A BITCH IN TIME 4

A Bitch In Time, showcasing female solo performers, returns to Space 55!

A Bitch In Time is back at Space 55 Theatre! Three prior versions of the all-woman show have been big hits. The latest edition of A Bitch In Time will treat audiences to an unforgettable evening of provocative, all-new solo pieces by an eclectic lineup of acclaimed actors, writers, musicians and performance artists, including the following:

• Molly McCloy
• Deborah Sussman
• Sally Jo Bannow
• Michelle Burchfield
• Harmony DeLeon
• Michelle Kable
• Elizabeth Athetis

When: November 9th and 10th ─ Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.
Where: Space 55 – 636 East Pierce Street, Phoenix, AZ 85004
Tickets: $10, available at space55.org – click on “Box Office,” then click on the show date and time. Or call (866) 811-4111. Tickets will also be available at the door 30 minutes prior to show time.

About Space 55

Space 55 is the home to cutting-edge theatre in downtown Phoenix. Formed in 2006, Space 55 Theatre Ensemble is dedicated to the development and production of new and
innovative theatre and presenting it in a relaxed, casual environment at an affordable price. For more information, including a comprehensive list of ongoing events and shows, visit www.space55.org.

SPACE 55 RIDES THE RAZOR’S EDGE WITH STAND UP COMEDIANS

S&M Comedy Podcast

Dates: Friday, October 12
Time: 10:30 p.m.
Tickets: $5 at the door

The S&M Comedy Podcast became a hub for Phoenix comedy, at its inception in February, 2011. Tonight’s interview features stand-up comics Sean McCarthy, John Henry, James Hoenscheidt, Ryan Gaumont, and Alex Lemoine, sharing the same stage, recorded before a live studio audience. Revealing a swirling vortex of each comic’s pain and triumph, including liberal amounts of jokes and insults. It’s followed by the Salsa Showdown of the century between comics Jamie Sanderson and Matt Micheletti! There will be blood! And tears! And salsa! And laughs! We warned you.

Listen to S&M’s Jamie Sanderson and Steve Marek’s in-depth interview of Space 55’s head honcho Shawna Franks. Click for podcast here.

NEXT FRIDAY LATE NIGHT:

October 19th @ 10:30 p.m. features: PROPPED UP with Jacque Arend, Tommy Cannon, Shane Carey, Rachel Cepeda, Ryan Drobel, Bob Fisher, Rick Grove, Jose Gonzalez, Jackie Rich, and Eric Storie. A double handful of improvisors, props, and you know what’s next. Wait, no you don’t!

MAKE YOUR PLANS NOW

Monsters, Mutants and Other Tales of Love

ONLY TWO WEEKENDS LEFT!!
Dates: October 11, 12, 13, 18, 19, 20
Time: All shows Thursday, Friday Saturday at 8 p.m.
Tickets: $15
Check out our season-opening comedy Monsters, Mutants and Other Tales of Love written by Carrie Behrens (the maniacal brain behind Night of the Chicken parts 1 and 2) with each tale directed separately by award winners, Duane Daniels and Greg Lutz!
Zombies, mutants, and semi-cyborgs are some of the haunting characters featured in 5 episodes of spooky and hilarious fun. This end-of-the-world premiere is rated PG-13 for some (comedic) violence. Laugh with us, as we poke fun at the end of the world.

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Arcana Caberet Presents:

Scriptor Mortis Encore
Saturday October 13 10:30 p.m. Late Night Series
Tickets: $10
October marks four years of Arcana Collective and one year of its monthly show, Arcana Cabaret! To celebrate these landmarks and all things Halloween-like, the Arcana Cabaret presents “Scriptor Mortis Encore”, an unholy resurrection of beloved diseased authors like Charles Bukowski, Marquis De Sade, H.P. Lovecraft, Hunter S. Thompson, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway and other favorites!

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7 Minutes In Hell

Date: Saturday October 27 9 p.m.
Tickets: $10
7 Minutes In Hell, will treat audiences to a random, raucous assortment of music, mayhem and merriment as it delivers diverse acts, each of which has seven minutes to do whatever it is they do — music, comedy, poetry, dance, magic, yodeling … you name it! Don’t like what you’re seeing? Just wait seven minutes for the next act! Please note: This show is not appropriate for children.

FILL YOUR BRAIN

while you

SAVE OUR SPACE

 

ALL DAY CREATIVE WRITING INTENSIVE at SPACE 55

We are offering an all day creative writing workshop designed to *unlock your intuition

• hone skills
• deepen your relationship to existing material
• dial up the conflict
• try out new tools
• network with other writers
• and fill your notebook with material you didn’t even know you were planning to write.

 
When you walk away from this workshop you will have a notebook heavy with promising new material and probably writer’s cramp.

This workshop is being facilitated by Space 55 Ensemble member Kim Porter who is an award-winning and critically acclaimed playwright , screenwriter and solo performer who has been helping other writers develop their stories since 1997.

But here’s the TRULY AMAZING PART, Space 55 has lured in 5 guest artists and local treasures…

• TANIA KATAN
• STACY REED HANLON
• CHRIS SCHNICK
• DEBORAH SUSSMAN
• AMY SILVERMAN
• (YES, I’M SHOUTING)

…to share their favorite exercises, expertise and tools from their own disciplines in back to back guided writing workouts and lively discussions.

That’s six writing coaches from six different disciplines sharing their best tricks in one location at one low cost!

The Intensive runs from 9 am until 5 PM Saturday October 6th. Lunch and snacks will be provided. The fee is $100. Ages 16 and up. (Participants under 18 need parental consent.)

100% of the money raised in this workshop goes directly to the Save Our Space fundraising campaign. Your donation is 100% tax deductible as Space 55 is a 501 c 3 non-profit organization.

To secure your spot, follow the link to the Space 55 website to pay by credit card.

 
Or if you prefer to pay by cash or check, contact Kim Porter for details.

Monsters, Mutants and Other Tales of Love to premiere in October

PHOENIX – SEP. 6, 2012 – Monsters, Mutants and Other Tales of Love, a new play by Carrie Behrens (author of Night of the Chicken and Night of the Chicken II), will kick off the Halloween season at Space 55. The end-of-the-world premiere features five short comedies set in a post-apocalyptic world crawling with cannibals, cyborgs, zombies, mutants, Frankenstein sisters and crafty panhandlers. This evening of spooky fun is rated PG-13 for some (comedic) violence.

Monsters, Mutants and Other Tales of Love is co-directed by Duane Daniels and Greg Lutz. The cast includes Michelle Burchfield, Kevin Flanagan, Edwin Guiterrez, Willa Iego, Ernesto Moncada, Ashley Naftule, Mike Van Liew, Jennifer Watson and Steve Wilcox.

Monsters, Mutants and Other Tales of Love
When: Thursday, Friday & Saturday shows at 8 p.m.
Oct. 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13, 18, 19, 20
Where: Space 55 ─ 636 East Pierce Street, Phoenix, AZ 85004
Tickets: $15 available at space55.org – Click on “Box Office,” then click on the show date and time.

Photography for Monsters, Mutants and Other Tales of Love is available upon request.

by Ashley Naftule

Theater is a dirty word.

A month ago, I got to see first-hand just how dirty a word it can be be. I was at the Phoenix Home & Garden Expo in Glendale, promoting Space55 and The Trunk Space with fellow ensemble member Kevin Flanagan. Every time we tried telling folks about our space, at the word “theater” they would visibly recoil. They winced and retreated away from our humble convention table like vampires fleeing from a brandished crucifix. It seemed like telling random bystanders “hey, do you want to see some theater?” wasn’t too far off from saying “hey, do you want us to stick a power drill in your kidney?” in terms of eliciting a VERY negative response from folks.

The funny thing is: I understand that reaction entirely. Up until about three years ago, I would have hissed and ran from “theater” too.

I used to hate theater. HATED IT. Every time I read or heard the word, it made me flashback to high school English classrooms. It made me remember the dead voices of my class-mates, forced to read “Death of a Salesman” out loud… and reading it out loud with all the passion that one would use to read a grocery list. “Theater” made me think of all the times I had to watch bad college productions of Shakespeare. Hours of my life lost to watching narcissists in frilly shirts running around onstage and competing to see who had the most tortured English accents. And the only worse than those Shakespeare plays: modern plays, full of concerned and unhappy middle class white-people sitting in their living rooms and being moody about God knows what. I had no conception that “Theater” could be more than that, that it could be stranger and funnier and greater than that narrow playground with the Elizabethan jungle-gym on one end and the Bored-Bourgeoise swing-set on the other.

And then one day I walked into Space55 to see their production of “Ubu Roi” and theater stopped being a dirty word. I didn’t have any respect for the theater until I saw a play in which a TOILET SEAT sat onstage as the throne of a king, a play where trash littered the floor and Johnny Thunders was part of the house music. It uprooted the weeds in my brain about theater and planted new seeds, seeds that sprouted into convictions that theater can be playful and serious, thoughtful and willfully dumb, loud and crass yet inspiring and skillfully made. All this because of Space55’s “Ubu Roi”.  It’s funny to think that the one thing that could make “theater” a clean word was a toilet…

And in the years that followed, I kept coming back to Space55 and saw that “Ubu Roi” was no fluke. They’ve been putting on incisive, intelligent and at times hilarious work for years. I’ve seen them do holiday shows where the main characters are three old ladies talking about vodka and how they used to bang FDR; I’ve seen them put on abstract, avant-garde plays from Canada where most of the action onstage revolves around peeling apples and drinking a glass of milk; I’ve seen them do shows about bitter family conflict; shows about were-chickens running amuck in middle schools; shows about drug-taking high school kids getting smote by the Hand of God; and I’ve seen more amazing improv shows, solo performance pieces, variety shows, puppet shows, burlesque and music at Space55 than I could have imagined possible in such a short span of time. And what struck me most about all the things I saw was the lack of of pretension. Here was a theater whose ensemble members do Shakespeare, who’ve worked in Chicago and New York and London with people like Tracy Letts, who have got all the credentials and bona fides a “proper theater artist” should have… and yet they’re cool and humble enough to appreciate a good fart joke. Or dress up as Japanese trans-sexual porn-stars onstage.

Rather than being a narrow playground, through Space55 I finally saw that theater was more like a circus.. and like all kids, I have long harbored dreams of running away and joining one. So three years after seeing that magnificent Alfred Jarry play, my adoption papers got stamped and now I’m part of this rambling circus family.

I’m Ashley Naftule, and I’m one of the humble writers of this blog. In the months to come, I’ll be writing about the exciting main-stage shows we’re producing for this season, as well as talking about our weekly Late Night Series of cutting edge, out-there programming. Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting about our season’s premiere show, “Monsters, Mutants and Other Tales Of Love” by Carrie Behrens. You’ll read some behind-the-scenes perspectives from the show’s playwright, as well as get a look into the hard and inventive work our set and sound designers are putting together for this very Halloween-friendly show. If the theater is a circus, think of “Monsters, Mutants and Other Tales Of Love” as the freak-show portion of our big tent.

And if you have friends or family who will wince at “theater” as hard and fast as the folks at the Phoenix Home & Garden Expo did, steer them our way. Let them see for themselves first-hand that theater is a dirty word… the good kind of dirty.