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Someone asked me to go either to a play or a concert. He asked me today (Monday) but meant it for in the future: this month. I said I have a problem with concerts: the sitting & concentrating on the orchestra gets to me: but that I'd LOVE to see a play.
Haven't seen one since I left NYC, where even the bad plays can be interesting.
What followed was a very long conversation about plays, the arts, black-box theaters, why we need a black-box theater in this small city...well, I do tend to go on, don't I? (shaddup, peanut gallery!)
So maybe -- fingers crossed -- I will get to see a play in the near future.
I hope whatever we see is as good as Letters from Cuba or Stop Kiss were (both of which I saw off-Broadway in the late 1990s, if memory serves).
Letters from Cuba actually made me cry. And Stop Kiss was almost that good.
This is a trailer from a production of Stop Kiss I haven't seen, but it looks like the best introduction I can give you from YT:
I can't find Letters from Cuba on YT at all, which really sucks.
Maria Fornes directed it herself for its opening at the Signature Theater in NYC, where I saw it with my friend David. One thing I remember: one of the letters, from a little nephew (iirc) went: Thank you so much for the canned peas. They were delicious. Then we used the can for this and this and this. Thanks SO much...and I was sobbing, that an empty can could bring so much joy to a little boy.
And that an empty tin can should mean so much anywhere...that Cuba should be so poverty-stricken an empty tin can represents wealth. Hell, I'm crying again, just remembering.
And then I think: this poverty-stricken country still has better health coverage than I do. Better than many of my compatriots do, too.
Enough politics: I don't wanna cry any more.
Compared to Sam Shepard (1996-97), Arthur Miller (1997-98), and even John Guare (1998-99), Maria Irene Fornes was a bold choice as the featured playwright for the 1999-2000 season of New York's Signature Theatre. Although widely admired in professional and academic circles, Fornes has never fared well in the mainstream, which made presenting a season of her work both risky and altogether appropriate for an off-Broadway theatre dedicated to re-kindling discussion about the United States's most important living playwrights.
Since it's been compared to Six Degrees of Separation it seems apropos to introduce a clip of what is perhaps John Guare's best-known play -- and yes, I WISH I had seen this one in its Broadway debut:
