Season

Short Eyes

HB Studio Production of Short Eyes

Playwright: Miguel Pinero

Director: William Carden

Cast: Ted Brunson, Cooley, Doc Dougherty, Ian Friday, Danny Gonzales, H. Clark Kee, Rey Lucas, Joseph Murphy, Andre Royo, Otto Sanchez, Alem Brhan Sapp, Bill Timmins, Guy Whitlock

Set: Ray Recht Lightning: Chris Dallos Costumes: Tonya Canada Sound: Becca Blackwell Fight: Ian Marshall Technical Director: Carlo Adonolfi Casting: Nadette Stasa Production Stage Manager: Kimberly I. Kefgen

Short Eyes was performed November 5th – 22nd

Synopsis: This powerful drama of prison life is set in a house of detention where a group of young convicts-predominantly black and Puerto Rican-taunt, fight, insult, and entertain one another in an attempt to preserve their sanity and to create a semblance of community. When a young white prisoner accused of child molesting is thrown into the cell block by a guard who says he belongs in Sing Sing because “the men up there konw what to do with degenerates like you,” the stage is set for an explosive series of events; for, among prisoners, this child molester called “short eyes” is the lowest of criminals.

Uncle Philip’s Coat

An HB Studio Production

Playwrights: Matty Selman, Larry Block

Director: Marcia Jean Kurtz

Set: Ray Recht Lighting: Chris Dallos Stage Management: Vienna Hagen Costume Design: Chris Field Artistic Director: William Carden Technical Director: Carlo Adinolfi Assistant Set Designer: Andris Krumkalns Associate Stage Manager: Avocado Pitt Assistant Stage Managers: Gene Kuhn, Madelyn Haward

Uncle Philip’s Coat was performed November 5th – 9th, 13th – 16th, 20th – 23rd

Synopsis: A young man inherits a tattered coat from his Uncle Philip, a Coney Island peddler who survived a pogrom. What begins as the young man’s journey to rid himself of the decrepit garment ends up in revelations about his family’s history. He finds new meaning in his own life as the old coat becomes the sacred coat of dreamers.

The Motel Plays

Playwrights: Neena Beber, Donna deMatteo, Alex Gersten, Julie McKee, Lisa Maria Radano, Ari Roth, James Ryan, Kathleen Tolan and Tug Yourgrau The Motel Plays - HB Studio Playwright Theatre

Directors: Donna deMatteo, William Carden, Deborah Hedwall, Julie McKee, Maria Mileaf, Shira Piven, Lisa Maria Radano, Ben Shaktman and Amy Wright

Cast: Tom Bazar, Gerry Becker, Peter Birkenhead, Elaine Bromka, Elizabeth Bunch, Michael Countryman, Rosemary DeAngelis, Drea deMatteo, Todd Gearheart, Alexandra Gersten, Frank Girardeau, Nurit Koppel, Sheryl Moller, Carole Monferdini, Pippa Pearthree, Sheryl Sciro, David Simonds, Irma St.Paule, Kathleen Tolan, Welker White and Amy Wright

Set: Ray Recht Sound: Robert Auld Lighting: Chris Dallos Costume: Chris Field Production Stage Managers: Vienna Hagen, Paul Powell, Jorge Colon, Cheryl Lawson, Robert Valin, Yukako Yamazoe

The Motel Plays were performed June 13th – 29th of 1997.

Plays:

The Ruse: Hal, a lonely man staying in a motel room, and Bryna, a motel maid, make a connection.

The Heart transplant: In a Miami motel, two women named Jen and Nina await an important medical procedure.

Motel Story: Two old friends reflect on their lives and their love for each other.

The Daffodils: An older hotel maid gives life advice to a younger co-worker.

Bright Angel: Gina, a traveling pregnant woman, who had a panic attack, converses with a motel maid about life.

Prelude to a Crisis: In a faculty room, a teacher and student has a discussion regarding their personal lives and how they impact in the classroom.

Warm Love: In a motel room, a man and an older woman who have been having an affair come to a revelation.

The Wax: Angie is a sexually repressed woman who meets with her old friend Kate who gives her marriage advice.

Mid-Life: Mark and Deena, two co-workers, meet in a motel room, and discuss their previous traumas and insecurities.

Marina

An HB Special Showcase of a Work-in-Progress

Playwright: Maria A. Suckaite

Director: Jonas Jurasas

Cast: Laura Esterman

Marina was performed December 2nd – 4th

A play based of the poetry, diaries, and letters of Marina Tsvetaeva.

Boy Dies Dancing Mambo

An HB Studio Performance

Playwright: Arthur Giron

Director: Elinor Renfield

Cast: James Doerr, Felix Solis, Olivia Negron, Forrest Compton, Eddie Lew, Miguel Melendez

Set: Edmund A. LeFevre Lights: Chris Dallos Sound: Robert Auld Costume: Christine Field Stage Manager: Vienna Hagen

Boys Dies Dancing Mambo was performed March 28th – April 13th, 1996

The Young Girl and the Monsoon

An HB Studio Staged Reading

Playwright: James Ryan

Director:

Cast:

The Young Girl and the Monsoon was performed during the 1994-1995 season

Synopsis: Growing up is hard to do particularly if you are a pre-adolescent girl in Manhattan living with a photo-journalist father reeling from a messy divorce. Constance is a thirteen-year-old torn by life and stretched between parents, struggling through those daunting rites of passage which none of us finds easy. Things aren’t all smooth-sailing for her father, Hank, thirty-nine, who is attempting to provide an anchor for Constance, while also working to get his own life into some kind of order, especially regarding his recent serious relationship with a younger woman, Erin, twenty-six. If Constance has only Hank for guidance, then Hank only has Giovanna, thirty-eight, a tempestuous colleague and genuine friend, with whom Hank has an off and on (chiefly off) affair. This romantic comedy turns on Hank’s efforts to find enough room in his life for both Constance and Erin, and achieve the balance and maturity that have, so far, eluded him.”

Left on Flatbush

An HB Studio Staged Reading

Playwright: Rick Lieberman

Director: Susan Einhorn

Cast: Larry Block, Arthur Francesco, Peter Smith

Set: Ray Recht Lighting: Chris Dallos Costume: Muriel Stockdale Sound: Robert Auld Production Stage Manager: Vienna Hagen Technical Director: Carlo Adinolfi Fight Choreographer: Ian Marshall Assistant Set Designer: Andris Krumkalns Assistant to the Director: Tony Martinez Assistant Stage Manager: Julie Cook House Managers: Trudy Steibl, David Adams, Glen Berman, Danette Pachtner, Gregory Pilot, Stephanie Sundine

Left on Flatbush was performed May 11th – 12th, 16th – 19th, 21st – 26th

Geography of a Horse Dreamer

An HB Studio Staged Reading

Playwright: Sam Shepard

Director:

Cast:

Geography of a Horse Dreamer was performed during the 1994-1995 season

Synopsis: Betsy sings, Jeremy plays, and Josh watches in this play about love, lies and piano teaching. Jeremy, a young musician who tutors spoiled, rich kids to make ends meet, tells his friend Josh that a student’s mother, a third rate junior miss Ann Bancroft straight out of ‘The Graduate’, is being suggestive. Josh is a former musician who has become a sedentary voyeur with a torch of his own. Envious of Jeremy’s domestic bliss with Betsy, he urges Jeremy to go forward with the encounter. Betsy, a proof reader by day and a jazz singer by night, is waking up to her husband’s and her own restiveness when a smooth record producer offers her a ticket to hear Koko Taylor at the Blue Note while offering Jeremy a trip to the west coast for sound track auditions. Josh, left to protect Betsy against Zev the wolf, suffers a conflict of passion of his own.

Below the Belt

An HB Staged Reading

Playwright: David Dresser

Director:

Below the Belt was performed during 1994-1995 season

Synopsis: Judd Hirsch starred in this hilarious Off Broadway comedy set in a soulless corporate world. Dobbitt has been posted to a dismal, distant place, a grim industrial compound that uncomfortably resembles a prison where his quarters have bunks (one freezing cold and the other boiling hot), a table, and an ancient typewriter. He is a checker; he checks though he has no idea what is being made with an irascible coworker who has been in this place for years. Their inept boss possesses a singular talent for fomenting dissent. The comic interplay among these men, one bullying and truculent, one ambitious and evasive, and the third a trembling mass of insecurity and arrogance, is irresistibly funny. As they comically maneuver in their pointless quest for status, sinister little animals encroach on the compound.