Archives for May 2009

tonight’s rehearsal was awesome. Dare I sound like a teenager and say “hard-core?”
I dare. It was hard-core! I love working on this play with these strong actors!
We had to crack the door at one point because it started to get a little too hot in the room.

For a play that deals with such strong levels of grief, Jenny Schwartz finds a great balance to that heaviness with a mixture of hilarity, tension, sensuality, and aggression.

The play itself is so complex but the emotions it takes the audience through…. completely simple, and the essence of human.

my directors blog deep thought for the night is:

The actors are finding such tender and raw moments in this beautiful script, it had me and the stage manager weeping. I cannot wait to share this with Columbus audiences.

and a little something about why I picked the play….

I’m dyslexic. It, and the coping/over compensating I’ve learned creep into every part of my life. I have a hard time finding the “right” words. Communicating has always had a physical aspect to it. In creating/performing for the stage my work starts with the body. Finally when I read Jenny Schwartz’s words I found someone who uses words the way I use movement: something beyond merely using it as a way to get from point A to point B. In “God’s Ear” the text is not straight forward dialogue. From the words there is at once poetry, communication, lack of communication, and a range of emotions. The language does more than describe surfaces wants and needs. The language is art. The language is movement. When I read the script I fell in love with the words and world of catharsis those words wove. Simply reading the script is touching, but now, armed with an amazing cast, crew, and design team, the play is taking on a new dimension, creating a production with which I am so lucky and proud to be a part.

A lot of people ask us where we find the plays we produce. Good question.

One way, is by reading a lot of blogs and online newspapers, browsing reviews, and seeing what gets a lot of good press. Well, in the off-off-Broadway realm that we keep a close eye on, no play in recent memory received as much favorable word of mouth as God’s Ear. In fact, it was just a week over two years since we published “Everybody’s Talkin; About: God’s Ear by Jenny Schwartz” on the Theatreforté blog. Here’s what we were reading then.

The actors aren’t the only ones giving a flawless performance in Jenny Schwartz’s God’s Ear. English itself is taking a bow in this beautifully stylized postmodern tragedy, a poignant, obfuscating look at the language we use when we cannot say what is in our heart, and the blinding power of honesty when at last our heartstrings find the strength to sing.

Theatre Conversation (Matt J)

The language absolutely explodes and the shattered bits form a world entirely unique and beautiful. Imagine Caryl Churchill and Mac Wellman’s lyricism smashing up against each other in a rhythmic configuration which can only be Jenny Schwartz’s.

Superfluities (George Hunka)

… Schwartz’s play finds a precise poetry in a stripped-down repetition of everyday cliche and anxious incompletion, set to an irregular, idiosyncratic rhythm … the slightly-mannered performances are also a keen match for Schwartz’s formally structured dialogue, echoing (if only slightly) the modernist linguistic catches of T.S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein.

The Brooklyn Rail (Heidi Schreck)

It wasn’t only that the play was terrific—there are already several terrific new plays that have been written in this century—it also felt like a play that could not have existed before this moment. God’s Ear is both formally inventive—Schwartz constructs it almost entirely out of found language, bits and pieces of clichés and misremembered idioms—and also psychologically grounded, a narrative arc that unfolds organically and with stunning emotional impact.

Time Out NY (David Cote)

Contentwise, Schwartz’s play has qualities that could make it appealing to subscribers chary of postmodern whimsy. It’s a family tale that deals with universal themes of grief and death similar to the recent Pulitzer winner for drama, David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole. Unlike that play, God’s Ear eschews theatrical and psychological conventions, deflecting the pain of the couple into quirky rhetoric and surreal flourishes, such as cameos by the tooth fairy and a life-size G.I. Joe.

The NY Times (Jason Zinoman)

In one of the most virtuosic monologues of the theater season, Christina Kirk, the rangy grande dame of the downtown stage, encapsulates an entire marriage in a series of declarative statements and hackneyed phrases. The poetic high point of Jenny Schwartz’s “God’s Ear,” a formally inventive and superbly performed drama about how the death of a son shatters a family, this ode to love, loss and the routines of life has the economy and dry wit of a Sondheim love song.

You can also hear Jenny Schwartz (with Zack Colbourn) read from her play courtesy of NYTheatreCast.

We started keeping track of the play immediately, and set to work getting in touch with the playwright and her agent. About a year later, AVLT member Eleni Papaleonardos got a hold of the script and fell in love. We reserved the special season-closing spot for it in 2009, and now it’s time for Columbus to meet Jenny Schwartz and her wonderful creation.