theaterboy®

Race-Baiting! Political Opportunism! Child Exploitation!

OK, so it's actually just another attempt at guerilla theater-marketing: Charter Theatre honcho Keith Bridges stars (alongside actor-playwright Chris Stezin) in a 7-minute drama about why Charter won't be staging Richard Washer's Quartet, originally announced for the new-play specialists' January-February slot.

Watch (agog) as Bridges explains his emergency back-up plan to his 3-year-old daughter Rosie: "Sweetie, papa has a brilliant idea. He's going to save his theater company by inviting Barack Obama to come see his next play, called Am I Black Enough Yet? Isn't that brilliant?"

Viz:

Choice moment: an "outtake," toward the end, where Bridges tries to get wee Rosie to pimp the Charter website. She's so over it that she won't even wave bye-bye when he finally gives up.

Backstory: Charter lost one of the cast members for Quartet — a play that was already "a tough sell," according to Stezin. (It's not a comedy. It's "a low-key, thoughtful piece," and its musically-inspired structure is anything but orthodox.)

"Bad mojo started to pile up," Stezin says, and with every theater in town having trouble putting butts in seats, a postponement seemed the best thing for Quartet. And as the company's leadership talked about replacements, they realized that Am I Black Enough Yet?, a 2007 hit, "wasn't just our best selling show last season — but our best-selling show ever," Stezin says.

And so, a revival. And, coming down the pipe: More episodes of Charter's serialized YouTube drama. And with any luck, a newly elected special guest and his family in the good seats.

"You can always dream," Stezin says. "We'd love to get the attention of somebody on the Obama campaign."

Theaterboy Stirs, Shakes Off 18 Months of Torpor

So: As you may have heard, things at Theaterboy's chief theater-writing outlet are kinda whack these days.

The odd thing is that the paper's fiscal crisis might actually be creating some opportunities.  It's too early to know whether we'll ever be able to get back to writing full-length reviews of everything -- or even most things.

But we have been asked to think about how we might cover theater on the paper's Web site -- starting with posts on the main blog, City Desk, and eventually maybe aggregating those posts on the theater page.

What kind of posts? Well, some of what Theaterboy used to do here, from backstage stories to funny things we heard in the lobby to on-the-scene bits (filed from the aisle, maybe) on something odd that happened just before intermission.

Also reviewlets, format TBD. (Maybe the First Impressions kinda thing Tboy used to do here; maybe something else.)

Which means? Well, if Tboy is going to be doing that kinda stuff, he's pretty sure he'll cross-post at least some of it here. And there will be things that don't rise to the level of CP-audience ready -- but that might be of interest to the people who probably don't come to this blog anymore.

We'll see ...