Red Fern held its first Developmental Week of Plays

The week of September 16-22, 2014, Red Fern hosted as many readings of new plays as we possibly could in our home down at the 14th Street Y.  Here's what we explored:

CARDBOARD CASTLES
Book and Lyrics by Luanne Aronen Rosenfeld
Music by Kristen Lee Rosenfeld
Directed by Melanie Moyer Williams

Featuring Cicily Daniels*, Leah Horowitz*, Daniel K. Isaac*, Robby Johnson*, Anthony Lee Medina*, Max Perlman*, Sergi Robles*, Matt Shingledecker*, Scott Sowinski*, Shelley Thomas*, and Deborah Tranelli*

Monday, September 16 @ 7:30pm

CARDBOARD CASTLES is a contemporary "Upstairs Downstairs" musical about the occupants of a brownstone and their homeless neighbors.  Ten New Yorkers, bound by the past, struggle to find recognition, love and human connection.
 
*CARDBOARD CASTLES began as part of Red Fern’s production of HOME last season.

THE BLACKOUT PLAYS
By Katie Bell
Directed by Elizabeth Flax

Featuring David Beck*, Christianne Greiert*, Shelah Marie, and DeSean Stokes*

Tuesday, September 17 @ 8pm

When the lights went out on New York City in the summer of 1977, widespread looting plagued the streets, but during the blackout of 2003, New Yorkers were relatively calm and there were few incidents of violence. Blackout '77 and Blackout '03 explore these two moments and how racial and class tensions both changed and remained the same over twenty-six years. A part of a developing larger work that will include an act devoted to the '65 New York City blackout and an act devoted to a blackout in the future, THE BLACKOUT PLAYS features four actors will play four different roles in four different eras of New York City.

THE HUMMINGBIRDS - A COMEDY OF MENACE
By Garret Jon Groenveld
Directed by Dominic D’Andrea

Featuring Olympia Dukakis* and Alfredo Narcisco*

Wednesday, September 18 @ 7:30pm

Been unemployed too long? Welcome to a very special office of the Unemployment Bureau! Here you will work with two very special unemployment counselors to place you into a job today. It may not be a job you are qualified to do, or a job that's safe for anyone to do, but you will have to do it. Because if you can walk, you can work!

The play also concerns domestic terrorism, strippers and weaponized hummingbirds. Winner of the 2012 Global Age Project and the 2012 Internationalists Global Playwrighting Prize.

ANOTHER KIND OF LOVE
A play by Crystal Skillman
Directed by Sarah Krohn

Featuring Clea Alsip*, Sebastian Beacon*, Megan Hill*, Nick Lehane*, Jeanine Serralles*, and Liz Zazzi*

Thursday, September 19 @ 8pm

Guitarist Kit Singer returns to her childhood family home in Woodstock to reunite with her former band members ... her sisters she hasn’t seen in ten years. As the clock counts down to the concert honoring the anniversary of their rock legend mother’s suicide, old wounds are replayed, new wounds are laid down, unwelcome guests crash the party, and the songs keep spinning as Kit tries desperately to redeem herself in the eyes of the family she was so quick to leave behind and her niece Max who is her spitting, destructive image.

SPIT THE PIT
By Christine J. Schmidt
Directed by Christopher Diercksen

Featuring Dana Berger and Christopher Tocco* 

Friday, September 20 @ 7pm

Falling in the love for the first time is never pretty, especially when it's with a man on the run. After being left for dead, Francine tells the authorities about a summer of uncontainable passion, her unlikely new identity, and the dangerous man who may still have her heart.

FREEDOM HOUSE
By Anna Moench
Directed by RJ Tolan

Featuring Shyko Amos, DeVon Jackson, Erica Lutz*, Jared McGuire*, Chet Siegel*, Jonathan Randell Silver*, and Stephen Stout

Saturday, September 21  - 7pm

When a group of friends graduate from college, they decide to ditch the crappy job market, cramped 5th floor walkups, and their smart phones in favor of founding an isolated, freegan utopia in an abandoned house in the woods.  It’s going about as well as could be expected when something happens…something that very well could be the apocalypse. They'd know for sure, if only they could Google it.

SINCE AFRICA
By Mia McCullough
Directed by Nancy Robillard 

Featuring Kristin Carpenter, Samantha Merrick, Keith Randolph Smith*, Jenny Vallencourt*, Vladamir Versailles*, and Jennifer Dorr White*

Sunday, September 22 @ 7pm

A refugee from the Sudanese civil war attempts to adjust to cold weather, processed food and a new life in Chicago, with the help of an African-American deacon and a wealthy white socialite recovering from the death of her husband.  Since Africa was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award. 

*Actors appear courtesy of Actors Equity Association.