Finessing The Titanic
Like much of the country, my wife and her younger sister were sitting on the couch watching the Super Bowl Commercials as I prepared to leave the apartment on one of the coldest nights of the year. The Bears had just made a field-length kickoff return for a touchdown in the opening seconds of the game as Carrie and Allison sat on the couch disinterestedly leafing through magazines, quietly waiting for the next commercial break. In seconds, I was out the door to meet with some people about The Titanic.Yes, it WAS below zero outside, but comfortably so. The #15 wasn’t far from the stop when I got there, so I didn’t have to wait long. There at the head of the bus sitting perpendicular to me was a young woman with an actress’ look about her. The bus rolled through mostly empty streets, quickly arriving at Brady Street. As the bus rolled past Brady Street Pharmacy, myself and the actress-eque girl both looked at it in the same way and rung the bell to signal a stop.
The Brady Street Pharmacy is a strange pseudo-urban hybrid space. The place is a privately owned old-style pharmacy-diner fashioned out of a space that once held a cinema house. They’ve converted part of the building into a performance space now known as the Astor Theatre. I walked through the door of the pharmacy/diner/theatre. The actress-esque girl was not more than few minutes behind me. It didn’t take long to spot John Manno. Manno is a freelance classical harpist who spends some of his spare time writing plays and looking vaguely like Steve Carell. He’s also helming a rather interesting project for the Pink Banana Theatre Company which shares a name with both the most successful motion picture of all time AND the most famous naval wreck of all time. Manno’s Titanic has nothing to do with either.
A reasonably strange mix of something like a dozen people had shown up to discuss The Titanic project. The idea is about as ambitious as low-or-no-budget theatre goes. It’s a very long program featuring 15 to 17 short plays written by local playwrights (myself included) that will be staged the 13th, the 14th, the 20th, and the 21st of April. There will be no charge for admission. Everyone is welcome to come. As one could probably imagine, there are numerous dangers involved in a project of this scope. My biggest fear is that no one shows. There’s nothing worse than a free show that almost no one has decided to attend . . .
Open auditions are set to be held at the Astor on the 25th through the 27th of this month from 7:30 to 9:30pm. No telling who’s going to show up. This could get weird . . .
Posted by rfindley on 02/06 at 06:24 PM