PLAY OF THE WEEK: June 19, 2008Jump/Cut by Neena Beber

From The WOMEN'S PROJECT 2006 Production, left to right: Luke Kirby, Michi Barall, and Thomas Sadoski. Photo by T. Charles Erickson

If you've ever known anyone who has had to deal with manic-depression, Neena Beber's Jump/Cut is designed to hit you uncomfortably close to home.

Paul and Karen each search for love and success in life while their friend Dave, exhausted from dealing with his illness, is only searching for a way out. When Paul starts to make a documentary chronicling Dave's progress in hopes of advancing his own film career, he hopes the process will re-ignite Dave's own creativity and desire for life – in the end, it only ends gives him the way out that he was looking for.

Paul's admiration for Godard's Breathless and its use of the jump cut adds a intriguing layer to the scenes between the characters as they jump from past to present and address the audience directly as Jean Paul Belmondo did in that seminal film.

There's also plenty of humor to offset the gravity of Dave's losing battle. When Dave compares himself to a bridge that collapsed during a storm, he asserts that the bridge was beautiful even though ultimately unable to withstand the forces of nature. Moments like these make the play’s ending seem more humane than sad.

Scenes/Monologues: Scenes for 2 men; 1 man and 1 woman; 2 men and 1 woman.

Recommended by: Hans

Jump/Cut by Neena Beber
Acting Edition, Dramatists Play Service, 2008

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Play of the Week: June 4 2008tempOdyssey by Dan Dietz

tempOdyssey by Dan Dietz

If your childhood on a chicken farm gave you the uncanny ability to kill chickens in a pure and painless way, where would your career path lead you?

To start temping for a bomb manufacturer? Makes sense to me.

Convinced she is the goddess of death and attempting to escape a man-made black hole on one side of the country, Genny finds herself temping for a weapons company in New York. Genny’s only comfort in her hellish job comes from another temp, called only Dead Body Boy, who has mastered the system and seems to have also mastered death. He leads her through the bowels of the company to find a secret that could finally free Genny from her past – or destroy the world.

Amongst all the god-like catastrophes and eminent destruction of the world, Dietz is able to tell a compelling story of a woman coming to terms with her past as she navigates her life as an adult in an unforgiving and cruel world.

The epic staging of the play creates great challenges for directors and set designers, such as: the sun stuck in a tree, miles of filling cabinets that turn into chicken coups in an instant - not to mention the creation of the universe that happens in the first two pages. All in all, this would be the perfect play for a young, ambitious theater company to tackle.

Scenes/Monologues: Scenes between a man and a woman, both 20 – 30. Monologues for a woman, 20-30.

Recommended by: Sean-Michael

tempOdyssey
by Dan Deitz
Acting Edition, $7.50
Dramatists Play Service, 2008