Click poster to view full size.

The Monkeys invite you to celebrate Christmas in April.  No, it’s not an April Fool’s Day joke!  Just the next step in the development of our original work An Appalachian Christmas Carol.  As many of you know from attending past Brick Monkey readings of new plays, a large part of the writing process entails hearing the material out loud in front of an audience to determine what works, what’s confusing, and what should be expanded.  So we need your help!

A reading of the full script of An Appalachian Christmas Carol will take place on

Sunday, April 1, 2012, at 2pm at Stuart’s Opera House.  

The event will be a seated, script-in-hand reading of the play with live music.  For those of you who heard Act One back in December, this will be an opportunity to hear the rest of the story.  If this is your first time to see it, your feedback is important as well, as we continue to develop the production over the coming months.

The reading is FREE, but donations are always welcome.  Coffee and cookies will be served.

Brick Monkey Theater Ensemble’s production of An Appalachian Christmas Carol will have its premiere this December at Stuart’s Opera House.  Don’t miss out on this exciting opportunity to tell our region’s story.  It promises to be the beginning of family holiday tradition!

We will be presenting a different play tonight than originally advertised: Steven Dietz’s comedy Shooting Star. Snowed in overnight at a middle-America airport, college lovers Elena Carson and Reed McAllister have an unexpected and life-altering reunion.

“Steven Dietz sends a tender valentine to middle-age in SHOOTING STAR, a smart and sweet comedy from one of the American theater’s most-produced playwrights. Dietz’s gift as a writer is an acute attention to our modern language. He elevates ordinary conversation to a kind of music. Dietz makes reality poetic.” —Austin-American Statesman.

The reading is directed by Rebecca VerNooy and features Janice Paxson Evans and Brian Evans. Come join us for a great play, cookies and coffee (or something from the bar), as we celebrate Valentine’s Day Brick Monkey style!

WHAT: A reading of Steven Dietz’s comedy Shooting Star
WHEN: 7:30pm on Tuesday, February 14, 2012
WHERE: The Dairy Barn Arts Center, 8000 Dairy Barn Lane, Athens, OH.

Cash bar available.

ADMISSION IS FREE!

Won’t you join us in donating $12 a month in 2012? The “$12 in ’12″ program proceeds go to supporting our popular monthly new play reading series (no admission fees) and toward our full production of Appalachian Christmas Carol in December 2012, the first act of whichwas very well received this past December at Stuart’s Opera House. (Of course you may choose to support us at $15 or $50 or $150 a month if you like — we won’t be upset if you break the $12/month barrier, we swear!) Also, stay tuned: there will be special benefits to becoming a “$12 in ’12″ member, such as “first look” previews of the 2012 full rendition of Appalachian Christmas Carol and other “Inside the Process” sneak peeks.

To donate (either a one time donation or on a monthly basis) simply click the button above and follow the instructions, or go to the support page. Network For Good, the donation processor, is also a not-for-profit entity; they make sure that 100% of your donation goes to BMTE.

At Stuart’s Opera House on the Public Square in Nelsonville, Ohio.

Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 8pm
$20 adults / $10 students / Free for kids 16 and under
Dessert reception to follow.
Tickets:  online and at the door

Visit Stuart’s Opera House for more.

Click to enlarge.

Many of you were in the audience at Stuart’s Opera House on September 11, 2006, for the first Brick Monkey Theater Ensemble reading of The Guys by Anne Nelson. The play documents the story of New York Fire Chief Nick Flannigan in the aftermath of 9/11. Our audience talk-back session that night was filled with personal accounts of the attacks, as audience members recounted where they were when the towers fell. Emotions still felt raw on that night five years ago.

And here we are. Ten years since the events of 9/11. While some things remain the same, many have been forever changed, and those raw emotions have morphed into…what exactly? Media exhaustion? Rage? Frustration? Fear? Hope? All of the above at different times? We want to hear from you, our audience. Where are we as a nation, as a community, ten years later?

We are excited to bring you the next installment of our Free Play Reading Series, Defiant by George Brant. George is a gifted playwright who has recently moved to Cleveland after many years on the East Coast. The Monkeys are big fans of his writing and we are excited to bring a play reading of his to Athens. Defiant tells the story of Ann Martin, a woman who incurs the wrath of a grieving country when she refuses to memorialize her husband following his death in a national tragedy. The play is a beautifully crafted Greek tragedy that asks difficult questions about what it means to grieve, what it means to be a patriot, and how a decision to not honor the dead can be seen as treasonous.

Presented by Brick Monkey Theatre Ensemble, Southeast Ohio’s professional theater company, the reading will be directed by company member Brian Evans, and features Merri Biechler, Shelley Delaney, Ledger Free, David Haugen, Phillip Johnson, Kate Scholl and lorraine wochna.

Dr. William Condee will facilitate an audience talk-back after the reading.

The reading will take place at 2pm on Sunday, September 11, 2011, at ARTS/West, 132 W. State Street, Athens, OH. Admission is free. Refreshments will be served.

Come join us for an afternoon of thought-provoking theater and discussion!

***
George Brant’s scripts have been produced and developed internationally by Trinity Repertory Company, the Cleveland Play House, Dobama Theatre, the Playwrights Foundation, Premiere Stages, the Playwrights’ Center, WordBRIDGE Playwright’s Lab, Trustus Theatre, the Drama League, Florida Studio Theatre, Terrific New Theatre, the Elemental Theatre Collective and the Disney Channel, among others. His script Elephant’s Graveyard was awarded the David Cohen National Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center and the Keene Prize for Literature. He has received writing fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Blue Mountain Center, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and the Michener Center for Writers, as well as commissions from Dobama Theatre and Theatre 4. His plays are published by Samuel French, Smith & Kraus, and Broadway Play Publishing.

Part of the fun of the Reading Series is revisiting a play at different stages of its development.  Sherry Kramer is a longtime friend of the MFA Playwriting Program at Ohio University.  When she served as a playwriting mentor at the 2005 Seabury Quinn Jr., Playwrights’ Festival, she was writing When Something Wonderful Ends.  Typical of Sherry’s generous spirit, she allowed Shelley Delaney to direct a public reading of this one woman show with SEVEN actresses!  The play went on to have its world premiere at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville in 2007, and has had numerous productions worldwide since then.

This is an autobiographical play for Ms. Kramer.  After the death of her mother, Sherry’s family home goes up for sale.  Sifting through memories of a seemingly simpler time as she packs up her baby-boom childhood, Sherry begins to connect the dots between her Barbie collection and America’s place in the rest of the world. A touching, funny, deeply personal and daringly global one-woman, one-Barbie play.

The reading will be presented by the Brick Monkey Theatre Ensemble, southeast Ohio’s only professional theater company, directed by Shelley Delaney and featuring Merri Biechler.

When? 7:30pm on Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Where? ARTS/West, 132 W. State Street, Athens, OH.
Admission is free. (Click poster above to enlarge.)

Sherry Kramer’s work has been seen at theaters across the country and abroad, including the Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Yale Repertory Theatre, Soho Rep, Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York’s Second Stage, Woolly Mammoth, and The Theater of the First Amendment.  She is a recipient of NEA, New York Foundation for the Arts and McKnight Fellowships, the Weissberger Playwriting Award, and a New York Drama League Award (What A Man Weighs), the LA Women in Theater New Play Award (The Wall of Water), and the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award (David’s Redhaired Death), and a commission from A.S.K. (The Mad Master).  She was the first national member of New Dramatists, and teaches playwriting at Bennington College, and in the MFA programs of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop and the Michener Center for Writers, University of Texas, Austin.

(Click on the flyer to see it full sized.)

Like many of you, the Monkeys were saddened by the passing of Elizabeth Taylor.  While Ms. Taylor might have been better known for her romantic entanglements, her collection of diamonds, and her fundraising for AIDS when most celebrities wouldn’t be associated with the illness, we want to remember her as the talented, risk-taking actress she was.We wondered:  how best can we honor Liz?  By raising a glass in her memory?  By revisiting a play that made her famous?  How about both!

Come join Brick Monkey Theater Ensemble for our next free public reading of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Click on the flyer to see it full sized.) The play, written by Edward Albee in 1961, has been described as one of the most important plays of the last 100 years.  It is a ruthless account of two marriages and the dangerous game they play one evening at a party.  The barbs and booze fly as George and Martha tear into each other, but as the evening progresses we discover the painful wounds their destructive games protect.  Newsweek called the play “a brilliantly original work of art–an excoriating theatrical experience, surging with shocks of recognition and dramatic fire that will be igniting Broadway for some time to come.”  Considering that statement was made fifty years ago, I’d say they were right!

The reading will be presented by Brick Monkey Theatre Ensemble, southeast Ohio’s professional theater company and will feature company members Dennis Delaney and Shelley Delaney, together with Beth Brown and Chris Young.

To honor the late Elizabeth Taylor, join Brick Monkey for a free reading of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011, at 7:30pm
The Dairy Barn Arts Center, Second Floor AEP Wing
8000 Dairy Barn Lane, Athens, OH

Admission to this event is Free

Wine bar will be available
Donations are appreciated

The reading will be presented by the Brick Monkey Theatre Ensemble, southeast Ohio’s professional theater company. The reading will be directed by ensemble member Shelley Delaney and will feature Beth Brown and ensemble members Dennis Delaney, Brian Evans, David Haugen and lorraine wochna.

The reading will take place at 7:30pm on Tuesday, November 16, 2010, at Glidden Recital Hall on the Ohio University campus. Admission is free.

Erik Ramsey is an Associate Professor of Playwriting who teaches with Charles Smith in the MFA Playwriting Program, and is Head of Undergraduate Playwriting at Ohio University. His plays have been produced around the country, and Samuel French and Dramatic Publishing have published several of his short works. Currently, he is writing a trilogy of historical dramas about the surprising turn of events that boosted Joseph Smith from life as a small time con-artist to Prophet of the Mormon Church; the first in the series, titled SMITH UNEARTHED, has recently been featured and developed at the International Society of Contemporary Literature and Theatre Conference (Estonia: 2007), the Gwen Frostic National Reading Series at Western Michigan University (Nov, 2008), and at Brick Monkey Theater Ensemble (Dec, 2008). His two textbooks, “The Art of Theatre: Then and Now” and “Experiencing the Art of Theatre” are in their second edition from Wadsworth (2010), and are in use at over 100 colleges and universities nationwide. In 2007 Erik was named a Kennedy Center Faculty Fellow for his work in new play development and in 2010 he was appointed as Director of Innovation, Research and Theory for WordBRIDGE Playwrights’ Laboratory. This past September he taught master classes in playwriting and play development technique at Lubimovka Playwrights Laboratory in Moscow, Russia.

The reading will be presented by the Brick Monkey Theatre Ensemble, southeast Ohio’s only professional theater company.  The reading will be directed by ensemble member David Haugen and will feature ensemble members Ledger Free and Rebecca VerNooy, and Zach Kopciak.