Year-End Greetings and Appeal for Goodwill from Piper McKenzie

Dear Friend,

What's that? It's almost 2011, you say? You're kidding. Really? Are you sure? Wow. That's... wow.

We here at Piper McKenzie have been a sprint all year, so maybe it makes sense that December has ambushed us like this - despite the fact that we're currently running a holiday show! A tally of the past year's activities bears this out:

• JANUARY: We finished up our second season of our serial Lady Cryptozoologist at the Vampire Cowboys' Saturday Night Saloon, putting two dozen actors on the tiny Battle Ranch stage to play assorted scientists, creatures, and semi-sentient spores. (Maybe you had to be there.)
  


• MARCH: We brought back a full-length run of our 2009 Fight Fest hit Craven Monkey and the Mountain of Fury at The Brick, pleasing audiences with our tale of world-shaking simian love.
  


• JUNE: We partnered with Old Kent Road Theater to present the premiere of Eric Bland's play Jeannine's Abortion: A Play in One Trimester, at The Brick's Too Soon Festival. A definite departure for PMcK, the show opened up new directions for us.
  


• JULY: As part of The Brick's Game Play festival, we created Theater of the Arcade: Five Classic Video Games Adapted for the Stage, in collaboration with The Fifth Wall. The New York Times called it "Brilliant," and it even made Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish. With every performance sold out (including an extension), this has been PMcK's most successful production to date.
  


• AUGUST: We filmed our first ever music video, for The Electric Mess' song "She Has a Funny Walk." It was an ungodly amount of fun, and certainly not the last of PMcK's film/video endeavors.
  


• SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER: We returned to the Saturday Night Saloon with Crystal Skillman's Killer High, a schoolyard riff on Apocalypse Now - final episode to perform in January!
  


• DECEMBER: We rounded out the year with a show created for family audiences: Bethlehem or Bust: How the Three Kings Teamed Up to Deliver the World's First Christmas Presents. Not only are kids and grown-ups alike loving it, it's also going to be Jeff's first published play! (If you had a chance to see it, there are two final matinees on Saturday, January 1 and Sunday, January 2.)

As always, we have an ambitious slate planned for next year - even despite the fact that Hope and Jeff are expecting their first child. (Yup, it's the truth - figured this was as good a place as any to spill it.) Some of our other planned productions include:

• Piper McKenzie's Dainty Cadaver: This ambitious collaborative playmaking project brings together 18 playwrights and three directors to create, Exquisite Corpse-style, three completely new plays to be staged as workshop performances at The Brick in late January.
  


• The Pow (working title): Our proposed entry to The Brick's Comic Book Theater Festival in June, this original play will enlist five comic artists to support the story of a lifelong fan who loves comics so much he's developed the power to enter the stories himself - with unexpected results.
  


• Fill the Valleys, Flatten the Hills: A planned 2012 project that will enter pre-production next year, this promises to be PMcK's most ambitious show to date - a Depression-era Southern Gothic alien invasion trunk show with a live, original folk score.
  


• PMcK Repertory: We'll be actively seeking out opportunities this year for revivals of some of our greatest hits from the past - our Bizarre Science Fantasy anthology, Macbeth Without Words, Theater of the Arcade and more.
  

Exciting, huh? It's probably very clear that, in order to accomplish all of these things, we'll be asking for your help. But we're not simply asking for money - we're seeking a relationship. Community is very important to us, and, by sending you this note, we're asking if you'd like to become an integral and crucial member of the Piper McKenzie community. Art can't happen in a void, and so we're seeking out your support. In return, we plan to honor your commitment by creating exciting, entertaining, enlightening and enlivening new theater, for you both to enjoy for yourself and to offer as a gift of enjoyment to others. No contribution is too small - whether you can give us $5 or $5 million (ha!), you'll still be a colleague, a collaborator, and a pillar of our community.

In the meantime, we hope you're having a peaceful and healthy holiday season, and that you'll be able to join us in the audience or online for some of PMcK's upcoming endeavors. Let's hope 2011 is as full and festive as possible - thank you for everything!

Best Wishes,
Hope Cartelli & Jeff Lewonczyk
Proprietors

SO YOU'RE DOING A PLAY ABOUT ABORTION...

Well, pretty much anyone involved in this production will tell you that it's not ABOUT abortion - it just has an abortion in it. I guess that dealing with the subject in such a casual manner is controversial in its own right, though, which is probably what makes it all so interesting.

In case you just came in (or haven't been following us on Facebook, etc.), the production is Jeannine's Abortion: A Play in One Trimester, and it's a collaboration with Old Kent Road, written by Eric Bland and directed by Hope Cartelli, featuring a cast of a half-dozen fresh young faces and one grizzled curmudgeon (i.e., me). It opens this Thursday as part of The Brick's Too Soon Festival, and there are a number of reasons you should see it.

However, I will hand the reins over to the playwright himself, who has crafted the following platonic dialogue with a platonic audience member describing the what-the-what about the show:

PERSON: Is this play about abortion?
ME: Someone has an abortion in it, yes.
PERSON: …Why?
ME: Because. That happens.
PERSON: Is the play funny?
ME: Sometimes.
PERSON: Why?
ME: Because that happens.
PERSON: Is it political?
ME: Man is a political animal.
PERSON: That’s sexist.
ME: Like the world?
PERSON: You’re silly.
ME: Your face is silly.
PERSON: Hah. I’m not even wearing a face. You don’t know who I am.
ME: No one knows anyone, do they?
PERSON: Tragic.
ME: Heroic.
PERSON: Look at my fingernail. It’s about to fall off. I got it caught in a lawn-mower yesterday. I guess, knowing that, all you can really say is, I was lucky.
ME: I love you.
PERSON: I love the idea of you.
ME: Would you like to take the idea of me out dancing?
PERSON: Well, I should remind you, about my finger, so, factoring that in, break-dancing might be out of the question, but most forms—
ME: Salsa.
PERSON: Now you’re talking.
ME: No, now I am.
PERSON: Now you’re not. You’ve grown quiet just as a plant on a brick wall or a fence—such as ivy—grows, not so much ‘quiet’ as…anywhere.
(Me nods.)

fIN

Tickets are available HERE.

GREAT MOMENTS IN SIMIAN VIOLENCE #5: WHEN MONKEYS RULED COMIC BOOKS

On Friday, the sci-fi blog i09 displayed incredibly astute timing by running a gallery of great ape-related DC comic covers – mere hours before the opening of Craven Monkey and the Mountain of Fury. We took it as some form of hulking, hirsute kismet and went on to have a wonderfully strange opening weekend as a result.

The blog quotes DC artist Sheldon Moldoff as follows:

It was a question of trying to find something that sold, and if one issue came out and it happened to sell, then immediately they would follow that type of story. Now, it didn't neccessarily follow through that they were going to sell. Now, I know Jack Schiff, when he was the editor of Batman, he followed sales very well. When he found that a gorilla on covers sold, then you could be damn sure that in an issue or two you're going to have another gorilla story.

Come help Craven Monkey the theatrical equivalent of this phenomenon – buy your tickets today! More monkeys in indie theater!

GREAT MOMENTS IN SIMIAN VIOLENCE #4: THE ORANGUTAN RECORDING

A few years back we discovered the 365 Days Project, an incredible year-long audio endeavor that posted a new bizarre, obscure and/or outsider recording every day in 2003 (with a follow-up edition in 2007). On March 27 of that year, contributor Greg (The Librarian) McCarthy posted a recording called Orangutan. McCarthy recorded it from the airwaves on WBZ Radio Boston in the early 1970s while listening to a Friday-night call-in program called the Larry Glick Show. You can read the full story of its origins here.

The recording features a man from North Carolina who called in to read a local newspaper item about an orangutan who went berserk on his hapless owner. The story follows the general contours of Great Moment in Simian Violence #2: Run Red Run, but this piece is all in the telling. What starts as a routine radio call-in turns into a demented laughing fit straight out of a weirdly infectious hell – I swear, I have never heard two grown men struggle through such helpless hysterics in my life, especially when talk of blood and bite wounds is involved.

If you’re remotely interested in anything, ever, you should check out the 365 Days Project, which is currently housed at the invaluable UbuWeb as well as wfmu.org, the site of the world’s best radio station. A broader span of the vagaries inherent in the Audio Age can hardly be imagined. Another thing for people interested in things is Craven Monkey and the Mountain of Fury – being a dance-theater piece, however, a radio version of it would lose something in the translation, so you should buy your tickets to check it out at The Brick. It opens TOMORROW NIGHT, for Pete's sake!

GREAT MOMENTS IN SIMIAN VIOLENCE #3: MONKEY SHINES

Neither Hope nor I have seen the 1988 George Romero thriller Monkey Shines, but I remember the commercials on TV. There was a paralyzed guy and a helper monkey and some creepy ambience. Today, without even having looked at IMDB except to get the year and accidentally see that it was actually made by a director of some pedigree, I will recreate the entire plot of the film using only the power of my mind.

Max (Bill Pullman) was a fast-living, cocaine-addicted Hollywood agent whose work-hard/play-hard lifestyle led him straight to a late-night six-car pileup on the L.A. freeway. When he wakes up, his doctor (a strangely mild-mannered Christopher Walken, before the first of his multiple comebacks) advises him that he’ll never walk again, and that use of his upper limbs is confined to the ability to flip his right middle finger with significant effort. The doctor advises his despondent patient – who has no non-estranged family members to wipe his ass for him – to purchase an experimentally trained monkey named Bobo who can undertake cleaning and grooming tasks on his behalf, such as shaving him with the old-fashioned straight-razor that’s always been one of Max’s expensive quirks.

So Bobo, who starts out all cute and shit, is gradually corrupted by Max’s abiding guilt and misanthropy into becoming a vessel of pure evil. While Max sleeps, Bobo takes his razor and goes out to slit the throats of Max’s enemies – the owner of the high-powered agency that laid him off after his accident (David Paymer), his estranged mother (Mamie Van Doren) and the high-school bully who used to beat him up (a weirdly miscast Tony Shalhoub). Max himself only slowly becomes aware of his connection to these crimes through the ministrations of Gwen (Lori Petty), a spunky reporter who befriends Max and tries to show him, despite her tender years, that the way to redemption is through the confrontation of his darker emotions.

This being a Romero film, of course, they both die during a grisly climax in which Gwen, after one final attempt to reform Max, tries to call the police and is killed when he can’t bring himself to call off Bobo. His self-loathing anguish at his own inaction – even a paralyzed man has the potential to take action – channels through his intimate psychic bond with Bobo and causes the monkey to turn on him and slit Max's own throat. Ironic! Christopher Walken shows up to identify the body and says something cryptic.

Anybody out there ever seen the movie? How did I do?

Rest assured that the monkey violence in Craven Monkey and the Mountain of Fury is less psychological and more kind of awesome. Buy your tickets today!

GREAT MOMENTS IN SIMIAN VIOLENCE #2: RUN RED RUN

In November 1959, the Coasters (not to be confused with the Platters) released a single called “Run Red Run.” Like the group’s biggest hit, “Yakety Yak,” this track would be classified as a “novelty song,” which basically just means that it’s ghettoized in a special category for being funny as well as being good.

Which is a shame, because it stands out as quite possibly the most important rhythm-and-blues song about simian violence ever recorded. Click here to listen to it for yourself on what would appear to be a Coasters MySpace page. If you can’t listen, take a look at the lyrics down below. If Craven Monkey and the Mountain of Fury were to be set in the late 1950s, this is almost exactly how the plot and the details would play out. It’s like Every Which Way But Loose gone horribly, horribly right.

Oh, Red went and bought himself a monkey

Got him from a pawn shop broker
Taught that monkey how to guzzle beer
And he taught him out to play stud poker
Last night when they were gambling in the kitchen
The monkey he was taking a beating
The monkey said, “Red, I'm going to shoot you dead
Because I know that well, you been a cheating."

Chorus:
Well, run Red run, because he's got your gun
And he's aiming it at your head.
Run Red run, because he's got your gun,
And he's aiming it at your head.
You better get up and wail,
You better move your tail before he fills it full of lead.

Oh, Red jumped up and started to move like a P80-Saber Jet.
He zoomed around the corner, and he disappeared
And everybody started to stare.
The race was on, you know the chase was on
And Red he was all shook up
But, let me tell you sport, don't sell that monkey short,
Because he's a travelling son of a gun.

Repeat Chorus

(Saxophone playing)

Monkey trapped Red in a parking alot.
Down along the Avenue,
Monkey said, "Red, you've made a man out of me,
Now I'm going to make a monkey out of you.
Give me your car keys, give me your wallet
Give it to me here, or I'll shoot
Going to put on your brand new Stetson hat
And go to town in your new brown suit."

Repeat Chorus

Craven Monkey and the Mountain of Fury opens this weekend - don't forget to buy your tickets soon, or we’ll sic Red on ya.


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GREAT MOMENTS IN SIMIAN VIOLENCE #1: THE MASSACRE AT MOROVEREEN

This week marks the re-opening of our Fight Fest show Craven Monkey at the Mountain of Fury. To honor this occasion, we’ll be spending the week walking you through some of history’s most notable instances of simian aggression.

The pioneering Victorian primatologist and Oxford professor Peddigrew Alfonse Makebutton, an early supporter of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, once embarked upon one a short-lived and little-known experiment to prove – or so he imagined – the tenability of Darwin’s work. Amassing a large number of assorted baboons snatched from the African wild by a group of paid bush hunters, Makebutton established a colony on the small North Sea island of Morovereen, right off the eastern Scottish coast. With the full cooperation of the university, he dressed his simian charges in human clothing, gave them little cottages and set them to the task of developing, under his guidance, a fully functioning society.

The experiment lasted approximately four hours. Having arranged for all of the necessary accoutrements of proper British living, Makebutton inadvertently created a culture of jealousy among the unsuspecting baboons. His diligence even went as far as mimicking the hairstyles of the day, leading some of the apes to have their faces partly shaved while others were allowed to sport the flowing muttonchops then in style. After a period of mutual wariness, in which they sauntered up and down the village’s central boulevard like well-behaved petit-bourgeois, the shaved monkeys, envious of their fellows’ more demonstrative facial hair, attempted to grab the chops right off each others’ faces. Needless to say, equipping the baboons with small but effective swords was a poor idea. The apes rioted, as can be seen in this contemporary engraving, forcing Makebutton off the island, but not before removing most of his clothing, several pints of blood, part of his left ear, and approximately 98.7% of his dignity.

The baboons continued to mate and quarrel on remote Morovereen Island until the 1950s, when it was chosen as a site for British atomic testing. Whether the nine-foot-tall, preternaturally aggressive mega-baboons that spawned in the radioactive aftermath will one day swim towards the mainland and enact a bloody revenge remains an open question.

Craven Monkey at the Mountain of Fury opens this weekend - don't forget to buy your tickets soon, lest you risk the fate of becoming a latter-day Makebutton.

THE RETURN OF THE CRAVEN MONKEY

Our December production of Craven Monkey and the Mountain of Fury at The Brick’s Fight Fest was a wild success – so much though that we’re moved to present a “remount” (ahem) later this month. We were thrilled by the critical response to the show, so in order to whet your appetites, here are some of the great quotes we received.

“This show is worth checking out for the costumes alone—sparkly, hairy, vibrant realizations of a world without rules, designed by Julianne Kroboth. But the actors’ spot-on, endearing performances are what make this show thrive. Although they have no dialogue, they bring fantastic creatures to life."
--Time Out New York

“In Lewonczyk’s play, Craven Monkey and the Mountain of Fury, anything goes, but you can be sure it’s done with finesse and delicately choreographed fight scenes. Not one character fell flat and by the end of the show, all the actors had a good reason to stand tall.”
--New York Press

"If epic animal battles, extensive monkey humping, and overall extreme silliness are what you've been craving, then head over to the Brick Theatre for Craven Monkey and the Mountain of Fury... The playfulness on the part of the team of monkey/creature-actors makes this show all the more fun. Maybe we can see a little of ourselves in this story of a simple monkey humping and battling his way through this crazy world."
--Nytheatre.com

“A dirty joke slips into poetry… the nonverbal cast stomps home a timeless semaphore of love, striving, and projectile poop. In the elegant interplay and affirmative physicality of “Craven Monkey”’s considered slapstick is a vision of passionate impulse bestowed with purpose, and essential conflict tamed as art.”
--ComicCritique

You can read more about the show itself at PiperMcKenzie.com, and you can check out our Flickr feed for more photos.