Happy Holidays from THE DESK SET

The rumors are true: I'm going to be appearing in a play next summer for the first time in years. I'll be playing the supporting role of Elsa and serving as Dance Captain in a production of the classic 1950s office comedy The Desk Set, by William Marchant. The production will be directed by Stuart Bousel, produced by No Nude Men, and presented at the EXIT Theatre in San Francisco.

Above is a photo of the full cast (I'm standing, second from the right). The Desk Set takes place around Christmastime and though our production happens in July, we decided to start our promotional campaign early by doing a holiday-themed photo!

We also took photos of smaller groups of characters. Below are the four main women: Jeunee Simon as Sadel, Kitty Torres as Ruthie, Megan Briggs as Peg, Allison Page as Bunny.

Here I am with my fellow supporting women: Carina Lastimosa Salazar as Miss Warriner and Lisa Drostova as the Mysterious Lady. I am wearing one of my grandma's cocktail dresses from the '50s. It always amazes me that she had such a va-va-voom dress (there is a nude-colored fabric lining underneath the black lace, and the illusion is quite realistic in person) but Elsa is the office sexpot, so it's character-appropriate! Though also a little strange -- I have never played a sexpot or had to do a stage kiss before.

And here are our handsome gentlemen: Abhi Kris as Mr. Bennett, Andrew Calabrese as "Shirtsleeves," Nick Trengove as Abe, Alejandro Emmanuel Torres as Kenny, and Alan Coyne as Richard.

Randomly and bizarrely, we discovered that a teenage Barbra Streisand played my role, Elsa, in a summer stock production of The Desk Set just a few years after the original Broadway production. Here's a picture from the office-party scene of that production; Barbra is dancing, second from right.

And if you want to know the plot of Desk Set or what I think of it as a play, here's the review I wrote on Goodreads.

The Desk Set: A Comedy In Three Acts by William Marchant
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For a mid-century, middlebrow comedy, The Desk Set is kind of a bizarre play. On the one hand, it's loaded with 1950s kitsch: female employees running out of the office midday to buy party dresses at Bonwit's; jokes about philandering executives and sexpot secretaries; a rather un-PC joke about Mexicans. The main character is a super-smart, capable, acerbic woman named Bunny (something that really puzzled me when I saw the film version as a child -- how could the no-nonsense Katharine Hepburn play a woman with such a silly name?) who spends a bit too much time hoping that her boss/boyfriend, who's clearly not as awesome as she is, will put a ring on it.

On the other hand, The Desk Set is a play about four intelligent working women who fear that they are going to be replaced by a computer, which is a surprisingly modern problem. The depiction of Richard, the character who wants to install computers in the office, also feels perceptive about how "techies" behave: he's not a bad guy, but he's kind of single-minded and socially awkward. While the play has a happy ending that suggests that people and technology can coexist, 21st-century audiences may find it a little more poignant than originally intended. After all, the women in the play work for the research department of a broadcasting company, where their job is to do fact-checking and answer queries like "What are the names of Santa's reindeer?" (The play takes place around Christmas.) But these days, you can just pull out your iPhone and ask Siri.

All photos (except for the Streisand one) by Cody Rishell.

"The Dryad of Suburbia" - staged reading Nov. 5

2014 is my fourth year participating in the San Francisco Olympians Festival as a writer. My contribution this year is a 10-minute play, The Dryad of Suburbia, which is part of the festival's "Nymphs! Nymphs! Nymphs!" night on Wednesday, November 5.

(At least two people have already inquired whether there will be nudity on this evening. Highly unlikely, as it's a staged reading. But I'm pleased that the evening's title has done its job and grabbed people's attention.)

You can find out more about The Dryad of Suburbia on the festival's website. Yes, that page has changed since the last time I linked to it, back in January. Back then, I thought I was going to write a play about a Dryad encountering a Druid. I clung to that idea for months without writing a word -- because I was unable to hear my characters' voices. At the eleventh hour, I scrapped that idea and banged out The Dryad of Suburbia in a mad rush. I wrote about this experience in more detail for my Theater Pub column this week.

My new play is about a contemporary, suburban couple whose young daughter has become convinced that she is a "tree spirit." When I was writing it, I had no idea that Cody Rishell, the poster artist for Nymph Night, was designing a suite of posters that show little girls playing with their nymph friends! It's like we were tuned into the same wavelength. The Dryads poster (above) is astoundingly perfect -- I am a very happy playwright! You can check out all of the Nymph posters on Cody's website.

The reading of The Dryad of Suburbia will be directed by Valerie Fachman and feature actors Colleen Egan and Nick Trengove. The other "Nymphs!" playwrights are Sam Bertken, Leah Halper, Sam Hurwitt, Carol Lashof, Bridgette Dutta Portman, Jennifer Lynne Roberts, and Siyu Song.

It's all happening at 8 PM on November 5 at EXIT Theatre in San Francisco's scenic Tenderloin. RSVP to the Facebook event here. Tickets $10 at the door.

Bon Anniversaire, Cody Rishell

Today's post is dedicated to my friend Cody Rishell, because it's his birthday and because I haven't properly thanked him, on this blog, for all of the ways his art and his friendship have enhanced my life over the past three years.

The first real memory I have of Cody is working the Olympians Festival audition sign-in table with him in 2010. He was talking a mile a minute about The House of Mirth (he had just watched the heartbreaking Gillian Anderson film version) and "California Gurls" (the song had just been released and Cody already had it stuck in his head). Not many people can talk with equal authority and enthusiasm about Edith Wharton novels and Katy Perry songs -- so Cody immediately piqued my interest as someone I'd like to know better.

Since then, we have bonded over our mutual love for Alphonse Mucha, La Traviata, The Great Gatsby, indie theater, and much more. Last year, I served as copy-editor and Cody did the layout for the Bay One-Acts play anthology -- we had a ridiculously quick turn-around time to put the book together (one week) but we ended up having a surprising amount of fun doing it. When I discovered that I could use Google Docs to compile a list of typos as I found them, and Cody could see the list update automatically as I typed, he wrote that his "head was exploding with unicorn glitter sex." Yes, it is that much fun to work on copy-editing a book with Cody.

Cody coordinates all of the art for the Olympians Festival each year, meaning that he recruited the artists who did the beautiful posters for my plays Pleiades (Emily C. Martin) and Aphrodite (Kelly Lawrence).

This year, Cody did black-and-white portraits of me, Stuart Bousel, and Meg O'Connor to serve as the promo artwork for our "Behind the Curtain" mini-festival at the end of March. I love the portrait he did of me (based on my headshot photo), especially the eyebrows!

"I was trying to channel '1960s French secret agent go-go car racer girl,'" said Cody when I complimented him on the way he drew my eyebrows.

Because Cody says fabulous things like that. And then the only thing I could do in response was send him this YouTube video of Anna Karina singing "Roller Girl." (I cannot find a version of this online that I can embed in my blog. But click the link, it's worth it.)

Cody also had an art show last year called "Everyone Worth Knowing is a Mythological Creature in Disguise," which is a pretty great philosophy, n'est-ce pas?

I particularly like his drawings of the sexy minotaur girl who goes around carrying a parasol, which she wields like a weapon in defense of the less fortunate.

Cody also does all of the artwork for San Francisco Theater Pub, and I have to confess that one of the most exciting things about producing a show at Theater Pub was the prospect of seeing what Cody would draw for the program. His illustration for Orphée this month was even better than I could've hoped: it was double-sided, with Orphée on one side of the paper and Eurydice on the other. So if you hold it up to the light, the image of Eurydice shines through the paper like a ghost. I can't find a picture of this online (and that wouldn't be the right format for it, anyway) but trust me, it was amazing.

So happy birthday, Cody, you mythological creature in disguise, and thank you for all of your beautiful artwork. Here's to many more years and much more beauty.

Psychedelic "Pleiades" Poster

I love, love, love Emily C. Martin's poster art for Pleiades! (Click for a bigger version.) And how amazing is it that the Olympians Festival creates such stunning artwork for what is, in essence, a one-night-only staged reading?

Our Festival art coordinator, Cody Rishell, asked us if we had any guidance for the artist, and I responded with an email about the early 1970s, psychedelic rock posters from that era, Alphonse Mucha, Art Nouveau, maxi dresses, and long-haired girls. (My decision to set Pleiades in 1971 was inspired by a photograph of my mother's six beautiful female cousins wearing long dresses in the early '70s.) I worried that I was demanding too much... but you can see that Emily Martin was able to capture all of that and more! I especially like the swirling mandala-like design.

The first show of the Olympians Festival is in exactly one month and Pleiades is taking place on October 22. Come to my show and have a chance to win a copy of this poster in a raffle!