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August 6th, 2009
 Julie Layton Actress Julie Layton will slam theater’s most celebrated door when she portrays Nora in the St. Louis Actors’ Studio production of “A Doll’s House.”
Written by Henrik Ibsen in 1879, “A Doll’s House” was a scandal in its own time. Today, it is hailed as an early, brilliant exploration of the life of an “ordinary” wife and mother frustrated by her lack of independence.
Layton’s real-life husband, R. Travis Estes, will costar as Nora’s husband; Milt Zoth, artistic director of the studio, will direct.
The play belongs to a season dedicated to issues of love and honor — in different eras and from drastically different perspectives. Classics and new plays, dramas and comedies will be included. Most plays will be staged at the Studio’s home, the Gaslight Theatre, 358 North Boyle.
The 2009-10 season opens with Neil Simon’s charming story of lovers new and reunited at a resort in the 1950s, “Proposals” (Oct. 2-18). Zoth directs “Proposals” and the next play, Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons” (Dec. 4-20). The dramatic retelling of King Henry VIII’s struggle with Sir Thomas More — a struggle that involved Henry’s break with Rome and the establishment of the Church of England — will star Christopher Lawyer as the king and William Roth as More. Roth is the Studio’s producing director. “A Man for All Seasons” will play at the Missouri History Museum in Forest Park.
The new year opens with “Love Song” (Jan. 8-24), an oddball comedy by John Kolvenbach about a man who falls for the woman who burglarizes his apartment. Jason Cannon directs the play, which stars Aaron Orion Baker as the man and Sarah Cannon (Jason Cannon’s wife) as the robber.
Strange relationships continue with Neil LaBute’s “The Shape of Things” (Feb. 19-March 7), a romance (if that is the word) about an art student and the boyfriend she treats as an aesthetic project. Shanara Gabrielle and Billy Kelly star; Roth directs.
That’s followed by “A Doll’s House” (April 19-25). Then the season winds up with a new, multi-media piece written and by Joan Lipkin in collaboration with the cast, “The State of Marriage” (June 4-20). Lipkin also directs.
Season tickets are $125, or $100 for students and older adults. For more information, call 314-458-2978, or visit stlas.org online.
by Judith Newmark, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Below is the link to the blog zone article.
http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/culture-club/?p=1799
Tags: central west end, gaslight theatre, Judith Newmark, julie layton, post dispatch, St. Louis Actors' Studio, theater
Posted in Actors, Performances, St. Louis
June 6th, 2009
 "Outsides The Lines" Playwright Gerry Mandel This marks my second season working with St. Louis Actors’ Studio. Last year, their first, involved a series of improv workshops over several months, with some wonderful actors. Not that I’m an improv actor, but the process provided excellent material for my written contribution to the original production of “Snapshots.” So last winter, Milton Zoth, artistic director, approached me with an offer I couldn’t refuse: write a one-act play for this season. The theme: “Power and Politics.” Lots of potential in that, I knew.
I developed several concepts/story lines/situations I felt would work well as a one-act. Milt and I discussed them, and we narrowed it down to three. So began the part of the process with STLAS that I enjoy and find beneficial. I outlined the concepts. They included a story of the media, the power it wields and its destructive effect on an individual; the story of one person who feels victimized by local government (which became “Outside the Lines”) and the third, which I still love: the issue of banned books and pressure groups that try to restrict public access to “undesirable” books. I want to do that as an off-the-wall comedy which features Marx Brothers-type-characters up against conservative media commentators. Think Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter. I’ll finish it some day.
With the “city hall” concept decided on, I wrote a script, showed the first draft to Milt. He guided me in the right direction, through a re-write, some more comments, another re-write. And then Sara Renschen, the actor/director, stepped in. We workshopped the script with various actors, some of whom are in the cast, some just willing to step in and read. I love this part of the process. Playwriting is probably the most difficult type of writing. All I have to work with is dialogue. And I never know if it’s any good, or even passable, until I hear actors read what I’ve written. The workshops on “Outside the Lines” yielded some insights and comments on my script that greatly improved it. Not that I’m willing to share writing credit with anyone, but I can honestly say, the play is better for having gone through this process. Small example: I had one of the characters refer to children playing “hide and seek.” The actor suggested he say “tag.” “It’s shorter and more effective.” He was right. We made changes up until a couple of nights before opening night. And I know as I watch the play, I’ll continue making changes in my mind, and wanting to know what the actors think.
The genesis of this play could be seen as being close to home. Actually it’s a situation that occurs frequently across he country, where one person has difficulty being heard, being considered. Even in our well-connected age, there are many unfortunate instances of isolation and helplessness. These are some of the victims of “power and politics.”
Posted in Performances, Uncategorized
May 7th, 2009
 Jodi Rothe, “Martha Mitchell Calling” playwright will be in St. Louis on May 14th and 15th to attend a final dress fundraiser and opening night at the Gaslight Theatre. We spoke to her recently regarding her inspiration for writing “Martha Mitchell Calling”
What was your inspiration for writing a play about Martha Mitchell? When and how did the project begin?
It all began in 2002. I picked up Helen Thomas’s autobiography, ‘Front Row at the White House’ and was surprised to discover that she devoted an entire chapter to her relationship with her friend, Martha Mitchell - and called her a whistle blower and the ‘unsung heroine’ of Watergate. That wasn’t what I remembered about Martha Mitchell - not what I’d heard about in the press in Los Angeles in the late 60’s and early 70’s - not what a ‘Valley girl’ was likely to discover… Valley girls weren’t supposed to be all that smart in any case or read the newspaper, which I did.
Years later, I fell in love with the opening of Helen’s chapter about Martha called, ‘She told the truth’:
‘The funeral wreath was made of white chrysanthemums, decorated with white ribbons. The flowers spelled out the message, ‘Martha was right’.
After reading that, I was hooked. Who wouldn’t want to find out more about this woman? And what was she ‘right’ about?
As for writing a play, I had been writing screenplays and developing projects that were either optioned or bought and then sat languishing at the network. As I was spending much of my time waiting to hear what was happening with these outlines or screenplays, I considered the idea of writing a play instead. At least I’d have freedom of expression and could use my time in a better way.
And Martha seemed like an ideal subject. I told a New York writer friend of mine (a Yale drama graduate) over dinner about my thought about writing a play about Martha Mitchell. We discussed it briefly and the next day I received a call from her. She had been seated on a flight to St. Louis next to an Artistic Director from a Shakespeare theater and they got to talking and somehow she mentioned my idea for a play - and this woman, who turned out to be Lana Pepper, wanted me to call her because she was interested in reading my ‘script’ about Martha.
I reminded my friend that I hadn’t written one word – there was no script - just an idea. But she insisted I call Lana Pepper anyway – why waste a good opportunity - and so I punched in the numbers and dialed Lana Pepper in St. Louis.
Lana was enthusiastic and asked if I could write up something quickly because she and her friend, a well-known producer, Mary Strauss, were about to make a decision about which one woman plays they might want to produce.
There have been many twists and turns since then, but Lana’s encouragement and the support of Mary Strauss for that embryonic reading of ‘Martha Mitchell Calling’ got the ball rolling.
(Of course, this later turned into a two-character play – because at heart – this is a love story gone awry - and the character of John Mitchell became so important to the telling of the tale that attention had to be paid.)
About fifty drafts later, and after productions in Lenox, Mass, Hudson, NY, Florida and Boston, Martha is coming home to St. Louis this May. And I couldn’t be more appreciative.
Posted in Performances
April 20th, 2009
It’s really the only thing I’ve ever enacted that made real sense to me. When I was in sixth grade, our teacher had us write in a daily journal, and once a week we’d have a chance to read something in front of the class. My whole academic focus (there was so little of it) turned to these weekly performances — I started fleshing out one-man scenes, memorizing parts of the writing, that sort of thing. Inciting my fellow students to laughter became a soul-mission, and I’ve turned it into a career. In addition, solo work  provides an opportunity to create a very particular zone of communication: the solo performer speaking directly to the audience, processing an issue/emotion of some urgency — for me, I was unable to locate a satisfying place in society to voice my concern and to hear other’s opinions about the very frightening events taking place in our country, so, in my solo work, I’ve attempted to posit a spectrum of opinion and emotion, as many facets as possible, in hopes of creating a venue in which to process and understand, to sort out, and make sense of. The process of learning how to be a full-time solo performer has transformed from a trial and error process into an entire life, and “How to do it?” is a question I address and attempt to answer on a sometimes daily basis. Primarily it involves establishing a circuit of gigs that I can return to on a yearly basis — that guarantees a steady supply of work — but it also means I have to create a show a year, more or less, so I can keep returning to those venues. I think that creating a full-length show a year is totally realistic and a great challenge, and, of course, as you create a body of material you can begin to custom-build some of your performances, much like a rock band shaping up a set list. I like to work on several shows at once, accumulating a tangle of notes in a sprawl of notebooks that I can pick through and transcribe at a later time… the point is to forever keep working, keep the ideas moving, keep writing, keep walking in circles, talking to yourself (by that I mean rehearsing). The rest of it, calling people, emailing endlessly, accosting people for gigs, applying to festivals, getting a solid website, updating blogs/touring schedules, MySpace, getting a DVD, getting good photos… sometimes this stuff is very hard — it demands a flexing of a very different set of psychic muscles than the ones used to write and rehearse. I tend to savor my alone time (hence the desire for solo work), so the outward, phone-call-get-a-gig-hustle-cover-letter-head-shot-thing is sometimes immensely challenging, but, until Obama creates a multi-billion dollar artist public-works project that funds touring solo artists and books 52-week tours with gigs from Daytona Beach to Tacoma, Washington and every city in between, I believe the career path I’ve chosen is very much a one-man show, and I’ll keep working to make it work.
Posted in Actors, Performances, St. Louis
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