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We are starting out this season with a Play Reading of “The Smell of the Kill” 
by Michele Lowe
For years, BUS STOP has been one of the titles we’ve tossed around on our Play Selection Committee – the response often was, “That old thing? I’ve seen that a million times”. Funnily enough, I hadn’t ever seen it. Written in 1955, BUS STOP was one of the favorites plays written by William Inge. (He also wrote PICNIC, COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA, among others.) When Marilyn Monroe starred in the movie version, it became even more popular and famous. But the play suffered from being a product of a style and era of theater that had gone out of fashion.
We read it as a committee and liked it, so decided to do it as a play reading, to see how it played to a contemporary audience. We’ll be using the Skylight Bar Monday, March 10th at 7:30, with the actors reading simply from the text in our usual reader’s theater style. We have lots of patrons who love the form – we hope you join us.
BUS STOP is set in the 1950’s in a café in the windy and snow-swept plains of Kansas – where the bus stops intermittently during the day and night and nothing spectacular happens. The world of BUS STOP is the world William Inge grew up in. Born in Independence Kansas in 1913, Inge liked to write plays about people from small towns, where you knew people well – knew their dreams, their secrets, their loves, their failures.
The charm of the piece is its characters. We have a great cast to read them, too: Julie Swenson (our Producing Director) plays Grace, the world-wise café owner; Brian Mani plays Will, the Sheriff; Drew Brhel plays Dr. Lyman, the philandering academic; Toni Inzeo, plays Elma, the wide-eyed high school girl behind the counter; Jim Fletcher plays Carl, the bus driver; Andy Truschinksi plays Bo, the rowdy cowboy; and Carrie Coon plays Cherie, the nightclub singer on the run from him. Come to the reading and see how this 1950’s classic romance plays out in 2008!
I was so excited when RTW asked me to direct the first play reading of this season and even more excited when they asked me to submit a list of possible plays. I concocted a fantasy list with topped by one of my dream shows to direct, Strindberg’s Miss Julie. Imagine my shock when they said “Miss Julie sounds like a great idea.” My first reaction was “GREAT!” and my second reaction was “Oh boy, what have I gotten myself into?” And then, Julie (Swenson, not Miss) called me and said, “have you ever read Strindberg’s The Stronger? Read it and see if you’d like to do that too. So, I read it and thought “that is the toughest script…I have to do it!” (Are you all seeing the pattern here?) So, since I’m apparently a glutton for punishment, I plunged in to both Miss Julie and The Stronger. Both texts are incredibly complex looks at, well, complex women. There is a sense of strength, weakness, and humanity in each woman, which is intriguing since August Strindberg was a notorious misogynist. The actors and I worked hard to decipher the texts in a way that was both true to the style and also meaningful and clear to an audience today.The interesting thing about working on a reading of a play is that you are really focused on the text. What are they saying? What does it mean? How do we interpret it today? It doesn’t matter that there is a ballet of servants in the middle, we don’t have to stage it, but what does matter is what each line means. What each actor brings to the text. It’s great fun to work on a reading. It is almost as if you begin the rehearsal process and then invite an audience in before you get to the staging of it. You approach the text work as if you are going to do a full production. Seek out all the questions and answers you can find because the audience doesn’t have anything but the words to paint the picture for them.A play reading is a wonderful tool. It can be used so many ways. You can use it to explore a play that your company probably won’t chose for a full production, you can use it to help a playwright hear how her script is working or not working, or you can use it to try out a play to see if it’s the right fit for your company. You can even just gather people together to read a play just for the joy of it. I have had the pleasure to work on readings for all the above reasons and I never tire of it. There is always something new to hear in a script. And the search is always entertaining.-Reva FoxDirector of the RTW readings ofMiss Julie and The StrongerBy August Strindberg (more…)
Join us on Monday, March 10 for a reading of William Inge’s BUS STOP, directed by our very own playwright in residence, Marie Kohler.
Inge’s uniquely American celebration of love in all its forms finds a busload of endearing characters stranded in a Midwestern diner during a howling snowstorm. An irrestisible romantic comic-drama, BUS STOP was made into a film in 1956 starring Marilyn Monroe, Don Murray and Eileen Heckart.
As always, our play reading series is offered to the public on a donation basis. If your short on cash, the play readings are an excellent way to see the talents of Renaissance Theaterworks. The suggested donation is only $10. Where else can you see some of the city’s top actors and directors at work for so little cost.
New with this reading is an optional dinner in the Skylight Bar. For only $34 you will receive prime table seating, entree, coffee, dessert and gratuity in the intimate setting of the Skylight Bar. A full cash bar is available.
Call our volunteer, Jane @ 414.303.7165 for reservations. Space is limited and going fast.
Hope to see you there!!
Reva Fox is still considered a newcomer to Milwaukee. She is a director that hails from Los Angeles and Philadelphia but is now settled here in Milwaukee. In September 2007, she directed a reading for us of Miss Julie and The Stronger. She then went on to direct Schluoss for the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s Young Playwrights Festival. In Philadelphia, she was the Director of the Theatre Arts Program at Arcadia University. There, her directing work included: Savage in Limbo, Once on this Island, and The Importance of Being Earnest. Other Philly credits include several short plays for Hisoric Philadelphia Inc., Same Old Story for the Philly Fringe Festival, Stags and Hens for the University of the Arts, Lysistrata for the Worldwide Lysistrata Project, and a reprisal of Same Old Story for Ladeyfest Philly. Reva is an alumnae of the Lincoln Center Theatre’s Director’s Lab and her work in New York City includes directing The Sparrow Project for the Extremely Staged Series for the Hypothetical Theatre Company and Producing Eighteen and HERE as part of the LCT Director’s Lab. Also at the Lincoln Center, Reva was the Assistant Director, Gordon Davidson on the show, QED starring Alan Alda.
In Los Angeles, she was a founding member of and resident director for the award winning Subterranean Theatre Company where she directed Wyoming, The Bastard Child of Eval Kineval, Noises Off and Heaven and Home, for which she won two Drama-Logue awards and was nominated for a GLAAD award for Best Production in Los Angeles. She directed Forget me Not for the Attic Theatre and Genet’s The Maids for Theatre Pangaea. She also wrote, directed and produced numberous shows for Universal Studios Hollywood Theme Park including The Denver Street Stunt Show, The New Animal Actors Stage Show, and the Halloween Horror Night Shows: Chucky’s Insult Emporium and Animal House…of Horrors. She spent a year with the Center Theatre Group in LA and had the honor of working with Sir Peter Hall as as production assistant on Romeo and Juliet and with The CTG’s Artistic Director, Gordon Davidson, as assistant to the director on the Mark Taper Forum world-premiere show, QED. As an actor, Reva has appeared most recently in The Vagina Monologues in Philadelphia, Land of the White Foreheads, in Los Angeles, and has appeared in numerous voice-over projects including, being all the chicken noises heard at Universal Studios Theme Park.
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