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.
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
