We were SOLD OUT. Now we're EXTENDED.

Clown Bar Extended!

We completely sold out (like SOLD OUT sold out) our current run but luckily we figured out a way to extend.  Clown Bar will now run until April 12.  Three more weeks!  For a total of 7!

New dates--

Friday, March 29, 9PM
Saturday, March 30, 9PM
Thursday, April 4, 8PM
Friday, April 5, 8PM
Thursday, April 11, 8PM
Friday, April 12, 8PM
     
But please buy tickets now in the not-unlikely case we sell out all those performances too. http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/336282

The reviews have been great and the audience response awesome:

Critic’s Pick; “Adam Szymkowicz’s script is unabashedly silly but also shrewd, paying homage to film noir and pulp novels.” --New York Times

"Mr. Szymkowicz has created a new world out old parts, breeding a brand new species of creative animal. He is, in fact, making his own rules – and the pleasure of obeying them is all ours." –New York Theatre Review

“The script is tight and funny—hard-boiled schtick.” --The Fifth Wall

“Adam Szymkowicz’s script is a case study in meticulously crafted playfulness… some of the most quotable lines ever heard in a play… Clown Bar is a fantastic way to spend your evening. If you love clowns, go see this show. If you hate clowns, go see this show.” --nytheatre.com 

“Clown Bar does detective story spoofs one better by employing every single familiar crime-movie trope — brooding hero, crazy crime boss, conflicted gun moll, hooker with a heart of gold — and making them all...well, clowns. It’s weird how well this works: playwright Adam Szymkowicz has combined two inherently ridiculous forms of entertainment and created a perfect storm of ridiculousness.” --Theatre Is Easy

“There’s not a streak out of place in Clown Bar‘s greasepaint; I can’t think of a better nightcap than the shot of extra funny currently being served by Pipeline Theatre Company.” --That Sounds Cool

---------
Book Store
Books by Adam

I Interview Playwrights Part 557: Lindsay Joy

Lindsay Joy

Hometown: Hudson, New Hampshire

Current Town: Brooklyn!

Q: Tell me about The Rise and Fall of a Teenage Cyberqueen.

A: Rise/Fall is the story of a flawed American family uprooted and unhinged by the rapid pace of online chat rooms and video feeds. The play centers around Lyla, a 14 year old girl, and what happens to her family as videos of her go viral. I wanted to use the duality of our "online selves" versus our true selves to unravel the intertwining lives of a family. I don't want to give away too much, but I will say that I'm crazy proud of the play. Director Padraic Lillis and the entire cast have done an amazing job.

Q: What else are you working on?

A: I'm working on a few new projects. I'm working on a multi-writer, collaborative project based on the hero's journey with AMios Theater Company. I'm also developing two new full length plays with my company, the LabRats.

Q: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A: I think that growing up in New England gave me a unique voice. New Englanders show their love by teasing...hard. It allows me to find laughter in awful situations.

Q: If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A: The one thing that I would change about theater? Getting more people to come out and see it.

Q: Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A: Martin Mcdonagh, Paula Vogel, Tracy Letts, Lee Blessing, John Patrick Shanley, Sam Shepard, Marsha Norman...I could go on and on!

Q: What kind of theater excites you?

A: I love theater that makes me laugh hard really right before the bottom drops out in a scene (the big reveal in the second scene of Pillowman comes to mind). That excites the shit out of me. There's so much great new work out there right now- new voices. We are on the edge of a paradigm shift to new work and I'm all in.

Q: What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A: Advice? Secrets. Secrets are your best friend. Give each of your characters (even the smaller characters) a secret and it'll open a new play right up for you.

Q: Plugs, please

A: Please come and see the show! http://www.facebook.com/l/zAQHBHaJqAQGwYPZRzHQbsjDkPUeuwweNQxo-VafkDZkgcw/riseandfall.brownpapertickets.com/
5 shows left. $10 tickets with pw: teenqueen

---
Book Store
Books by Adam

Episode 3 of Compulsive Love

3rd episode of my web series Compulsive Love is here!  Watch it and previous episodes on Koldcast or Blip or Daily Motion or Boomtrain or Youtube or JTS.

Embedded #3:

---
Book Store
Books by Adam

I Interview Playwrights Part 556: Stan Richardson

"I'm on the left; Matt Steiner is on the right."

Stan Richardson

Hometown: St. Louis, MO

Current Town: NYC

Q:  Tell me about the new Representatives show. 

 
A:  O Happy Happy Aztecs! is a short dark comedy about an aspiring actress and her gay best friend who move to NYC from Small Town USA. They have all the big dreams of 20-year-olds, but they are in their early-30's. And they carry with them their overwhelming need for safety and convenience which effectively castrates the dangerous and exotic city they have always wanted to call home.

Q:  What else are you working on?

A:  I'm writing the next play for The Representatives which will be a loose adaptation of Turgenev's Fathers & Sons called Bazarov. It's about, among other things, the entrance of a nihilist into a haven of well-meaning, but sedentary liberals; he blithely suggests that all of their useless ideals and institutions should be obliterated and this causes some problems. Unlike most of The Representatives' projects, Bazarov is simply too large to be done in an apartment and will be presented in a larger venue this coming August.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  Aside from having it meaningfully subsidized by the U.S. government? I would like for playwrights to devote themselves to work that makes them extremely uncomfortable. That discomfort is inherently entertaining and relevant. If what you are currently working on does not absolutely scare the shit out of you, keep me in the loop about future projects.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  Edward Albee; Pina Bausch; Caryl Churchill; Cherry Jones; Craig Lucas; Elizabeth Marvel; Jan Maxwell; Joe Orton; Wallace Shawn; Ivo van Hove; Lanford Wilson; and The Wooster Group.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  I'm very drawn to theater that feels like it was created Just Now. The key to this, it seems to me, is not so much topicality but depth of feeling and conviction. Playwrights, unlike politicians, need not under-express their views in order to "stay in office." But another obstacle is the stultifying years-long wait to be produced. The Representatives has given me the opportunity to see my work onstage nearly as fast as I can write it. Matt Steiner, my co-artistic director and an actor for whom I've been ceaselessly inspired to write for the past seven years, and I try to streamline the production process. We figure out who we want to work with and where we'll be performing, then I start writing and a few months later we do the play. Most of these projects have been elegantly staged by Ben Vershbow, a pragmatic poet of a director. And we are continually having the pleasure of working with incredibly talented actors: mesmerizing ambassadors to whatever world we collectively dream up.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  I would give this advice to any playwright, including myself, at any stage of his/her career. It's a Godard quote: "At the moment that we can do cinema, we can no longer do the cinema that gave us the desire to do it." Let's acknowledge and honor our theatrical ancestry and then pop out some troublemakers of our own.

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  Nobel Peace Prize nominee Bradley Manning has a rather important new show running off-off-Broadway right now down at Fort Meade. It's called The Obama Administration Is Going To Destroy the Role of Whistleblower If We Don't Do Something About It. Seats are still available! Please show your support: https://www.bradleymanning.org/
----
Book Store
Books by Adam

Finding Collaborators

It’s been a while since I posted an actual blog post that I wrote myself that isn’t to promote one of my projects. Here goes.

I’ve been reading a bunch of plays recently for contests and such as well as in my new role as a Lit Mgr for an off off theater in town. (Yes, I’m being intentionally vague)

As a reader of over 200 plays in the last six months, I get really excited each time I read something really good. The other day I read a funny heartfelt play by an emerging writer that I was blown away by. (Again, intentionally vague.  Please don't try to guess.)  I immediately started to wonder who I could show the play to. Was there a theater in New York who could do the play? After a quick google search, I realized the play had already been done and had gotten mixed reviews in New York. The times had not been kind. And I knew a couple of the cast members and knew them to be very talented and I knew the play and knew of the director. And I wondered…

What Went Wrong?

1. Was I mistaken in my assessment of the play? That’s certainly possible, but I don’t think so.

2. Did the play just have bad reviewer luck? Did the wrong people see it and not get it? That is a definite possibility and frequently happens.

3. Were the wrong people involved in the production? Was it miscast? Was it the wrong director? Were there communication problems? Has the very talented writer not yet learned how to explain the play to her collaborators?

It could be any of these but let's suppose it’s # 3. Let me ask you, how did you learn how to find the right people to work with? Does it continue to be a struggle? Do you know when to say no? How does a talented writer learn how to cast and choose a director and work with a team to realize the best possible production of a play.  How do we make necessary compromises while keeping intact the vision and structural integrity of the piece?  How do we find the people who will make the play better than it should be?

I’m still wondering if there are theaters out of town I could recommend the writer send the play to, theaters who are young and exciting. The trouble is, how does one recover from bad reviews? The play which should be published, is not. And what to I say to this writer? And how does one talk theaters into it who are leery of multiple bad reviews?

I don’t have the answer to this. What do you think? Certainly, write the next play. Continue. Can anything be done?

---
Book Store
Books by Adam

I Interview Playwrights Part 555: Basil Kreimendahl

Basil Kreimendahl

Hometown: Louisville, KY

Current Town: Iowa City, IA

Q:  What are you working on now?

A:  A new play, that takes place in Louisville, KY; it's about an unconventional drag house on the wrong side of the Ohio River flood wall, and their desire and need for dignity and belonging. They take performing realness to another level by preparing to give the performance of a lifetime at the Kentucky Derby. It's a play that explores "passing" not in terms of gender but in class.

I'm also working on an adaptation of La Ronde, with one of my favorite directors at the University of Iowa, Nathan Halvorson.

Q:  Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

A:  Because I quit school young, at 14, I've been working full-time for a long time. Back then, one of my jobs was doing yard work for a lawn company. One day, I had a toothache, the summer heat was suffocating and the weed whacker kept breaking. I'd have to stop and fix it over and over again. In a moment of frustration, I stopped for a minute and sat down on the grass. It was the first time I actually took in the house and the neighborhood. There was a fountain in the yard, a statue and a Mercedes parked in the driveway, and I thought just one of these things could fix a whole lot of toothaches.

Q:  If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

A:  At this moment, what I wish for theatre is that we stretch our ideas about what  we think is commercially viable. I hope that the kind of theatre our audiences want to see encompasses a broader range of forms, stories and experiments than we give them credit for.

Q:  Who are or were your theatrical heroes?

A:  My heroes are not just my heroes because their work inspires me, but because I like how I see them walk in the world. So just to name a few, Naomi Wallace, Lucy Thurber, Christina Anderson, Polly Carl, Jen Silverman, Kia Corthron, Francine Volpe, Bonnie Metzgar... apparently, a lot of amazing women.

Q:  What kind of theater excites you?

A:  This is one of those things that's bound to change with time, I'm still discovering things that excite me. I'm interested in work that I want to be in conversation with, because it challenges me and moves me. Plays that queer everything. Work that has a bold sincerity, even when it's being ironic. Theatre that goes to those places we don't often go, where it's a little frightening to go, but once we've been we're not the same anymore.

Q:   What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  Write the next play. Read something other than plays. Finally, to quote Mama Cass, "You gotta make your own kind of music, sing your own special song."

Q:  Plugs, please:

A:  My classmates, the group of talented playwrights I'm about to graduate with: Kat Sherman, Bonnie Metzgar, Deborah Yarchun, and I have to include a graduating director from Austin, Will Davis. A new project Gabrielle Reisman and I organized, The Iowa/Austin Exchange. Last but not least, a big congrats to my dear friend and fellow Iowan, Andrew Saito for his playwright residency at Cutting Ball.

---
Book Store
Books by Adam