Tag Archives: GEM Theatrics

Theater festival creating a storm of its own

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GEM Theatrics presents “Give ‘Em Hell, Harry” Feb. 22-24 at the Lake Effect Fringe Festival. (Supplied)

By Mary Beth Quillin

The snow maybe over, but there is still flurries in the forecast..theater flurries as the Lake Effect Fringe Festival takes center stage this month.

The annual event, which is in its seventh year, celebrates local theater with a host of events taking place at the Dog Story Theatre, 7 Jefferson SE, throughout the month and into early March.

Activities kicked off Monday with the Dog Story Theatre’s popular Comedy Outlet Mondays that will run every Monday, Feb. 11, 18, and 25, throughout the Festival at 7 p.m.  Comedy Outlet Mondays (COM) is an experimental comedy hub in the heart of downtown Grand Rapids.

New to the Festival is an improv workshop and Collywobbles Theatre Company from Fennville, Mich., will present Touch the Names for one night only. Also new this year: Industry Sundays! Bring a playbill or a website you can call up on your phone to show you’ve been involved in a West Michigan production over the past year and pay just $10. This offer is available only at Sunday performances and for ticket sales at the door.

Tickets for all events can be purchased in advance on the Dog Story Theater website, www.dogstorytheater.comand are $15/adults and $10/students & seniors.

This year’s full schedule includes:

February 11, 18, 25 & March 4  

Dog Story’s popular Comedy Outlet Mondays will continue throughout the Festival at 7:00 pm each Monday night.  Comedy Outlet Mondays (COM) is a staple for locals and visitors that takes place at Dog Story Theater in downtown Grand Rapids. The only one of its kind, COM is a weekly comedy variety show that features stand up, sketch, improv, and experimental comedic acts- now with live performances by local Musical Guest Artists! Audiences can look forward to a stage full of talent, special events, and a free improv jam for all skill levels after the show. Now in our fourth year, Comedy Outlet Mondays will be adding even more programming and opportunities for local comedic performers. The show is $6.

Feb. 8 – 10; 8 p.m. Friday & Saturday, 3 p.m. Saturday & Sunday
The Brutal Sea presents The Day the Earth Refused to Die, by Declan Maher
Follow a group of college students through the nightmare-proxy “Somnam” service as well as the planning process of their yearly celebration of the planet’s narrow survival. Along for the ride is the chronically-oversharing Priestess of the 1000th Dimension and her mysterious shadow, Agent Condor. A hilarious and frightening romp through dreamscapes and potential realities, this show will both delight and challenge its audience. It contains mature content and may not be suitable for young viewers.

Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company will be presenting “The Seagull” Feb. 14 – 17. (Photo from production of “Caesar.”)

Feb. 14 – 17; 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday & Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday
The Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company presents The Seagull, by Anton Chekhov
In a version by Christopher Hampton, based on a literal translation by Vera Liber. The Seagull follows the contentious relationship between famous actress Irina Arkadina and her son, the aspiring playwright Konstantin Treplev. When Arkadina begins a relationship with the writer Boris Trigorin, whom she brings to her family’s summer home, jealousy and resentment break out. With a play-within-a-play, references to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and an exploration of the world as stage, The Seagullhas many connections to Shakespearean theatre. Pigeon Creek’s production will employ many of the companies’ signature staging conditions, such as cross-gendered casting, direct audience contact, and live music and sound effects to bring Chekhov’s classic to life.  Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company is Michigan’s only year-round, touring Shakespeare Company.

Feb. 16, Saturday; 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.
Alistair Watt returns to G.R. from Second City with an Improv Workshop!
In this 3 hour workshop we will touch on the idea of going in the scene while taking care of yourself.  Ever go into a scene and realize you didn’t bring anything to the table? This will help you practice always being prepared to play.

Feb. 19; 8 p.m.

Collywobbles Theatre Company of Fennvillepresents Touch the Names, by Randal Mylar & Chic Streetman

A staged reading with music, this touching play is based on letters and artifacts left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall from fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, and comrades. The title refers to the memorial, in which the names of those who died in Vietnam are etched into a sunken wall of black granite, able to be felt by searching fingertips.  Directed by Carole Fletcher-Catherine  One Night Only!

February 22 – 24; 8 p.m. Friday & Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday

GEM Theatrics presents Give ‘Em Hell, Harry, by Samuel Gallu

A one-man show starring Gary E. Mitchell as Harry S. Truman, our 33rd President, directed by Mary Beth Quillin.Written and performed after the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation, the play and the Truman are surprisingly timely again as the nation faces yet another scandalous presidency, with an uncertain outcome.  The play offers a refreshing view of a man who viewed public service as an honorable undertaking and a noble calling.  It premiered at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 17, 1975 and was attended by then President Gerald R. Ford. This production contains strong language.

Feb. 26 & 27; 7 p.m. 

The Curious Arrow presents Polarea and the Cloud Weaver, by Stephen Douglas Wright:  A reading of a new script, Tuesday, Feb. 26 only.

The suicidal Sun refuses to rise, leaving the burden of carrying “the light” to the Moon. When the exhausted Moon crash lands, it’s left to Polarea to get “the light” back in the sky.

Wednesday, Feb. 27

The Behavior of Wings, by Steven Bogart. 

Mr. Bogart’s play Two Men and the Moon was chosen as an audience favorite for our Lucid Festival, so we are presenting a reading of this full length play. An eighteen year old college student drops out of her freshman year of college and shows up at her father’s campsite in the mountains of Mexico where he has been trying to protect the Monarch Butterflies.

March 1 -3; 8 p.m. Friday & Saturday, 3 p.m. Saturday & Sunday

The University Wits presents It’s Just a Play, by Terrence McNally

It’s opening night of Peter Austin’s new play as he anxiously awaits to see if his show is a hit. With his career on the line, he shares his big First Night with his best friend, a television star, his fledgling producer, his erratic leading lady, his wunderkind director, an infamous drama critic, and a wide-eyed coat check attendant on his first night in Manhattan. It’s alternately raucous, ridiculous and tender — reminding audiences why there’s no business like show business.

The Lake Effect Fringe Festival seeks to highlight performer-focused theater in a non-traditional theater space, creating an intimate performance experience for audiences who can expect different seating configurations and differing levels of interaction with the performers at any given performance.

All performances take place in the black box performance space of the Dog Story Theater, 7 Jefferson SE, Grand Rapids, 49503. Tickets for all events can be purchased in advance on the Dog Story Theater’s website: www.dogstorytheater.com, and are $15/adults and $10/students and seniors. “Industry Sunday

Lake Effect Fringe Festival creates its own weather phenomenon with an array of shows

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By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma

joanne@wktv.org

 

For the past six years, “lake effect” has had a new meaning with several local theater companies coming together to host a month-long celebration of local theater called the Lake Effect Fringe Festival.

 

Running through March 2, the event features a plethora of productions ranging from musicals to improv.

 

TJ Corbett and Mary Beth Quillin at the WKTV station.

“You are going to see works that are not produced in the larger theaters in town or works by local playwrights,” said Mary Beth Qullin, one of the organizers. “There is a lot of comedy or improv that goes on during the Festival. It is something different almost every weekend.”

 

The Lake Effect Fringe Festival features smaller productions of two character shows, musicals and improvisational pieces with the audience almost sitting in the round with seating on three sides of the stage.

 

“We have a very vibrant theater company, but this is a way to kind of bring to the forefront some of the small more edgy groups that not many people know about,” Quillin said.

 

TJ Corbert, of Hole In the Wall Theatre Company, said he bugged organizers to let his company perform at the annual event, because you couldn’t get more “fringer” than with the Hole in the Wall Theatre Company.  The company performs commedia dell’arte, a form of theater characterized by masked types. The style began in Italy in the 16th century and was the first time actors — and actresses — make a living through the theater by traveling from town-to-town performing improvised shows based on sketches or scenarios.

 

“It is similar to Looney Tunes in that you might see Yosemite Sam, where in one he might be a sheriff and in another one he might be a sultan,” Corbett said. “But he is always Yosemite Sam. He behaves a certain way. He has that certain personality.”

 

On Feb. 24 and 25 — which by the way Feb. 25 is Commedia dell’Arte Day — Hole in the Wall Theatre Company will present the original comedy “Yes, We’re Closed,” one of the first shows the company ever produced. The story centers around a shopkeeper who is suddenly locked out of his store with the money he owns to a vicious loan shark locked inside and the entire neighborhood getting pulled into the madness. Hole in the Wall Theatre Company also is hosting the 10 Minute Play Festival on Feb. 22 and 23 featuring short plays written by local playwrights.

 

Qullin is actually one member of the two-person theater team GEM Theatrics. Her husband, Gary E. Mitchell and her will present “2 Across: A Comedy of Crosswords and Romance,” by Jerry Mayer, who worked on such TV shows as “M*A*S*H,” “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Tabitha,” “Punky Brewster,” and “The Facts of Life.” The GEM Theatrics production is this weekend, Feb. 16 – 18.

 

All performances take place at Dog Story Theater, 7 Jefferson Ave. SE. For more about the Lake Effect Fringe Festival, visit lakeeffectfringe.com.

6th annual Festival continues to focus on local playwrights, directors, composers and performers

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GEM Theatrics, featuring Gary E. Mitchell and Mary Beth Quillen, will be performing “2 Across: A Comedy of Crosswords and Romantic” Feb. 16- 18. (Photo by Terri Foley)

By Mary Beth Quillin

 

The Lake Effect Fringe Festival kicks off its 6th season of bringing new theatre to West Michigan all through the month of February on Thursday, Feb. 1, at 8 p.m. with a performance by No Outlet Improv.

 

Troupe members Nick Milbratz, Kristen Hirtsch, Sean Francis, Eirann Betka, and T.J. Corbett bring short-form, fast-paced, interactive fun to audiences of all ages.  No Outlet is a Grand Rapids original entertainment group that is working throughout West Michigan to promote and perform improvisational theater.

 

There is a full calendar of events that are guaranteed to have something for everybody scheduled at the Dog Story Theater, 7 Jefferson SE, Grand Rapids throughout the month of February, right into early March.  Again this year, Dog Story’s popular Comedy Outlet Mondays will continue throughout the Festival (Feb. 5, 12, 19 & 26) at 7 p.m. each Monday night, for the low price of just $6 Comedy Outlet Mondays (COM) is an experimental comedy hub in the heart of downtown Grand Rapids. From 7-8 p.m., audiences only pay $6 to watch a variety of local artists performing brand new comedy from improv, to sketch, to puppets and music and beyond!

The second hour opens up the stage for those who wish to watch, or participate in, a free open comedy lab. Here, anyone can try new games, network, and may even be inspired to create an act and return as a performer. COM has become an ongoing circuit of performing, playing, producing, and polishing, all leading back to establishing new artists/art forms in Grand Rapids. It is brought to the community by No Outlet Improv Troupe and Dog Story Theater.

 

This year’s full schedule includes:

 

Auditions!! – Jan. 30

 

The 10 Minute Plays and 24-Hour Theatre will be holding auditions at the Dog Story Theater, 7 Jefferson SE, Grand Rapids on January 30 at 7 p.m.  More info is available on the Dog Story Theater website; www.dogstorytheater.com

 

 

Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company – Feb. 2, 3 at 8 p.m. and 4  at 3 p.m.

 

The Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company will present The Knight of the Burning Pestle, by Francis Beaumont; this play within a play is a 1607 burlesque of citizen drama and chivalric romance.  Pigeon Creek’s productions present Shakespeare and his contemporaries’ works in a lively, audience-interactive, and accessible atmosphere that brings the plays to life for modern audiences.  This play by one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries blurs the boundaries between audience and actors with absurd comedy. Join us for all of the fun!  The Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company is Michigan’s only year-round, touring Shakespeare Company.

 

 

The Brutal Sea – Feb. 8 & 9  at 8 p.m. and Feb. 11 at 3 p.m.

Local group The Brutal Sea presents Chaos & Entropy, by local playwrights Kimmy Snyder and Declan Maher;  a multidisciplinary collage. It involves short plays, sketch and improv comedy, performance art, video content, and poetry. This piece offers the audience a space for emotional exploration, catharsis, laughter, and expressions of hope and forgiveness.  It contains strong language and is not suitable for children.

 

 

Last year’s production of “Love & Semiotics” at the Lake Effect Fringe Festival. (Photo by Hunter Pamer)

Dog Story Theater – Feb. 10 at 8 p.m.

 

24-Hour Theatre Local playwrights, directors and actors will work all day and present their completely original works to the audience at 8 p.m.  One performance only. (Actors interested in participating should attend auditions for the 10-Minute Plays on January 30 at 7 p.m.)

 

 

GEM Theatrics – Feb. 16 & 17 at 8 p.m. and Feb. 18 at 3 p.m.

 

The husband and wife performance team of Gary E. Mitchell and Mary Beth Quillin return to the LEFF with the Michigan premiere of 2 Across: A Comedy of Crosswords and Romance, by Jerry Mayer. The play first premiered at the Santa Monica Playhouse, in Southern California, in 2004. The Los Angeles Times said of the original Santa Monica production, “2 Across strives to entertain and succeeds admirably. This is a charming, character-driven comedy.”  Two strangers, a man and a woman, board a San Francisco BART train at 4:30 am. They’re alone in the car, each is married, and both are doing the New York Times crossword. She’s organized and sensible. He’s a free spirit.  She is a crossword pro, he always quits. When he tosses his puzzle away, she snaps, “Crosswords are a metaphor for life; those who finish, succeed, those who don’t, fail.” Boy meets girl, does boy get girl?

 

 

10-Minute Play Festival – February 22 & 23 @8:00 pm

Titles of plays will be announced soon! Local directors and local actors will take on scripts submitted by local playwrights for an evening of 10-Minute Plays produced by Hole in the Wall Theatre Company.

 

ACTORS: auditions will be held on Jan. 30 at Dog Story Theatre at 7 p.m. Directors need to plan to be present for these as well, so you can cast your shows.

 

Casting will be announced that week. Directors will be responsible to coordinate rehearsal schedules with their cast.

 

 

Hole in the Wall Theatre Company – Feb. 24 at 8 p.m. and Feb. 25 at 3 p.m.

 

J. Corbett leads Grand Rapids’ only Commedia Dell’Arte troupe in the original comedy, Yes, We’re Closed. A shopkeeper is suddenly locked out of his store, with the precious money he owes to a vicious loan shark locked inside…the neighborhood gets pulled into the madness, as desperate measures, scandalous revelations, and questionable prescriptions run wild in the streets.

 

 

Alternative Acts Theatre Company – Feb. 24 at 3 p.m.

 

Hole in the Wall presents the premiere production of Alternative Acts Theatre Company, a group of students from Aquinas College.  I’m So… is a theatrical exploration of the stigmas and societal noise surrounding mental health issues. One Performance Only.

 


No Outlet Improv – Mar. 1 at 8 p.m.

 

No Outlet Improv returns with one more fun evening of interactive improv! Final Festival Improv Event

 

 

The University Wits – March 2 & 3 at 8 p.m. and March 4 at 3 p.m.

 

The University Wits present The Last Five Years; a musical by Jason Robert Brown, directed by J.J. Lindke and starring Emily Diener and Steffan Copenhaver.
The story explores a five-year relationship between Jamie Wellerstein, a rising novelist, and Cathy Hiatt, a struggling actress. The show uses a form of storytelling in which Cathy’s story is told in reverse chronological order (beginning the show at the end of the marriage), and Jamie’s is told in chronological order (starting just after the couple have first met). The characters do not directly interact except for a wedding song in the middle as their timelines intersect.

 

 

The Lake Effect Fringe Festival seeks to highlight performer-focused theater in a non-traditional theater space, creating an intimate performance experience for audiences who can expect different seating configurations and differing levels of interaction with the performers at any given performance.  Along with the Dog Story Theater, organizing partners include; GEM Theatrics, Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company, and The University Wits. All performances take place in the black box performance space of the Dog Story Theater, 7 Jefferson SE, Grand Rapids.  Tickets for all events can be purchased in advance on the Dog Story Theatre’s website: www.dogstorytheater.com, and are $14/adults and $8/students and seniors.  Comedy Outlet Mondays are just $6.

Local theater festival marks fifth year, continues to grow

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By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma

joanne@wktv.org

 

Five years ago, a group of theater lovers looked around Grand Rapids and saw a lot of community-wide events centered around specific themes such as LaughFest and ArtPrize. And this group decided it was time for Grand Rapids to host a community-wide event for theater.

 

Thus the Lake Effect Fringe Festival was born.

 

“Can you believe it?” wrote Mary Beth Quillin. one of the organizers and a member of GEM Theatrics, in announcement about the upcoming event. “The little theater festival that could is now celebrating five years at the Dog Story Theater.”

 

During those five years, the event also has grown from mostly weekend events during the month of February to programming throughout the month, and this year, has expanded into the first weekend in March.

 

Week day events include Comedy Outlet Mondays performing every Monday at 7 p.m. during the Festival. Also during the week is The Brutal Sea’s presentation of “Love & Semiotics,” a new play written by Kimberly Snyder and directed by Alex Michael Cook. The production, set for 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 8 and 9, is about a young woman who is visited by a novelist’s ghost and is forced to confront her relationship with reality and herself. Due to language and themes, the production is for mature audiences only. Christopher Van Der Ark is set to do a reading form “Collage of a Dystopian Midwest: a play by various authors” Feb. 22 at 8 p.m. and local playwright Stephen Douglas Wright will read from “The Ghost of Jimmy Dean” March 1 and 2 at 8 p.m.

 

Hole in the Wall Theater performs Feb. 25 and 26.

There are several Wyoming and Kentwood participants in the festival including members of the Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company, who performed “Titus Andronicus” last weekend. Coming up, Kentwood resident Ann Celeste Cloyd directs the Blue Star Players’ production of “36 Questions,” where two college seniors attempt to replicate an experiment to create real love in a laboratory setting on themselves. “36 Questions” is at 8 p.m. Feb. 18 and 3 p.m. Feb. 19.

 

Also from Kentwood is the Hole in the Wall Theatre Company, a Commedia Dell’Arte group that will present “The Whole Vine Yards” at 8 p.m. Feb. 25 and 3 p.m. Feb. 26. In this tantalizing tale, the diVonstro family vineyard has slowly been going bankrupt over the last three generations, and Modestina, the current head of the estate, is at the end of her financial rope. Then a mysterious box with a treasure map is discovered with everyone from the vineyard owner to the neighbors to the servants racing to get their hands on it.

 

Other productions throughout the month include:

 

One of the original LEFF participants. The University Wits, returns this weekend, Feb. 10 – 12, for Yasmina Reza’s dark comedy “God of Carnage.” Four parents come together to “calmly” discuss the fight between their children, but as tempers flair and neuroses collide, the night evolves into disturbing and hilarious mayhem. Show times are 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday.

 

Also this weekend are two songwriting workshops, the LEFF Songwriting Workshop with Julia Yob from 1:30 – 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 11, and the two-hour musical-writing workshop M.Y. Musical World at 7 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 12.

 

The following week, Feb. 16 and 17 at 8 p.m., Art by Ellis will present “The Bald Soprano,” the classic French farce that launched Theatre of the Absurd a half-century ago. Directed by Roger Ellis, the story centers around the Smiths who entertain and insult their guests the Martins, who can’t remember whether they actually know each other.

 

Feb. 23 and 24 at 8 p.m., Midwest Stage Company presents David Mamet’s “Sexual Perversity in Chicago,” which takes a look at sex and relationships.

 

Since the festival’s inception, GEM Theatrics has wrapped it up and will do so again this year March 3 and 4, with the West Michigan premier of “Chapatti,” by Christian O’Reilly. The husband-and-wife team of Gary E. Mitchell and Quillin play two lonely animal-lovers in Dublin. When Dan (Mitchell) and his dog Chapatti cross paths with Betty (Quillin) and her 19 cats, an unexpected spark begins a warm and gentle story about two people rediscovering the importance of human companionship. Show times are at 8 p.m.

 

LEFF performances are all at the Dog Story Theater, 7 Jefferson SE. Tickets are $14/adults and $8/students and seniors. Comedy Outlet Mondays tickets are $5 each. For more information, visit www.dogstorytheater.com.