Hello Friends!

Elemental is tickled to announce that, for the FIRST time ever, we will be accepting submissions for the 2011 GO.GO PLAYS FESTIVAL!

Love writing plays?  Always wanted to try to write a play?  Do you love the theatre?  Are you a famous-yet-reclusive novelist trying to re-ignite your creative furnace and want to join forces with Providence’s hippest theatre artists to remind the world of your literary greatness?  [editor's note: We just found out JD Salinger died.  So I guess this goes out to Harper Lee?] Or do you just love Elemental?

Then keep your eyes on this page.  Because on September 15th, we will be announcing the rules for our FIFTH ANNUAL GO.GO PLAYS FESTIVAL, and this year, we’re opening up the writing process to all our friends.  This space will be the place for the details about the shared elements,  submission information, and the selection process.  And now, your questions…

Q: Why do I have to wait until September 15th?

A: The GO.GO PLAYS are our version of “instant playwriting”; we decide on some common elements and ask our writers to use them in their own way, and then we give them an intentionally short writing period, because it’s kind of fun to see what you come up with when you have a deadline.  In addition, these plays are ideally immediate responses to the elements; hopefully, that sense of immediacy translates into the work!

Q: What are these “common elements” that you keep mentioning?

A: Each fall, we select a few randomly-suggested ideas and ask that each playwright find a way to use them in his/her play.  Last year, for instance, all the writers had to use the same location (randomly selected: a cabin); a few years ago, each play had to have a broken toy, a public auction, a crack in the sidewalk, a song, and an event “out of time”.  These elements don’t have to be the focus of the play, but they do have to appear somewhere in there.  We try to pick things that will give our writers inspiration, so have fun and be creative!

Q: I already have a kick-ass play written?  Can I just submit that?

A: First of all, congratulations on your kick-ass play.  Secondly, we prefer that the GO.GO PLAYS are born out of the unholy union of pressure and the writer’s response to the elements.   So, sadly, no.

Q: When can I submit a play?

A: Anytime between September 15th and October 31.  That’s six weeks, people!  Submission details will follow at this site.

Q: My name is Harper Lee, and I am a famous reclusive author.  If I submit a play, will you guarantee that you will produce it?

A: Any Pulitzer winner who is willing to waive her/his usual advances and fees will be STRONGLY considered.

Q: How many plays can I submit and how much is this scam gonna cost me?

A: Submitting is free!  But please – one submission per person.  We’re a mom-and-pop operation over here.

Hopefully, this answers most of your questions. You can e-mail us here.  In the meantime, get excited!  Tell your friends!  Tell your neighbors!  For heaven’s sake, tell Harper Lee!  We are super-excited to read your plays,  so keep checking here for details!

Love,

Dave Rabinow

Elemental Theatre

The Providence Phoenix has come out with its annual “Best Of” survey, and Elemental Theater Collective was one of five nominations for Best Theater Company.

We’re honored to have been selected, and to be keeping such good company.  Please take a moment to click on the survey link below, and vote for ETC!

Providence Phoenix “Best Of” List!

The Cabin

Reviews are in for

The Father, The Son and the Holy Go.Go -

The Providence Journal’s Channing Gray said the play festival was “well-crafted” and “engaging,” and called Elemental’s artists “some of the rising talent” in the area.

Bill Rodriguez of the Providence Phoenix praised the “layers of narrative suspense” in George Brant’s The Cabin, noting his “skillful unfolding of a compelling story” and Alexander Platt’s “captivating performance.”  He called the play “as absorbing as a campfire tale.”

Marianne Messina wrote in ARTSMASHRI that the plays were “humorous and engaging,” noting their “tight development” and Kelly Seigh’s “well-grounded performance” as Molly in RedPop.

Don Fowler of the Cranston Herald found the evening “original,” and “thought-provoking.”  He wrote that “The writing is crisp, building to a crescendo that I found fascinating” and that all three plays were “artfully directed and acted.”

Read the reviews in full:

The Providence Journal

Providence Phoenix

ARTSMASHRI

The Cranston Herald

Marianne Messina  posted a preview of The Father, The Son and the Holy Go.Go on artsmashri.com –

She writes: “Even the way they dovetail each other’s thoughts in a discussion confirms that ‘collaborative’ is a key part of their company chemistry. All graduates of the Trinity MFA program, they’ve stumbled on one of those lucky synergies that makes artistic magic, and they’re running with it.”

Read the full article.

Elemental Theatre Collective is proud to present the world premiere of three short plays as part of their fourth annual Go.Go Plays New Works Festival.  This year’s production, the father, the son and the holy go.go, draws its title from the seven Catholic Sacraments, which were randomly assigned to the three playwrights.  The playwrights used their chosen sacraments to inform the plays as they wrote them, and  were given the additional challenge of setting the plays in a common location.  The setting, chosen at random from a hat full of suggestions, was a cabin.

The plays are divergent in style, but as always with the GoGo Plays, they manage to overlap and echo each other unexpected ways.  “This production takes three very different plays with similar starting points and links them into a surprising and cohesive evening of theatre,” says Alexander Platt, Elemental’s Artistic Director.  “The audience will enjoy connecting the dots between the plays almost as much as watching the plays themselves.”

Nationally-produced playwright George Brant contributed The Cabin, set in an abandoned family retreat, where Scott and Karen (Platt and D’Arcy Dersham), married for six years, are holed up for a week-long getaway. Directed by Dave Rabinow, The Cabin allows us a peek at the secrets that can make us question the foundations of our most intimate relationships.

Platt crafted RedPop, in which Molly (Kelly Seigh) has found herself pregnant and fled the city to clear her mind at the family cabin. She is unexpectedly joined by Ian (Rabinow), the father of her child, and even more unexpectedly haunted by visions of Kevin (Platt), her incarcerated high school band teacher. Melissa Rabinow directs this portrait of a woman at a crossroads.

Finally, Rabinow created Two Of Us, which follows the forty-year love affair between former commune members Peggy (Dersham) and Skeeter (Melissa Bowler).  Beginning in 1970 and set to the music of the Beatles and John Lennon, Two Of Us is directed by Platt and spins us through the decades as Peggy and Skeeter find, lose, and find each other again.

The father, the son and the holy go.go features some of Rhode Island’s finest theater artists working together to create a provocative and original evening of theatre. For the first time in the history of the GoGo plays,  Dersham, Platt, Rabinow and Seigh, who graduated together from Trinity Rep Conservatory in 2002 and form the core of Elemental’s acting company, will be performing in the same evening. They are joined onstage by Melissa Bowler, a member of Improv Jones, stand-up artist and frequent contributor to the Manton Avenue Project. Melissa Rabinow, a founding member of the Collective and Resident Dramaturg of the festival, received her MFA in Dramaturgy from Brandeis University and is making her GoGo directing debut with this production.  This is Elemental’s first collaboration with George Brant, a local playwright with a national reputation, who received his Masters in Writing from the University of Texas at Austin and is a member of the Dramatists Guild.

As 2009 came to a close, two of Elemental’s productions were recognized by the Providence Phoenix and the Providence Journal as the best of the year.

Read the article by Bill Rodriguez, tapping deca.go.go and Amadeus, in the Providence Phoenix.

Read Channing Gray’s pick of Amadeus in his Providence Journal article.

Elemental Theatre Collective is proud to present its fourth annual original short play festival at Perishable Theatre. This year’s collection is entitled the father, the son and the holy go.go, and features new plays by George Brant, Alexander Platt, and Dave Rabinow.

The writing challenge this year was for each playwright to create a play using elements of the Catholic Sacraments, and to set the plays in a shared location. The playwrights each drew two of the seven Sacraments out of a hat, leaving one as a wild card; from another hat, they drew the location. The result: three plays, set in a remote cabin, using Baptism, Confirmation, Communion, Holy Orders, Matrimony, Reconciliation, and the Annointing of the Sick as their jumping off point.

George Brant, in his first collaboration with ETC, is a playwright whose plays have been produced and developed at theaters across the country. His plays include Elephant’s Graveyard, Ashes, NOK, The Lonesome Hobos, One Hand Clapping, Terminal One, The Royal Historian of Oz, Lovely Letters, Three Men in a Boat, Borglum! The Mount Rushmore Musical, Tights on a Wire, Night of the Mime, and Any Other Name, which was recently produced by Premiere Stages. His script Elephant’s Graveyard was awarded the David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center and the Keene Prize for Literature. It will be published this winter by Samuel French. He has received writing fellowships from the James A. Michener Center for Writers, the MacDowell Colony, and the Blue Mountain Center. George received his Masters in Writing from the University of Texas at Austin and is a member of the Dramatists Guild.

Alexander Platt recently directed the company’s acclaimed production of Amadeus at Beneficent Church. Platt, Elemental’s Artistic Director, has written plays for each of its four go.go festivals, including Profit Margin (2007), True Time Broke (2008), and his contribution to this year’s festival, RedPop. Together, Platt and Rabinow have co-written two evenings of short plays – The End of the World Cabaret in 2006, and last year’s go.go festival, in which each wrote five short plays one after the other to create the ten plays in deca.go.go.

Dave Rabinow, a founding member of the Collective, has been writing plays for the company since its inception. His play, A Boy and his Ball, was published as part of the Boston Theatre Marathon Vol. 4 Anthology by Baker’s Plays. Elemental has produced his plays Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman (2004), Shelter from the Storm (2005), Regenesis (2007), Six Short Films about Black Holes (2008), and Two of Us for the current festival. He adapted Elemental’s free summer tour of Carlo Gozzi’s commedia masterpiece King Stag (2007) into rhyming verse, co-writing the songs with composer Paul Scharf.

Rabinow is also the driving force behind ETC’s popular late-night musical radio plays. He created the Halloween/Election Night extravaganza Zombie President in the fall of 2008, and co-wrote Recession: The Musical! for the 4th of July, 2009, in collaboration with Peter Sampieri, one of Elemental’s Resident Directors.

For the first time in the festival’s history, the father, the son and the holy go.go will feature Platt, Rabinow, D’Arcy Dersham and Kelly Seigh on stage in the same evening. The four graduated together from Trinity Rep’s MFA program in 2002 and form the nucleus of Elemental Theatre Collective’s acting company. They are pleased to be joined by Melissa Bowler, a member of Improv Jones, who appeared in Elemental’s pent.a.go.go in 2007, the first year of the festival. Platt and Rabinow will each direct a play, with Resident Dramaturg Melissa Rabinow making her directing debut with the festival.

Channing Gray picked Elemental’s production of Amadeus as one of the Top Five of 2009.

He called the production “powerful” and “a giant leap forward.”

Read the entire article.

Bill Rodriguez of the Providence Phoenix picked two of Elemental’s productions as the best of 2009.

“Beginning and ending the year with great productions, Elemental showed us what theater at heart is all about.”
Read the entire article.

We are looking for actors of all genders and types to comprise the company for our annual original short play festival, father, son, and the holy go.go, an evening of three original plays by Dave Rabinow, Alexander Platt and George Brant.

father, son, and the holy go.go runs from January 21 through February 7, 2009 at Perishable Theatre. Rehearsals begin around December 14, and take place weeknights and weekend days.

Auditions will be held Tuesday, December 8th from 6-10 pm at Perishable Theatre, 3rd floor Dance Studio, 95 Empire Street, Providence, RI.

To schedule an audition: call (401) 447-3001 or e-mail info@elementaltheatre.org. Leave your contact information and choose an audition time slot: 6-7, 7-8, or 8-9. Please arrive for the time slot you requested – we will only contact you if there is a problem.

Preparation: You will be reading sides from the scripts – no prepared material is necessary. Sides will be available by request after December 2. Hard copies of the sides will also be available for perusal at the audition. Please bring a photo, resume and your calendar, as we will need you to list your availability and conflicts in detail on your audition sheet.

See you there!