Ummm...she said WHAT?!

Portland Center Stage’s

NOW HEAR THIS

invites you to a concert reading of

The Drunken City

By Adam Bock

*

November 3, 2008

4pm-6pm

@ Portland Center Stage

128 NW Eleventh Avenue (between Couch & Davis)

in the Rehearsal Room

Admission is free, but space is limited

Please email Megan Ward at meganw@pcs.org

to reserve your seat

—————————–

Marnie’s getting married! The girls are out on the town to celebrate her last night of being single, when they run into Frank and Eddie. Sparks fly and Marnie is left questioning why she’s getting married. In The Drunken City, everyone is trying to sober up and find some balance—especially the bride-to-be.

*
Adam Bock’s plays include The Thugs (OBIE Award) Swimming in the Shallows (3 BATCC Awards, Clauder Award) Five Flights (Glickman Award) The Typographer’s Dream, The Shaker Chair and Three Guys and a Brenda (Heideman Award). He is the resident playwright at Encore Theater, a Shotgun Players artistic associate, and a New Dramatist member playwright. He is currently writing a screenplay for Scott Rudin/Miramax.

Our outstanding cast includes:

Brittany Burch, Paul Glazier, Chris Harder, Julie Jeske Murray, Chris Murray, & Laura Faye Smith

Now Hear This and Portland Center Stage gratefully acknowledge the support of the Oregon Cultural Trust.

NOW HEAR THIS SEASON FINALE

Portland Center Stage’s

NOW HEAR THIS

invites you to a concert reading of

Why Love Doesn’t Recognize Its Name

a new play by Lisa Leaverton

*

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Noon to approximately 1:30 pm

@ Portland Center Stage

128 NW Eleventh Avenue (between Couch & Davis)

in the Rehearsal Room

*

Our outstanding cast includes:

Lava Alapai, Mario Calcagno, Drew Danhorn,

Heather Nelson Robertson, Cecily Overman & Amy Palomino

*

Admission is free, but space is limited

Email Megan Ward at meganw@pcs.org

to reserve your seat

-----------------------------

At a loss for words? Then come down to Lee’s Expressive! He’s the best! Lee and his team of mechanics help clients whose speech patterns are clogged with words that are too ornate, or have the wrong shade of meaning, or just plain don’t communicate. But only Deep Mystery (that’s you, our audience) can unlock the most problematic phrases.

Please join us for our final reading of the season, which promises to be unlike any other reading we’ve had this year: it’s semi-staged; the audience can affect the play’s plot; AND the playwright herself will be here, all the way from Brooklyn, to celebrate the first fun season of

NOW HEAR THIS.

Lisa Leaverton, Playwright (Brooklyn, NY) runs a collective (inquire within) with Director John Kaufmann, devoted to audience dependent, ephemeral theatre. Her One Act, “PERHAPS,” (2008) was read in Outward Bound Series, at CSPS, Cedar Rapids. WHY LOVE DOESN’T RECOGNIZE ITS NAME, for which she received a Richard Maibaum Scholarship was featured at Iowa New Play Festival, 2008. Theatre of The Body (2001), a series of lecture demonstrations created in collaboration with choreographer Katharine Livingston has been performed numerous times since it sold out at Philadelphia Fringe. A Blue We All Know (2008), will be featured in a Gallery production at University of Iowa, Oct. 2008. Other plays include Who Are These They, (2007) read in Primary Stages Playwrights Workshop, The LONG Night, (2008), and The Countess of Misery (2005), full-length play in verse. Since graduating from Peabody Music Conservatory, Lisa has costumed Theatre and Dance companies, including Headlong Dance and Pig Iron Theatre Co. Lisa participated in Goat Island Performance workshops, and KCCTF, 2007. Recipient of a Felton award, Lisa is completing her MFA in playwriting at University of Iowa.

F.U.B.A.R.

Portland Center Stage’s

NOW HEAR THIS

invites you to a concert reading of

FUBAR

a new play by Karl Gajdusek

*

May 17, 2008

Noon to approximately 2 pm

@ Portland Center Stage

128 NW Eleventh Avenue (between Couch & Davis)

in the Rehearsal Room

Admission is free, but space is limited

Please email Megan Ward at meganw@pcs.org

to reserve your seat

-----------------------------

Mary lives amid the boxes her abused mother left behind. Her husband David tries desperately hard to stay young and hip. Meanwhile, best-bud Richard is on the road not taken and Sylvia’s along for the ride. But when Mary is the victim of an unprovoked act of violence, it leads them each down different paths of addiction and realization. Four people trying to recognize the people they have become in a time that’s totally F.U.B.A.R.

Karl Gajdusek was born in San Francisco and now lives in San Diego with his wife and son. He writes plays, screenplays and television. He has taught Playwriting at San Francisco’s School of the Arts, UCSD, ISOMATA and The Playwrights’ Center. He has a BA in Literature from Yale University and an MFA in Playwriting from the University of California at San Diego. Karl’s other plays include Fair Game, Silverlake, Minneapolis, Dr.S F.S in the Terminal Ward, Big Sun Setting Fast, The Gilded Garden of Patcheww, Malibu, and Waco, Texas, Mon Amour. Screenplays include Higher, 9 Days Wonder, Widow’s Walk, Reunion, Woderman, The Next Best Thing (not the one with Madonna), and the independent film 58, which he wrote and directed. Story Editor for the Showtime show Dead Like Me. He founded the script publication service Big Sun Publication. He is the recipient of the 1991 Jacob K. Javits fellowship, 1996-97 & 1998-99 Jerome Fellowships, the 1997 McKnight Screenwriting Fellowship, and the 2000 MAG fellowship. When not writing for the theater, Karl spends his time surfing So Cal breaks, writing movies for pro wrestlers, and lovingly changing diapers.

Our outstanding cast includes:

Brittany Burch, Mario Calcagno, Paul Glazier,

Natalie Knapp and Tom Walton.

Stage Directions by Teddy Roisum

Bang, Bang

Portland Center Stage's

NOW HEAR THIS

invites you to a concert reading of

The Bullet Round

by Steven Drukman

Featuring the talents of
Paul Glazier, Tom Moorman, Chris Murray,
Nasir Najieb, Amy Newman & Michael Fisher Welsh

*

April 19, 2008
Noon to approximately 2 pm
@ Portland Center Stage
128 NW Eleventh Avenue (between Couch & Davis)
on the Main Stage

Admission is free, but space is limited
Please email Megan Ward at meganw@pcs.org
to reserve your seat

-----------------------------

"If you put a gun onstage in Act I, it must go off by Act III."

-- Anton Chekhov

Karma's a bitch, as the hapless inhabitants of this knockabout comedy
are about to find out. In the course of an a La Ronde chain reaction,
an aspiring white rapper gains and loses a gun that continues to
change hands, scene by scene, on its way to fulfilling an
unanticipated destiny.

Steven Drukman's play IN THIS CORNER (about legendary boxer Joe
Louis) opened in January at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre. Other
produced plays include GOING NATIVE (Long Wharf Theatre), FLATTERY
WILL GET YOU (Connecticut Rep), COLLATERAL DAMAGE (Illusion Theatre,
Minneapolis), THE SNOWMAIDEN (Bob Hope Theatre, Dallas) and ANOTHER
FINE MESS (Portland Center Stage), which was nominated for the
Pulitzer Prize. He has been developed and/or commissioned by the Mark
Taper Forum, the Intiman Theatre, South Coast Rep, New York Theatre
Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Sundance Theatre Lab and the
Williamstown Theatre Festival. Awards: Paul Green Award, Alfred P.
Sloan Award, Heinemann finalist, others. He wrote for many years for
The New York Times, was an Associate Editor of American Theatre
Magazine, and he just released his book of the edited screenplays of
Craig Lucas. He teaches playwriting at NYU.

*

Now Hear This and Portland Center Stage gratefully acknowledge the
support of the Oregon Cultural Trust.

That Time of the Month

Portland Center Stage’s

NOW HEAR THIS

invites you to a concert reading of

The Evildoers

A new play by David Adjmi

performed by

Ted deChatelet, Stephanie Gaslin, Val Landrum, Tom Moorman & Leif Norby

*

March 29, 2008

Noon to approximately 2 pm

@ Portland Center Stage

128 NW Eleventh Avenue (between Couch & Davis)

in the Studio Theater

Admission is free, but RSVPs are appreciated

Please call Megan Ward at (503) 445-3845 or e-mail meganw@pcs.org

to reserve your seat

-----------------------------

Described by one critic as "a culmination of the last four centuries of theater," The Evildoers runs the gamut of theatrical forms from Jacobean tragedy to drawing-room comedy. Not for the faint of heart, Adjmi's Carol and Jerry and Martin and Judy make Albee's George and Martha look like Sunday School teachers. Be forewarned: the only thing nastier than their tart tongues and their violent actions is their politics.

DAVID ADJMI’s plays include Strange Attractors, The Evildoers, Elective Affinities, Marie Antoinette and Caligula. David’s work has been developed and produced at the Sundance Theatre Lab, Manhattan Theatre Club, NYTW, Lincoln Center and Portland Center Stage’s JAW Festival, among others. He is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a McKnight Fellowship, the Marian Seldes-Garson Kanin Award, a Jerome Fellowship, a Helen Merrill Award, an Ovid Grant for New Writing, a Lecomte du Nouy Award, a Cherry Lane Theatre Fellowship, as well as multiple fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and Ucross Foundation.

That Time of the Month

Portland Center Stage’s
NOW HEAR THIS

invites you to a concert reading of

All Hail Hurricane Gordo
a new play
by Carly Mensch

*
February 23, 2008
Noon to approximately 2 pm
@ Portland Center Stage
128 NW Eleventh Avenue (between Couch & Davis)
in the Rehearsal Room

Admission is free, but space is limited
Please email Megan Ward at meganw@pcs.org
to reserve your seat
-----------------------------

Two brothers’ tenuous hold on stability gets blown apart when they take in a plucky young houseguest with a secret. While India is running away from her relatively normal family, Chaz struggles to find normalcy in the one he already has. Is it possible to be your brother’s keeper and have your own life, too?


Carly Mensch is currently a fellow at The Juilliard School's Lila Acheson Wallace Playwrights Program and the playwright-in-residence at Ars Nova. All Hail Hurricane Gordo was developed at Ars Nova's Out Loud Series, the Kennedy Center's University Playwrights Festival and Marin Theatre Company. It will premiere at the Humana Festival this March. Other plays include Len, Asleep in Vinyl (Juilliard), The Delicate Business of Boy and Miss Girl (2006 New York International Fringe Festival) and Bradshaw (Lorring Dodd Drama Prize).

Our outstanding cast includes:
Mario Calcagno, Drew Danhorn, Michael O'Connell, and Ana Reiselman

Megan's Bourgeois Popsicle Stand

Portland Center Stage’s

Now Hear This

invites you to a concert reading of

Maria/Stuart

A play by Jason Grote

*

December 29, 2007

Noon to approximately 2 pm

@ Portland Center Stage

128 NW Eleventh Avenue (between Couch & Davis)

Admission is free, but space is very limited, so RSVP

Please call Megan Ward at (503) 445-3845 or e-mail meganw@pcs.org

to reserve your seat

-----------------------------

If you came to JAW last year, you’ll remember Jason Grote as the provocateur who brought us Box Americana. Jason writes smart, funny and imaginative dialogue that creates a world in which these vivid characters can play. His other plays include 1001, This Storm Is What We Call Progress, and Hamilton Township.

Maria/Stuart is a wild ride with a fabulously dysfunctional family. All families have secrets, but this one includes an inherited shapeshifting spook who faxes in unpleasant truths and has an unslakable thirst for soda. Grote uses Friedrich Schiller’s Maria Stuart as his inspiration, but the play is hardly an adaptation; it jumps off the deep end immediately to veer into terra incognita. Trust me, it’s a comedy!

Our outstanding cast includes:

JoAnn Johnson, Sharonlee McLean, Sarah Lucht, Karla Mason

Julie Jeske Murray, Chris Murray

Stage Directions read by Stefan Kay

NOW HEAR THIS

This Saturday (November 17th) at 12 noon I will be producing my very first reading in our brand new reading series: NOW HEAR THIS at Portland Center Stage. This is something we have been looking forward to because it is allows us to try out scripts that we might be interested in for upcoming seasons and to get some audience feedback. Also it just feels good to share all the wonderful scripts we read with the community. So many benefits so little time!!

If you are in the pearl on Saturday, (please consider this a personal invitation as a subscriber of my blog) come check out BINGO WITH THE INDIANS by Adam Rapp. He is an amazing playwright and I think more people in Portland need to be familiar with his wonderful work. He is currently directing this script in New York at the Flea Theater. If you are in NY you should go check it out, but come see the reading first!

More info below:

NOW HEAR THIS

Portland Center Stage's monthly reading series
invites you to a concert reading of

BINGO WITH THE INDIANS

A play by Adam Rapp

*

November 17, 2007
Noon to approximately 2 pm

@ Portland Center Stage
128 NW Eleventh Avenue (between Couch & Davis)

Admission is free, but space is very limited, so reservations are vital -- please call Megan Ward at (503) 445-3845 or e-mail meganw@pcs.org to reserve your seat.

-----------------------------

Bingo with the Indians is about Wilson, Dee and Stash, a trio of desperate downtown theater geeks who travel to an upstate rural community with the aim of knocking over a bingo parlor. In this way they plan to fund their next black box show, but the cooler-than-thou thespians don’t reckon on the local yokels: terminally teen-aged Steve, his raving sapphist girlfriend, and his checked-out mom.

This play is a rarity among Rapp’s scripts in that it is an out-and-out comedy, but it has all the razor-sharp insight of the bleaker plays for which he is better known, such as Red Light Winter, Blackbird and Nocturne.

Our outstanding cast includes:
CHRIS MURRAY, PAUL GLAZIER, BEN BUCKLEY, AMANDA JENSEN, AMY NEWMAN & SARAH LUCHT

PLEASE READ THIS: Bingo with the Indians refers to sexual
situations some may consider unsavory, and it contains language that will make your hair stand on end. Do not bring the kids.