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7 Sorceries.

Help Desk Help Synopsis
Set in a 21st century’s version of a coal mine, the play explores the impact of Information Technology on those people who hold and support IT. All day, every day, screens and recording devices monitor and shape our perceptions and out understanding of reality. Connecting with each other in visceral ways, those working in the into tech industry struggling to ward off psychological and spiritual damages from their perpetual immersion in a world devoid of mystery, darkness and sleep.

Help Desk Help

Cast & Crew

Production Team
Guy Zimmerman - Padua Playwrights Artistic Director/Producer
Gabrieal Griego - Production Manager/Lighting Designer
Dean Petrakis - Playwright/Director
Julio Rodriguez - Technical Director/Stage Manager
Laura Forst - Tech Stage Manager
Ashley McFall - Lighting Consultant
Lyn Gaza - Set Designer
Chavis Humphries - Box Office

Cast
Darrett Sanders - Ted
Kevin Brian - Neil
Susan Spano - Tiffany
Evan Blackford - Bob

Help Desk Help – Clip 1:

Help Desk Help – Clip 2:

Red Milk Canyon Synopsis
Residents in a cozy canyon in the San Fernando Valley begin dying from a mysterious poison that may or may not relate to the history of the two and its proximity to Spahn Ranch. The remaining people don’t want their hamlet to turn into a ghost town, and they fiercely hold on to a new way of living, some through promiscuity, others in various states of disease, or with new characteristics. Newcomers are welcome, especially if they practice tolerance with the odd and strange. The residents of Red Milk Canyon learn that home is something that you can always reinvent.

Red Milk Canyon

Cast & Crew

Production Team
Guy Zimmerman - Padua Playwrights Artistic Director/Producer
Gabrieal Griego - Production Manager/Lighting Designer
Sharon Yablon - Playwright/Director
Julio Rodriguez - Technical Director/Stage Manager
Laura Forst - Tech Stage Manager
Ashley McFall - Lighting Consultant
Aubrey Schoeman - Choreographer
Chavis Humphries - Box Office

Cast
Sarah Lyddan - Beth
Suzanne Elizabeth Fletcher - Paula
Robert Stoccardo - Cole
Alexandra Freeman - Thea
Lisa Denke - Brenda
Evan Blackford - Timmy
Jesse Fair - Berman
Aubrey Schoeman - The Ghost Of Susan Atkins/Water Fairy

Red Milk Canyon – Clip 1:

Red Milk Canyon – Clip 2:

The Accountant Synopsis
Alba loves numbers and mathematics. For her entire life she has embraced everything from compulsive counting, to the observation of the formulaic nature of everyday thought, to an interest in the central role math has played in philosophies and cosmologies. But then, in the sudden disappearance of her beloved daughter she finds herself following her obsession into a passionate relationship that revises everything.

The Accountant

Cast & Crew

Production Crew
Guy Zimmerman - Padua Playwrights Artistic Director/Producer
Gabrieal Griego - Production Manager
Nathan Birnbaum - Playwright/Director/Props
Kelly Egan - Stage Manager
Mecca Vazie Andrews - Choreography Consultant
Raul Staggs - Casting Consultant
Tina Preston - Costume Consultant
Monica Palacios - Dramaturgy Consultant
Ashley McFall - Lighting Consultant
Chavis Humphries - Box-Office

Cast
Rose Portillo - Alba
Tina Preston - Siofra
Julie Fletcher - Rita-Brianna
Jacob Sidney - Nathan
Tony DeCarlo - Dewlap
Christine Breihan - Tiff
Tania Verified - Morisa

The Hillary Game
In a remote military facility somewhere in the American Southwest, two characters play out drone warfare training scenarios involving a kidnapped Hillary Clinton. As the scenarios merge with their actual lives, the characters look for ways to step off of a “kill chain” of their own.

The Hillary Game - 2016

Cast & Crew

Production Team
Guy Zimmerman - Padua Playwrights Artistic Director/Producer/Playwright/Director
Gabrieal Griego - Production Manager/Lighting Designer
Co-Director
Julio Rodriguez - Technical Director/Stage Manager
Laura Forst - Tech Stage Manager
Ashley McFall - Lighting Consultant
John Zalewski - Sound Designer
Alex Hoffman - Video Designer
Chavis Humphries - Assistant Stage Manager/Box Office

Cast
Darrell Larson - O
Alana Dietze - H

Categories
Productions

Villon

Villon

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Casting the Lead in Villon | More Videos
Hear our KCRW spot! [.mp3]

“Masterful and intriguing”
Examiner.com Read in full

“Witty and entertaining … check it out!”
The Los Angeles Post Read in full

“Humorous, energetic, and highly physical … [The] cast comprises of LA stage vets make sturdy, faithful companions to Mednick and his kaleidoscopic theatermaking.”
Arts In LA Read in full

VILLON

Written and Directed by Murray Mednick

“[Villon is] portrayed with gleeful lack of repentance by charismatic Kevin Weisman”
Los Angeles Times

“Murray Mednick’s sharp, cynical comedy … the dialogue crackles with quirky, non sequitur jokes and snarky repartee”
Stage and Cinema

Murder, mayhem and poetry. Award-winning, visionary playwright Murray Mednick brings his unique sensibility to the hair-raising, sometimes violent and often hilarious exploits of François Villon. Follow the 15th century poet and his gang of bandits, vagabond priests and swordsmen-courtiers through the treacherous forests of medieval France.

Inspired by the life of France’s infamous poet/criminal

Starring Peggy Ann Blow, Alana Dietze, Troy Dunn, Geoffrey Dwyer, Carl J. Johnson, Gray Palmer, Christopher Rivas and Kevin Weisman as VILLON

Scenic Design Keith Mitchell
Lighting Design Matt Richter
Costume Design Adriana Lambarri
Sound Design John Zalewski
Properties Design Elizabeth Gibson
Assistant Director Laura Manchester
Production Stage Manager Kathleen Mae Meler
Assistant Stage Manager Chris Mertan
Publicity Lucy Pollak
Marketing C. Raul Espinoza
Executive Producer Guy Zimmerman
Producer Laura Hill

Previews: February 13 & 14 ($15)
Opening: February 15 thru March 23 ($30)
Please Note: No performance on March 2. Added matinee on March 1 at 2pm.

Buy tickets at the Odyssey Theatre or call (310) 477-2055 x2
2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
More Theatre Info

SPECIAL PRICING
Pay What You Can – Sundays February 23 and March 9 ($5 minimum)
Special Student Rate $18 – First 3 weekends (thru March 1) – Use code STUDENT

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Productions

The Black Glass

The Black Glass

PRESS

The Black Glass“Bentham’s nightmare, well-enacted by the performers in Zimmerman’s choreographic staging and with the support of John Zalewski’s haunting sound design, is that of a doomed man trying to reckon with his multidimensional bankruptcy.”
LA WEEKLY

“Such an enigmatic, elliptical narrative risks leaving audiences bewildered but not edified. The Black Glass’ mystique instead casts a definite spell over its spectators.”
CREATIVE LOAFING (ATLANTA)

“The Black Glass” develops a surprisingly powerful poetry of tangled expectations…It isn’t so much a play as an abstract painting that uses theatrical action instead of brushstrokes: it invites that sort of contemplation and meditation.”
ARTSATL (ATLANTA)


“Los Angeles-based playwright Guy Zimmerman’s theatrical “exploded noir” makes its international debut in Berlin.”
EXBERLINER (BERLIN)

“The strongest thing I’ve seen in a Berlin theater.”
LIVEKRITIK.DE (BERLIN)

PHOTOS

The Black Glass

The Black Glass

The Black Glass

The Black Glass

The Black Glass

The Black Glass

The Black Glass

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Productions

The Fool & The Red Queen

The Fool & The Red Queen

PRESS

“The second play takes us inside the film being conjured in the first work. In the conjunction of the two works, handsomely staged with expert video support by Guy Zimmerman in tones both laconic and whimsical, the theme of genocide and a sadomasochistic relationship between the Red Queen (Julia Prud’homme in a viciously jocular turn) and her Fool (Bill Celentano, bursting with both intelligence and frustration at the capricious cruelty of his mistress) blend into a phantasmagoric vision of world history and contemporary L.A. that shoots darts of humor into its own despondency.”
Steven Leigh Morris (LA Weekly)

“With fine direction by Mednick and Guy Zimmerman and a noteworthy cast, the play is an intriguingly magical odyssey that may not suit everyone’s tastebuds, but which will certainly compel, entertain, and maybe even enlighten.”
Don Grigware (BroadwayWorld)

“The Fool and the Red Queen embodies the wonderful alchemy possible when a lifetime of craft is mixed with a still youthful experimentation with form.”
Anthony Byrnes (KCRW)

“An indefatigable gadfly, Mednick has been flying in the face of theatrical convention since the 1960s. Judging from this defiantly offbeat effort, custom has not staled his infinite variety.”
F. Kathleen Foley (LA Times)

“If the celebration of the power of poetic logic sounds like something exciting to you, go see Mednick’s play. It truly is a delight for the mind.”
Gala Chausson (LifeInLA)

“The Fool and the Red Queen, which opened May 19 and runs through June 24th as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival is a wonderful amalgam of theater, poetry and (if you are so inclined and willing to go with it a bit) therapy that deserves more than one viewing. I have seen it twice so far and plan to see it again.”
James Eliopulos (The Los Angeles Beat)

“Both plays, “Gary’s Nightmarish Audition” and the “The Fool and the Red Queen” relate to one another in such subtle but powerfully intrinsic ways that one can view these as a conversation between shifting realities and the artistic process.”
M.R. Hunter (EyeSpyLA)

“The Fool and the Red Queen” is a sinfully smart show written with poetry and passion, perfectly produced, and presenting its audience with fifty pounds of “wow” in a ten pound bag.”
Ernest Kearney (Working Author)

VIDEO


PHOTOS

The Fool & The Red Queen

The Fool & The Red Queen

The Fool & The Red Queen

The Fool & The Red Queen

The Fool & The Red Queen

The Fool & The Red Queen

The Fool & The Red Queen

The Fool & The Red Queen

The Fool & The Red Queen

Categories
Productions

Girl on a Bed (Film)

In Girl on a Bed a young drug user, Danny Boy (Andy Hopper), wakes to find himself in a room with the body of a girl who has died of a heroin overdose. This is Laura (played by Niamh McCormally) a sensitive and intelligent American teen. To Danny’s horror, he recognizes Laura from a pornographic movie that was playing on the TV earlier. Frightened into sobriety, Danny tells his father (Gary) the harrowing story of the girl. A few days later Danny himself is shot dead in a local park, apparently at random. The deaths of these two young people send Gary (Christopher Allport) on a search for meaning across a sun-drenched Southern California landscape haunted by ghosts.

Using innovative staging, photographic and editing techniques, and a talented ensemble of actors, director Guy Zimmerman gives playwright Murray Mednick’s evocative text visceral impact. The movie features unique production design by Jeffrey Atherton, who also works closely with D.P. Scott Galinsky to bring Gary’s inner world to life on screen. Cutting-edge editor Jed Parker completes the creative team. Girl on a Bed was produced by Guy Zimmerman and T Keaton-Woods.

Girl on a Bed

Original Music composed by: Don Preston

Additional music by: Arvo Part, Olivier Messiaen, Martha Mooke, Inara George,
Thee Eyes and Oliver Future

CAST

Gary: Christopher Allport
Laura: Niamh McCormally
Danny: Andy Hopper
Rondell: Hugh Dane
Antonio: David Carrera
Marcia/Gloria/Mrs. Williams: Shannon Holt
Dr. Jones: Gray Palmer
Monica: Shawna Casey
Charles: Jack Kehler
Rena: Devon Carson

CREW

Written by: Murray Mednick
Directed by: Guy Zimmerman
Produced by: Guy Zimmerman & T Keaton-Woods
Line Producer/Production Manager: Dayla Corcoran
1st AD: Leslie Kyle Becker
Director of Photography: Scott Galinsky
Director of Photography: Jeffrey Atherton
1st AC: Michael Kershner
2nd AC: Adam Instefjord
Production Designer: Jeffrey Atherton
Sound Mixer: Mondo Vila
1st Boom Operator: Craig Wade
2nd Boom Operator: Hector Quevedo
Additonal Sound Mixing: Robert Oriol
Gaffer: Ignacio “Nacho” Trujillo
Key Grip: Daniel Cutroneo
Grip: John Toom
Grip: Lance Oyabu
Script Supervisor: Rosalyne A. Smith
Costume Designer: Erin Farrell
Asst Costumer: Chad McNutt
Make-Up Artist/Hair Stylist: Amy L. Forsythe
Properties Mistress: Kathryn L. Bucher
Properties Coordinator: Marta Jennings
RP Playback Supervisor: William John Sims
Editor: Jed Parker
Graphics and Titles: La Mer Walker
Key Set PA: Devon Carson
Rear Projections Editor: Kathleen Abing
Production Assistant: Edward Schlesinger
Steadicam Operator: Jon Myers S.O.C.
Stills: Neil A. France
Strike Crew: Joe Wolf
Evan Pesses
David Gamble
Catering by: John Woodard Catering

“Fratres” by Arvo Part
Performed by Don Preston and Harry Scorzo

“Praise Eternity” by Olivier Messiaen
Performed by Don Preston and Harry Scorzo

“Drifting” and “Winds of Arden”
Written and Performed by Martha Mooke

“No Poem” and “Everybody Knows”
Written and Performed by Inara George

“Nice Nice Nice”
Written and Performed by Thee Eyes

“Slow Down Slow Down”
Written and Performed by Oliver Future

Music Supervisor: Jed Parker

Special thanks to Norbert Weisser and Morgan Weisser.

Special Thanks also
Will Urie, David “Bubba” Jarrell, Robert Sharp, Reece Glover, Payton Ewing, Alicia Hoge, Jason Adams, Tom Robertson, Screen Actors Guild, Kish of Kish Optics, Steve Melton, Joan Zierler, Joel Shapiro, Miranda Morton Yap, Aletia Ferreira, Ken Wolf, Jenny Bright, Michael Hacker, The Electric Lodge, Neil A. France, Michael Plesh, Neil Hurwitz, Bega Metzner, Keegan Shea, Steve Anker, Mark Litwak, Kathleen Abing, Matt and Jason at the ATO House.

Categories
Productions

WinterFest 2012

WinterFest 2012Winterfest 2011 is the latest in a series of projects back through 2008 marking Padua Playwrights ongoing collaboration with LADAD Space and the downtown arts community. To one degree or another each of these productions has been an exploration of the possibilities for artistic cross-pollination between playwrights, visual artists and musicians. Looking forward we hope to focus and deepen these explorations in the years ahead as part of the downtown arts community and, hopefully, also as a part of an actual community arts center – an arts “incubator” – in the arts district. By attending these events, the public joins in this collaborative effort at its most crucial focal point, providing invaluable feedback and inspiration.

Guy Zimmerman
Artistic Director
Padua Playwrights

Categories
Productions Publications

Beneath the Dusty Trees – The Gary Plays

Beneath the Dusty TreesBy Murray Mednick
Introduction by Guy Zimmerman

The Gary Plays are an octet of plays portraying economic and spiritual distress in the contemporary urban wilderness of Los Angeles. The series was inspired by a friend of the playwright whose son died in a drug deal gone wrong under the “dusty trees” of the San Fernando Valley. The series begins as Gary, an unemployed actor down on his luck, visits the park where his son was shot, apparently at random. Struggling with murderous rage, he is joined by two “choral” figures, internalized voices that re-enact painful memories and goad him toward a moment of surrender. Each of the subsequent Gary Plays explores different aspects of this core relationship – Gary and his “chorus” – Mednick exploring the full range of theatrical possibilities opened by this modernist resurrection of the classical Greek chorus.

“A staging of “The Gary Plays,”…is one of the most engaging and ambitious local theater events of the past few seasons…. Mednick’s Gary is a sort of L.A. Leopold Bloom… The Los Angeles River may be a mere trickle compared to the River Liffey, but “The Gary Plays” surge with a desire to find—in the seemingly mundane wanderings of one man—the very soul of a city.”

—James C. Taylor, KCRW Theatre Talk

“A playwright’s playwright…Mednick has spent his career at the forefront of avant-garde theater.”

—Sandra Ross, LA Weekly

“Mednick’s characters lean fully into their own confusion, in search of transformation, and these plays, from the middle of his career, embrace the idea that theater, like poetry or music, is meant to inspire those it engages.”

—Guy Zimmerman, Artistic Director, Padua Playwrights

Padua Playwrights Press
Distributed by Theatre Communications Group, New York
ISBN 0-9630126-8-1
$16.95

Categories
Productions Publications

Fever Dreams: Recent Work From Padua

Fever Dreams: Recent Work From PaduaFever Dreams: Recent Work From Padua
Introduction by Guy Zimmerman

Resurrected in 2001 by artistic director Guy Zimmerman, Padua offers ten superb plays including work from the last nine seasons, 2001 through 2010. Included in the anthology:

Sissy Boyd – Liddy
Hank Bunker – The Interview
Heidi Darchuk – Hotel Bardo(t)
Murray Mednick – Clown Show for Bruno and Destruction of the 4th World
John Steppling – Phantom Luck and Spanish Angel
Sharon Yablon – The Empty Bed
Rita Valencia – A New World War
Guy Zimmerman – Head Trader and The Inside Job

“If Hollywood movies present to the world a picture of Los Angeles – of America, even — then the Padua playwrights (many of them working in television and film) present an anti-picture. They are a collective of wordsmiths who represent one of the city’s most authentic, legitimate theater voices…The Padua playwrights embody a true voice of L.A., as Steppenwolf embodies a voice of Chicago. The mythology Padua conjures, as a group, starts with Los Angeles as an emblem of vanity, hubris and celebrity. The invariable comedy comes, of course, from L.A.’s larger context in the scorching, blinding Mojave Desert, a no-man’s land with a grandeur that belittles would-be kings and actors with equally ferocious apathy.”

-Steven Leigh Morris, Theater Editor, LA Weekly

“Intense, language-based work that gives more weight to words than situation or plot.”

-Theatre.com

Padua Playwrights Press

Distributed by Theatre Communications Group, New York
ISBN 0-9630126-9-X
$18.95