Theatre: The Few written and directed by Samuel D. Hunter, Play-Per-View in conjunction with Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
Play-Per-View has jumped to the front of the line providing electifying readings of acclaimed Off-Broadway plays for one night. This past Saturday they reunited the original 2014 cast of Samuel Hunter’s The Few with proceeds going to its original company Rattlestick. This was on my radar but the timing didn’t work and I was overjoyed to catch up with it here.
Bryan (Michael Laurence) washes up at the offices of the newspaper for truckers he helped found with QZ (Tasha Lawrence) and left her holding the bag years ago two days after the funeral of their third founder and best friend. In the intervening years, QZ turned the paper into a legitimate news source and even (marginally) profitable.
The triangle’s completed by the paper’s newer employee Matthew (Gideon Glick), a true believer on the run from a toxic homelife and broken in ways QZ and Michael know all too well. The Few is the kind of cry into the void I’m a particular sucker for. A paean and a ritual for human connection even in the face of all the pain tied up with it.
It’s beautifully acted: Laurence’s increasingly desperate pleas that “It’s all bullshit” and the anguish at what his old friend was capable of. QZ’s simmering rage at the disrespect she faces at doing the best she could and being played over and over. And Matthew’s youthful hope that he can use this paper to mean what it meant to him as a lonely kid. The writing is finely honed and lived in, with recordings of personal ads used as punctuation.
I’m glad when anyone makes theatre in the face of the requirement to stay apart from one another and I’m glad to see productions given new life in a way that doesn’t turn into the devalued nature of the sea of streaming.
Live Music: Nief-Norf Virtual Marathon 2020
I first became acquainted with Nief-Norf through their partnership with fellow Knoxville New Music institution The Big Ears Festival. Taking a page from similarly hiatused summer festival Bang on a Can, they threw a remarkable party drawing together composers, instrumentalists, alumni, performing new and classic work.
The charming interviews didn’t just add context, they reminded the audience of the role community plays in any art scene. The most crucial thing that’s in danger of being lost if funds dry up and institutions (from university programs to the bar down the street that hosts a jam session every Tuesday) go out of business are these connections, these memories, the sense that new generations want to be involved because it’s fun and fulfilling.
And the music, the main course, was astonishing. Highlights in the three hours I was able to catch included cellist Ashley Walters’ rolling, crackling tensions in her riveting take on Nicholas Deyoe’s Another Anxiety; Andrea Lodge’s meditative, warm reading of Annea Lockwood’s Red Mesa; and Joshua Weinberg and Philip Snyder’s glittering look at Flutronix’s Brown Squares.
Screen of Distance 