New Moon Edition September 2023
The Circle Game. That’s the way life so often seems, how people and things reappear in your life and make you take notice all over again. It happens especially with art and artists. Those experiences and the people who make them continually visit and revisit me. It’s always a learning event and usually an enjoyable one.
Years ago, just before the pandemic, I started a podcast called Play4Keeps. I had been president of Ashland New Plays Festival and hoped to expand the reach of that organization in its mission to help playwrights connect their new works with audiences. We recorded some of our best local actors reading those plays and promoted the recordings for subscription.
It was a financial flop and the Board quickly tired of the experiment, but it taught us some things about presenting plays in a virtual setting when theater everywhere for the next couple of years ran on Zoom or not at all. It also connected me with a host of exceptionally talented people, many of whom continue to loop through my life.
Twenty-two years ago, the terrible event we now call 9/11 changed the United States in profound and lasting ways. Kari Bentley-Quinn, the playwright, in her Substack newsletter The Long Climb (below) says of the swirl of emotions it brings to mind she fixates on music, the thing that always gets her through. In this case, she’s talking about learning to appreciate The Boss. As much as we write about music here, we certainly can relate.
At Play4Keeps, Kari’s play The Worst Mother in the World featured Erica Sullivan, Tamra Mathias, Marie-Claire Erdynast, and Eric Poppick. It cites the “Diver” by Andreas Feninger, an unforgettable photograph I saw at the Whitney years ago, which is used here as an image that triggers the play’s dream sequences.
Another work at P4K, Flowers in the Desert by Donna Hoke, features Elizabeth Gudenrath and Aaron Galligan-Stierle as a couple in a tumultuous relationship who momentarily recapture the magic when they run into Bruce Springsteen in a New Jersey bar and have the audacity to say, “hello.”
Email brought me Kari’s newsletter, Aaron’s on Broadway his posts remind me, Erica, Tamra, and Beth continue to play to rave reviews in theaters locally, Donna comes to mind regularly in recalling her amazing work, and Bruce is heading out on tour with the E Street Band after his triumphant one-person show on Broadway last year. And I continue my efforts to reach Steven Van Zandt about what we’re doing at the Freeform Radio Archive (www.radicalradio.media). It really is like pinball.
One actor who did great work for ANPF and especially Play4Keeps was Michael Goodfriend. I remember sharing a drink after he, Jon Toppo, and Michael’s spouse, Nancy Rodriguez, wrapped our lengthy production of Leslie Slape’s unique and very powerful play, The Harder Courage.
He and Nancy, Michael told me, had been released from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, two of so many favorite actors who’d be parting the repertory company. They would be selling their home in Ashland, their children withdrawing from school, and heading, as actors often must, to New York City. They did. Then came the pandemic.
Theater and the actors who make its magic suffered egregiously for the past several years. It’s been a very tough row to hoe. But Michael has landed on his feet. He is Head of Scripted Fiction at Next Chapter Podcasts (ncpodcasts.com), where Lue Douthit’s Play On Shakespeare venture and a lot of other strong material is presented. Next Chapter is like Play4Keeps on massive steroids and better management. Michael is making it happen.
I saw Lue recently at a John Rose interview with ANPF artistic director Jackie Apodaca and all three of them were amazing, each in their own way. John, Jackie, and I connect frequently. I haven’t seen Michael since the night we had that drink together, but I’m pleased to know he’s doing well and look forward to our next encounter whenever fate decrees.