click to see plays to be produced this season
click to obtain tickets
click to read about past plays and responses
click to learn how to get to the theatre
click to view press packets
click to contact the theatre

 

Charles L. Mee

 

 

 

FIRST LOVE

by Charles L. Mee

October 29 - November 15
Thurs. & Fri. 8:00 pm
Sat. 2 pm and 8 pm
Sun.  6 pm

 

sometimes, you can't help it
where your heart takes you


FUSION Theatre Company continues its 2009-2010 “Audacity of Laughter Season” on Thursday October 29th, The Cell Theatre, 8:00 p.m., with the Southwest premiere of Charles L. Mee’s First Love. Doors open at 7:00 p.m. for an opening night catered reception. Reservations are highly recommended for this event.

Love can strike at any time, any place, anywhere. When they meet on a bench, Harold and Edith have lived a good amount of life and yet with all their baggage and ballast, Mr. Mee sets them teetering on the brink of memories, passions, and absurdities as a love story unfolds.

Expect one of the most beautiful and hilarious productions FUSION has ever produced: this is a special, delightful work that should not be missed. The production includes adult themes and language.

Contemporary playwright Charles Mee is noted for his collaborations with such eminent directors as Anne Bogart and Robert Woodruff. Mee is the recipient of the lifetime achievement award in drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and two OBIE Awards for Vienna: Lusthaus (1986) and Big Love (2002), He currently teaches playwriting at Columbia University.

I don't write "political plays" in the usual sense of the term; but I write out of the belief that we are creatures of our history and culture and gender and politics—that our beings and actions arise from that complex of influences and forces and motivations, that our lives are more rich and complex than can be reduced to a single source of human motivation. – Charles Mee

FUSION co-founder Laurie Thomas directs. FUSION newcomer and Tony Award nominee Joanne Camp takes on the role of "Edith" and company member Paul Blott fills the shoes of "Harold." Kate Costello rounds out the cast.

First Love continues through November 15th with Thursday through Friday performances at 8:00 p.m., Saturday at 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., and Sunday evenings at 6:00 p.m. Tickets are $30 for general admission, $25 for students and seniors. Thursday performances (excluding opening night) feature a $10.00 student rush (with valid I.D.) and $20 actor rush (with professional resume.) The first Saturday matinee October 31 is a pay-what-you-wish performance. Group discounts are also available. Free parking is plentiful. The Cell is located at 700 1st St. N.W. (just west of Broadway and south of Lomas.). For tickets, call 505-766-9412 or click here:

Substantial discounts are available when you purchase a


Pedal to the Stage!

BikeABQ is very excited to announce that on November 7, 2009, at 2 pm, the FUSION Theatre Company will host a special promotion “Pedal to the Stage” for their matinee performance of the Southwest premiere of Charles Mee’s First Love.

Free refreshments will be offered to those who cycle to the theatre, and best of all, $5 from each ticket sold to a cyclist will go to BikeABQ! So, on November 7th, have a fun ride downtown, enjoy a great afternoon of live theatre from the only professional theatre company in New Mexico and support your local bicycle advocacy organization. There is plenty of SAFE bicycle parking right in front of the theatre, and the staff at the FUSION Theatre Company will keep a watchful eye over all bicycles parked there.




click to view a YouTube production slideshow
photos © Richard K. Hogle


Barry Gaines, review, Albuquerque Journal:
"The FUSION Theatre Company production of First Love by Charles L. Mee challenges and delights its audiences. This three-person play, directed by Laurie Thomas, is an unconventional study of a conventional topic: the intensely joyous and searingly painful arc of falling in and out of love, especially for the first time. The acting is superb and the play provocative.

Charles L. Mee is a unique playwright. He has declared, "There is no such thing as an original play," and his works remind me of visual artists who construct their works from "found objects." First Love is like a collage of scenes and emotions with rough edges and sudden shifts. After reading the play (available free online), I was confused and concerned. It took the fine direction and performances to unlock the play's humor and reveal its authority.

The story is ancient and familiar. Harold is an old man, apparently homeless and adrift from his family that meant much to him. Edith is an aging woman who has not given up her dream of finding a man with whom to share her life. They meet when Edith demands room on a park bench where Harold is sleeping. A "cute meet."

They verbally spar with each other and find that they have a common past as anti-establishment protestors whose youthful visions for a better world have not come to fruition. They recite stanzas from Allen Ginsberg's Beat poem, "Howl," and dance to the socialist anthem "L'Internationale." They make love, fight, split and come together again. Moving in and out of these scenes is a beautiful young woman playing various roles that take us beyond the simple narrative. Kate Costello portrays the young woman with a beatific smile that suggests she possesses some vital knowledge.

Mee places his play in "the world of Magritte," the Belgian surrealist painter who paints ordinary objects in unusual contexts. Scenic and lighting designer Richard K. Hogle captures this surrealism in the undulating back wall of the set featuring realistic pictures and comments about love scrawled as graffiti.

Paul Blott and Joanne Camp who play Harold and Edith are younger and more attractive than the characters Mee envisioned, but they are excellent. Blott, familiar to Cell audiences, captures Harold's insecurities, uncertainties, and yearnings, as well as his youthful memories as he eyes Costello dressed as a ballerina.

Camp is a welcome newcomer to Albuquerque with a wealth of experience acting both on and off Broadway. Her portrayal of Edith is honest and brave, touching and teaching. It is Edith who experiences "First Love," and Camp is not afraid to display raw emotions — passion, fear, anger, joy — in her Edith. "


Elyse Sommer, review, Curtain Up Reviews:
"...First Love is an intense lament about the age-old mystery of why passion and contentment don't naturally coexist....This is first love through the eyes of Charles Mee who, since becoming a playwright in late middle age, has won many admirers for his cutting edge adaptations of Greek legends."


Catherine Scott Burriss, review, Johns Hopkins University Press:
"In the first half of 2001, Berkeley Repertory Theatre staged both Robert Fagles's translation of Aeschylus' Oresteia and Charles Mee's Big Love, an adaptation of Aeschylus' Danaid tetralogy. If this sudden grouping of Aeschylean tragedy had been a formal festival, Mee's dense but free-flowing one act adaptation would have easily taken first prize. The Suppliants, once considered the oldest extant Greek tragedy, is the surviving first play of Aeschylus' tetralogy; only fragments remain of the other plays. The narrative that Aeschylus treats is often described as the classic war of the sexes, but fortunately, in Mee's hands, nothing is that simple."


Jenny Sandman, Curtain Up Reviews:
"As a historian, Mee isn't afraid to let the trappings of the past illuminate the present. He is essentially his own dramaturg, and his depth of knowledge shows in his writing. All adaptations should be so well-informed. He is simultaneously a revisionist and a deconstructionist, tearing the play apart and then rebuilding it carefully. The emptiness at the center of his plays give his words space to breathe, affording them a subtle and lingering power. Stylistically, Mee's work is a cross between Mac Wellman, with his linguistic experimentation, and Vaclav Havel, with his deep appreciation of the world's absurdity."



"First Love" Cast


Joanne Camp

JOANNE CAMP* is thrilled to be working with FUSION Theatre Company having just moved to Albuquerque from New York City this August. Ms Camp’s NYC credits include Broadway: Dinner at Eight, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, The Sisters Rosensweig, The Heidi Chronicles (Drama Desk & Tony Award nominations), and Coastal Disturbances. Off-Broadway: 25 years as a member of The Pearl Theatre Company where she performed in over 50 productions playing roles ranging from "Atossa" in Aeschylus’ Persians, to "Beatrice" in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing to "Millamant" in Congreve’s The Way of the World to "Ranyevskaya" in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard to "Miss Prism" in The Importance of Being Ernest to "Albertine Prine" in Lillian Hellman’s Toys in the Attic and her work was recognized with an Obie Award for Continued Excellence and a Joseph A Callaway Award for Classical Performance; Geniuses (Clarence Derwent & Theatre World Awards), Painting Churches, As It Is In Heaven, and Lips Together, Teeth Apart. Film/TV: Private Parts, Law & Order, Damages, The Luckiest Man in the World, and Canterbury’s Law. Joanne has been a proud member of the Actors Equity Association since 1978.


Paul Blott

PAUL BLOTT* Originally from Los Angeles where he performed a variety of Shakespearean roles at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, Paul is a veteran of New Mexico theatre having appeared in many productions in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. He appeared with FUSION last season as "Father" in Sarah Ruhl's eurydice and “Willy Loman” in Death of a Salesman. He also starred in the Jury Award-winning "Gun Metal Blue Bar" and "Laying Off" in The Seven: That One Thing. He also performed in "Laying Off" at the Samuel French OOB in NYC. Previously, he was “Big Daddy” in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Paul’s film work includes Lightening Jack, Lazarus Man, Last Stand at Saber River, Bordertown, Wildfire, Beer for My Horses, Run for Her Life and the new USA series In Plain Sight. When not acting Paul and his wife Susie run their own herb business, Aroma Fresca.

Kate Costello
KATE COSTELLO^ returns to FUSION, having played "Little Stone" in last season's Sarah Ruhl's euydice as well as performing in The Seven: That One Thing and our touring production of Brad Gromelski's The Invention. She appeared in the first The Seven: Games People Play with FUSION, as well as numerous other productions nationally. Kate received her BA from UNM and her MFA from SMU in Dallas.
  * member Actors Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States
^ Equity Membership Candidate

You bet! I'd like to be reminded of coming events!
E-Mail:
     

 

 

click to learn more about FUSION Theatre
click to learn about our partners and friends
click to learn how to support FUSION Theatre
click to learn about education at FUSION Theatre
click to learn about auditions at FUSION Theatre
click to learn more about The New Works Fest

 

Laurie Thomas