Going punk

We had a great meeting last night with 18 attendees, including 1 new actor. Our newbie is Teri McClintock, who runs a children's theatre company in Woodland Park and is looking to get more involved with the local acting community. Teri currently appears in the Six Women Play Festival, which is running at the MAT through April 28. And don't forget to read my review of the show in tomorrow's Indy.

We had a special treat this week as Tim Phillips opened the meeting with some classic punk tunes courtesy of his laptop. In previous readings of his girl band drama The Decibelles, some of the actors said that they didn't know what the music was supposed to sound like, and we were all brought up to speed as the lilting strains of the Ramones, Blondie and the Runaways filled the cozy confines of the theater.

We then launched into the next part of his script, a particularly dramatic scene in which the troubled Natasha pulls a gun on Edie. Tim has been reading a lot of biographies of the punk pioneers and much of the script is based on real-life incidents from their lives.

After that, we read Sue Bachman's delightful short folktale The Great Fire Serpent Tulikaarme, inspired by the imaginative walks she would take with her grandson in the Ivywild neighborhood. Her tale showed a lot of imagination of its own, and more than one person suggested it could be padded out to make a long one-act for youth audiences.

Next up was Phil Ginsburg's play, St. Clair of Corona. This short comedy centered on a cleaning woman who impulsively picks up the phone at a crisis center after the therapists have disappeared. It had some great lines, and seeing how the cleaning woman was able to help everyone was a lot of fun.

We followed that with the first scene of Charlie Ammen's comedy Beyond a Shadow. He originally wrote it with Donna Vessey as a screenplay and is now converting it to a stage play scene-by-scene. Everyone fell in love with the characters, a couple of trailer-dwelling rednecks who, despite their poverty, truly love and support each other.

And we finished up with the next part of my full-length farce Butterfly Effect. In this installment, the titular phenomenon was just beginning to wreak havoc as the snobbish Pembertons tear away from the party only to smash into a tree after Henry is distracted by a wayward canape. I don't know where it's going from here, but I'm having a lot of fun writing it.

Be sure to catch the readings of Sue Bachman's and Marisa Hebert's plays at the Rough Writers play festival this weekend and next. For the complete schedule, visit the FAC web site.

Also Buck Buchanan will be appearing in Forestgate Community Theatre's production of Fiddler on the Roof the next two weekends. He says it's selling out fast, so get your tickets soon.

By the way, Nancy and I lost our critic in our upcoming production of Kill the Critic!, so if you knows anyone who would like to take the title role in a world premiere comedy, send him our way. We promise we won't abuse him too badly.