in the festival since its inception. "It builds into a fever pitch around this time." All nine productions will be performed five times over the course of two weekends and on only two stages, posing a hectic schedule for performers.
Only 10 minutes is scheduled between performances, so the technical aspect has to be minimal. Sets, lighting and sound constitute the bare minimum, Burris added.

"It's truly a unique experience," he said. "We're used to moving into a theater space and staying for a while." The excitement around the theater has been growing, Burris said.
"Doing a play is something bigger than you already," he said. "But being a part of a festival like this is something else entirely."

Contact Southwest/Spring Valley View reporter Nolan Lister at nlister@viewnews.com or 383-0492.

VegasFringe 2012: City Life Picks

FRIDAY-SUNDAY, JUNE 1-3; THURSDAY-SUNDAY, JUNE 7-10

Autoerotic asphyxiation! Suspicious religions! Einstein! That's one third of the subject matter at the third annual VegasFringe Festival, setting up shop at the Las Vegas Little Theatre. The festival takes place over two weekends, offering plenty of opportunity to see all nine of the shows presented by eight production companies: Chaos Theatre, Las Vegas Little Theatre, Poor Richard's Players, Found Door, Endless Productions, Olde English Productions, Table 8 Productions and TSTMRKT.

If you only have time to see a couple performances, here are our votes:

A.R. Gurney's Open Meeting (Las Vegas Little Theatre), about a mysterious meeting that devolves into an Oedipal ritual; Erica Griffin's Roles for Women (Table 8 Productions), about a bizarre stage manager pushing the lengths five actresses will go to become stars; and the double-feature Fringe Shorts, including James Huber's "Kissing Hank's Ass" (Found Door) about a couple trying to coax a room-rental candidate into joining their religion, and "Maranatha" (Chaos Theatre), about a reporter trying to prove a man who thinks he's Jesus is anything but.

In the end, four of the theater companies battle it out during The Final Four by Deanne Grace to establish who wins Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best in Fringe and Most Fringy. No play is longer than 90 minutes, so there's no excuse for not experiencing at least half of your represented local theater troupes in action.

Las Vegas Little Theatre, 3920 Schiff Dr., 362-7996.www.lvlt.org/fringe2012home.htm for tickets and show times.

LVTAPS REVIEW

episode 65

Opposites attract

Beauty, in two brand-new plays, is in the eye of the beholder

BY DAVID MCKEE

"Las Vegans" sound like the inhabitants of some alien planet where extreme vegetarianism reigns. Erica Griffin's Spearminted (Las Vegas Little Theatre) stars the two most visible subspecies of Las Vegan: 11 (Mario Mendez), a street-corner sign twirler, and Piph (Erin Marie Sullivan), a stripper. They meet not-so-cute when 11 wanders onto Maryland Parkway into the path of Piph's car, late one Thanksgiving. He's been reduced to living with his grandmother and Piph, having turned 35, has been demoted to the Spearmint Rhino morning shift. Ah, the glamour of life in Sin City.

Since 11 can't seem to recall his identity, Piph -- short for (metaphor alert!) "epiphany" -- takes over as his primary caregiver. Smitten, 11 moves in, hoping to graduate from her couch to the bedroom. But since Piph hasn't come clean about her day job, he's heading for a rude shock ... as is she.

After two prior disappointments, LVLT's New Works Competition has a legitimately good play in Spearminted. Griffin not only sustains interest in just two characters for 130 minutes, she's devised an intriguing structure that entwines their destiny from the start. When not together, 11 and Piph engage in conversations (sometimes heard in voice-over) with unseen and unheard interlocutors, but seem to obliquely answer each other. These are, to borrow a Stephen Sondheim lyric, parallel lines that meet.

Griffin seems to have invented a new genre: screwball tragedy. Her literate but outrageous sense of humor once again enables her to slip ambitious themes (for instance, whether personal identity is innate or constructed; the importance of fantasy) into one's intellectual bloodstream virtually without notice. This ability to be both cosmic and individually specific is a rare gift, although her protagonists sometimes deliver too-sophisticated witticisms that betray authorial ventriloquism. Also, whether intended or not, 11's self-righteous male feminism just seems like patriarchy in drag.

Director/designer Shawn Hackler's affectionate, flowingly paced, impeccably produced staging enhances the contrapuntal weave of Griffin's writing, but he's also destabilized it. Rail-thin and angular, Sullivan contrasts sharply with Mendez's teddy-bearish "lovable loser" slump. But it's like the mating dance of an egret and a turtle: Piph's an airhead, with ditzy mannerisms and a helium-fueled voice to match. So extraordinarily bizarre is Sullivan's "tour de farce," you can't take your eyes off her. Thankfully, Mendez doesn't try to match her quirk for quirk, but he's overshadowed until 11's emotional defenses ultimately collapse, to gut-wrenching effect. The real scene-stealer is Thomas Chrastka, bringing deadpan humor to several background roles, which include a corpse and a macaw.

Another premiere, Ernest Hemmings' Bro (TSTMRKT), like Spearminted, deals with how we're conditioned to perceive beauty. At its center are two emotionally infantile pals, Cosmo (Alex Olson) and Craig (Shane Cullum). Cosmo has drunkenly bedded his XXL friend Rebecca (Sue McNulty) and the damage to his self-esteem is worse than the hangover. A subsequent "friends with benefits" arrangement might become more serious were it not for the harsh peer pressure represented by Craig.

Dropping a Scarface-sized quotient of F-bombs, Hemmings mercilessly, hilariously, flawlessly captures "bromance" dynamics, his dialogue not sounding "written" but as though overheard from the next barstool. Zingers like "you're harder than Chinese algebra" feel perfectly off the cuff. (Cullum nails them like nobody's business.) It's ribald, bruisingly real and almost unrelentingly funny, even if director Hemmings is clearly too close to his script to do it full justice.

The first act is a daring success: a slow buildup to Rebecca's entrance. Act 2, however, settles into a familiar rom-com path and even finds Hemmings employing awkward monologues to advance the plot. The men's casual nastiness toward Rebecca would seem to dictate an unhappy ending. But where Spearminted sticks to its guns, concluding very ambiguously, Bro panders. We buy the pro forma final clinch only because of Rebecca's likeable personality and the vulnerability of McNulty's performance.

It's her best work yet: deeply felt, unusually casual and sweet, even sexy. We feel Rebecca's pain. But there's guy trouble: One believes Cullum completely and Olson not at all. The straight man gets the laughs because Cullum plays the situation while Olson goes for the joke, heavily overworking Cosmo's dorkiness along the way. Olson does comedy; Cullum just is, especially in the second act, where the breathtaking cruelty that underlies his incorrigibly inappropriate behavior emerges with a vengeance.

Like Hemmings' direction, the lighting is patchy and the sets have to be taken on faith. However, you'll probably enjoy three-fourths of Bro and grant papal indulgence to the rest.

Spearminted Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m., Sunday, 2 p.m., through May 13; Las Vegas Little Theatre, 3920 Schiff Drive, 362-7996, $14-$15. Bro Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m., through May 5; Onyx Theatre, 953 E. Sahara Ave. No. 16, 732-7225, $15-$20

Last updated on Thursday, May 3, 2012 at 3:29 pm

Las Vegas Review Journal Review: Spearminted

 

By ANTHONY DEL VALLE
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

"Spearminted" - an original play by Erica Griffin now at Las Vegas Little Theatre's Fischer Black Box - had me intrigued during much of the first act. The author and director Shawn Hackler get us immediately interested with some hard-edged DJing and two people onstage who don't seem a part of each other's worlds. One is a woman who's a Vegas stripper about to be exiled into the morning slot at a sleazy club. The other is a man whose job involves twirling a sign advertising 69-cent tacos.
A car crash connects their lives. After a long period in a coma, the man comes to, and the woman - mostly out of guilt for causing his injuries - spends a lot of time with him.

Griffin and Hackler nicely package the first act: plenty of fast pacing, unexpected visual beauty and varied rhythms. What I liked best is Griffin's ability to slowly establish a romantic relationship with two very different people. Her dialogue is often clever, but better yet, she knows when to stop being clever and just let her characters talk. She also has created a nifty dramatic device: The man has amnesia, and the aging stripper feels she's losing her identity. It's obvious that this is a story about two people who don't know who they are.

But in the second act, the more I learned about them, the less I cared. The two analyze their feelings so often - and so melodramatically - that I felt Griffin was just repeating herself. The audience is way ahead of her.

Erin Marie Sullivan plays the woman with the stereotypical high-pitched squealy voice of the dumb blonde. She's tough to listen to. Mario Mendez as the man gives an extraordinarily natural performance in the first act. You can feel his amusement at getting to know such an eccentric, and you sense a genuine growing sexual attraction. But in the second act, he falls victim to histrionics. He has one too many nervous breakdowns.

I hope Griffin loses her tendency to overexplain and overfeel. Her first act is rich in suggestion. I wish the second were equally complete and ambiguous.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at vegastheaterchat@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.

Theater review: Las Vegas Little Theatre’s ‘Spearminted’
Jacob Coakley

Wed, May 2, 2012 (4:54 p.m.)

Erin Marie Sullivan inhabits her character with absolute commitment.

The Details

Spearminted

Through May 13; Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m.; $15; 18+

Las Vegas Little Theatre’s Fischer Black Box, 362-7996

Spearminted, by Erica Griffin—winner of the Las Vegas Little Theatre’s New Works Competition, and playing there through May 13—starts promisingly, but ultimately feels unfinished and manipulative.
An opening dance number introduces us to our main characters: Stripper Piph (short for Epiphany, played by Erin Marie Sullivan) swings on a pole and grinds on an audience member while Eleven, played by Mario Mendez, twirls a taco sign. And both work it hard. Sullivan is amazing on the pole, and Mendez has definitely been practicing his sign-twirling tricks. It’s exciting, energetic and a unique vision … and then all that energy melts away in an overlong, overlapping monologue scene in which the actors talk with unseen characters. This pattern repeats throughout the play—flashes of a genuine quirky sensibility get buried in scenes that take too long to hit their mark and meander too far afield. At one point Eleven mutters about “digressing again,” and I have to agree.
In the second act, things get more intense as Piph and Eleven get closer—but the emotional fireworks don’t add up the way Griffin wants them to. Character turns seem disjointed and unmotivated, even as they’re played with absolute commitment by Sullivan and Mendez. Sullivan, in particular, does a great job with the left turns the play takes, inhabiting her character with vulnerability and absolute commitment. The problem—for both actors—is a final, sudden, shocking twist, that strips off layers of Eleven to reveal a new, almost entirely different character underneath. But this reveal, while written for maximum dramatic effect, doesn’t feel surprising or inevitable. It feels manipulative, the work of an author tweaking things for maximum “twist” impact. Rather than coming as a surprising but inevitable destiny, the twist robs the play of the tension that had been building.
There’s much to applaud in this play: vivid characters, a genuine Las Vegas vibe, off-kilter humor. But the promise and menace of the story get lost along the way.

Plotting the Neon Curves: Women Writing in Las Vegas

Spearminted, the twisted love story between a stripper and an amnesiac, is playing to a packed house at the Las Vegas Little Theatre. Nestled anxiously in the back row is Erica Griffin, the author, who says it's the first time she's seen the play performed live. Typically, she's far more involved in the process of getting one of her shows onto the stage. Erin Marie Sullivan, who plays the character Piph, is performing a strip tease on stage while women in the audience applaud and cheer her on. Some of the men are trying hard not to stare at her naked breasts; after all, this isn't really a strip club. Actors and audiences always seem to have a good time during an Erica Griffin play. But those seeking a meaningful emotional connection with fictional creations should beware: her plays are populated with psychotics, murderers and crazy people. She writes situational comedy that pushes the boundaries of the possible by using characters that live on the edge of reality. Hilarious, slightly disturbing and completely unexpected, her plays have been titillating audiences in Las Vegas for almost a decade. No doubt she'll be titillating them for years to come. Her newest play, Roles For Women, will be presented by Table 8 Productions in June as part of the Las Vegas Fringe Festival.

Las Vegas Little Theatre to present New Works Competition winner

By F. Andrew Taylor
VIEW STAFF WRITER

 

The Las Vegas Little Theatre is heating up its 34th season with "Spearminted," a play by local playwright Erica Griffin that is anything but ordinary, and that's just what the theater's organizers hoped.

The play is the winner of the theater's fourth New Works Competition. "We had about 20 entries this year," said Walter Niejadlik, president of the board of directors of the Las Vegas Little Theatre. "That's less than some years, but the competition was really solid. It was really hard to choose from the last three or four."

The play features 11, a young slacker who earns his living as a sign twirler and cares for his disabled grandmother, and PIPH, a headstrong stripper who was recently demoted to the morning shift. Both characters have dreams of escaping their depressing existence and meet when PIPH accidentally hits 11 with her car, which causes 11 to lose his memory. As PIPH helps him recover, an unlikely romance develops, which is threatened by his returning memories. The play features partial nudity.
"It was written as a two-person play, but I've added a third person as what I'm calling a chorus," said director Shawn Hackler. "It's sort of a scene change logistics thing."

Griffin hasn't been able to be as involved with the production of the play as either she or Hackler would prefer, but they've kept communicating, mostly via email.

"There's a certain amount of trust you've got to put into the director of a premiere," Griffin said. "Those first reviews have the power to determine if a play has a life beyond the first staging or not."
For Hackler, the prospect of working on a new play was both daunting and exhilarating.
"You've got nothing to go off of from former productions, so you have a tremendous amount of leeway to explore the text completely independent of anything else," Hackler said. "You get to sort of rack your brain and the cast's brain and work directly with the playwright."

Hackler said he's still fairly new to directing, although he directed the first New Works Competition play and has directed for Insurgo Theater and his own production company. He agreed to direct the play before he had a chance to read it, based on Griffin's previous work he had seen and read.
"I like her work. I like her style. I like her brain," Hackler said.

Familiarity with Griffin didn't help her win the competition as the three-person panel that initially reads all the submissions does so without knowing the identity of the author.

"They have a score sheet and judge the plays on things like creativity, originality, theme and other factors," Niejadlik said. "There are points added for being a local, too, because we want to encourage local writers. We tally up the scores, and the highest five come to the final judge, which was me this year."

The competition seeks plays that can be told in a black box theater, with minimal sets and props. They're also looking for works geared toward a younger audience ranging from 18 to 40.
The play was something that had been percolating for years. Griffin originally conceived the characters while living at the Katherine Gianaclis Park for the Arts and hosting weekly workshops in the center's black box.

"I wanted to create these two characters who made a living on the periphery of things, like sign twirling and stripping," Griffin said. "I wanted them to have nothing in common except the fact that they both moved their body for strangers to make a living. I wanted them to meet because of an accident, one hitting the other with their car, and see what would happen."

Later, while watching a reading of the Johnna Adams play "Nurture," winner of the Sin City New Play Contest at the Onyx Theatre, Griffin figured out how she wanted to tell the characters' story.
"Her play was a revelation," Griffin said. "It had only two characters, but it kept moving along and had constant surprises. I went home that very night and wrote furiously - well, only when my toddler was sleeping - for two months straight and came up with 'Spearminted.' "

Griffin described the play as a quirky, dark comedy set in modern-day Las Vegas that examines the differences between the fantasy world and the real world of the sexes and that confusing place in between.

"Spearminted" is scheduled to open Friday and run through May 15 in the Las Vegas Little Theatre Black Box at 3920 Schiff Drive. Performances are scheduled at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $15 for adults and $14 for seniors and students. For more information, visit lvlt.org or call the box office at 362-7996.

Contact Sunrise/Whitney View reporter F. Andrew Taylor at ataylor@viewnews.com or 380-4532.

Write-Face!

Las Vegas playwrights are on the march to add new voices to local theater

By Steve Bornfeld

New words to say, new characters to interpret them, new ideas to challenge us. No Felix and Oscar, no Willy and Biff, no Romeo, oh Romeo. Can you handle that, theatergoers?

“Finding original voices in this city is vital to getting us on the national theater map,” says Erica Griffin, one of numerous Las Vegas-based playwrights in a city where community theater isn’t an easy sell.

Perhaps that is about to change. Culture commands this city’s attention now as The Smith Center for the Performing Arts delivers a raft of Broadway musicals to entertain even those who never thought they could be mesmerized by (insert exaggerated elitist accent here) “The Theater.” What better time, then, to cultivate and appreciate the grittier side to high-gloss theater and discover the pleasures therein?

Topics and genres vary greatly among our home-bred wordsmiths. Ernest Hemmings’ bulky résumé encompasses what he calls “absurd to parody to brutal realism” in plays such as The Shande of Rabbi Schlemazel, about a rabbi’s affair with a transgender prostitute. Author of six short plays, Dave Surratt also penned the full-length Listen, about a medical research analyst fired for using music therapy to aid cancer patients.

Drawn to dark comedy, Griffin finds funny beats in murder, suicide, mental illness and abuse. Among her 18 plays, Casa De Nada, about a band of homeless people living in a tent city in a rich woman’s back yard, won Las Vegas Little Theater’s “Best Of” prize at its Fringe Festival.
“There seems to be a good amount of new plays in Las Vegas from local writers,” says Walter Niejadlik, president of Las Vegas Little Theatre, which provides new playwrights a platform, including a New Works Competition. “Hopefully the audience will grow. New works are vital, or there is no growth of the art.”

Playwright-in-residence programs would also bolster the profile of Vegas dramatists. “We have a free weekly workshop that we run for six months, then produce scripts from that effort in the remaining six months,” says John Beane, director of Insurgo Theater Movement. “We’re currently in the producing phase with three scripts chosen.”

Yet growth includes growing pains, and sometimes setbacks. The craft took a painful hit locally when UNLV, sucker-punched by state budget cuts, suspended its post-grad playwriting program. Swept away along with it were productions of student works in the university’s Black Box Theatre. Long gone are the greatly missed Katherine Gianaclis Park for the Arts and its cutting-edge cultural presentations, as well as Hemmings’ downtown SEAT (Social Experimentation and Absurd Theater). Adventurous venues remain, though, to nurture new work: Onyx Theatre at the Commercial Center, Insurgo Theater Movement at the Plaza, Theatre 7 and Cockroach Theatre.

Opinions vary among local playwrights, though, about the receptiveness to their scripts. “Las Vegas is a great place to start,” says Surratt, whose playwriting career was preceded by three years as a theater critic with Las Vegas CityLife. “Given the relative lack of entrenched cliques and grim gatekeepers to the scene, it’s not hard for an aspiring playwright with any talent or ambition to be heard.”

Others’ experiences have been different. “Usually playwrights are turned away or ignored unless there is an actual call for them to submit,” Hemmings says, “or if the playwright is in with the theater company in question and happens to have a finished play to be produced.”

Once a playwright has grabbed a theater’s attention, though, other obstacles loom. “You think you’re going to make your money back on production costs with a play written by a nobody? You might as well show foreign films in Montana,” Hemmings says. “But—and this is a very big ‘but’—if you are good with marketing and you pick content you know will push the right buttons with your base, then you could easily come out ahead.”

Whether by William Shakespeare or Neil Simon, established plays are safer bets to bring in paying customers. Unknown authors need to work within narrower budget margins. “If you are a nobody like me, it is really important to keep in mind how much it would cost to do your show,” says Hemmings, whose work was produced at his own SEAT and Gianaclis Park, as well at the Cleveland Public Theatre in Ohio and Los Angeles’ Riprap Studio. “You better have fewer than four characters and give producers a reason to think they’ll be able to market it easily. Sex, violence, politics—that stuff is easy to market.”

Theater’s status as popular entertainment has declined over the decades, leaving a largely older, nostalgia-loving fan base with a suspicion of novelty. Keeping the doors open often requires theater companies to cater to patrons’ sentimental attachments by staging classic plays. “It’s kind of like sitting around and listening for the thousandth time to the great old Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin of one’s youth, rather than take the time to discover the new guard of Radiohead and Queens of the Stone Age,” Surratt says. “An important difference [is] that there are far fewer theater fans than rock fans.”

Yet local playwright and actor Ernie Curcio is optimistic about the evolution of audiences. “The Vegas audience of the past will soon pass and so will their season tickets and their grip on deadly theater,” Curcio says. Among his 26 plays, staged in Vegas and New York City, are Warmouth and the deeply personal Unfinished and Sundrops, both partially prompted by the 2008 suicide of his first wife, local theater veteran Barbara Ann Rollins. “A new audience will emerge from the ashes, and they’ll have no appetite for stale plays.”

Would plays specifically addressing Las Vegas and its pinwheel of eccentric characters up the odds for engaging local audiences? Griffin is a one-playwright juggernaut for that cause. Consider her catalog:

Inbred focuses on a Boulder City cover musician drawn by a groupie into a strange reality (and a shack near Hoover Dam). Opening April 27 at Las Vegas Little Theatre after winning its New Works Competition, Spearminted tells of a romance between a stripper and a street sign-twirler after she accidentally hits him with her car.

“You could say I’m more creatively obsessed with Las Vegas folk,” Griffin says. “I want to write about bartenders and showgirls and chefs and executives. I want to write about dealers and musicians and clowns and union workers and tourists, too. There is something so fascinating about the people who choose to live here and the way they do or don’t adapt. I feel like I can give a voice to them, unique to this time and place.”