Showing posts with label Giasone Grote. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Giasone Grote. Show all posts

Sunday, April 13, 2008

GroteQuote




If you’re going to attempt being at all au courant in the teeny tiny universe of live theater, there are certain blogs you’d best keep up with: Parabasis, for ex, and Histriomastix, for a very different ex. And of course there’s that raving blogophiliac Jason Grote, whose portrait (by Neil Numberman) graces this post. There is also the indispensable Bamboo Nation, whose evil (but darling) creator has trained me to check every single day, lest I miss his latest contest giveaway or Diablo Cody quip or new Pork Chop video.

Below is recent comment from Herr Grote'g blog that I appreciated.

Like many of us, I have a love/hate relationship with theater. It's like a bad romance that is occasionally pretty great, but usually frustrating and annoying. I've been thinking a lot about quitting lately, but every time I start to think seriously about it, some experience draws me back in - most recently, Woolly Mammoth's production of David Adjmi's Stunning, directed by Annie Kauffman, a phenomenal piece of work that I got to see last weekend.

I think, were I to quit (switching to screenwriting, comedy, and prose full-time), I'd miss the sense of instant gratification and collaboration that one gets from doing theater, but not much else. There is one place, however, that I would always come back to from whatever greener pastures call me, any time, and that place is Soho Rep. Last night I gave a speech to introduce the Writer/Director Lab reading of Mike Daisey's The Moon Is a Dead World.

If you’d like to read the full text of his appreciation of Soho Rep, here ‘tis.

Part of what I like about the above quote is that it mentions three of my favorite writers in just a few centimeters.

Even if I am miffed at Mike Daisey right now.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

For Your Eyes Only


Portland Center Stage’s
Now Hear This
invites you to a concert reading of

MARIA/STUART

a new play by Jason Grote

*

December 29, 2007
Noon to approximately 2 pm
@ Portland Center Stage
128 NW Eleventh Avenue (between Couch & Davis)

Admission is free, but space is very limited, so RSVP

Please call Megan Ward at (503) 445-3845 or e-mail meganw@pcs.org
to reserve your seat

-----------------------------

If you came to JAW last year, you’ll remember Jason Grote as the provocateur who brought us Box Americana. Jason writes smart, funny and imaginative dialogue that creates a world in which these vivid characters can play. His other plays include 1001, This Storm Is What We Call Progress, and Hamilton Township.

Maria/Stuart is a wild ride with a fabulously dysfunctional family. All families have secrets, but this one includes an inherited shapeshifting spook who faxes in unpleasant truths and has an unslakable thirst for soda. Grote uses Friedrich Schiller’s Maria Stuart as his inspiration, but the play is hardly an adaptation; it jumps off the deep end immediately to veer into terra incognita. Trust me, it’s a comedy!

Our outstanding cast includes:
JoAnn Johnson, Sharonlee McLean, Sarah Lucht, Karla Mason, Julie Jeske Murray and Chris Murray, with stage directions read by Stefan Kay