The Oe4K blog

A great interview is up with Kim (book for Oe4K) over at The Villager.

It's the day before the weekend storm. Two performances on Saturday, and one on Sunday, some of which have tickets that go onsale 7 PM the night before.

I know you're tired of hearing me ramble. Since we'll be living in the Sage Theatre the entire day Saturday and part of Sunday, I'm going to try to force at least 2 people to write blog entries of their own.

I was wrong. Some of the tickets that NYMF was going to hold till night-before are now available for some performances. Take a look!

OK, so let's do a little bit of advertising fun, shall we?

Here's how the most recent issue of The L Magazine looks under the eye of advertisements:

• "A Bloody Riot!"
  - Raven Snook, The L Magazine
  

And here's what she really said:

• The third annual New York Musical Theatre Festival.
  Here's my completely biased, mostly rumor-based roundup of the shows you want to see.
  
  Oedipus For Kids! No, this show isn't appropriate for tots and yes, titles with exclamation points are really tired. But this musical about a children’s troupe that ill-advisedly attempts to musicalize Sophocles' masterpiece with numbers like 'Be Kind to the Blind' and 'My Lover is My Husband is My Son' sounds like a bloody riot.

I saw another "sold out" NYMF show yesterday. The seat next to me was empty because of more unused press/VIP seats that went onsale, even though nobody knew about it.
As nice as it is to brag that a show is sold out, there's a level of ingenuinenessness when you show up to a sold out performance to find that you can put your smuggled-in puppy onto the empty seat next to you.

Our extension dates are now entirely sold out. The only way to see the show now is getting tickets 7PM the night before any performance, or at the show a half an hour before.

Well, that's not the only way to see the show. I also accept favors.

"Oedipus for Kids!" opened last night. And let me say, it went pheomenally.

When you're that close to the show, especially a comedy, you forget what it looks like with your fresh glasses on. You wonder, "People laughed at the Icarus joke? People know that Icarus flew into the sun and died?" Or you're afraid that some of it the audience won't "get", or it might just go over their heads. But it works.

After walking out of the show, I think we all felt like the audience "got" it. The humor hit right, the audience laughed in all the right places (and in some I never imagined them laughing). The show together works as one coherent piece, and it moves well. And by the ending...

Our cast is hysterical. There's no other way to put it. Whether it's Reed as an idiot, Gavin as a blindman, or Laura as the Oracle (it's so nice when a scene that's not a musical number gets its own applause at the end), they kept the show on its toes.

I don't know what else to say. Last night was great. My brain is still decompressing from it (being tired isn't helping much either, I suppose). I want to congratulate all of the creatives, cast, and crew for the phenomenal work they've done on this. A special thank you to Dan Fields, who I'm glad we bumped into. And a thank you to last night's audience, for being such a fantastic audience.

There's still one performance left that isn't sold out, and that's Friday, 9/22 at 11 PM [tickets].

NYMF also isn't very good at publicizing this, so I'll try to make it clear for the other seven "sold out" shows. A big handful of tickets for all NYMF shows are held for industry/press/insiders/VIPs and those that aren't used are released at 7 PM the night before the show. So either come to this webpage the night before, or alternatively you can just show up at the theatre the night you want to go.

I'll try to write some more meaningful comments at some future point. I'm still decompressing. Soon, though.

• Local graduate turns "Oedipus" into a musical comedy

This is listed under the Asbury Park Press's "TOAST OF THE TOWN". That's possibly the funniest name for a section I've ever heard of.

Also, I think I never linked to this: Sophocles and Plato Review Oedipus for Kids

The show starts tomorrow. For those of you who haven't been involved in an NYMF show, here's how your schedule works day-of:

• 8 AM: Load into the space. We already pretty much have all our stuff here because we've been rehearsing at the performance venue from the beginning. But that's when we load into the actual theatre; we've rarely rehearsed in the theatre itself and usually use the back room.
  
• 12:30ish: The Actors show up because by Equity, they can't be around for that long and by sanity, they probably shouldn't show up earlier if we want them to be good.
• 6PM: Actors are done standing around as we change lighting on them over and over again.
• 8PM: Opening night. Insanity.
  

And by the way,
a) For anybody who keeps asking, I did not create the Oedipus for Kids! Wikipedia page. If I did, I would have filled it in with some detail. The cast/creatives also say they didn't do it. Although I must say, 95% of the research for this play was done via Wikipedia.

b) The New York Sun hasn't seen the show but described my lyrics as discomfiting. Says dictionary.com:
dis·com·fit v.
1. To make uneasy or perplexed; disconcert.
2. To thwart the plans of; frustrate.
3. Archaic. To defeat in battle; vanquish.

c) Another Broadwayworld.com picture, this time from the NYMF launch party. I look smug as always.

Sometimes it seems that Reed, Gavin and Laura seem to have endless energy. I suppose you have to. This show is like Noises Off in that it's exhausting and you're constantly onstage hammin' it up. The only difference is that Noises Off doesn't also have singing and dancing.

A friend pointed out that in the bottom-left corner of that photo, I'm stroking my chin for some unknown reason. Bobby is smiling. He has the correct response. I will try to keep this in mind.

We're listed in this weekend's New York Times listings, and there's an article in the Post that features us:

By the time the curtain falls on Oct. 1, a total of 34 new musicals - amid 84 seminars, concerts, dance pieces and related events - will have played New York, and none are likely to be confused with "Fiddler on the Roof."
Bedlam on the Hoof is more like it. How else to explain a little tuner called "Oedipus for Kids," with songs like "A Little Complex" and "My Lover Is My Husband Is My Son"? (As you may have guessed, the show - about a kiddie troupe's version of a Greek tragedy gone horribly wrong - is not for kids.)
But if you think we're edging into Fringe territory - and with shows with titles like "The Tragic and Horrible Life of The Singing Nun" and "Gutenberg! The Musical!," who'd blame you? - the festival's organizers disagree.
"Sure, there are satires, like 'Oedipus for Kids,' but far fewer of our shows are in that bizarro place," says executive producer Isaac Hurwitz.

The majority of the article highlights The Screams of Kitty Genovese, and pretty much only talks about either of our shows because of sensationalism...

Pretty typical New York Post mentality. Exactly what you'd expect from a newspaper whose cover featured a blowup of Zarqawi's face, bruised and puffy, with a cartoon bubble from the dead terrorist's mouth uttering the command "Warm up the virgins".