D3C presents: Look at the Fish benefit night 3/29 at 8PM

Dialogue with Three Chords (D3C) presents a benefit for the Look at the Fish (LatF) theatre company on March 29th at 8PM at Mr. Dennehy's at 63 Carmine Street, NYC.

The evening will benefit the company and it's upcoming production of: "The Genesis Collection of Plays; Nine Monologues for the Theatre by Don Nigro; Dramatic tales of creation, love, carnage, and obsession told by Look At The Fish Theatre Company" to be directed by Thomas Mckee and Thomas James Lombardo

An evening of monologues written and performed by members of Look at the Fish theatre and live music. Admission is $12 and comes with a raffle ticket. 21 and over, please: the benefit is in a room with a private bar.

Excerpts from selected Don Nigro monologues will be performed as part of the benefit, as well as two works by LatF company playwrights Bret Richard Hoskins and Stephen Gracia.

"I'm very pleased to be a part of the Look At The Fish Theatre Company...they investigate the text and trust the text. That's very important to me. I think they will do brave, honest, and good work." --LatF company playwright Don Nigro

The performances will include:

"Genesis" by Don Nigro
Eve tells her side of the story.
With Colby Minifie as EVE, directed by Thomas James Lombardo

"Diogenes The Dog" by Don Nigro
Diogenes, the homeless Greek philosopher and founder of Cynic philosophy who often lived in a bath tub outside of Athens shares his unique philosophy of life.
With Dorien Makhloghi as DIOGENES, directed by Thomas James Lombardo

"The Last Giddy Hour of a Woundless Heart" by Stephen Gracia.
In this modern day Prometheus monologue/tale, a man away on business gets more than he bargained for after hiring a prostitute.
With Philippe Chang as MAN, directed by Thomas James Lombardo

"Frankenstein" by Don Nigro
A young woman who wrote her dissertation on Frankenstein shares why this novel her a definition of what it means to be alive. With Rachel Troy as MEREDITH, directed by Thomas James Lombardo

"Gone Fishin' On A Cloudy Day" by Bret Richard Hoskins
A scene from the forthcoming short play. With Ridley Parson as JIMMY and Evan Daved as CHARLIE, directed by Thomas James Lombardo

With live music from composer Aleksi Glick, accompanied by Christina Bendetto. Please visit www.aleksiglick.com

There will also be a raffle full of great prizes! Tickets are $2 each or 6 for $5:

-5 hours of free rehearsal space at 36th Street Studios
-Original manuscripts of collections of plays by Don Nigro; not published
-Free tickets to any Look At The Fish Theatre Company show
-Free tickets to Barefoot Theatre Company's next play at the Cherry Lane featuring Lynn Cohen
-Half off a headshot session (200$ - original price is 400-500$) from Even Cohen Studios
-2 Concert Tickets to ZoSo, the legendary Led Zeppelin Cover Band.

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.