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I went to Sachsenheim Hall on Tuesday night to observe the rehearsal of my dear friend Peter’s play The Gyntish Self.

One rendition of the play was produced at Carnegie Mellon as Peter’s thesis play a few years back, and I had the opportunity to see it. While it has changed with re-writes and a newly emerging production, the play has lost none of its comedic bite.

Peter’s play is based on the Ibsen play Peer Gynt, which is based on the Norwegian fairy tale Per Gynt. Apparently at the time Ibsen wrote it there was a hullabaloo about the thing, with a bunch of pissed off Norwegians, and I’m sure they’d all be even more incensed by what Peter does with it. However, just like the Ibsen play, Peter’s creation moves seemlessly between the world of today and the deranged lunacy that is Peer Gynt’s mind. Of spontaneous interest to me was that Edvard Grieg wrote In the Hall of the Mountain King for the play and when I was visiting Mike Geither last Friday night for his birthday his son was playing that very song on the piano.

Regardless, the play, so far, is good fun with a great cast and I look forward to the upcoming production! If you wish to contribute to Peter’s production efforts.

For the full multimedia extravaganza .

Attended a staged reading of Christopher Johnston’s play Nude Reclining into Shadow at Dobama. The reading featured the talents of Lara Knox, Dana Hart, and John Busser.

The following description is from the event listing from Playwright’s Gym:

“Keegan is a middle-aged artist who once reveled in national acclaim for his paintings and photographs. He’s been away from the limelight for many years, however, and survives by teaching a college class in painting at his decrepit studio. Now, just when he’s at a new low and the university is forcing him to retire, he meets Amaris, a beautiful, young, fiercely independent model who is equal parts inspiration and exasperation. She could become the new muse he so desperately desires to start painting again – or his worst nightmare.”

The role of Keegan was read by Dana Hart and that of Amaris was read by John Busser, just kidding, it was Lara Knox, with Busser handling the stage directions.

The eventual performance will be a mix of media, including screen projections (text and video), studio space action, and movement through time.

I have to say, from the reading, that I did not pin Keegan as a middle-aged artist. This had nothing to do with the reading itself, but more to do with the predicament of the artist, the unfamiliarity with more modern communication devices, and perhaps the social disconnection that were both of his own making and the passage of time. I imagined him as more early to mid sixties or later, perhaps. More specifically, it seemed that the artist character was reclining into shadow, shadow of a more permanent sort.

I’m not going to discuss the play too much because I’m still thinking about it and it has not been staged, which will make a pronounced difference. I will say that I found it intensely engaging and, through a series of intimate encounters, a play about longing with a heightened eroticism that I haven’t experienced in many plays before.

I do hope that it finds it’s path to a full production.