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Ford Theatres
Los Angeles County Arts Commission Arts Education Arts Resources Folk and Traditional Arts Grants and Professional Growth Public Special Events

[INSIDE] THE FORD Series 2002-2003
Plays For Consideration
 

The following lists scripts recently developed with A.S.K. Theater Projects that are eligible for the [Inside] the Ford program. For more information about a specific script, please call Mead Hunter at A.S.K.: (310) 478-3200.



Strange Attractors
by David Adjmi
Betsy's good. There's the charity work, the AIDS fundraisers. Her life is good, too: Park Avenue penthouse, Ad-exec hubby, live-in maid. But Betsy's been bad. Photos on the Internet prove it. Now she's a download away from finding out just how bad life can get.
CAST: 3 WOMEN, 2 MEN

Big Death & Little Death by Mickey Birnbaum
It's those damn teenagers and their damn death metal. It's all the drugs, and the sex with guidance counselors, and the stillborn pit bull pups coming back from the dead. Let's face it-you're just a tiny goober of flesh in this universe. You're never safe.
CAST: 2 WOMEN, 5 MEN

Kate Crackernuts by Sheila Callaghan
Once upon a time, there were two stepsisters. Then one day Anne lost her head. Once upon a time, there were two healthy brothers. Now there is one healthy brother, and one spent piece of punctuation who drips from the bed and changes colors by the hour. A head is a head after all, and who says the imposter won't be a better fit?
CAST: 4 WOMEN, 4 MEN

Henry Flamethrowa by John Belluso
A comatose girl with miraculous healing powers. A reporter who'll do whatever it takes to get the real story. A father desperate to believe. And Henry, who prays to the Devil to keep him from doing God's terrible will. An A.S.K. commission.
CAST: 1 WOMAN, 2 MEN

Raree by KC Davis
This is how a poet should arrive: Open to inspiration. Drunk as a lord. Richard Savage embodies both qualities as he stumbles into the lives of the love-starved Prentiss sisters. Is it fate? Or the work of a certain magical charm?
CAST: 4 WOMEN, 4 MEN

chokecherry by Erik Ehn
Part three of a trilogy that takes The Divine Comedy as its point of departure.
CAST: 1 WOMAN

Crazy Drunk by Robert Fieldsteel
It's the case of the century, drawn from the tabloids of the day. Los Angeles, 1903: city patriarch Griffith W. Griffith fires a revolver into his pleading wife's face. Was it really attempted murder? Intoxicating defense attorney Earl Rogers makes the case, but fails to learn the lesson.
CAST: 3 WOMEN, 4 MEN

The Gibson Girl by Kirsten Greenidge
Two girls, raised as twins, but different. Dark-skinned Win isn't exactly who she thinks she is, while light-skinned Valerie has just moved into a bathroom stall. Only a long-gone daddy could straighten this all out. That is if mama Ruth can lure him back with sweet, and trap him with sticky.
CAST: 6 WOMEN, 2 MEN

Philosophy of the World
Words by Joy Gregory, music by Gunnar Madsen
Austin Wiggin had a vision: his daughters were going to be rock stars. So what if they couldn't play any instruments and didn't know any songs? With little talent and even less desire, this girl group became The Shaggs, the worst rock-n-roll band of all time.
CAST: 4 WOMEN, 4 MEN (with doubling)

The Lively Lad by Quincy Long
Little Eva Martin won't be satisfied with anything less than a eunuch for her 13th birthday. After all, everyone else is getting them. But the spoiled Victorian debutante is destined for more than social success when her new companion enters the scene in this madcap new play with songs. An A.S.K. commission.
CAST: 3 WOMEN, 6 MEN (with doubling)

Moscow by Steven Leigh Morris
Moscow takes the Faustian underpinning of Bulgakov's legendary novel, The Master and Margarita - in which the devil and his entourage raise havoc in Stalinist Russia - and refracts it through the prism of contemporary Moscow, with the Russian Mafia and the struggles of one Muscovite family.
CAST: 4 WOMEN, 5 MEN (with doubling)

Rhinebeck by David Rambo
It was a fine example of American Empire architecture. For Andy and Christopher, the adventure was adding to the history already within its walls. For Susan and Pete, the history was an annoyance best dealt with by a bulldozer. Past, present and future meet as two couples clash in a 19th-century house in upstate New York.
CAST: 1 WOMAN, 3 MEN

Mayhem by Kelly Stuart
Everyone has a story to tell, and everyone has a lie. Whether it's the genocide in far corners of the world, the drive-by shootings across the street or even the homegrown mayhem on the other side of her kitchen table, Susan needs to decide which story will be hers. An A.S.K. commission.
CAST: 2 WOMEN, 2 MEN

Parasites by Marius von Mayenberg
It's a flat, not the stinkin' hospital. Don't let the wheelchair, the pills, or the pregnant woman fool you. And it isn't a cage of wild animals, either. They may bite and claw and devour each other bite after bite, but it's just people. Husband and wife, sisters, victims and persecutors. Parasites. A Royal Court Theatre Exchange participant.
CAST: 2 WOMEN, 3 MEN

The Dinosaur Within by John Walch
Stolen footprints set off an epic story, in which aboriginal Australians collide with faded movie stars; real time meets dreamtime meets movie time; a wild bird attempts to increase her wingspan by finding her inner dinosaur; and a young reporter does her best to get to the bottom of it all.
CAST: 8 ACTORS

Be Aggressive by Annie Weisman
Blackmail, grand larceny, whatever it takes, Leslie and Lisa, two cheerleaders from Vista del Sol High School-by-the-Sea won't stop until they make it to the Spirit Institute of the South-where people take cheer seriously.
CAST: 7 WOMEN, 1 MAN

Clubland by Roy Williams
They've been out of school for more than a decade, but these Black blokes are still cruising the same London clubs and fighting the same fights. Marriage, family and White girls aren't going to cramp their style. Still, what happens when club kids turn 30? A Royal Court Theatre Exchange participant.
CAST: 4 WOMEN, 3 MEN

The Princess Inside by Y York
In a New York newsroom, content is optional and videotape is king. It's a scramble for the top of the heap as two reporters try to decide if their faces are their fortunes, or if it all can be changed in editing. An A.S.K. commission.
CAST: 2 WOMEN, 2 MEN


Board of Trustees
Audrey Skirball-Kenis, Chairperson
Charles Kenis, President
Kym Eisner, Secretary

Staff
Kym Eisner, Executive Director
Mead K. Hunter, Director of Literary Programs

Matt Almos, Literary Manager
Nathan Birnbaum, Artistic Associate
Matt Cullen, Graphics Associate
Bryan Davidson, Playwright Outreach and Education Coordinator
Heather Dundas, Project Manager
Wendy McClellan, General Manager
Alison Merkel, Assistant to the Directors
Raul Clayton Staggs, Project Coordinator
Joseph L. Thornburg, Office Manager

A.S.K. Theater Projects
11845 W. Olympic Blvd.
Suite 1250 West
Los Angeles, CA 90064
(310)478-3200
info@askplay.org / www.askplay.org

A.S.K. Theater Projects, a local and national resource for the theater and its artists, facilitates the creation of new work through a broad range of artistic and educational programs. A.S.K. offers an energetic year-round schedule of readings, publications, practical labs, on-line services and workshop productions and regularly hosts symposia, festivals, caucuses and labs as forums for exploring issues vital to the theater. In addition, A.S.K. contributes to the development of new theater through its Playwrights in the Schools program and affiliations with like-minded organizations, locally, nationally and internationally.


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