June 22, 2006
TRUE LIFE
filed under: Idle ChatterI am belated, as usual, on the promotion front, but here goes:
This past Sunday, Youngblood's latest show, THE TRUE LIFE STORY OF [YOUR NAME HERE]: TOM RITCHFORD, was the subject of a feature in the NY Times Arts & Leisure section. The reporter, Steven McElroy, had shadowed us from the very beginning of the project.
For this show, created for the Brick Theater's $ELLOUT FESTIVAL, we held an eBay auction, to write the "TRUE LIFE STORY" of the winning bidder. Eight of the Youngblood playwrights eventually contributed material, which I organized into a 50-minute show. The article references our "kamikaze timetable," and that was no joke this time out - this show opened nine days after "Not All Korean Girls," and we didn't have a full cast until 6 days before opening. Sigh.
Despite a truly unsettling tech on the day before we opened (one of those soul-shaking moments where you're briefly convinced that everything you've done is bad, misguided, and destined to flagrant failure), the show came together in excellent style. It was one of the great turnarounds I've ever been a part of.
Since then we've had some contentious run-ins with our subject, which is too bad. Some day it may be worth chronicling the whole saga - for now I'm eager to get past it. There was some drama, but nothing that rose above the level of mutually snippy emails.
Anyway, here are some excerpts from the article:
YOUNGBLOOD, a collective of playwrights under 30, recently devised a novel way to raise money. The team held an auction on eBay offering to write a play about the winning bidder and stage it at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.As it turned out, the auction was just the first of many wrinkles in the production, which opened this month and runs through July 1. The variables included eight writers working separately, an unknown subject, a cast of seven unpaid actors and a down-to-the wire schedule. While many Off Off Broadway troupes take less than two months from first rehearsal to opening night, as Youngblood did, most of them usually start with a script. Steven McElroy chronicled the life of "The True Life Story of [Your Name Here]."
46 DAYS TO GO
Tom Ritchford, 43, a software engineer for Google, enters the auction, partly as a lark and partly as a way to tell the story of his parents, who both died of AIDS. He wins with a bid of $521, though he said he was willing to pay twice that. The show will now be known as "The True Life Story of [Your Name Here]: Tom Ritchford."38 DAYS TO GO
The playwrights, led by R. J. Tolan and Graeme Gillis, the collective's artistic directors, wait in a Midtown bar to meet the auction winner. Their main concern is a boring subject. Mr. Ritchford bustles in late. He is energetic, nervous, speaks quickly with a British accent and flashes a big grin. Mr. Gillis turns to another writer: "We're golden." Mr. Ritchford talks about himself for over an hour. He says little about his parents and much about his relationships with younger women.[SNIP]
8 DAYS TO GO
The cast is short one actor, the script consists of eight scenes that aren't finished, and the artistic directors are still struggling to link them. Rehearsals start anyway.7 DAYS TO GO
An actor who was to play Mr. Ritchford in several scenes leaves for paying work. Now the cast is down two actors, but Mr. Tolan is not upset: Youngblood knows others accustomed to its "kamikaze timetable."6 DAYS TO GO
The final two actors are cast.[SNIP]
THE DAY BEFORE
The tech rehearsal is rough and lasts until midnight. Afterward, Mr. Gillis and Mr. Tolan (the director as well as the set, costume, sound and lighting designer) work three more hours, trimming the script and adjusting props and costumes.
If you're registered with the Times, you can read the rest here.
As I said, it was a happy ending, with a big friendly house and the show in pretty darn good shape. Since then it has come together further, with last Saturday's show being our best yet. All in all, with some heavy ups and downs, I think we've put together a pretty compelling hour of theater.
Three more shows if you want to check it out - Friday 6/23 at 10:15pm, Wednesday 6/28 at 9:30pm, and Saturday 7/1 at 2pm. Tickets are available on TheaterMania.