everyone is invited!!!

Greetings,

LiveWire Theater’s Opening Night Reception will be held on April 7th at the Poitin Stil Bar (1502 West Jarvis – only 2 doors down from the side studio).

Reception starts at 7pm and will be catered by Cyrano’s Bistro & Wine Bar. The cost is $25 dollars and includes a ticket to the evening’s production of A Night of Innocent Games. Space is limited so call the box office 773.412.8089 and make reservations today.

A Night of Innocent Games, inspired by August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, Directed by Christopher Dennis, Written by Joshua Aaron Weinstein, tells the story of a 20th century aristocrat who spends a passionate New Year’s Eve with her father’s footman. Realizing that an affair between them is impossible, they contemplate escaping the constraints of their environment. A fascinating glimpse into a society rigidly ordered around class stratification, gender roles, and sexual conduct; once thought dead. Attempt to resist.

The show runs April 7th – May 7th (Thursday – Saturday at 8pm; Sunday at 2pm) *no show Sunday, April 16th.

- jaw

ps. this is how it's listed in the Chicago Reader:

A NIGHT OF INNOCENT GAMES
Joshua Aaron Weinstein's drama resets August Strindberg's Miss Julie to the present. LiveWire Theater presents a world premiere. Previews Thu 4/6, 8 PM, $5. Opens Fri 4/7, 8 PM. Through 5/7: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, no show Sun 4/16, Side Studio, 1520 W. Jarvis, 773-412-8089, $10-$12, industry shows Sun.

pps. eek!

Have you got it?

Oh! You'll get it soon.
The latest
Greatest
To hit stores
Everywhere

Can I introduce you
To my get rich
Quick scheme

Involving people
Of every race
Every creed
All religions
Sex and realities

More leg room
Than any other brand
More strangers
To shake hands with

Unlimited runs
Cheap flights to (???)

- jaw

ps. will it be Berlin or Japan???

been reading

i've read some amazing pieces in the past couple weeks.

I started with The Maids and Deathwatch, Genet's first plays with a very interesting forward by Sartre. Both plays worked nicely with my current thoughts on class struggle and the upcoming premiere of A Night of Innocent Games, a play I wrote inspired by August Strindberg's Miss Julie (more info at www.livewirechicago.com). Genet is a poet. His words dance and the action of the play projects like a dream before his readers eyes. Read anything by him and you will understand.

Henry VIII by willy shake was next on the bill. The lack of war and heroics in this history were replaced by commentary on the corruption of religion in state affairs. Brilliant. I am about a fourth of the way through reading all his plays and hope to rework them all one by one when I am finished. A life of dreams.

Yesterday I finished Naomi Ragen's Women's Minyan. My cousin in North Carolina got to see the American premiere at Duke University and after she told me about it, I went onto Amazon and ordered myself a copy. The story of an ultra-Orthodox woman married to an abusive Rabbi from better stock. One day she has enough; walks out on her husband and 12 children. After two years, she returns to see her children with a court order in hand, but comes up against a group of woman who have full knowledge of the fundamental world they live in and are hiding the kids from this woman they feel has tarnished their place in the Jewish community and gone against the God they put their faith in. She must convince these women that what has happened to her is unjust and it is only by doing this that she can ever see her children again. Everyone should see this play.

CHANA: If a woman is only a womb, then why did God torture her with intellegence, understanding, creativity, wisdom? Why didn't He make her ant-like, without the consciousness to raise her head and examine her role as a beast of burden?

john's own walls

got my balls beaten black and blue
my grapes were soured by you
there are no other chords
i'd rather be in the entire world

have you heard

you know the one about paul young who went down to the courthouse and put a gun to his head told the judge if he didn't set down a not guilty verdict he would end his life right then and there before the gavel hit the table paul young was dead because he saw it in his eyes these laws can't be changed that easily but the death of an innocent man is sure to make them think about a better world strive for a new tomorrow one paul young will never see

music is power

"We're in a malaise," he says. "What do people really believe in any more apart from sport and music?" "You can radically change a person's life with a tune. I don't think people truly understand or appreciate how powerful that is." "I think I was born to be a songwriter," he continues. "I'm not driven by fame or success. I'm quite a shy, introverted person and I could easily melt away into the background. But I am driven to write tunes. Creativity for me is almost like therapy, my songs take you into the underbelly of my mind and there's some dark stuff in there. If I lived in LA, I'd be seeing someone three times a day, every day. But I'm a northern Englishman dealing with his shit in his own way."

he is Richard Ashcroft

Untitled #39

Room full of people.

Attractive girls sipping Jack and Coke, no ice, twenty oz. bottles, Styrofoam cups.

Men smoke heavily, lounge while they drink Canadian beer, rum. Once belonged to my boss who resembles a chimney at the moment.

Slightly inebriated, the finer things in life, I continue to be accused, the loner in the corner, I cannot deny it, selfish, the way I feel most comfortable.

People are amusing.

I interact with the film, change the storyline, I don’t like the way it’s going, I’m too close to the screen. The picture is always clear, my eyes don't cross, nobody speaks to me. Not a complaint, observation, occasionally look over, make eyes. I know what you’re doing over there...

A small Japanese girl catches my attention and smiles while she takes a drag off of her cigarette. "I want to know what you are thinking," she asks with her delicate eyes. My emotions are all over the place. Since I was a child. I’m falling in love with every girl at the bar. Cursing them whenever it doesn’t work out. It’s a toss up. Highs and lows. Everyone knows. It shows.

Happy pills never work. Being a workaholic. A writer. Recreational drugs. Watching movies. Acting. No medicine for disease.

Help me.

I need help please.

A big enough cry.

- Benjamin D. Bain
(March 14th, 2006)

purim

a time of celebration!

making great progress on my play based on The Book of Esther.

I am imagining a Bat-Mitzvah giving her speech after reading from the Megillah. As she relays the story and its meaning to her, the action shift to the time of Esther and her story unfolds before our eyes. The Bat-Mitzvah's speech is intertwined with Esther's story and both reveal great truths about the Book, themselves and the plight of the Jewish people.

CAST

REBEKAH ISAACS - our Bat-Mitzvah, 13
ESTHER - Mordecai's cousin, and newly-selected Queen to Achashverosh
MORDECAI - the Chief Rabbi of Shushan and member of the Jewish Supreme Court, the Sanhedrin
HAMAN - the wicked descendent of Amalek who seeks to annihilate the Jews
KING ACHASHVEROSH - a grubby man who picks his wife through a beauty contest and accepts bribe money for the destruction of the Jews
VASHTI - the depose Queen whom Esther replaces

missed connections

I place an ad
Am I insecure
Nobody responds
What's a man to do

So I said goodbye
All I had was love

Then she wrote back
I suffer a heart attack
Dead on arrival
So much for survival

jewish is not a color

according to the many voices project, being jewish does not make a playwright of color. as I hang up with the staff to clarify my ethnicity (and be rejected from consideration), I turn on Charlie Rose where he is interviewing Michael Steinhardt who endowed the Jewish Life Network and has written "Judaism is in danger of becoming obsolete". A self described atheist, Steinhardt sees Judaism as a people not a religion. a dying breed indeed.

there is probably some grant that was received to fund the many voices project, where those of African, Latin, Caribbean, Pacific Island, Asian, East Indian, Arab, and Native American descent are considered, so I can't be too upset. it makes one want to have his voice heard.

thanks for listening.

first love

My other writings are no sooner dry than they revolt me, but my epitaph still meets with my approval...

Hereunder lies the above who up below
So hourly died that he survived till now.

by Samuel Beckett

and a bit about the oscars

jon stewart is funny. crash deserved its award(s). phillip seymour hoffman is an icon. Munich got overlooked. Ang Lee is a force for modern positivity. nick park and aardman animation rule! jon stewart is funny and said it best, it's getting a little easier out here for a pimp.

a Julia Margaret Cameron photograph

sadness

utmost for the highest

finished two plays this weekend, reading that is...Conversations With My Father by Herb Gardner, where I was once again reunited with the myth of FDR, who was placed in this play to represent the blindfold America had on during the Holocaust. Jews in New York during this time was the undercurrent of a play about fathers and sons living in their own time trying to make their own way; and the dysfunction that occurs as a result. Brilliant!

the second play was Virginia Woolf's only play, Freshwater, a farce on the life of her aunt Julia Margaret Cameron, photographer and good friend of Alfred Lord Tennyson, poet, and George Frederic Watts, a painter. I am not so familiar with these people, but I will be, and the play read no less because of my ignorance. I will have to do some research before producing it sometime in the future. Figure that I could do this play, Picasso's Desire Caught by the Tail and maybe Elie Wiesel's The Trial of God as a season of artists who are not playwrights, but wrote a few masterful plays. I will hold off on deciding exactly which until the funding comes through and I've read some more, though the gallery tells me to read less...fuck the regulations!

E3 (cubed)

Ah, to have a blank page and a mind full of words.
With so many thoughts to express. I’m such a mess. It’s for the birds.
I’m so shy when it comes to girls, always hiding behind my curls, and pearls of wisdom that nobody reads or heeds.
I think you are a wonderful person inside and out, there’s no doubt that the timing is all wrong for this song, for I belong in this bout.
Nevertheless, you are a beautiful lady, though this may seem shady and weird.
I had to do my best to get this off my chest and not have happen what I had feared:
To be some random guy. A passerby. Only to leave a brief undistinguished mark in your mind.
If sometime you could drop a line and say that you liked this rhyme,that would be so kind.

Peace on Earth, and all things beautiful,
- Benjamin D. Bain

witness

what i've seen you've probably already witnessed. come back soon I'll show you what I got...

recently, I've been to the theatre. saw A Number presented by Next Theatre Company. My second Caryl Churchill play. this was far superior to the production of Top Girls put on by a fellow MFA student. Churchill, however, is far superior to most so any production of one of her plays is going to engage. A Number did; even though I was in the back row, the characters inhabited by these two actors touched my soul. What is A Number and how many of us are there? What is family and who are our parents? In 60 minutes, Churchill binds us to many questions that may never leave our minds. I drove home in silent awe; contented I am able to be around for such things.

i also spent a night at Steppenwolf, where they presented After the Quake, an adaptation of two of Murakami's short stories by Frank Galati. This "story theater" production was best summed up by the man sitting in front of me who turned to his wife as they got up to leave the upstairs theatre and said "it was like a bedtime story". one of the best I've ever been told. already a fan of the novelist and playwright, I shouldn't be surprised, but when a piece is done so well, i can't help but take a moment to reflect on how great this life is.