cast-and-crew

WINNIE……………………… will be played by………… Ash

CASPIAN……………….…… will be played by………… Drum

DEL………………………………will be played by………… Asa

THAT ONE DUDE………..will be played by………….Foster

SPLENDID………… ………..will be played by………… Soe

REM……………………………. will be played by………… Birdy

MITTENS………………… …..will be played by…………Nancy

STREAMING HOST………will be played by…..……Stephen

ARTISTIC STATEMENT FOR ON THE BOARDS 06/06/26

Hello and welcome! Thank you for joining us tonight for AFTER THE WHALES SPOKE.

If you would like to follow along on your smartphone, a pdf of the script and a caption slide deck are available here:

You can also find audio descriptions of the artists, content descriptions and a trigger warning, and other details about the play on this site. You are welcome to move about the room if you want a better vantage point, just be aware of everyone around you. Feel free to sit up front on the floor if that is comfortable for you. Please keep your mask on for the whole show. If you need a break, go ahead outside and rejoin at your leisure.

Thanks Ash and Clara and LAVA for tonight’s opportunity. Thanks to Abbas, Terri and Emjoy for your artistic guidance and support. Thank you Haven, Elle, Sam and Tau for the very 1st read.

Thanks to Stephen Fructman and GCTV for providing tonight’s streaming services. Thanks to Mpress Bennu at WMBC, CanaryUK, and WakeUpAndSmelltheCovid for promoting tonight’s reading.

Thanks to Asa, Ash, Birdie, Drum, Foster, Nancy, Soe and Stephen, the cast & crew of “Whales”. Thanks to you, audience, for supporting small art. Here and on the stream. Thanks to my wife Maxine.

We will have a talkback following the reading. I hope you will share your experience of “AFTER THE WHALES SPOKE” with us. Please take food and drink outside to enjoy it. We are centering immuno-compromised folks tonight. Let’s actively, radically care for each other in this space.

I am a Clown, even as a Playwright.

I make structures for myself and other artists to play in. My scripts are “action series”: a list of items to be carried out by actors in front of an audience. These actions can include: tricks, turns, stage directions, dialogue, emotion, feats, dances. There are central themes and can be full on developed narrative, although the design is to evoke immediate visceral response. Direct action theater.

Radical inclusion is the unyielding central tenet of my work. What does access look like for all: performers, directors, designers, and audience? A keen awareness of who is and is not present, and a constant practice of welcoming and celebrating every partner as their full selves is the goal. How do we all be together?

My years in circus revealed balance is the most active state. My work wobbles in these contrasting ideas:

Raw and Refined

Chaotic and Ordered

Magnified and Specified.

Actors are asked to tell the story with an acute awareness of the environment and immediate access to impulses and responses. The way the story is told is the story. The finished script is only the start. There is only Poetry and Rebellion. Failure is the only option.

Molly B