Jack Hitt and I have two more exciting opportunities for MAKING UP THE TRUTH in the new year. In March, we will have a two week residency at 3LD. We will work with amazing video designer Aaron Harrow to develop the multimedia aspects of the piece. Many many steps up from the Power Point presentation we’ve been struggling with up till now. Then in June, we will be part of the New Haven Arts and Ideas festival. I’ll post details when I have them.

Happy New Year!

I’m about to go to Boston for a few days to work at the Huntington with journalist Jack Hitt to work on Jack’s solo performance piece, Making Up the Truth. We are blending some of Jack’s amazing stories (several of which have been heard in different forms on This American Life) with the neuroscience of perception and self to celebrate the wild and unpredictable world we all live in, but rarely let ourselves see. If you’re in Boston on Sept 24, come check it out.

We’ll also be at New York Theater Workshop on Monday Oct 18 at 3pm.

Here’s all the info:

Jack Hitt tells extravagant, true tales – a yarn about the childhood neighbor who was one of the first men to become a woman, or his first apartment super with a deadly secret identity. But, the stories always lead people to ask, did that really happen? The Atlantic Monthly recently called This American Life contributor Jack Hitt “one of America’s best storytellers.” In his new show MAKING UP THE TRUTH, he shares his stories and learns that, of all things, new scientific breakthroughs point to an answer to that question: Do extraordinary things only happen to certain people, or do we all swim unaware in a sea of the uncanny and unbelievable?

Friday, Sept 24 at 7pm, Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA, 527 Tremont St, Boston

rsvp: huntingtontheatre.org/makingup

ALL DAY SUCKERS by Susan Dworkin, produced by New Feet Productions,  premieres at the New York International Fringe Festival. There’s only 4 more performances – come check us out!

Playwright Theresa Rebeck is the guest blogger for the NY Times arts blog. And her first blog quotes me – right at the beginning, where even people who aren’t sure they want to read it will see me! Kind of cool.

Here it is:

Somebody recently told me that one of my plays, “The Understudy,” was “too funny.”

Comedy is historically undervalued, and one does wonder when we’re going to get over that. But “too funny”? Now we have to deal with “too funny”?

I started asking around about it. My friend Jessica Bauman, who is a wonderful director, felt like she understood the criticism and tried to explain it in a nice way.

“Your plays are so funny people don’t notice how serious they are,” she said. “They’re enjoying themselves too much. So they stop listening.”

For those of you who actually do want to read the whole thing, it’s quite smart and interesting. Check it out! http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/theater-talkback-the-perils-of-being-too-funny/

by Emily DeVoti
directed by Jessica Bauman  

with Carolyn Baeumler, Jordan Baker, Peter Bradbury,
Jon Krupp, Anna Kull, Noah Robbins

design Susan Zeeman Rogers, Lenore Doxsee,
Amy Altadonna, Emily Pepper  

psm  Kat West    asm Emily Paige Ballou    props Ashley Gagner
line producer Lisa Dozier     assist dir Samantha Tella
casting Paul Davis, Calleri Casting     press Jim Baldassare  
associate producer Rehana Mirza
produced by Susan Bernfield & Sarah Cameron Sunde  

APRIL 26 TO MAY 22
Mondays through Saturdays
most performances 8.30pm
April 26, 27, 28 & May 3, 4, 5 — 7pm  

opening night Thursday April 29   

at HERE 
145 6th Avenue (enter on Dominick, 1 block south of Spring)    

$35 premium seats (reserved) / $25 general admission
Mondays pay-what-you-will (at the door only) tickets www.here.org or call 212-352-3101

Rural New England, just before Reagan’s second term.  Meg and Ben are a creditor away from losing their family farm.  To the rescue flies a high-powered businessman — in a private chopper no less — offering a tidy sum for a taste of farm life and the pure, raw milk that goes with it.   

Even before locavores roamed the earth, “back to the land” was hardly as simple as its promise; livestock and humans aren’t known for behaving as expected.  And so it is in MILK, an elegant parable of change set on the cusp of a shifting American landscape.  

www.newgeorges.org

I had imagined that I would update this space all the time, but the truth is that I forget I’m supposed to do it, and I don’t post anything for months. Oh well.

Good things are in the works for this winter and spring. I’m in preproduction for MILK by Emily DeVoti, which is being co-produced by New Georges and New Feet at HERE, starting performances April 26. It’s a beautiful play – I’ve been working on it for years. We have great designers and are putting together a wonderful cast, including many who have helped us develop it. More details when I have them.

On March 8, I’m directing a reading of one of my favorite plays I’ve ever directed: MAIDEN VOYAGES by Honor Molloy and Bronagh Murphy. It was the first play I ever directed for New Georges at the old, decrepit Beckett Theater in 1992. We are doing the reading for the Working Theater’s 25th Anniversary season, featuring songs by Grammy winner Susan McKeown (who was in the original cast). The reading will also be a tribute to Bronagh, who died of cancer far too young last spring in Ireland. Again, all the specifics when I have them.

Other than that, trying not to get too discouraged and depressed about Haiti, Massachusetts, health care reform, unemployment, the stupidity of the American electorate and all the other ways the world is falling apart. But who isn’t?

Welcome to my new website! After much labor by my wonderful designer (Matt Falber – call him if you need website work, or a great cabaret song), it’s finally done. There will still be a few things added – old reviews etc. – but it’s basically all here. Please look around, and let me know what you think.

And, of course, the real reason to have a website is to let people know what I’m doing and have done. I just directed “and it seems to me a very good sign…” by Harrison Rivers for the 24 Hour Plays on Broadway at the American Airlines Theater. Amazing cast – John Krasinski, Sam Rockwell, Naomi Watts and Amber Tamblyn. Crazy, fun day of theater boot camp in glamor land.

And for the future: please come to my workshop reading of “All Day Suckers” by Susan Dworkin. It’s funny, smart, very timely and has ukulele-accompanied songs.