Can we pick hot playwrights or what?

by jenthorn

The recent success of two playwrights MOXIE introduced San Diego to for the first time, has prompted me to give them a great big shout out and to give ourselves a little pat on the back.  We sure know how to pick ‘em…

Go Liz Duffy Adams!

We want to give a great big MOXIE shout out to the playwright who brought us Dog Act, Wet or Isabella the Pirate Queen Enters the Horse Latitudes and The Listener.  Her recent play Or just debuted at the Women’s Project off-Broadway in NYC. She’s getting rave reviews and drawing national attention.

Read the review or Or in the New York Times Here

Check out some images from past plays we produced by Liz and join us during the final weekend of Dog Act to celebrate!  Tickets On Sale Here

Dog Act 2005

Wet - 2006

The Listener 2008

Dog Act 2009

Go Marisa Wegrzyn!

We just got word that Marisa has been awarded the Wasserstein prize for her new play Hickorydickory. You may remember her work from our recent production of her wacky play The Butcher of Baraboo. We’re so happy for you Marisa and wish you all the best! Read about her award Here.

The Butcher of Baraboo 2009

Where we at

by jenthorn

It’s no doubt that many followers of the MOXIE blog simply gave up hope.  Where did those MOXIEs go anyway?  We didn’t really go anywhere.  Well that’s not true we went a lot of places.  Here is a recap of what I know has been happening in the month of October at MOXIE. 
-We moved into our new space at the Rolando Theatre (check out our new signage above.  Soon it will have our logo and everything)
-We opened the second show in our fifth season to rave reviews. See more about that below…
-We held the first of our off-night series, MOXIE Blues night with the killer blues band Fat Man’s Misery.
-Jen Thorn flew to Miami Florida to remount the MOXIE award-winning staged reading event of How I Learned to Drive
-Delicia began rehearsals for The Seafarer at SD Rep
-MOXIE successfully rehearsed and put in three understudies (a MOXIE first) on two separate weekends while Jason Connors and Jo Anne Glover attended out-of-town events. Yeah Melissa Fernandes, Justin Lang and Max Macke who stepped into the roles of Jo-Jo, Dog and Coke in Dog Act
-MOXIE launched its $5 for Five campaign.  A fundraising effort for the new space which encourages people to make smaller contributions in the amount of $5 toward MOXIE’s Fifth Season and furnishing of their new space.  We’ve been pleased to discover that this smaller amount means an overall average of more donated dollars per day than ever before.
-MOXIE finished casting the third show in its Fifth Season Expecting Isabel.
-We have begun a “We’re Your New Neighbors” campaign in the Rolando area which is comprised of board efforts to introduce MOXIE to local businesses, an on-foot campaign delivering “welcome” package to surrounding neighborhood and an upcoming Cygnet Subscriber night at MOXIE where we host an audience of Cygnet Subscribers for a special performance so they can meet us.

We’ve been a little busy but we promise to get back to our roots soon and keep the blog afloat.  Now a little about Dog Act…
Re-mounting a show is scary.  It’s especially scary when the show was so well-received and develops a sort of mythical reputation.  What if it isn’t as good as it was the first time? Will we be able to do the script justice again?  All those fears occurred to us when we considered bringing Dog Act back…but with every new audience we are assured that this was the perfect way to move into our new home.  The show is bog with a vengeance.  The music is more developed, the “acts” are honed, the actors are sharp and the overall product is irresistable.  Don’t believe us?  Check out what the critics are saying and then come see for yourself.  I’ve developed a whole new love for the script and couldn’t be more proud of the work Delicia and this ensemble of actors and designers have done.

“You have got to see this show – even if you saw it before. It is so inventive, so distinctive, so whimsical, and so wonderfully well done, it’s absolutely irresistible – and unforgettable. You gotta love a play that describes the sea like this: “It smell like a come-on meeting a want-to, a knife-edge meeting a peach.” Let this play wash over you; you’ll be refreshed, replenished, re-convinced of the power of theater.“- Pat Launer, SDNN.com

“Instead of laboriously creating and recording a physical illusion of the chosen fantasy, this theatre taps directly into the imagination of each new audience, inspiring personal, hand-crafted reactions in every viewer.”-Welton Jones, SanDiego.com

“The plot of Dog Act is goofy, the characters outrageous, the costumes hilarious, the songs clever, the script loaded with references to everything from Peter Pan to old classic TV shows. The whole is a raucous, rollicking good time, and leaves you with this cheery thought: “However bad it be, it gonna keep gettin’ worse.” As Coke might say, “Do not thou f***ing miss it.”-Jean Lowerison, GLTNews.com

 

These are a few of our most needed things…

by jenthorn

Not whiskers on kittens or soft woolen mittens…no we have some real concrete things on our wish list for our new home at the Rolando Theatre. If you can donate any of the following items let us know. Your donation is tax deductible for the amount your item is valued at. Give us a call at 858-598-7620 or email joanne@moxietheatre.com if you can help!

1. Chairs – office & dressing room – 12
2. Desks – 3
3. File Cabinets – 2,
4. Coffee maker
5. Coffee carafes-2
6. Bar/ tall table
7. Benches – 4
8. 8 ft. ladders-2
9. Folding tables – 6

Playing The Part: Part II

by jenthorn

Tech beings tonight which means the final days of rehearsal when the play still belongs to the ensemble and not the audience. The process so far has been a challenge. Comedy is hard and this particular comedy happens to have its roots, as most good comedies do, in the most painful issues we deal with as humans. That means in some senses we are working on two different plays: A drama where all the characters are at HUGE turning points in their life where they are faced with their biggest demons, AND an all out physical and verbal comedy. Someones life is threatened in nearly every scene of the play and yet it’s silly and often lighthearted. How the hell did the playwright manage to strike both chords and did she have any idea what a roller coaster this thing would be to produce?

As I play the charachter Sevenly I explore what it means to be trapped in a belief system that you used to define yourself by but which no-longer works for the life you feel you must lead. As Sevenly struglles with a difficult decision, she finds that her faith in God is challenged and that her very definition of self must bend if she is to survive. I am struggling with the balance of playing her honestly without ignoring the fact that there is a lot of comedy to be found in how different she is from the other women on the stage. It’s tempting to see her as very different from myself but I discover more everyday that she isn’t. I can’t wait to get into costume for the first time tonight and truly find the last parts of who she is!

Playing the Part: Part I

by jenthorn

 I’ve long been yearning to try and capture some of the magic that is the “process” of theatre, especially as it exists at MOXIE.  Today I begin documenting the creation of a character I’m playing in MOXIE’s next production The Butcher of Baraboo. 

The First Rehearsal -

A  few days before our first rehearsal I had a nightmare.  In my dream I was cast to play Sevenly (the character I am playing in MOXIE’s production of The Butcher of Baraboo) but at a different theatre.  This “other” theatre was going o be producing the play before MOXIE did.  I had to travel to wherever this theatre was and when I got there and started the first rehearsal we began working on some very modern and wordless  movement piece, which apparently was how the play began and I had overlooked it in the first few pages.  All the other actors seemed aware and prepared for this part of the play, except me.  They all knew how to move and had great ideas. I was unprepared but too ashamed to admit it and so I was making stuff up on the fly and the director wasn’t impressed. I think my nightmare was my way of processing those jitters an actor has before they have  taken that risk that you do at a first rehearsal, when you reveal you have already begun to make choices and you hope the director isn’t second guessing having cast you.

Here is Sevenly in the production at Second Stage in NYC. Ali Marsh. Yeah it’s that woman from that 70′s show playing Valerie the butcher… Debra Jo Rupp, and Michael Countryman.

Our first rehearsal was this past Saturday.  As usual I walked to the theatre and thought about the play on the way there.  I thought about the amazing cast (Linda Libby, Deanna Driscoll, Wendy Waddell and Don Evans) and was honest with myself that I felt a little intimidated I am to be playing with some of the women who are considered to be the funniest actresses on stage in San Diego.  I feel excited to be working with Chelsea Whitmore for the first time, and with Delicia Turner Sonnenberg again (they’re co-directing).  We started our first rehearsal by sharing a secret of our own since this play revolves around secrets.  I wish I could share some of those secrets with you..everyone had a juicy one…but I can’t tell.  Then we looked at a presentation of the set design which Amy Chini and Esther Emery are co-designing.  Jennifer Brawn Gittings spoke about costumes and our Technical Director Dustin Long assured us he would make sure we were all safe on the set…then we read and oh how we read. The play is funny. Sometimes we had to just stop and get the laughs out in order to continue.  We were half in character and half ourselves just enjoying the writing.  This is my favorite way to explore a new play!

My Character:  I play Sevenly a 30 year old Mormon woman from Provo, Utah who moves to Baraboo Wisconsin. Sevenly is the mother of 6 children. She is married to a man 20 years her senior, who she loves. Sevenly is very kind and likable.  She is a perfect party guest…well that depends on the party I guess. Sevenly has a secret that she fears may land her straight in hell.  In my research to learn more about my character I discovered the following about her hometown:

Population: 117,592
Third Largest City in Utah
The MOST conservative city in the United States with over 100,000 people!
88% Mormon
88% White
Home to the largest LDS Missionary Training Center
Home to Brigham Young University
Home to the entire Osmond Family

We finished off the day asking questions about things that we weren’t sure about in the story.  We made decisions about timelines and back story and then we called it a day. I stood outside afterward and picked the directors brains for a few more minutes which was productive.  I was assured that my character isn’t stupid and that through the course of the play we see her get stronger. We discussed how heavily her secret ways on her.  I walked home feeling electrified.

On finding my inner six-year-old

by jenthorn

This post was written by Jo Anne.  Someone get that girl a password so she can keep writing blog posts like this one!

Yesterday, I had a great time at my godson Auggie’s baseball game.  It was so cool to be outside in the late afternoon.  Great people watching – all of the very serious 10-year-olds and their parents rooting for them. 

But, some of my favorite moments were hanging out with six-year-old Zoe, who I am just so inspired by right now.  I loved watching her entertain herself, investigating the underside of a table, skipping off to the playground.  At one point, she picked a little flower – one of those little plants made of little grains that fall apart when you rub them between your fingers.  She was telling me about how she and her best friend Piper will pretend that its wheat and play granary.  Really?  They play GRANARY?  And, I was just struck by the simplicity of being six.  The lovely openness and beauty with which she approaches the world.  I want to regain some of that loveliness.  As most of us do, I let it get chased out of me – but I want to rediscover my six-year-old.  I think she’s probably pretty cool.

I’m not a poet, but felt inspired by this baby goddess.

For my goddaughter, THE PRINCESS ZOE

Sweet Princess
You amaze me with your
Spirit
Laugh
Wonder 

FULL of WONDER
I love how you wonder at nature
At dogs
At sticks
At flowers
At people 

So much spirit
So much spunk
For someone so small
You INSPIRE me with
Your BIG heart and BIG self 

Your laugh will always make me smile
Just like your mama, my sister
It makes my heart bigger
And when you hug me
I know I would travel to the ends of the earth for you
I am so blessed to know someone as cool as you

Meditation on the Wacky Ass Art of Directing

by jenthorn

When people who don’t spend every waking minute in the theatre world see a show, it’s hard to see the director’s work.  Sometimes they give the director too much credit assuming all the artistic elements were created by them.  Often times they don’t give them enough credit and assume that any success in the production is only to be credited to performances or the script.  The truth is it’s very hard to know from the outside what the director did or didn’t do.  Today I am thinking about the simple definition of our job title.  We are the deciders of the direction.  Every moment of creating a production is a moment at a cross roads.  There are one, two, sometimes several paths to choose from and the director decides which path to follow.  If we’ve started our job off on the right foot we have assembled a team of people who individually know more about the separate aspects of the production than we do and then we proceed to be very clear about the vision or the end goal of the production while allowing these individuals to do their jobs in finding solutions or answers to the questions the play asks.  Sometimes these decisions feel terrifying because you can’t be sure if they’re right but the danger of not making a decision is far greater than the danger of making the wrong one.  So the director says “yes, that is correct” or “no, that doesn’t work” or “I don’t know the answer to that questions so can we spend sometime trying different options and I’ll tell you when we find one that works”. 

Today I feel thankful that I was trusted to be the director of MOXIE’s production of The Sugar Syndrome which started previews on Saturday. I feel grateful for:

-The team of designers and technicians who are so commited to the show that they have continued to shift a light here, change a sound cue there, reconstruct an entire set piece, bake a pizza from scratch in order to achieve perfect greese stains on the inside of a prop pizza box.

- The actors who work tirelessly to reach a deeper level of understanding of their characters while technically striving to render each line and movement the same without loosing the feeling of “doing it for the first time”

- My partners in MOXIE who sit in rehearsals and lend an ear and advice when I feel lost on how to achieve something.

-Our audiences whose laughter and applause and kind words assure me that this play is hitting the mark we all are aiming at.

-And lastly I feel so lucky that MOXIE is a company which takes family into consideration as part of our work.  Our tech schedule included a rotating babysitting schedule which allowed time for us all to work without worrying where our children were and on the day of our first preview when my phone rang at 9am and I saw it was our techinical director and assumed he was calling about that set peice he was going to have to rebuild…I felt grateful that it was actually him calling to see if he could reserve a picnic table at the park for my daughter’s first birthday party that morning. 

Here are some of the newest MOXIE’s celebrating Penny’s first birthday before heading back to work.

Chelsea Whitmore, Jennifer Brawn Gittings, Dustin Long and Amy Chini

MOXIE in the UK

by jenthorn

Here I am. It’s somewhere around 1:50 am in England.   Now is the time when Americans think ….”oh cool…how is London?”. No, I’m not in London.  I’ve been to England 6 times in the last 4 years and only spent one evening in London.  Nope…I’m in Pucklechurch.  Yeah you heard me right. Pucklechurch sounds like a mystical place where fairies may live…or perhaps somewhere gnomes live but it’s a real place. Pucklechurch is a village half way between Bath and Bristol.  Most Americans have never heard of either of those places so I’ll explain further.  Pucklechurch is in Gloucester which is in the area of England called the midlands, which is to say I am in the center part of the country toward the west.  But what you really want to know is…why am I in Pucklechurch and why the hell have I ventured to England 6 times and not seen a single show on the West End while I’ve been here.

My husband Matt is British and this is where he grew up.  We come back often because his family can’t travel for health reasons.  It’s cold here right now and I find it funny that I was sick of the warm sunny weather in San Diego just a few days ago.  The timing is excellent though as I prepare to direct the next MOXIE show The Sugar Syndrome which is an English play.  Just because we share the same language doesn’t mean Americans and the English have a lot in common.  Being here reminds me that one of the fabulous things about the play is how English it is.  If you know many English you know what I mean when I say there is a fabulous contrast of being reserved and polite and at the same time completly unshocked when it comes to anything bodily.  Sex is on TV here everywhere you look.  They may blur out area of the screen where actual penatration takes place  but that’s about all the decency required in the afterhours on regular tv. The though of old English ladies sipping tea and watchin softcore pornography before bed makes me laugh.

This is what you see as you climb over the old stone wall in the back yard of Matt's house where he grew up...no kidding!

Penny was fantastic on the plane.  She has been really well behaved and seems happy despite the freezing temperature which has us housebound most of the time…but she isn’t going to let me get away with changing her schedule around…so she has decided to spit everything I try to feed her in my face.  She doesn’t want jarred baby food…or food I make fresh…or finger foods she can feed herself…she is happy al long as I don’t attempt to feed her anything. We go out with friends and I watch in admiration as they’re daughter eats all her food.  Mommy guilt takes over…maybe if I prepared all Penny’s food fresh like this mommy does then she would eat.  Matt takes me to the fabulous English grocery store.  I buy ingredients to cook Penny some more “wholesome meals”…and she spits them in my face.  I could hug her.  Thanks for the reassurance that you love me just the way I am…as a busy mommy who can’t cook fresh baby food for her at every meal. I’m glad to have those yams in my face because I know it’s not me. I think if she’d gobbled them up my working mommy heart would have broken a little.

Amy’s set design is getting me hot

by jenthorn

When I first felt inspired by a photograph of a skate park and thought about using it  as a concept for The Sugar Syndrome,  which has nothing to do with skate parks, I felt a little unsure of sharing my crazy idea with my set designer. 

How cool is this place?

When I showed it to her and she totally got it and ran with it…I felt like I had won the lottery.  Amy Chini (read more about Amy in the spotlight they did on her in the San Diego Union-Tribune) just sent me a sketch of what she is thinking about and working through some of the specific needs in the play (places to set things, sit and entrances and exits).  I sent her image back with notes and questions in red.  This process is thrilling.   I am so excited!  Watching another artist create a world in which the actors and I will play and create this play is exhilarating.  I find myself thinking “I wish the audience could know all about this process as they go into the theatre.”  Wait…they can.  Check out drawing # 1 an #2.  I hope when you get to the theatre you’ll see just how cool I think this is going to be!

Amy's Drawing

My explosion of thoughts inspired by Amy's drawing

3 MOXIE Ladies and a Baby…in a storage unit

by jenthorn

9:30 am…I’m late.  My daughter on my hip, baby bag on my shoulder and a car full of crap….it’s MOXIE storage day.  I pull up in front of Jo Anne’s place.  Just as I turn the corner my cell phone rings…damn…I hate being late.  It’s no big deal because today Jo Anne, Amy Chini and I are just going to re-organize the MOXIE storage unit, but still, being late sucks.  As I arrive Jo steps out.  Her car is already loaded and ready to go.  Amy is meeting us at the storage place.  We hop in our sseparate vehicles (both filled with random things MOXIE may need again and can’t afford to get rid of just yet) and get on the road.

On the way there I listen to NPR.  I hate watching news and I don’t read the paper so my drive time is my news time.  This means that my daughter Penny’s first words may actually be “This is Steve Inskeep for National Public Radio”.  This morning they discussed the earthquake preparedness drill we are all supposed to know is happening across Ca tomorrow.  I wondered if any of this stuff we were paying to store would really be missed if a hole opened in the earth during an earthquake and it all got swallowed up. The truth is that we can’t afford to re-buy things…no non-profit can…and so into storage the boxes go, waiting for the day when we may need a beer bottle cap studded seat belt/utility belt for post apocalyptic treasure hunting.

We get there and manage to get all the boxes up the stairs.  Amy Chini points out that a horror film should be set in one of those places.  Totally.  I set Penny on the ground to get filthy and play with Jo Anne’s keys and we get to work sorting through the storage unit to make room for the new stuff.  Here are a few things that were in the unit…the ones I think are most interesting…see if you can guess what show they may have been from:

-a brief case with syringes inside
-pink fuzzy slippers
-A massive muslin sail
-silver sparkly construction hats
_a selection of brightly colored carpet samples
-a box full of glass beakers