Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Before there was an AICN... before I met Harry Knowles... before I even had a computer and was online... I had my first real professional experience in Los Angeles as a playwright. And I loved it. There’s something singularly exhilarating about the rush of watching a production of something you’ve written play in front of a receptive audience. It’s such an immediate thing, such a sense of give and take with them, that it’s definitely a high.
When we got this letter tonight, I immediately had to smile. I have no idea if this guy’s play is any good or not. But I admire his sense of pride in what he’s done, and it sounds like something that might be worth checking out. If anyone in New York makes it to the play, drop us a line and tell us what you think. In the meantime, let me hand over the mic so he can make his case directly to you:
Before there was an AICN... before I met Harry Knowles... before I even had a computer and was online... I had my first real professional experience in Los Angeles as a playwright. And I loved it. There’s something singularly exhilarating about the rush of watching a production of something you’ve written play in front of a receptive audience. It’s such an immediate thing, such a sense of give and take with them, that it’s definitely a high.
When we got this letter tonight, I immediately had to smile. I have no idea if this guy’s play is any good or not. But I admire his sense of pride in what he’s done, and it sounds like something that might be worth checking out. If anyone in New York makes it to the play, drop us a line and tell us what you think. In the meantime, let me hand over the mic so he can make his case directly to you:
When we got this letter tonight, I immediately had to smile. I have no idea if this guy’s play is any good or not. But I admire his sense of pride in what he’s done, and it sounds like something that might be worth checking out. If anyone in New York makes it to the play, drop us a line and tell us what you think. In the meantime, let me hand over the mic so he can make his case directly to you:
Harry & Gang,
A proclamation: with few exceptions, sci-fi just doesn't work on stage.
Sure, you have plays that use genre elements, such as THE SEARCH FOR INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE, the long-running Lily Tomlin vehicle, but here the genre's just a gag to get you into the show, a fantastic framework that quickly brings its subject matter back down to earth. Aside from the occasional Bradbury adaptation (like the one-acts currently playing TheatreWest in LA), and dusty historical precedents like Karl Capek's R.U.R. (where we get the term "robot") true-blue sci-fi doesn't make it in the theatre.
Until now.
On June 22nd, at 2 pm, at the prestigious New York Stage & Film Festival (held at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY), there will be a staged reading of my play, THE PLANET ON 158th STREET. For those who don't know, this festival is a huge incubator for new shows, many of which are instantly scooped up by agents and producers for production. Lots of influential eyes and ears will be experiencing PLANET that weekend. What will they get?
PLANET is the story of Lester Corley, a farmboy who moves to NYC in 1941 with dreams of becoming an artist. There he meets a new group of friends - alcoholics, Communists, and social workers. Lester lands a job writing stories for a sci-fi pulp magazine, and in an alternating storyline, one of his naive "Buck Rogers"style stories come to life, with actors assuming dual roles (because the characters are inspired by the friends around him).
And that's when a strange amnesiac drops into their world, a fragile and confused man they call John Doe, who remembers nothing about his past but carries with him haunting visions of impending catastrophe: mushroom clouds, sinister gas chambers, and two gigantic towers, broken and smoldering against a very familiar skyline ...
Terrifying otherworldly radio broadcasts straight out of an Orson Welles nightmare. A severed robot head that peers through other dimensions. A tin rocketship on a string that may hold the deadliest weapon in the universe. Make no mistake about it: PLANET is pure unadulterated sci-fi, imaginatively staged, with a final vision of infinite universes that is as terrifying as it is comforting.
PLANET is loosely inspired by the Futurians - that group of NYC writers who took sci-fi by storm. I'm talking Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight, Fred Pohl, Judith Merrill, and other hangers-on like A.E. Van Vogt and L. Ron Hubbard. Picture them in their early days - young, innocent, but hopeful enough to dream the dreams they gave us. All of them are gone now. I'd like to think that, in some parallel world or afterlife, they'd approve of what this play is doing.
I'm trying to get people back into the theater. In a world of superstar CGI-multiplex billion-dollar fodder, this is probably a fool's game. But I'm grinning ear-to-ear as I write this, because we staged a workshop production a few months ago at Carnegie Mellon University, and it went over like gangbusters. I'm talking sold-out, standing-room-only shows, competely generated by word of mouth. The sensa-wonder excitement that only live theater can deliver.
Attached is a press photo from this workshop production. We had a budget of something like twelve bucks, but we made it look like a million.
At the very least, thanks for reading this. And keep up the good work.
Thrive,
Clark Perry, author
"The Planet on 158th Street"
Good luck with it, Clark, and I hope we hear back from the audience about it. Now you’ve got me curious...
"Moriarty" out.
