You Down with The OP - Yeah You Know Me!

The only traffic light in town.

Poor Pluto

Things have been so crazy busy these last couple of weeks that I've not been getting my required 10 hour of sleep. (Siesta counts, right?) A week ago I was up at The Orchard Project www.orchardproject.com participating in a theatre retreat. The OP is unique in that it is committed to entire theatre companies, instead of individual artists. They provide housing, food, rehearsal/performance space and a local Catskills audience. The wine sponsorship didn't hurt either.

Assembled were 24 people representing 24 companies from the City, Upstate, Chicago, Austin and London. The four days ended with the performance of four new 24 Hour plays written by Emily DeVoti, Jason Grote, Megan Mostlyn Brown and Lucy Thurber. I had the chance to be in Megan's play called Second Time Around, directed by Alyse Rothman . Me and Rob Neill from Neo-Futurists www.nyneofuturists.org played college kids pretending to be investment bankers who hook up with two middle aged, coke snorting divorcees through the internet. The two actresses were Sarah Richardson from Rude Mechanicals www.rudemechs.com and Nicole Quinn from Actors & Writers http://www.ninashengold.com/actorswriters.htm. I spent the entire day laughing. My trouble during the performance that evening was not remembering my lines, but keeping a straight face. We had so much fun. I'd do it all again.

And I did. When I got back to NYC, I got a call from Tina Fallon from the 24 Hour Play Company www.24hourplays.com to take part in their fringe show, 24 is 10: The Best of the 24 Hour Plays at the Lucille Lortel on Tuesday night. I hopped into the role of The Ordinary Man in Conner Ratliff's Tobias, Angel of Heaven directed by Daisy Walker. If it weren't for my furry pioneer vest, Abe Lincoln hat and stuffed animal rabbits, I would've bombed.

In between all this, I'm running back and forth to the Gallery Players to direct this Durang doublebill that opens on Sept 9th. Things have been going really well except for the fact that one of the supporting actresses dropped out on Monday night. We've been in a frantic search to replace her. We've still got two weeks, but no doubt there will be more speed bumps ahead. Having the actors is obviously number one though. Luckily, we recast it about an hour ago. She'll be at rehearsal tonight, and I hope I can get things to merge back on the highway after our short detour.