#whitehorsepike

[rndyounghowze]

We are teaching 2 classes this fall. Even our Comics class is still accepting students.

[alternativestates17-blog]

#brucespringsteen #atlanticcity This song always makes me cry. The video is a time capsule homage to our little town of #Absecon - a derivative of the #lennelenape word #ABSEGAMI which means “Little Water”. This was shot on our own #whitehorsepike . I grew up mere blocks from this place. Also behind this liquor store is where someone I love took their own life. So for me, living here, having to live, drive past this place has never gotten easier. Not one day has gone by this tragedy hasn’t affected me in some way. You can’t unsee terrible things. You can’t bring people back to life. I hope by sharing my story some will choose a better path than I did at times, and find the strength to keep pushing even when you just wanna give up. I don’t care who you are if you are struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts you are not alone and you can call me 24/7. It gets better. It gets worse. It gets better again. It is what it is. Also, if you know someone struggling please take it seriously. This person announced his impending death continually and none of us believed him. Not one day goes by I don’t regret telling someone. We’d love to still have you here. #hellorhollywood #hellorhollywoodatruestory (at Absecon, New Jersey) https://www.instagram.com/p/BuoSxktnril/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=eyoq7wnumysb

[docfronk]

Opens tomorrow and runs until the 24th. The Normal Heart by Road Company at The Grand Theatre in Williamstown, NJ www.roadcompany.com @roadtheatre #whitehorsepike #williamstown #theatre #openingnight #play #larrykramer #normalheart #roadtheatre #roadtheatrecompany #grandtheatre #downtown #southjersey #gloucestercountynj #southjersey #nj (at Mays Landing, New Jersey)

[badxdata-blog]

UNTITLED I.

A riff, two dudes and cups of coffee. This was the product about an hour later.

Guitars by Geoff Gregory

Kit/bass by J. James

Download here: https://lose-me.bandcamp.com/track/07-27-17

[rndyounghowze]

Grease is the word! I’m going to be reviewing Grease next week at Cedar Creek High School! I’m also going to be using it as inspiration for my study on plays set in the 1950’s. Are you gonna be there?

[rndyounghowze]

Break a leg to the Ritz Theatre on their premier of Neil Simon's Rumors. The show runs until Sept. 24. Go to the link below for box office info. https://secure.wcit.net/ritztheatreco/remote.list_shows.php

[rndyounghowze]

Harvey by Absegami High School's Emanon Players in Galloway, NJ

Absegami's Emanon Players displayed a touch of insanity last night. Don't worry it was all in good fun as they brought Mary Chase’s play Harvey to life. This play under the direction of Chip Garrison showed us that maybe we all need just a little bit of craziness in our lives. They told us the story of Elwood P. Dowd (played by Bart Machula) and his friend Harvey. The slight problem is that Harvey is a 7 foot white rabbit (a pookah). And did I mention that the only person who can see him is Elwood himself? To everyone else he's invisible. This is especially troubling to his sister Veta (Miranda Muniz) because Harvey gets invited to all of her public soirées; in this case her daughter Myrtle Mae’s (Mara Platt) coming out party. In order to rid herself of any embarrassment she decides to have Elwood committed to a sanitarium where we meet a young doctor Lyman Sanderson (Coby Alavez) and a Nurse Kelly (Andrea Rapetti). We also meet orderly Mr. Wilson (Rick Mangold) and the head of the sanitarium Mr. Chumley (Billy Platt) and his wife (Rebecca Hennessy). But from that point on misunderstandings abound when they think Veta is the crazy one and lock her up instead. We soon find that maybe the “insane” Elwood is the most level headed of the bunch. And Elwood shows us that maybe insanity is a paradise! Chip Garrison's direction led his actors through a play from another time. Harvey won the Pulitzer in 1945. There is a lot of removal in the dialogue and the action from what young actors know today and I think he gave them enough handholds into the characters and the time period that they connected to the characters very well. I do feel that with a play like this you never can get too much rehearsal, especially with 1940’s wit and schtick flying everywhere. But with the limited time that I know they had and a spring break in between I feel Garrison got them to lean in enough to the meat and potatoes of the story and such juicy characters that the audience got to come along for the ride too. The entire cast did a remarkable job. This is a really dark comedy when you think about it and just about every character has something lying between them; a skeleton in the closet. I really enjoyed Machula’s Harvey which never failed to charm. I really loved Muniz and Ms. Platt as Veta and Myrtle Mae respectively. I really think they dove in and showed us that crazy really can make you crazy. My supporting standouts are Alavez as Doctor Sanderson and Rapetti as Nurse Kelly. There is a huge rift between these two characters; some hidden pain that's bubbling up to the surface. I really could feel that through these two actors’ performance. These also happen to be my favorite characters in this play so I was really glad to see them done well. My background shoutouts are Rebecca Hennessy who played both Mrs. Chumley and bath-robed sot Elsie Greenblatt and Claire Dell-Priscoli. I really think for two people without a whole lot of stage time they made a lasting impact on the performance. Shoutout to Brian Conover and Kathleen Moore for their work on sound design and set design respectively. All in all I think this was a performance that the actors really leaned into and I hoped that they learned a lot through it. If this determined cast and crew are what Chip is going to take to Edinburgh in 2018 for the Fringe I think he's in good company. Harvey by Mary Chase was presented for one night only by Absegami Emanon Players. All proceeds went to fund Absegami's upcoming showing at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

[rndyounghowze]

Hamlet by Aquila Theatre at Stockton College in Galloway, NJ

Something's rotten in the state of Jersey with Aquila Theatre’s touring production of Hamlet by William Shakespeare which stopped at Stockton College for a performance. This production directed by Desiree Sanchez brings something more than Shakespeare but the question of existence itself. Hamlet is the center of a 400 year old story of woe and intrigue. Someone has murdered Hamlet’s father. Gertrude, his mother, has married Claudius, his uncle. What's worse Horatio has seen his father’s ghost has come back from the dead with a message: “I have been murdered and you must avenge my death” Add in the schemings of Polonius who thinks Hamlet is just a lovesick puppy over his daughter Ophelia, the meddling of his parents who use Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to keep tabs on him, and the well wishes of his friend Horatio and you can tell that Hamlet is soon to be torn at the seams by everyone’s expectations of him. How is he going to fulfill every obligation? Does he even want to go on at all? Desiree Sanchez as director worked together with the cast and crew to bring something visceral to the play. When someone watches Hamlet it is easy to watch with your upper brain, the one that wants to dissect it as literature. But through skillful work with actors and long work with designers to shape sound and light she presented a piece that brought us back to the caveman’s campfire. We’re watching Shakespeare in modern dress but we're also talking about the oldest questions of life, family, legacy, and what would we do to preserve each if death were crouching just outside the light in the darkness. I think that she did a wonderful job bringing actors to that dark edge while still making it something that they can do over and over while on national tour. She also seems to curate the whole picture using physical bodies, light, set, and costumes to make the whole experience. Some directors you can tell whether they favor working with actors more or whether they are just putting bodies on stage under pretty lights. Sanchez rides that line down the middle and uses all the resources at hand. That's a perfect skill to have while designing a national tour.

Our cast of eight may as well have been a cast of thousands with the kind of energy they brought to the production. Lewis Brown (Hamlet) gives us a character of struggle. He brings the full body and voice into what he does. I once always thought that Hamlet’s soliloquies were purely verbal and mental but you could tell he was leaning his whole body into it. He turned the iambic pentameter into a physical effort and showed us not only struggle with people but the struggle between the forces in his head. Lauren Drennan’s (Ophelia) did something that I never knew could happen. She made me feel sorry for Ophelia. There is always a sense of naive innocence when you talk about Ophelia and in her voice and her tone she started there but then as things got real and her life started falling apart she turned that innocence into a train wreck. She melded her voice and her body and her energy to become something that made me shiver. During her talk about the flowers I wanted to look away but found I couldn't. I wanted to run onstage, scoop her up, and take her away. Drennan brought her whole acting training to bear to make a character that made me feel guilty for sitting still. Now that was talent! Tyler La Marr (Horatio) served as a Sergeant in the Marine Corps and did two tours in Iraq. What better person to play a man do torn between duty to his country and duty to his prince. Immediately I found a man who was honorbound and struggling with those convictions usually willing to die for them but in his case brave enough to live for them. Kudos! My hat goes off to Guy de Villiers (Claudius) and Rebecca Reaney (Gertrude) who made me feel dirty as the king and queen. But it's also hard to play a king and queen that people hate but they still are captured by and have to take notice of onstage. There were times where I didn't believe their chemistry but I didn't know if that was because their characters literally had none in the story or if their performance was slightly off. I do feel however that it's something that is not as vague in most of their performances of this play. James Lavender played a host of characters from Polonius to the Ghost to the Grave Digger (as well as Osric). I want to focus on the work that he did as Polonius and the Ghost though. Playing both those fathers he brought forth the theme of legacy in the face of mortality. He brought a warmth to Polonius that I haven't seen and a tragic anguish to the Ghost that I've never seen. It really is a touching performance from such a versatile actor.

My hat is also off to Harriet Barrow and Michael Rivers who had to both play the parts of the players and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. I felt that they did the best that could playing two characters that seemed to have conflicting emotions. And motivations. In fact I don't know if the director made the right choice putting the characters together at all. But I so admire the actors for pulling off the feat this mashup presented. Barrow pulls off a wonderful performance as Marcellus and the priest. I feel that I loved Rivers’ Bernardo far more than I did his Laertes and I'm not sure that's supposed to happen. Rivers was obviously at home in Shakespeare and while one of his characters left something to be desired I truly admired his professional caliber performance.

I also want to give a lot of credit to lighting design by Joel Moritz, sound design by Andy Evan Cohen, projections by Lianne Arnold, and Lara de Bruijn’s work on costumes. Together they took a minimal touring production and made every little element have meaning. Even a shift in costume, a square of light, and a piercing shriek of sound could be a major change in psychology or plot. It's such a breathtaking piece of art that these guys have collaborated on and you must go see it!

When you're directing or producing Shakespeare you’re always wearing two hats. The first hat is the director who must become an advocate and lover of this story and bring together a team of artists on one solid mission to bring it to the stage. The second hat is one of an adaptor who must turn a five act Elizabethan script intended for an ancient stage into a two act piece of modern theatre. Unless you're directing museum theatre you're no longer performing Shakespeare in the way it was originally intended. Director Desiree Sanchez also wore these two hats and I don't envy her that job even while I celebrate her work. To adapt Shakespeare in one sense is to make no one happy. There is half the audience that is having flashbacks from years of English teachers shoving the bard down their throats and half the audience are Shakespeare devotees who have seen or read it several times and will swoon the minute they hear a soliloquy or get outraged the minute they see something they love get cut. But like I said earlier to produce Shakespeare today is to change it. So essentially half the audience won't care and half the audience wants to take you out back after the show and punish you for your “crimes”.

This is what made Sanchez’s adaptation so surprising. I first noticed something was awry when the first act was over and I saw some clamor amongst some audience members around us. The person next to me and my wife asked us “Did you notice that they cut “To Be or Not To Be”? My first reaction was to shrug and go “wait did they?” My wife, who is often far faster on the uptake than me snapped her fingers and went “that's what was missing!” The circle of humanity around us seemed a buzz. As if they were saying, “How dare they cut that one piece?” But I was desperately searching my brain trying to figure out where it was supposed to be. You have to understand that I'm a mixture of these two types of people in the audience. I was force fed Shakespeare in high school and then became a lover or him in college and grad school. I went from saying we should never produce Shakespeare again to saying we should desperately revive him and the old canon. The through line of this is that I've had to read, memorize, and discuss that speech my whole academic life. How could I have been watching Shakespeare so intently that I forget that soliloquy!

Right as the lights were going down for the second act my wife said, “We saw what they did with ‘Murder on the Nile’ I bet they’ll put it somewhere in the second act.” I was dubious but found myself silently rooting for her as the show went on. Then it came to the scene at the graveyard. We know that Claudius and Laertes have hatched a plot to kill him. We have already seen him hold the skull of a dear beloved Yoric in his hands. We see Hamlet and Laertes fight over the body of Ophelia. Most of us know the ending is coming. We know that most of these characters are not long for this world. We know that Hamlet will soon go to a grave of his own.

And then Hamlet comes on stage again with these images of life and death fresh in our minds. He comes onstage at a time where both of these predescribed factions of the audience know the plot and then begins to utter those immortal words. A silent hush fell over the audience. My wife grabbed my arm and I was shocked. Not by the audacity of changing the script but because how much weight those words had in that moment. In a graveyard of dry bones with murder plots abound where we know death is imminent Hamlet doesn't talk about life or death. He talks about existence and whether he wants to be on this or not. The sheer weight and density of that moment became so palpable that it lay like a heavy blanket over the whole audience. Sanchez didn't just awake our visceral selves in this play but got two steps ahead of our brains and played our emotions like an instrument. She made Shakespeare new to people who had seen it a million times. Maybe there were some people left in the torch and pitchfork contingent but the standing ovation at the end of the play tells me there weren't many. I got home home and looked up Hamlet and there it was in Act Three. “To be or not to be that is the question”.originally the lamenting of a young man (what my wife calls an “emo teen”) Sanchez made it into the heavy thoughts of a suffering adult. Hamlet seemed to grow up in this version. I also found a myriad of characters that I had totally forgotten were in the play. Aquila Theatre managed to make an old play, not one of my favorites even, and make it hit me where I live. Not only that it hacked my memory and made me watch the play with my emotions not my theatre degree. And for that rare and special gift I give them thanks.

[docfronk]

I threw up three more #announcements on the #tumblr All of these are for shows in the #southjersey area by some great #theatre companies. See the link below. https://rickyyoung-howze.tumblr.com/post/165270035276/this-week-looks-to-be-very-eventful-here-are-some @broadwaytheatreofpitman @levoytheatre @obsp @roadtheatre #littleshopofhorrors #normalheart #shrek #atlanticcounty #cumberlandcounty #camdencounty #nj #whitehorsepike #blackhorsepike #pitman #millville #williamstown #larrykramer #howardashman (at Mays Landing, New Jersey)

[docfronk]

Taking a selfie would have had us staring directly at the sun so we took a shadow selfie! #eclipse2017 #eclipse #millville #cumberlandcounty #atlanticcounty #sun #moon #shadow #whitehorsepike #blackhorsepike #hammonton #totaleclipse (at Mays Landing, New Jersey)

[docfronk]

I'm making my schedule for show reviews all the way to #Christmas of #2018 . If you know a #stageplay or #musical in the #southjersey tomorrow or in the next year let me know! Want me to shout out your show? Talk to me about getting on your press list! #blackhorsepike #whitehorsepike #levoy #obsp #stocktonuniversity #greatereggharbor #atlanticcounty #cumberlandcounty #vineland #millville #mayslanding #eggharbortownship #eggharborcity #atlanticcity (at New Jersey)

[docfronk]

My review for Harvey is live! https://rickyyoung-howze.tumblr.com/post/159901258661/harvey-by-absegami-high-schools-emanon-players-in #onstage2017 #galloway #nj #harvey #marychase #atlanticcounty #whitehorsepike #performance #review @gamiemanonplayers #southjersey #harveytherabbit #edinburghfringe (at Mays Landing, New Jersey)