End Of The World Ephemera

Fangtoothed & Wild
&
A Wig Full Of Spiders

Thursday, January 26th at 8pm
Mr. Dennehy's Irish Pub
63 Carmine Street, NYC

Thoughts on the sound of Fangtoothed & Wild and A Wig Full Of Spiders

“A Wig Full of Spiders” and “Fangtoothed and Wild” are my Garage Rock plays. They’re rough, a bit sloppy, and they stagger around the stage.

I’ve always had a love for Garage Rock and lo-fi Rockabilly, anything that sounds so overdriven that it’s about to turn into white noise, something that shakes and rattles and is always on the verge of falling apart.




The characters and tone of both plays are a bit different than what I usually write. They’re not strictly surreal or experimental, they’re just…off. I wanted to write something that put language first: the sound of it, the mythologizing, something a bit like the imagery in a song like Bo Diddley’s “Who do You Love?”:

“I walked 47 miles through barbed-wire; I use a cobra snake for a neck tie….”



“I’m just 22, and I don’t mind dyin’…”

Which was, just last year, repurposed into “California”, a beautifully apocalyptic song by Ema...



...which begins:

“Fuck California, you made me boring; I bled all my blood out…” and resolves into that same Bo Diddley line before crashing into the jarring:

“What does failure taste like? To me it tastes like dirt.”

This mirrors “Who do You Love?” ’s bravado vs nihilism. Of course a man who lives in a house of skulls doesn’t fear death, and of course a woman who’s bled all her blood out doesn’t fear it either.

The characters in “A Wig Full Of Spiders” fear death (and intimacy/vulnerability of any kind) and those in “Fangtoothed & Wild” either deny it or instinctively know how best to weather this Twilight of the Gods.

“A Wig Full of Spiders” is a groove, two repeating patterns playing against each other: drums and bass. It introduces the idea of being terrified of myths, especial a myth about the apocalypse, one led by Fenris, the world-eating dog.

“Fangtoothed and Wild” builds on that. It’s the fuzzed-out guitar. It’s the end of the world and Fenris is here, scamming drinks in a dive bar. The world shakes apart and much like the myth Fenris stars in; the Gods fall and the humans endure.

This Week! Dialogue with Three Chords Returns!

The Krampus: A Christmas Play

Happy Holidays and a Merry Krampusnacht!

In lieu of an actual, live D3C event this month, we are happy to offer you a free, original, Christmas radio play for your downloading pleasure. 

This play, The Krampus, will soon be featured on D3C's Podcast channel (more information on that to come) and will contain some additional talking and context by the producer, writer, and director.

So grab a scotch, light a fire, and gather around the ol' laptop, the way we did when we were kids, and enjoy this decidedly non-kidfriendly Christmas play.

THE KRAMPUS

Written by Stephen Gracia
Directed by Michael LoPorto
Produced by Edie Nugent
With Sound Design By Da Archutek/Archutek Communications, LLC

Starring:
John Gazzale as Dylan 
Jason Jacoby as Kevin
Aidan Koehler as Rebecca
Sean Meehan as Eric
Greg Skura as Doug
Jennifer Skura as Jane
Jennie West as Diane
And
Steve Weinblatt as The Narator

Dialogue with Three Chords would like to thank our amazing cast, who came together, three days before Christmas, to rehearse and record The Krampus all in one night.

As Christmas miracles go, that one was pretty spectacular.


The Krampus by Stephen Gracia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Winter Intersession

Dialogue with Three Chords is on break until January 26th, 2012 when we will return with brand new plays (from Stephen as well other playwrights), music, poetry, and more.

We at D3C would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who came out to support new theatre, and we hope to see you next year.

D3C exists as a monthly event because of the generosity of Donal Dennehy, the Dennehy family, and Jennifer and Greg Skura. They have been fantastic hosts and inspirations.

Our patrons knew that these were happening because of the tireless devotion of our PR Person, Edie Nugent.

D3C, as a concept, was influenced by the New York theatre movement of the 60’s, and the New York Punk Rock scene of the 70’s. La MaMa and Max’s Kansas City. Sam Shepard and Richard Hell. Growing up in Brooklyn, we idolized and romanticized that time, when actors mixed with artists, mixed with musicians, mixed with poets. We spent our youth hoping to join a scene, and as adults, we figured we’d start our own, throw wide the doors, and invite everyone down to the basement to join in. We were Hardcore kids; we know a thing or two about the power of a gang chorus.

Our postcards are flyers. Our programs are setlists.

As we start the holiday season, it’s hard not to get boldly sentimental. We at D3C are thankful for everyone who came out to support the kind of theatre that excites us; it's nice to know that we're not alone, and we're thankful for all the actors and musicians who contributed their time and passion to these plays: those we’ve worked with in the past and those we met during these four months.

We look forward to making you say unspeakable things in 2012.

We also look forward to getting even more actors, more writers, and more musicians involved next season.

While we’re away, Stephen will be working on new scripts, workshopping old ones, and blogging here about the process. He will also be soliciting short play scripts, so check back for announcements.

D3C may be dark for the next couple of months, but our friends won’t be, please go and support these brave, forward thinking companies and events:

Abraxas Stage Company

Monk Parrots

Barefoot Theatre Company

Look at the Fish Theatre

Glitterbox Burlesque


See you in the dead of Winter.

Dress in layers, because the basement gets toasty.

Hello Central! - "Deleted" Scenes from NEXT

 From the press release, because our publicist, Edie, said it more succinctly than I ever could: 

"Dialogue with Three Chords will host a benefit night for On Behalf of a Grateful Nation, an organization that raises funds for wounded veterans and military families. HELLO CENTRAL Deleted Scenes from NEXT is written by Stephen Gracia and directed by Michael LoPorto. It is an expansion of NEXT, produced by Abraxas Theatre Company at HERE Arts Center, which follows a group of WWII soldiers as they wait for their turn at a military-sponsored whorehouse. It includes a burlesque performance and starts at 8PM on October 27, Downstairs at Mr. Dennehy's pub on 63 Carmine Street in Greenwich Village. Admission is $10."

Read more: http://offoffbroadway.broadwayworld.com/article/Dialogue-With-Three-Chords-Hosts-Benefit-For-Veterans-and-Military-Families-20111025#ixzz1bv7Tguq9

I never though that I would return to NEXT in quite this way.

I had no doubt that I would return with a new arsenal of editing tools once I let the version that ran at HERE Arts Center in February, 2011 settle for a while. The visuals conceived by Michael LoPorto and the creative team had inspired new additions to the narrative, and I planned to sit down and change the script accordingly. 

I knew that the character of Danny would need a bit of a rewrite. It took me the three week run, the month of rehearsals prior, and the almost year of discussion   that led to the process and production to really understand the characters I had created, and I now had clearer idea of how to tell their stories. 

I recognized the need for tweaks and changes, and when the idea of doing a fundraising event for On Behalf of a Grateful Nation (the not-for-profit organization we partnered with in February) came up, I thought that throwing together a collection of “scenes that you didn’t see”-- conversations that were happening simultaneously or, at most, just before or just after the action you saw on stage -– would be fun. What ended up happening was entirely different.

“Hello Central” is less a hodge-podge of scenes and more of an entire second play-- taking place before, during, and well after the war. It’s a full companion piece, and that’s shocking. Revisiting characters like this, telling another story using the same people…crafting a sequel, of all things, seems somehow wrong. If I did it right the first time, I thought, then the story should be over. There should be nothing else to say.

But then, If I’m completely honest with myself, NEXT is less of a straight narrative, with a beginning, middle, and end, and more of a collections of moments that hang within a structure of two or three themes. There’s resolution at the end, and little journeys that move throughout both acts, but the acts are completely separate, with entirely different tones and pacing, and even within the acts, action and journey are broken up by narration.

This structure made it easier to write a re-visitation with those characters. It was a matter of finding moments between the ones you saw in the original production. And, naturally, those moments between seemed to necessitate visiting a moment months before the play and a moment years after. Looking at NEXT this way, through the lens of the new Hello Central!, has put me in mind of a quote from Gravity’s Rainbow, (Pynchon in general and GR in particular had a huge influence on NEXT, though I’m not sure that’s obvious.)

"It's been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such message, no such home — only the millions of last moments... nothing more. Our history is an aggregate of last moments."

NEXT and Hello Central are just that: aggregates of last moments, which is the nature of writing fiction about war. There is no kingdom, no home, nothing but the “now.” And that now is terrifying, and it’s the moments of peace, of pleasure—of laughing or drinking, of fantasy and sexual release that break up the moments where death feels imminent.

D3C Playlist - An Ugly, Lovely Town

When Dylan Thomas referred to the area of Wales where he grew up as "an ugly, lovely town" in "Reminisces of Childhood" he both set a future tone and gave perfect voice to a long held belief (at least in the rest of the UK): Wales is a beautiful country populated by hard people.

Welsh popular music then, is an interesting thing. Its two most well known exports are:

Two of the biggest voices out there. Beautiful and booming. Nary a rough edge to be seen. Odd, since the Welsh accent is considered quite harsh (given the overload of consonants).

Even when we move into the Punk, Post-Punk, and Indie Rock eras, the sweetness remains. Even when the lyrics are about death:

If the person filming this had widened the shot a bit, you'd absolutely see me standing in the audience, stage right, jumping around like a buffoon. So, I remain thankful that he/she stayed focused on Jon Langford. Langford, a newport boy and one of the greatest, most prolific musicians to come out of the first wave of UK Punk (seriously, I refer you to the Mekons, The Waco Brothers, The Three Johns, The Pine Valley Cosmonauts, and his solo stuff, unreservedly. I have seen him play NY, in various incarnations, 4 times in the last 3 years, and I already have my Mekons ticket for next month) is the patron saint of this play. His book about growing up in Wales, Skull Orchard, provided every detail I needed.

The Ugly/Lovely balance is evident in Langford's lyrics about his working class upbringing conveyed in a rich, melodic vocal, in the same way the "soul of the Sex Pistols in the body of Guns N' Roses' body" dynamic works for Wales's favorite sons, The Manic Street Preachers.

which is the loveliest Brit Pop song to ever begin with words as despairing as:

"Culture sucks down words
Itemise loathing and feed yourself smiles
Organise your safe tribal war
Hurt maim kill and enslave the ghetto.."

The contribution of Wales to UK Pop seems to be giving it a knife edge, an act never more brilliantly realized than by the latest Welsh band to inspire devotion, Los Campesinos. 

"We are Beautiful; We are Doomed", a distinctly Welsh concept born in an "ugly, lovely town", complete with a gang chorus/pub singalong: 

"Oh, we kid ourselves, there's future in the fuckingBut there is no fucking future..." 

All of these artists were played constantly during the (relatively short) writing process because in the space of just over ten pages I wanted to get at this dichotomy: this love and indifference toward the same place. (Thomas was later quoted as saying "Wales is the land of my fathers, and my fathers can have it." which, in structure, is both a searing indictment and wistful rememberance) 

In the play, "An Ugly, Lovely Town", there is no fucking, but there's love and indifference, there's a romantic past and a bleak future and a protagonist who's willing to love both equally. 

- Stephen