The Alliance

BROTHERS BECKETT honored with three Carbonell Awards Nominations!

2012-01-17T07:40:00.000-08:00

It is our pleasure to announce that our first play to be presented as part of our play development series Brothers Beckett has been honored with three Carbonell Award nominations!

BEST NEW WORK - DAVID MICHAEL SIROIS

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR - MARK DELLA VENTUR

BEST ENSEMBLE

The Carbonell Awards, considered South Florida’s answer to the Tony Awards, is a highlight of each theatre season and pays tribute to the area’s finest theatre productions. The ceremony, which will feature entertainment from the top shows of the year, will be held Monday, April 2, 2012, at Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale. Amy London, Carbonell executive director, and Michael McKeever will co-produce and co-direct the event.

Congratulations go out to all the honored nominees. This has truly been a landmark year in our short history and for the South Florida Theatre community at large.

The Alliance Theatre Lab is proud to announce our 2012 season of Original Works!

2012-01-12T08:44:00.000-08:00

We are extremely proud to announce that our 2012 Season will be dedicated to solely presenting original works. After the success of last season's Brothers Beckett, we couldn't be more thrilled to embark on this exciting adventure!

In a time when most theatres would play it safe and produce true and tried works that have already played in New York and other cities, The Alliance is giving voice to two of South Florida's most promising playwrights.

After the loss of Florida Stage we felt the need to pick up the torch in whatever small way we can and dedicate our creative energies to the development new works. This is something that we hope you will appreciate and support. We hope to continue to produce new works in each and everyone of our upcoming seasons as well as provide our audiences with the edgy modern classics that they have come to expect from us.

Here is your first look at this BRAVE and EXCITING new Season. We look forward to seeing you at the ALLIANCE!

Off Center of Nowhere
by David Michael Sirois**

Jackie, a 17 year old Brooklyn high school student, has a secret to tell her parents. But, in confessing her one secret, it unleashes a string of confessions that can destroy her whole family. As the story unfolds, the characters are faced with moral conundrums that deal with abortion, racism and religion.

"This play deals with the fragility of belief systems, and the lengths a person is willing to go to as long as honesty is the foundation," says Sirois.

David Michael Sirois is a Connecticut born theatre artist who wrote and directed his first play, 3 for Lunch, at Broward College in Davie, Florida. At Broward, he would successfully act, write and direct many more of his full lengths and one acts. David submitted his work to the Kennedy Center Playwrighting Competition where he was a finalist in both the 10-minute play and short play categories. His first world premiere, Brothers Beckett, was produced at The Alliance Theatre Lab and has won the Miami New Times Best New Play Award for 2011, Best of MiamiArtZine, Best of Florida Theatre on Stage, The Silver Palm Award and is recommended for the ATCA/Steinberg Award. He's acted, written and directed at many school and professional theatres including: Broward College, New World School of the Arts, Barry University, Lynn University, Frenchwoods Festival, Coral Springs Institute, New Theatre, Promethean, Mosaic, GableStage, Caldwell, Florida Stage, The State Theatre Project, Lake Worth Playhouse, and is an Ensemble Member and Resident Playwright at The Alliance Theatre Lab.

"Small Membership"
by Mark Della Ventura**
Directed byDavid Sirois

Meet Matt, a 26 year old seeking attention and guidance from a group of strangers. The show centers on male insecurity and through a series of flashbacks we see his childhood and adulthood struggles with puberty, sexual orientation, anxiety, true love, heartbreak and self-determined celibacy.

"Small Membership is an original, full-length one person show about a big boy with a small problem," says Della Ventura.

The original, twenty-minute, one-act version of Small Membership was first presented at New Theatre in July 2009 as part of "The New Ones Festival." Since then, it has had showings in New York and Miami, all to audience acclaim. He was advised to expand the play into full-length, as there seemed to be much more story to tell. The full-length script has had three staged readings here in South Florida: two at GableStage and one at Mosaic Theatre, both last year. This production at Alliance will mark the first full production of the full-length version and will be directed by Ensemble Member David Sirois.

"Roomies"
by Mark Della Ventura**

Put five 20-somethings, who all just graduated from a four year acting conservatory, in a two bedroom apartment. Now have one of those 20-somethings trying to write a play, documenting their lives in this apartment.

"roomies is about a playwright literally living with his characters," say Della Ventura.

Mark Della Ventura was born in New York and raised in South Florida. He first studied theatre at Broward College and then went on to earn his BFA from New World School of the Arts. His play, Two Years Later was a finalist for the 2010 Heideman Award. As a playwright, he has been produced throughout the country, including two one-acts in the Off-Off Broadway Harvest One-Act Festival with Variations Theatre Group in New York.

A letter from our Artistic Director Adalberto J. Acevedo

2012-01-08T14:46:00.000-08:00

First, I would like to thank you for being a part of our 2011 Season, which was our most successful season to date. We were humbled and honored last year to be Carbonell eligible, as well as being recognized in Best of Miami New Times, Best of MiamiArtZine, Best of Florida Theatre on Stage, Boca Mag's "The Top 10 South Florida Plays/Musicals of 2011," and at the Silver Palm Awards ceremony...which brings me to our 2012 Season!

We are extremely proud to announce that our 2012 Season will be dedicated to solely presenting original works. After the success of last season's Brothers Beckett, we couldn't be more excited to embark on this exciting adventure.

We begin our 6th season with the world premiere of Off Center of Nowhere by Resident Playwright David Michael Sirois. Like Brothers Beckett, this play will have you laughing and leaving the theatre with plenty to talk about. Think Sopranos meets Juno.

Following Off Center of Nowhere is the world premiere of Ensemble Member Mark Della Ventura's incredibly funny and touching one person show, Small Membership. For those of you who have seen Mark as an actor, his writing is just as humorous, charming and sincere as he is on stage.

Closing our 6th season is the world premiere of roomies, a full-length comedy, also written by Della Ventura. This play takes us for a ride into the mind of a playwright living with his characters. For those of you who enjoy Judd Apatow films, you are in for a treat with roomies!

Also, stay tuned for ongoing presentations from THE LAB; a play reading and development series where we workshop new plays by some of the community's most gifted playwrights.

Looking forward to seeing you at The Lab!

Sincerely,

Adalberto J. Acevedo

Producing Artistic Director

The Alliance Theatre Lab

Miamiartzine's rave review for Lobby Hero helps Alliance close out its most successful season yet!

2011-11-21T08:01:00.000-08:00

by Roger Martin atca on November 20, 2011

It's a fascinatingly cynical piece, Kenneth Lonergan's Lobby Hero, with its moral dilemmas and flawed characters, and the passion poured into this production by The Alliance Theatre Lab makes this play everything it should be. The terrific cast is led by Mark Della Ventura as the almost professional goofball, hanging by a thread, security guard, Jeff. He mans the lobby desk in a New York City apartment house. At first glance you think, oh, Della Ventura's been typecast; he can play goofy just standing still. But there's a lot more hidden behind the sunny smile; he knows he's a loser, he knows he betrays his friends; he knows he's lonely and desperate and he knows his silly jokes are featherweight manhole covers for his inadequacies.

David Sirois is Bill, a tough, conniving NYC uniformed cop who's been around just long enough to think he's ruling. He's already nailed his rookie partner and blithely leaves her waiting in the apartment house lobby with Jeff while he spreads the joy with his lady friend on an upper floor. He's this close to his gold badge and he'll do anything to get it. Anything but obey the rules. Sirois's Bill is a quiet thug with deadly authority. He can't spell nice.

Dawn, Bill's probationary partner in the car and on the horizontal, is Anne Chamberlain and she's every bit of layered as Della Ventura and Sirois. Not a lady to be scorned. In fact, probably not a lady at all. And remarkably fast with a nightstick. And rabid vengeance.

And then there's Mcley Lafrance playing William, Captain of Security Officers, shirt and manners starched into rigid expectations and willing to fire Jeff time and time again. And of course he has a brother who's a bad boy and needs William, who never saw a rule he didn't adore, to lie to the cops on his behalf.

Dilemma: should William risk ruin to save his brother? Dilemma: should Dawn report Bill's on duty leg overs? If she keeps quiet, Bill won't testify against her for needlessly whacking a perp on the head with her nightstick.

Dilemma: should Bill interfere on William's behalf? Dilemma: should Jeff tell all he knows about William, Bill and Dawn?

Director Adalberto J. Acevedo has mounted a faultless Lobby Hero. The play works as both comedy and drama and Acevedo's actors are more than up to every nuance in the excellent script.

Acevedo also designed the nicely realistic set and Howard Ferre designed the first-class sound and lighting.

Lobby Hero continues the Alliance Theatre Lab's string of highly successful productions. It's good to see a small theatre consistently hitting the high marks.

Yet another RAVE REVIEW for Lobby Hero!!

2011-11-19T14:36:00.000-08:00

Alliance’s Lobby Hero is Compassionate Look at Human Beings Facing Tough Choices

Posted on November 19, 2011 by Bill Hirschman

Partners David Michael Sirois and Anne Chamberlain have a complicated relationship / Photo courtesy of Alliance Theatre Lab

By Bill Hirschman

Lobby Hero is about character.

Character is who we are and what we do when facing choices that have repercussions for us and the people we are connected with.

But unlike fairy tales in which heroes effortlessly find the courage to do the right thing, we in the real world know pain and damage are not abstractions, but profound consequences that often paralyze us into rationalizations and inaction.

All four characters in Kenneth Lonergan’s masterwork are caught in their personalized vises with no painless alternatives. Most yearn, as we do, to do the right thing. But knowing what that is and having the fortitude to follow through are at the crux of Alliance Theatre Lab’s engrossing production.

Under Adalberto Acevedo’s direction and the work of a strong cast, Lobby Hero becomes a compassionate examination of ordinary flawed human beings struggling to do the right thing as their personal code dictates, sometimes decisively making choices, sometimes stumbling into them – and invariably suffering for those choices no matter how “right” the choices may be. The empathy derives from watching these people earnestly stumbling around in the dark looking for the light.

Oh, and it’s terribly, terribly funny thanks to Lonergan’s creation of his central protagonist, Jeff, a woebegone Everyschlub we can relate to all too well, played to hilariously quirky perfection by Mark Della Ventura in what we’ll argue is the best work we’ve seen him turn in.

Lobby Hero focuses on Jeff, a 27-year-old lovable loser who is fighting to break his string of bad luck that you suspect may be partially chance and partially self-inflicted. For instance, he was drummed out of the Navy for smoking weed on guard duty. After an aimless life of half-failures, Jeff has finally clocked in nine months at this job – front desk security guard at a relatively prosperous Manhattan apartment building. Jeff is the kind of voluble nebbish whose hyper-articulate mouth is forever stepping over boundaries. He must love the taste of shoe leather.

Still, there is a clear metaphor in the title of a man who is outside the real world waiting – or hiding .

His supervisor William (Mcley Lafrance), a self-made man of strict integrity, is trying to help Jeff find his way. Williams knows Jeff is capable of more than spending his life working the lobby until someone calls him “Pops.” But William is faced with the prospect of having to lie to protect his brother who is accused of murder.

Enter the morally corrupt veteran street cop Bill (David Michael Sirois) in tandem with his adoring probationary rookie Dawn (Anne Chamberlain). They have, to put it mildly, a complicated relationship which begins to sour when a smitten Jeff tells her that Bill stops off in Jeff’s building regularly to visit a woman of easy virtue.

They are all people in transit, torn in various configurations between wanting to have dreams and not trusting life to give them a fighting chance to deliver on them.

Lonergan weaves together their individual crises into one Gordian knot to which the hapless Jeff reluctantly holds the knife.

The New York Times critic Christopher Isherwood recently argued this script may be the finest drama of the first decade of the century. Indeed, for all the laughter – and there is a lot of it in watching someone like us repeatedly stubbing their toe in their social interactions – for all that, this is a serious work examining the feasibility of integrity in the modern world.

Lafrance is serviceable enough as the supervisor trapped between his own inflexible integrity and familial loyalty, although he was still not comfortable with his lines in the second week of production.

The winsome Chamberlain is completely convincing as a lovely woman trying to be taken seriously for her own merits and who hides a vulnerability inside the tough veneer she believes she needs to survive the gritty streets and the male-dominated world of police politics. We hope we’ll see a lot more of her work in coming seasons.

Sirois was simply stunning. Unlike the charismatic slacker in his Brothers Beckett, Sirois’ cop is all entitled arrogance and swaggering confidence. The performance never seems like a caricature, and yet, if you’ve seen Sirois in other roles, it will floor you how he has transformed himself into a toxic menace that leaves a slime trail behind him.

And last, only because we’re saving the best for last, is the rubber-faced Della Ventura who inhabits someone smarter than everyone in the room, but fatally inept in dealing with people. Physically, he has that doughy face, unruly mop of hair, hang-dog expression in the eyes and an endearingly goofy, sad smile that says Jeff has seen enough disappointments to expect nothing different in the future. Della Ventura has mastered Lonergan’s arias of uncontrolled verbal effluent, always ending with a clumsy emotional faux pas. His Jeff is not just uncomfortable in his own skin, but in his own life.

All these performances have been guided by Acedvedo with dead solid pacing. He is especially adept at invisibly moving people around the tiny stage to give the illusion of action when, in fact, it’s just people standing around talking to each other.

With virtually no money, Acevedo also has designed his best set yet: A recognizable apartment lobby right down to the walls adorned with little touches of verisimilitude such as a no smoking sign, generic art print and fire alarm.

Following the consecutive successes of Brothers Beckett, Fool For Love and ‘night mother, this production of Lobby Hero cements Alliance’s reputation as a company to go out of your way to take a chance on seeing.

Lobby Hero plays through Nov. 27 at Alliance Theatre Lab at the Main Street Playhouse, 6766 Main Street, Miami Lakes. Performances 8 p.m. Thursday & Friday, 5 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets $10-$25. For tickets and information, call (305) 259-0418 or go to thealliancetheatrelab.com or email reservations@thealliancetheatrelab.com.

More RAVE reviews for 'Lobby Hero'!!!!

2011-11-15T11:48:00.000-08:00

THE ALLIANCE THEATRE LAB’S “LOBBY HERO” DESERVES PRAISE FOR ACTING, WRITING, DIRECTION

By Ron Levitt

Florida Media News / ENV Magazine

MIAMI LAKES, FL -- Critiquing Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero – the current Alliance Theatre Lab production at the Main Street Playhouse – allows one to award five stars (out of five) at several levels, even though it makes one appear to be an overly-gushing fan of the stage company,

1, Director Adalberto Acevedo has taken this comedy which explores the moral judgment of four blue collar New Yorkers and has given it such adroit pacing that it sparkles with reality. It is so well done that the audience cannot help but understand that this play is about ordinary people searching to justify their actions.

2. The four actors deserve praise. Mark Della Ventura, who has been one busy guy -- ably placed in many supporting roles since his graduation from New World School of the Arts several years ago -- competently takes on a major character here, as a security guard at a middle class apartment building. David Sirois – proving to be one of South Florida’s finest young actors –plays Bill, a seasoned police officer who has a proclivity for off-beat sexual activities. Lovely young actress Anne Chamberlain is flawlessly cast as a rookie cop, totally smitten by Bill, while Mcley Lafrance is A-One as William, the man in charge of the doormen/security guards who acts like a sergeant overseeing his squad.

3. Kenneth Lonergan, the playwright, could just as easily transformed this script into a motion picture or television movie. It is so filled with dramatic impact and character-study, it could just as easily been viewed on the big or small screen. However, we are glad he decided to do this one as “theatre.”

The play is filled with moral choices. First, Willam (LaFrance) -- the senior security guard – has a brother who is a suspect in a robbery/murder and wants him to say he was at the movies with him when the crime was committed. Should William provide the alibi?

Dawn (Chamberlain),is the rookie cop. She is a vulnerable. youthful girl, smitten with Bill, the experienced, sleazy policeman. She must make a major moral judgment. But, is it either out of jealousy, anger or because she thinks she is doing the right thing.?

And, is Bill (a terrific performance by Alliance veteran Sirois ) merely the misunderstood husband who has a girl waiting for him and his sidekick rookie eager to attract him or is he also the good guy -- steadfast to his friend (apartment manager William)? There’s ambiguity here but somehow one gets the feeling the playwright wanted the audience to consider Bill’s attributes and decide for themselves.. Sirois – in a final analysis – plays this role as a street-smart, sexy individual with one redeeming quality – loyalty!

Meanwhile, there is Jeff (Della Ventura), the babbling doorman (excuse me, security guard) who is attracted to the girl cop but muddies the water by telling her what is going on with William’s alibi and Bill’s extra-marital carousing. This character can’t help but chatting constantly, even describing why he got kicked out of the Navy and other personal experiences. Della Ventura really shines in this demanding role. He provides the most chuckles.

Lobby Hero a mish-mash of situations, realistically yet humorously carried out by four topnotch performers. Della Ventura and Sirois are a dynamite duo in this production, using every line to punctuate their reality. In fact, all four of the actors make this production something special.

It’s a sober play but author Lonergran has a rare gift of using comedic elements which allows the audience to laugh –even under serious circumstances.

A footnote to this review: David Michael Sirois is Alliance’s resident playwright,. His last production – The Brothers Beckett – was a positively reviewed smash hit. Sirois both wrote the play and starred in it. He will be honored Dec. 5th at the Theatre League party when he receives the coveted 2011 Silver Palm award for his ”Outstanding New Work” Makes you want to see more -- and you will! The Alliance Theatre Lab will present Sirois’ newest play early in 2012.

Christine Dolen loves Lobby Hero

2011-11-15T11:30:00.000-08:00

‘Lobby Hero’: Moral dilemmas, terrific acting
BY CHRISTINE DOLEN
cdolen@MiamiHerald.com

Photo by Howard Ferre
David Sirois plays a cop in the Alliance Theatre Lab's 'Lobby Hero' in Miami Lakes.

Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero was first staged in South Florida a decade ago when the play was still a hot ticket in New York. But as the new production by Alliance Theatre Lab so amply, delightfully proves, the script hasn’t aged one bit.
Under Adalberto Acevedo’s direction, the Alliance version at the Main Street Playhouse in Miami Lakes becomes a four-person acting showcase for its young cast, three New World School of the Arts grads and a fourth actor who graduated from Barry University. That the four have stuck around to begin their careers here is a lucky break for South Florida theater fans. Here’s hoping they don’t get the New York itch too soon.

Lonergan serves up a cascade of moral dilemmas in Lobby Hero. The play’s chatty “hero” is Jeff (Mark Della Ventura), an apartment building security guard working the graveyard shift after he was kicked out of the Navy for smoking pot. Jeff’s boss William (Mcley Lafrance) is a by-the-book, no-nonsense guy determined to better himself. He tries to get some of that drive and focus to rub off on Jeff, but Jeff lives in the realm of fantasy, entertaining an ever-changing list of “goals” that aren’t much more than momentary thoughts.

Two beat cops, the seasoned Bill (David Sirois) and his rookie partner Dawn (Anne Chamberlain), often stop by the building. Bill leaves Dawn parked in the lobby while he goes upstairs to visit a “friend” who turns out to be a hot single woman. Bad enough that Bill is married, but he has also been wooing Dawn. So does she cover for him, though she’s disgusted to learn the truth?

William has his own painful dilemma. His brother is one of three suspects in a robbery that turned into a rape and murder. The brother says he didn’t do it and wants William to supply his alibi. What does good, honest William do?

Della Ventura, who has given deft and engaging performances on a variety of South Florida stages, demonstrates the reach and depth of his talent in Lobby Hero. He is utterly convincing as the goofy, funny, warm-hearted guy who has been drifting through life. His Jeff is a man-child with a gift for getting himself in hot water every time he opens his mouth. And he talks a lot.

Lafrance lets us peek under William’s stern façade to see a caring, worried man. Sirois nails Bill, making him a charming slimeball determined to keep Dawn in his corner by seduction, threat or both. Chamberlain impressively travels an emotional path from naïvete to fury, seeking vengeance and asking forgiveness. She’s terrific. And so are the costars who shine so brightly in Lobby Hero.

First Look - Lobby Hero in rehearsal

2011-11-10T05:30:00.000-08:00

First Look - "LOBBY HERO" in performance

2011-11-09T04:44:00.000-08:00

Here is your first look at "Lobby Hero" which opens this Friday November 11th and runs til November 27 on our mail stage!

Alliance to recieve national and local awards

2011-11-07T04:52:00.000-08:00

Exciting things are happening at The Lab! Brothers Beckett, Resident Playwright David Michael Sirois' 2011 world-premiere, has been recommended for consideration for the American Theatre Critics Association's annual ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award, honoring new scripts produced outside New York City in calendar year 2011! Ensemble Member Mark Della Ventura was awarded "Best Actor" for the Harvest One-Act Festival in NYC! And I am humbled and honored to have been chosen as one of this year's recipients of MiamiArtZine's annual Visionary Award!

Brothers Beckett Recommended for ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award!

David Michael Sirois is the writer of Brothers Beckett (Steinberg Award consideration, Miami New Times Best New Play, Best of Florida Theatre on Stage, Best of MiamiArtzine.) He recently had two of his one act plays produced Off-Off Broadway. They are also being produced this weekend at Sleepness Night Miami Beach (11/5/11) at the Colony Theatre at midnight.

for more information, check out:
http://sleeplessnight.org/

David has been commissioned by Artistic Director, Adalberto J. Acevedo, to write another full-length play for the 2012 Season. The title is Off Center of Nowhere and it will open Alliance's next season in March 2012!

What is the ACTA/Steinberg New Play Award?

In 1977, the American Theatre Critics Association began annually citing an outstanding new play produced professionally around the United States but not yet produced in New York City. This ATCA New Play Citation continued through 1985, when for the first time three plays were cited. Starting in 1986, one of the three was given the ATCA New Play Award, with citations to the two runners-up. The annual prize was $500, then $1,000, with the money contributed some years by ATCA members' newspapers.

In 2000, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust generously funded the awards, setting the main prize at $15,000 and two additional citations at $5,000. The award was then named the American Theatre Critics/Steinberg New Play Award and Citations (ATCA/Steinberg for short).

In 2006, it was renamed the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award and Citations (Steinberg/ATCA for short) and raised to $25,000, with two additional citations of $7,500. The honoree and citations are also honored by critical essays in the definitive annual theater yearbook, Best Plays, edited by Jeffrey Eric Jenkins, founded by Burns Mantle in 1920.

Any play receiving its professional premiere as a finished work, outside of New York City, is eligible for nomination, as long as it hasn't opened in New York by the end of the calendar year. Plays are nominated for the Steinberg/ATCA Award by ATCA members. Scripts are then read and honorees selected by a large committee of critics from different regions of the country, and the recent practice has been to announce the awards at the annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors' Theatre of Louisville. Many ATCA Award selections have gone on to major off-Broadway or Broadway productions, and many have received subsequent other awards.

for more information, check out:
http://www.americantheatrecritics.org/steinberg-atca-award/

Mark Della Ventura takes home "Best Actor" Award for the 2011 Harvest One-Act Festival in New York!

Mark Della Ventura, along with David Michael Sirois, submitted two plays each to Variations Theatre Group's national call for new one-act plays for their 2nd Annual Harvest One-Act Festival. All 4 shows were accepted!

They began rehearsals here in Florida and geared up for their 2-week NY adventure. The Harvest One-Act Festival, which is also a competition, is a 10-day festival, consisting of 3 Rounds. Advancement through the rounds relies heavily on audience voting.

All 4 plays received extremely positive responses and Small Membership, Mark's one person show, was picked by Variations' Artistic Director Rich Ferraioli to perform in Wild Card Night. Mark performed his show and WON Wild Card Night and made it all the way through to the Semi-finals!

During the closing ceremony, Variations Theatre Group awarded three individuals for outstanding talent in acting and directing, in addition to the "Best Play" Award for the festival.

Congratulations to Mark Della Ventura for taking home the "Best Actor" Award for the 2011 Harvest One-Act Festival!

All 4 shows are being produced this weekend for Sleepness Night Miami Beach at the Colony Theatre this Saturday (11/5/11) at midnight! Free admission!

Visionary Award Recipient

Each year, as part of its Birthday Celebrations, MiamiArtZine honors outstanding contributors to the arts in Miami.

MiamiArtZine will be celebrating its sixth Birthday on Monday November 7 at The Stage, 170 NE 38th Street, Miami starting at 6 pm. $25 Donation

Proceeds benefit Miami Beach Arts Trust
Ticket info at Miamiartzine.com

Mark Della Ventura wins BEST ACTOR at The Harvest One Act Play Festival!

2011-10-24T04:45:00.000-07:00

UP-DATE: After a successful run at The Harvest One Act Play Festival Mark Della Ventura and David Sirois return to South Florida, but not without capturing one of the festivals major awards. Mr. Della Ventura was awarded BEST ACTOR of the 2011 festival which closed on October 22. Mark and resident Playwright David Sirois presented two shows each at the festival which is produced yearly by the Variations Theatre Group in New York City. Both had great success and are excited about future collaborations between The Alliance Theatre Lab and The Variations Theatre Group.

Up next for these talented actor/writers is the Alliance production of Lobby Hero which opens November 10th. Also on the horizon is a full production of Della Ventura's One Man Show - "Small Membership" as well as two new original full length plays written for the Alliance by both gifted playwrights.

Lobby Hero replaces Title of Show as last play in Alliance's 5th Season

2011-10-12T05:35:00.000-07:00

South Florida audiences may have to wait a little longer to see the South Florida premier of Title of Show. The Tony nominated musical was scheduled to close our 2011 season but due to the unforeseen circumstances, the "laugh out loud" musical will be moved to our 2012 theatre season. In its place we are pleased to announce that the 2011 season will now close with Lobby Hero! Kenneth Lonergan's touching play deals with Jeff, a luckless young security guard who is drawn in a local murder investigation.

The show feature and all Alliance Ensemble cast that includes-

Mark Della Ventura
Anne Chamberlain
David Sirois
&
McLay LaFrance

The play will run-
November 10 - November 27 2011
Thursday & Fridays @ 8:00pm
Saturdays @ 5:00pm
Sundays @ 2:00pm

Please call the theatre hot line to reserve your seats.
305-259-0418

Alliance plays NEW YORK CITY!!

2011-09-30T08:38:00.000-07:00

Great news for fans of Ensemble members David Sirois and Mark Della Ventura! You will be thrilled to learn that both Actor/Plawrights will be making their New York city debute when the Alliance travels north to the Harvest One Act Play Festival. The Veriations Theatre Group who host the festival accepted four short plays writen by the talented duo. Sirois' "Granny's Bones" and "Martin's Dilemma" and Della Ventura's "Small Membership" and "The C Word" will compete with other plays from around the country for a cash prize and the chance to be produced by The Veriations Theatre Groups as part of their mainstage season. Both actors will perform in their own plays and Artistic director Adalberto J. Acevedo will help produce the preformance. The festival will take place at the Hudson Theatre Guild in Chelsea on October 14 - 22.

Florida Theatre On Stage makes it unanimous. 'Night Mother is one of South Florida's best reviewed shows!

2011-09-19T04:28:00.000-07:00

Life and Death Hangs in the Balance in Provocative ‘night Mother at Alliance Theatre Lab

By Mary Damiano

A mother and her middle-aged daughter spend a Saturday night at home. What makes this night different from any other is that the daughter, Jessie (Aubrey Shavonn Kessler) has decided that this will be the night she commits suicide. And she matter-of-factly tells Mama (Sally Bondi) of her decision.

This is the suspenseful beginning of Marsha Norman’s powerful play ‘night Mother, now getting a moving production at the Alliance Theatre Lab at Barry University’s Pelican Theatre.

What follows for 90 taut minutes is the examination of Jessie’s decision as Mama tries to save her. Family secrets are revealed, old wounds are opened and a lot of tears are shed over what might have been, could have been. By the end of the play, the audience may be surprised about which character they believe makes the better case.

Bondi and Kessler bring poignance to Mama and Jessie, a mostly housebound pair who have their share of troubles. Mama had an unhappy marriage, few friends and a troubled family. Jessie is prone to epileptic seizures and has an ex-husband and delinquent son. Neither one has much going for them. But they differ in their outlook on life. While Mama is fiercely protective of her couch potato lifestyle and plans on fighting off the grim reaper with every breath, Jessie has simply decided that it’s not worth it anymore.

The nonchalance with which Jessie talks about her decision to commit suicide is often chilling. And that’s part of the brilliance of Marsha Norman’s play — she makes suicide seem like a rational choice, not just for the terminally sick, but for the terminally sick and tired.

Director David Sirois, an actor and playwright whose play The Brothers Beckett met acclaim in its world premiere at Alliance earlier this year, proves here as he did with his own play that he knows relationships. Mama and Jessie feel real — we know these people exist all over the country. Bondi and Shavonn Kessler work well together, and the director and actresses, along with set designer Mary Sansone, immerse the audience in the world of the pair’s shabby little home and their sad little lives.

Bondi does a beautiful job of building Mama’s desperation as she tries to save Jessie’s life, journeying from disbelieving mom to protective tigress to resigned confidant. Kessler brings moments of clarity to the suicidal Jessie.

‘night Mother is a provocative play and Alliance’s production does it justice.

New Times Raves about 'Night Mother!

2011-09-13T05:27:00.000-07:00

Alliance Theatre Lab's 'Night Mother Shines Darkly

By Camille Lamb Sat., Sep. 10 2011 at 11:00 AM

"So we're just gonna sit here and talk for a couple of hours, and then you're going to kill yourself." Actress Sally Bondi, who plays Mama Thelma in the Alliance Theatre Lab's production of 'Night Mother, sums up the plot of this play by Marsha Norman (which was also made into a movie starring Sissy Spacek and Anne Bancroft in 1986) in a single, darkly humorous line.

Mother and daughter Jessie (played by Aubrey Shavonn Kessler) are about to spend a mundane evening together like any other in their small home in their small town, when Jessie, epileptic, divorcee, and mother of a dope fiend criminal, casually interjects that she plans to kill herself with her dead father's gun in a matter of hours. The rest of the play is a dialogue between the two actresses, a kind of unfair cat and mouse, where the mouse cheats the game by never sticking more than nose and whiskers out of its cavernous hole in the wall.

Before a simple backdrop of faded furniture, shelves of sweets, and boxy old appliances, the actresses slowly descend a spiral staircase from superficial bickering into deep and painful revelation. Norman, her long dark hair pulled back from her bare and blank face, busily paces from cabinet to cabinet, straightening, folding, and organizing her mother's house before her departure.

She at first appears hurried, steely-eyed, and stoic; her demeanor, and actually even her face, closely resemble that of Chloe Sevigny's character "Nicki" in the HBO series Big Love. As time ticks by, though, the actress subtly, but successfully, displays a deep and painful sense of pointlessness and inadequacy.

Though both actresses were impressive, Bondi was purely astounding in her portrayal of a gritty, no-nonsense broad with a not-so-deeply hidden emotional underbelly. Her loping gate, slick head of curlers, dark under-eye circles and gravelly voice conveyed a simple woman who's been worn out by an uneventful and largely loveless life.

The evolution was imperceptible, but over the course of the 90-minute play, Bondi brought her character from inane white trash simpleton to anguished, mercurial matron. Our eyes were glued to her boxy, sweat-suit clad form as she shifted from sappy sweet pacifier to bitter, angry pot- and pan-thrower. She literally worked up a sweat as she nervously wracked her brain for a way out of the hellish dilemma she'd found herself sucked into.

As she tried over and over again to strike an effective chord with her cruelly recalcitrant daughter, Bondi painted an awfully realistic portrait of a baffled and beaten woman. By the end of the production, we, along with many other patrons, were wrenched to tears by the emotional immensity of her performance.

The intimacy of Barry University's Pelican Theatre, coupled with the actresses' gripping work, made us feel as though we were locked into the convoluted debate along with the players. Smells of gunpowder and matches pervaded the 44-seat auditorium, adding to the effect.

With the exception of rushed line delivery on the part of Kessler during the first 15 minutes, opening night of director David Sirois's presentation went off beautifully. Anyone who appreciates high quality small theater or psychological, emotional drama would be an absolute fool to miss this Alliance Theatre Lab production.

The RAVES keep coming for 'Night Mother!

2011-09-12T04:35:00.000-07:00

Driving Mama Crazy

by Roger Martin atca on September 10, 2011

A careening bus struck a power pole. The pole fell down. All the lights went out at Barry University and its Pelican Theatre. And that's why the preview night of Alliance Theatre Lab's 'night Mother was canceled and that's probably why on opening night the show began tentatively and with not much subtlety. But things improved.

Marsha Norman's 1983 Pulitzer winner is a terrific piece of work, from the conception to the page. Sixtyish Mama slumps on the battered sofa in her country living room cum kitchen, her daughter, Jessie, enters and calmly announces that she's going to kill herself before the night is out. There's a large wall clock hanging upstage, set to real time.

We know the play is a ninety-minute one-act and the clock then is the face of the suspense. Will Jessie indeed shoot herself with her beloved dead father's gun or will Mama's love prevail? Tick tock.

Sally Bondi is Mama and Aubrey Shavonn Kessler is Jessie and I confess I've not been greatly enamored of either in previous shows. A little too broad from Bondi and a little light in stage presence from Kessler have been the norm. And this is how things started out, with Mama flouncing and sighing and Jessie barely being there. But as the clock ticked on the two actresses found their footing, with Bondi ably handling the shock and horror of her daughter's impending suicide and Kessler giving the epileptic, forlorn and depressed Jessie a nice balance between the sanity of arranging her mother's future and the madness of taking her own life.

'night Mother would seem a difficult piece to enjoy; a dysfunctional family, sickness, death, loneliness, and sad, wry humor. Not much to laugh at. But the play is engrossing. The time, there it is again, flies by. This is actor/writer David Sirois' first outing as a professional director and he has done well.

One more note about Sally Bondi. On opening night there was a technical sound failure at the culmination of the show but she handled it so adroitly I thought director Sirois had elected to go for an enigmatic ending rather than the scripted. Interesting choice. But not so. It was, after all, just what happens in live theatre.

Set design by Mary Sansone, sound Howard Ferre and lighting by Will Cabrera.

The Pelican Theatre is now Alliance Theatre Lab's second stage. They will continue to mount shows at the Main Street Playhouse in Miami Lakes.

Rave reviews for 'Night Mother

2011-09-12T04:31:00.000-07:00

Life-and-death struggle powers ‘’night, Mother’

Alliance Theatre Lab launches its second-stage series with Marsha Norman’s Pulitzer-winning drama.

BY CHRISTINE DOLEN

cdolen@MiamiHerald.com

The suspense in Marsha Norman’s ‘night, Mother doesn’t flow from what a no-longer-young woman named Jessie Cates plans to do with her life. Quite early in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, after just a bit of bustling activity that introduces Jessie and her candy-loving mother to the audience, Jessie casually tells Mama that she’s going to kill herself. That night.

Instead, Norman creates suspense – loads of it – from all the questions that come after such a chilling declaration. Will she or won’t she follow through? What has brought Jessie to this point? And can Mama, who at first thinks Jessie is joking, conjure up something, anything, that will make her daughter want to live?

Launching a new series of second-stage productions, the Alliance Theatre Lab has brought a new production of ‘night, Mother to Barry University’s intimate Pelican Theatre. The play marks the professional directing debut of David Sirois, a multitalented New World School of the Arts grad who is also Alliance’s resident playwright and the guy who wrote last season’s smash Brothers Beckett. His staging of ‘night, Mother is sure and clear, so directing is obviously one more thing in his dramatic toolkit.

Sirois is also very fortunate to have the inventive, fascinating Sally Bondi in the role of Mama. As full of life as her daughter is deadened, Bondi’s Thelma Cates is a woman of ever-changing emotional colors. She’s honest, critical, scared, furious, loving, desperate, manipulative – well, the list goes on and on, as Bondi creates a thoroughly believable country gal who accepts the cards life has dealt her.

As Jessie, Aubrey Shavonn Kessler has the greater acting challenge. Life has been one long, disappointing challenge for Jessie. An epileptic whose husband left her, whose son is forever in trouble with drugs and the law, the now-agoraphobic Jessie has become her mother’s caregiver. Thelma has surrendered most of the day-to-day tasks of their isolated life to Jessie, maybe to give her daughter a sense of purpose, maybe because it’s just more fun to watch TV, crochet and eat Hostess Sno Balls than it is to do laundry and order groceries.

Kessler has to convey the determination beneath her character’s almost incomprehensibly breezy manner as Jessie runs down a long list of the preparations she has made for her mother’s future life alone. The actress shifts from an initial disconcerting cheerfulness to emotional flatness. Perhaps that’s what Jessie needs to follow through with her meticulously planned exit, but Kessler’s muted performance allows the vibrant Bondi to dominate what should be a more evenly balanced tug-of-war over Jessie’s future.

Though a critical technical glitch marred the opening night show, Bondi’s skill and power overcame even that one-time flub. In allowing her to show so much range in ‘night, Mother, Alliance reminds us that Bondi is one of South Florida’s acting treasures.

'night Mother by Marsha Norman

2011-08-04T12:25:00.000-07:00

'night Mother
by Marsha Norma

Join Alliance at our 2^nd stage, The Pelican Theatre at Barry University. Directed by ensemble member and resident playwright David Michael Sirois, starring Sally Bondi and ensemble member Aubrey Shavonn Kessler.

Winner of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, ‘night, Mother takes a deep look into a mother-daughter relationship while making a disturbing statement about responsibility and courage. In this 90 minute harrowing story, the character’s interactions culminate into a disturbing, yet unavoidable, climax.

September 8th -
September 25, 2011
Thu-Sat 8:00 PM
Sun 2:00 PM
Industry Night TBA

Adults - $25.00
Students - $10.00
Seniors - $15.00
Call 305.259.0418

'night Mother is being presented as part of our second stage LAB series at

The Pelican Theatre

Located at Barry University

11300NE 2nd Ave. Miami Shores

ON FILM: Opening Night "Fool for Love"

2011-06-17T11:30:00.000-07:00

IT"S UNANIMOUS!!! FOOL FOR LOVE IS ONE OF SOUTH FLORIDA'S MOST WELL REVIEWED SHOWS!

2011-06-14T11:21:00.000-07:00

Here’s A Big, Fat Rave…
Review of Fool for Love

by Roger Martin on June 14, 2011

It's the raw violence that gets you. Not just the action. There's plenty of that. But the violence in the murmured words, the soft caresses, the kisses, the flat out dry humping, that spins through Fool for Love has you leaving the theatre spent. It doesn't happen very often, this wow, turn me off I'm done feeling, but it's for damn sure present at The Alliance Theatre Lab in Miami Lakes.

Director Adalberto J. Acevedo has presented a tight, sharp, seventy-minute diamond. Wear your shades. And this is becoming the norm at the Alliance. I don't know how Acevedo does it (I've seen rehearsal photos of him clutching a baseball bat) but he consistently gets fine, natural work from his actors. Of course, the actors not being chopped liver helps in a mighty way.

Fool for Love, written by Sam Shepard and first produced in 1983, is set in a grungy motel (terrific work by Jodi Dellaventura) on the edge of the Mojave Desert.

Eddie, (Arturo Fernandez) has been diddling May (Jehane Serralles) on and off (sorry) for fifteen years. She's found a new man (Jameson Hammond) but Eddie can't let her go. The Old Man (George Schiavone) is an imaginary one-man Greek chorus.

Fernandez' Eddie is a lanky rodeo rider with a rictus sardonicus smile that disembowels with every flash and Serralles' May, cafe waitress, bruised both ways, careens between cuddly and cruel, loving and hating. These two give us the darkness of love as if they had truly lived the affair.

The Old Man, rocking and drinking, commenting in the minds of Eddie and May, revealing their secrets, is a role made for Schiavone. He excels.

Jameson Hammond, as Martin - landscape gardener and a good man, becomes the mouse battered between the two cats and pulls it off perfectly.

The four actors, the direction, the set, the sound (ah, the doors slamming) by Howard Ferre, the lighting by Will Cabrera, the costumes by Aubrey Shavonn Kessler, hell, just the whole thing, show, once again, that The Alliance Theatre Lab is doing things the right way.

Hurry on down to see Fool for Love through June 26 at The Alliance Theatre Lab located at 6766 Main Street in Miami Lakes. For reservations call 305.259.0418 or visit www.thealliancetheatrelab.com.

YET ANOTHER RAVE REVIEW FOR "FOOL FOR LOVE"!!!

2011-06-13T11:19:00.000-07:00

Fool For Love by Sam Shepard

GRIMY MOTEL ROOM IS BACKDROP

FOR EXCELLENT THEATRE LAB PRODUCTION

By Ron Levitt

Florida Media News/ENV Magazine

MIAMI LAKES, FL -- Color me dysfunctional!! That could well be a subtitle for Fool For Love, the intense Sam Shepard play now being revived at Miami Lakes’ Main Street Theater by The Alliance Theatre Lab. It is one tough play which basically is about the years of obsessive love-hate relationship of a slovenly rodeo rider – a grimy Marlboro Man -- and a woman who may be his half-sister.

Ably directed by Lab founder Adalberto J. Acevedo and acted by a handful of talented performers, Fool For Love takes no prisoners in exposing a battling reunion by these two characters in a seedy motel room a the edge of the Mojave desert.

Don’t expect any laughs (which Shepard ordinarily adds to his dramas), because this 70 minute play is powerful and passionate tragedy about two people who are involved in a long-standing affair that was never meant to be.

Suffice it to say, this play is about grubby, battling people involved in a noxious on-again, off-again relationship. They are the kind of people most of us have never met – and probably would not want to!

On the other hand, watching Arturo Fernandez as Eddie, the lanky cowboy. and Jehane Serralles as May, the volatile feminine portion of this impossible duo, is an acting treat. They are two marvelous performers who milk almost as much pathos from their roles as their characters do sipping bourbon (a mainstay of many Shepard plays).

While these two do battle amidst love-making, there are several outsiders for the audience to contend with. First there is the unseen Countess, a rich woman referred to continuously (apparently she is a woman whom Eddie sees when he is not with May), and then there is bewildered Martin (Jameson Hammond), a relatively simple kind of guy, a maintenance man who shows up to take May to the movie, but is told by Eddie that he can tell him stories about May and himself better than any motion picture.

Besides the unseen character and Martin, is a surrealistic role, an old man (George Schiavone), who sits on the side, in his rocking chair, drinking bourbon (of course). We learn that he is the father who has a close connection to both Eddie and May, and in typical Shepard fashion, adds his commentary from time to time from his after-death location.

Yes, it is a grim tale, but the acting is so intense, it is the kind of performing you want to experience from the audience seat. You may not like or want to know these characters, but you will admire the actors who play them.

Jodi Dellaventura, does an A-One job in projecting the scenic design envisioned by the playwright. The double-bed, run-down motel room is perfect for this dialog-fueled play. Will Cabrera does the lighting, Howard Ferre the sound, and Aubrey Shavonn Kessler handles the costuming, highlighted by May’s simple red dress which at times she disrobes in this realistic, grubby motel room.
Fool For Love runs through June 26. Cal

MIAMI HERALD FALLS IN LOVE WITH "FOOL FOR LOVE"!!!

2011-06-13T11:15:00.000-07:00

Passion ignites in ‘Fool for Love’

By CHRISTINE DOLEN
cdolen@MiamiHerald.com

Will Cabrera
Arturo Fernandez and Jehane Serralles explore a volatile, forbidden relationship in Alliance Theatre Lab's 'Fool for Love.'
Eddie and May, the volatile duo in Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love, aren’t so very different from Ennis and Jack in Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain. Both couples are bound by passion that crosses the line into violence. Both have reason to hide the true nature of their relationship. Yet try as they might to end it, these addicted lovers in a still-wild West just can’t quit each other.

Shepard’s 1983 script, now getting a new production by the Alliance Theatre Lab in Miami Lakes, is a tight piece that peels back its mysteries until the scope of one more American family tragedy is revealed. As in many of his plays, Shepard considers the linkage of love and violence, the mythic West, damage done by an absent alcoholic father, divergent takes on a family’s history.

Beyond exploring those themes, what actors and directors like Alliance’s Adalberto Acevedo relish in Fool for Love is the chance to leap into edgy theater territory, see-sawing between quieter emotional moments and a shocking, unpredictable physicality.

The actors with those juicy assignments are Arturo Fernandez as Eddie and Jehane Serralles as May. Fernandez’s Eddie is a tall, rangy guy, soft-spoken and sly, a kind of latter-day Gary Cooper — except that he punctuates his points by shoving May into the wall of the cheap desert’s-edge motel room where she’s holed up. Serralles’ May is desperately trying to avoid falling down the rabbit’s hole of desire yet again, flailing and kneeing Eddie, giving as good (or as bad) as she gets. Theirs is a doomed love, but doom can prove irresistible.

Observing this passion play is a grizzled Old Man (George Schiavone), silent at first, then vocal and manipulative, increasingly insistent that Eddie and May aren’t getting their stories straight. The Old Man, folksy on the surface and wounding underneath, is actually memory, not flesh and blood. But the hold he has on Eddie and May is all too real.

Trying to get over each other, Eddie and May have explored romantic alternatives. Eddie has had an affair with a rich woman May dubs “The Countess,” and though we never see her, the woman is every bit Eddie’s equal in violent negative reaction to rejection. May has a movie date with Martin (Jameson Hammond), an unassuming landscape maintenance guy who shows up just as May and Eddie are having one more argument. Then Eddie and Martin get into it, first physically, then verbally as Eddie smilingly menaces his rival.

With Shepard’s recent Ages of the Moon now at Plantation’s Mosaic Theatre, South Florida is getting an unofficial Sam Shepard mini-festival through June 26. Moon is latter-day Shepard, Fool for Love vintage and vital. Both are worth a look.

NEW TIMES RAVES ABOUT FOOL FOR LOVE!!!

2011-06-13T11:08:00.000-07:00

Fool For Love Is a Dark Tale of Incestuous Romance
By Camille Lamb, Mon., Jun. 13 2011 at 8:45 AM
Categories: Last Night, Theater

The setting for Sam Shepard's Fool for Love is fitting: an isolated, shabby motel in the Mojave desert. It's the perfect bubble for a tortured, taboo, and sickly compelling love affair. Unspeakable things, wrong things, happen between people under the influence who are locked in cheap motel rooms. Here the drug of choice is obsessive, incestuous love.

Last night, we witnessed the Alliance Theatre Lab's staging of Fool for Love. A red-headed woman in a cheap wife beater. A tall and imposing young man with a wide, thin-lipped smile in jeans and a cowboy hat. A bed. And an old man tipping back and forth in a worn wooden rocking chair in a darkened corner of the stage. Watching. Detached.

Not until actors prompt him to pipe up with some commentary or anecdote does he come to life like a mechanized dummy, which performs a little ditty when you drop a quarter in it before receding back into a static state. Turns out this old man is the father of the two quarreling lovers on stage.

Eddie (Arturo Fernandez) has just tumbled back into town to try to reclaim his high school sweetheart (ack, and half sister), May (Jehane Serralles), after one of many long and unexplained absences.

Eddie's gangling limbs seem ruled by a force outside himself --- his movements appear appropriately involuntary as he grabs his woman by the waist, flings himself onto the bed, slams doors, and tips a liter of gin upside down over his mouth. His eyes shine with fantastic dreams and poetic words that seem to strike May first as romantic, and a moment later, as cruel and repulsive as she recalls the long string of disappointments.

"I'm never going away. I'll track you down, even if you can't stand the sound of me, the sight of me, or the smell of me," he promises as she beats him away, a glimmer of reluctance always visible right under the surface of her expression. Fernandez's delivery is convincing and at times haunting, most notably in an eerie monologue he performs toward the end of the show.

Playing the object of his narcissistic love, Serralles strikes a balance between a woman who is desperate to move on and make good, and a woman who is desperate to lose herself in the intoxicating and private infatuation that seems to have eaten little wormholes in her brain.

It must be difficult to play a character who is also playing a character --- May is trying to come off as rehabilitated, over the base and lustful relationship she and Eddie have, but it's clear that at her core, she is stuck.

The bruises on her legs (which appear real) are a testament to the extremely physical blocking of the play. In line with the script, Eddie and May are in a constant push and pull, their bodies alternately exploding away from one another and groping each other hungrily. They execute both adeptly.

May's new boyfriend, Martin (Jameson Hammond), bumbles in naively, providing welcome relief from the infernal feud he unwittingly walks into. His laid-back, childlike demeanor in the face of the very adult scene he has stumbled upon is quite humorous at times. He provides necessary neutrality on an otherwise fully-loaded stage.

Then there is the father (George Schiavone), the root of all the trouble, who leans back, observing remorselessly as his son and daughter wrestle with each other in more than one way. When he breaks his silence, his performance is nothing short of magical, his spindly fingers and his eyes dancing with gin-soaked nostalgia as he imparts some memory of May's childhood, the two women he loved, or the old Studebaker he drove. We come to understand an old fool who lived his life selfishly and caused a lot of pain, but who was adored, fair or no.

A strange and intriguing tale, the one-hour play could have held our attention for two more. Kudos to director Adalberto J. Acevedo for bringing this interesting story to a Miami stage and doing it so well.

First look at "Fool for Love" in rehearsal

2011-06-08T12:41:00.000-07:00

Meet the Playwright : Sam Shepard

2011-05-16T08:32:00.000-07:00

Considered one of America's most influential and celebrated playwrights of the 20th century, Sam Shepard is also an accomplished actor, director, screenwriter and musician. Samuel Shepard Rogers IV was born on November 5, 1943 in Fort Sheridan, Illinois. In the early years, Sam, the eldest of three children, led a rather nomadic life living on several military bases. His father was an army officer and former Air Force bomber during World War II while his mother was a teacher. His childhood experience of living in a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic father would often provide the recurrent dark themes in his writing as well as a preoccupation with the myth of the vanishing West. His writing commonly incorporated inventive language, symbolism, and non-linear storytelling while being populated with drifters, fading rock stars and others living on the edge.

The family finally settled in Duarte, CA where Sam graduated from high school in 1961. In his high school years he began acting and writing poetry. He also worked as a stable hand at a horse ranch in Chino from 1958-1960. Thinking he might become a veterinarian, Sam studied agriculture at Mount Antonio Junior College for a year; but when a traveling theater group, the Bishop's Company Repertory Players came through town, Sam joined up and left home. After touring with them during 1962-1963, he moved to New York City and worked as a bus boy at the Village Gate in Greenwich Village.

Sam began focusing his efforts on writing a series of of avant-garde one-act plays and eventually found his way to the off-off-Broadway scene to Theatre Genesis, a ragtag group that met in an upstairs room at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery. There he had his first two plays produced on a double bill - "Cowboys" (1964) and "The Rock Garden" (1964). After the University of Minnesota offered him a grant in 1966, he won OBIE Awards for "Chicago," "Icarus' Mother" and "Red Cross" - an unprecedented feat to win three in the same year. In 1967, Sam wrote his first full-length play, "La Turista," an allegory on the Vietnam War about two American tourists in Mexico, and was honored again with his fourth OBIE.

After receiving an OBIE for "Melodrama Play" (1968) and "Cowboys #2" (1968), Sam received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation. He put his music skills taught to him by his father to use by playing drums and guitar in the rock band, the Holy Modal Rounders, in which he played for the next few years while continuing to write plays. In 1969 he married O-lan Jones Dark and together they had a son, Jesse Mojo Shepard. At this time, Sam made tentative steps toward screenwriting, having his first teleplay, "Fourteen Hundred Thousand" (NET, 1969), broadcast on television. He got a taste of Hollywood when he was one of several screenwriters on Michelangelo Antonioni's "Zabriskie Point" (1970). In 1971, after a high-profile relationship with singer-poet Patti Smith - despite being married to actress O-Lan Jones Dark - Sam and his family moved to London, where he spent three years writing more plays, including "The Tooth of the Crime" (1972). The play crossed the Atlantic for a U.S. production in 1973, winning the young playwright yet another OBIE.

In 1974, Sam returned to the United States, where he was set up as the playwright in residence at the Magic Theater in San Francisco, a post he held for the next ten years. Meanwhile, he joined Bob Dylan's "Rolling Thunder Revue," the singer-songwriter's traveling band of musicians who covered the northern hemisphere in the mid-1970s. He was originally hired to write a movie about the tour, but instead produced a book later on called "The Rolling Thunder Logbook". He then entered the cinema world with the lead role in Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven" (1978), which served to raise his profile. It was a lucky stroke. The screenplay was written by Rudolph Wurlitzer, who was also on Dylan's tour. Despite his branching out into other avenues, playwriting remained Sam's stock and trade.

Returning to the theater, Sam wrote some of his finest work, including several plays that later proved to be his most famous and revered. He produced the first two of a series of plays about families tearing themselves apart, which debuted off-Broadway. "Curse of the Starving Class" debuted off-Broadway in 1978 followed by "Buried Child" the same year. Though both plays added to his OBIE collection, "Buried Child" earned the playwright the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979. He also began his collaboration with actor-writer-director Joseph Chaikin of the Open Theater, with both contributing to "Tongues" (1978) and "Savage/Love" (1979).

For the next installment of his family tragedy series that he started with "Curse of the Starving Glass," Sam wrote "True West" (1980), using a more traditional narrative to depict a rivalry between two estranged brothers. First performed at the Magic Theater in San Francisco, "True West" was revived on numerous occasions and starred several high-profile actors over the years, including Gary Sinese, John Malkovich, Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly. Meanwhile, thanks to his performance in "Days of Heaven," Sam began landing other roles in features with greater regularity. Tall, lanky and brooding, his weathered good looks served him well on screen. In 1980 he co-starred with Ellen Burstyn in "Resurrection" followed by a very small role in "Raggedy Man" a year later and then a more substantial role in the biopic "Frances" (1982). That would prove to be an important film on a personal note because it introduced him to his future companion, Jessica Lange. Two years later, he ended his marriage with O-lan Jones.

Despite being involved in theater for almost two decades at this point, Sam had shied away from directing anything he wrote. That changed with "Fool for Love" (1983), which depicted a pair of quarreling lovers at a Mojave Desert motel and earned him his 11th overall OBIE award, but his first for Best Direction. He next landed perhaps his most widely recognized film role, playing Chuck Yeager in the epic drama about the birth of America's space program, "The Right Stuff" (1983). This would earn him an Academy Award nominiation. His restrained and minimalist performance - which mirrored the real life Yeager - was hailed by critics and audiences, including the man he portrayed on film. After starring opposite Jessica in the rural drama, "Country" (1984), Sam took his prose collection - "Motel Chronicles" - and incorporated it a screenplay for Wim Wenders' "Paris, Texas" (1984), which won the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. He next adapted his own play, "Fool for Love" (1985), for director Robert Altman, in which he also took the leading role of Eddie.

Sam made another triumphant return to the stage as writer and director with "A Lie of the Mind" (1986), a gritty three-act play about two families suffering the consequences of severe spousal abuse. It was first staged off-Broadway at the Promenade Theater. Once again, the playwright earned several awards and accolades, including a Drama Desk Award and a New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best New Play. As his career progressed, Sam began exploring other avenues of creative expression with more frequency, which left less time to focus on the theater. While early in his career he had at least one play - if not several - released just about every year, he began writing fewer plays by the late 1980s. After producing the lesser-known "A Short Life of Trouble" (1987), he co-starred in Beth Henley's quirky drama "Crimes of the Heart" (1986) with Diane Keaton and again with the Oscar-winning actress in the romantic comedy "Baby Boom" (1987). Sam then made his feature directorial debut with "Far North" (1988) starring his long-time companion.

In 1989 he took on a small, but very noticeable role in the successful comedy-drama, "Steel Magnolias" about six Southern belles with backbones as tough as nails. After writing the blackmail drama "Simpatico" (1993) for the stage, he made a return behind the camera for the metaphysical Western-cum-Greek tragedy, "Silent Tongue" (1994). After his induction into the Theater Hall of Fame in 1994, he reunited with Chaikin for "When the World Was Green" (1996), a play commissioned for the Olympic Arts Festival in Atlanta and reprised for the Signature Theater Company's 1996-97 season that showcased several of his plays. In 1996 his restaging of "Buried Child" on Broadway with direction by Gary Sinese earned a Tony Award nomination. Meanwhile, he published "Cruising Paradise: Tales" (1997), a collection of 40 short stories that explored the themes of solitude and loss.

As the new millennium approached, Sam found himself in demand more as an actor, which gave him greater exposure to audiences, but unfortunately also limited his stage output for a spell. Through the 90s, he appeared in about fourteen films, some television productions, including three westerns - "The Good Old Boys" and "Streets of Laredo" in 1995 and then "Purgatory" in 1999. A&E's biopic, "Dash and Lilly" was well received the same year. He began the decade with Volker Schlöndorff's "Voyager" (aka Homo Faber), in which he gave an impressive performance opposite Julie Delpy. That was followed by three mediocre films, "Bright Angel" and "Defenseless" in 1991 and then "Thunderheart" with Val Kilmer in 1992. During the next two years he co-starred in two substantial mainsteam films - "Pelican Brief" (1993) in the role of Julia Roberts' lover and "Safe Passage (1994) as Susan Sarandon's husband. In 1997 he was back on screen in the romantic drama, "The Only Thrill", co-starring for the third time with Diane Keaton.

Following a role in "Snow Falling on Cedars" (1999) and a screen adaptation of "Simpatico" (1999), Sam played the Ghost of Hamlet's father in the contemporary adaptation of "Hamlet" (2000), which he followed with a supporting role in "All the Pretty Horses" (2000). Returning to playwriting, Sam then wrote "The Late Henry Moss" (2001), which debuted at the Magic Theater. Continuing to act more than write, he was seen in numerous onscreen projects, including the exciting war film, "Black Hawk Down" (2001), "Swordfish" (2001) and "The Pledge" (2001) starring Jack Nicholson.

As time wore on and the world became more darkly complex, Sam's writing started becoming more political as a reflection of the times. With "The God of Hell" (2004), the playwright sought to tackle what he deemed "Republican fascism". On the big screen he had a small role in "The Notebook" (2004). Remarkably, he returned to performing on stage for the second time in his career ("Cowboy Mouth" being the first in 1971) and co-starred with Dallas Roberts in the Caryl Churchill cloning drama, "A Number", which opened Off-Broadway in November 2004.

It was time to team up once more with Wim Wenders as scriptwriter and lead actor for "Don't Come Knocking" (2005) in which Jessica plays his old girlfriend. He was then cast as the commander of a top secret Navy squadron in "Stealth" (2005), followed by a supporting role in the Mexican Western, "Bandidas" (2006) opposite Penelope Cruz and Selma Hajek. After narrating the endearing "Charlotte's Web" (2006), Sam earned a SAG nomination for his performance in "Ruffian" (ABC, 2007). The same year he played Frank James in the brooding and beautiful film, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford".

Then it was back to the theater scene with two plays written for Irish actor Stephen Rea - "Kicking a Dead Horse" (2007) and "Ages of the Moon" (2009). Both premiered at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and were then transported across the Atlantic to off-off Broadway. Three smaller films followed with a perfect role in Jim Sheridan's "Brothers" (2009) in which he gives a fine portrayal of a taciturn military father.

2010 began with the publication of Sam's collection of short stories, "Day out of Days". For onscreen productions, he will star in a Mateo Gil film in Mexico called "Blackthorn", in which he plays Butch Cassidy. He will be appearing as the patriarch of a Nashville music clan in an EPIX new TV series called "Tough Trade".

Sam Shepard's "Fool for Loves" comes to The Alliance

2011-05-12T08:14:00.000-07:00

Featuring

Jehane Seralles & Arturo Fernandez

The scene is a stark motel room at the edge of the Mojave Desert. May, a disheveled young woman, sits dejectedly on a rumpled bed while Eddie, a rough-spoken rodeo performer, crouches in a corner fiddling with his riding gear. When he attempts to console May, who is distressed by Eddie's frequent absences and love affairs, she seems, at first, to soften—but then she suddenly attacks him. As the recriminations pour out, and the action becomes, at times, physically violent, the desperate nature of their relationship becomes apparent—they cannot get along with, or without, one another, yet neither can subdue their burning passion. The poignancy of their situation (they are half-brother and half-sister as well as lovers) is pointed out by the play's two other characters: a hapless young man who stops by to take May to the movies and becomes the butt of Eddie's funniest yet most humiliating jokes; and a ghostly old man (perhaps their father) who sits in a rocking chair at the side of the stage, sipping whiskey and commenting wryly on what he observes. Eventually May and Eddie tire of their struggle and embrace—but it is evident that the respite is temporary and that their love, the curse of the past which haunts them, will remain forever damned and hopeless.

June 9th -
June 26th, 2011
Thu-Fri 8:00 PM
Sat 5:00 PM
Sun 2:00 PM
Industry Night TBA

Adults - $25.00
Students - $15.00
Seniors - $15.00
Call 305.259.0418
or click the tab above for tickets.

The Alliance Theatre Lab performs at the Main Street Playhouse
in Miami Lakes.

6766 Main Street
Miami Lakes, FL 33014

Opening Night at Brothers Beckett

2011-03-30T13:51:00.000-07:00

First look at Brothers Beckett by David Michael Sirois

2011-03-08T21:30:00.000-08:00

Here is your first look at the brilliantly funny and heart warming production of a new play by David Michael Sirois. Don't miss Brothers Beckett when it opens on March 17, 2011!

First look at Brothers Beckett Poster

2011-03-06T20:19:00.000-08:00

Here is your first look at the publicity campaign for Brothers Beckett a new comedy bt David Michael Sirois. Don't miss this heart warming play when it opens March 17!

First look at the cast of Brothers Beckett!

2011-02-05T14:06:00.000-08:00

The Alliance is proud to announce the cast for the up coming WORLD PREMIERE of David Michael Sirois' comedy "Brothers Beckett".

Kevin Beckett is a Yale Alumnus who is awaiting the arrival of his beloved girlfriend named Tuesday, who will be spending a perfect week with him and his roommate and brother, Brad. When Kevin divulges to Brad he will be proposing, Brad tries to find any way possible to keep his brother from moving out of their bunk bedded, pink walled studio apartment.

Don't miss this funny yet heart warming story when it makes its way onto our stage.
Brothers Beckett opens this spring.

March 17th -
April 3rd, 2011
Thu-Fri 8:00 PM
Sat 5:00 PM
Sun 2:00 PM
Industry Night TBA

Adults - $20.00
Students - $10.00
Seniors - $15.00
Call 305.259.0418

Kevin Beckett - David Derastyne
Brad Beckett -David Sirois

Joyce - Kaitlyn O'Neill
Tuesday - Shira Abergel
Doug - Mark Della Ventura

David Dearstyne

David Sirois

Kaitlyn O'Neill

Shira Abergel

Mark Della Ventura

The Alliance Theatre Lab performs at the Main Street Playhouse
in Miami Lakes.

6766 Main Street
Miami Lakes, FL 33014

Small Membership returns to GableStage

2011-01-17T13:47:00.000-08:00

Back by popular demand!
One night only
7:30
@
GableStage

The Alliance Theatre Lab presents

"Small Membership"

Alliance Theatre Lab proudly presents a second staged reading of "Small Membership," January 24, 2011. "Small Membership," which has been revised and extended, is an original, full-length one person show about a big boy with a small problem. Meet Matt, a 25 year old seeking attention and guidance from a group of strangers. The show centers on male insecurity and through a series of flashbacks we see his childhood and adulthood struggles with puberty, sexual orientation, anxiety, heartbreak and self-determined celibacy. (Contains Strong Language and Adult Content.)

GableStage has generously opened up their space, free of charge, to help Alliance Theatre Lab with

their fundraiser, featuring South Florida actor/playwright Mark Della Ventura and directed by

Alliance Theatre Lab's Resident Playwright David Sirois. All proceeds go to Alliance Theatre Lab's 2011 Season opener: the world premiere of David Michael Sirois' "Brothers Beckett," which opens

March 17 and runs thru April 3, 2011. A sneak preview of "Brothers Beckett" will happen before

the reading.

Ticket Information:

Ticket Price: Suggested Donation

General Admission: $10 / Students: $5

Location:

GableStage is located at The Biltmore Hotel at

1200 Anastasia Avenue, Coral Gables, FL 33134

For more information, please call (305) 259-0418 or e-mail thealliancelab@aol.com

Happy Holidays from the Alliance

2010-12-12T19:14:00.001-08:00

2010 has come to a close for the Alliance, and it was quite a year for one of the best reviewed theatre's in South Florida.

Starting in March... Lyle Kessler's Orphans opened to spectacular reviews across the board. Our audiences doubled, and production values tripled. Orphans left people leaving in tears and wanting more. Christine Dolen said Orphans was " ...an engrossing, accomplished production..." and "Alliance's Orphans cast digs into Kessler's characters with obvious relish" Brandon K. Thorp writes, "The sheer preciousness of it all is the invitation to ham, but the brave actors of the Alliance Theatre Lab resist. They give Kessler's old script a loving treatment, as intimate as the tiny theatre's warmly lit stage." Orphans was a hit. But more importantly, it left audiences moved and excited about theatre.

June showcased "Coyote on a Fence" by Bruce Graham. Dolen this time calling Alliance's show, "... one of the troupe's most powerful and polished shows to date..." and calling Mark Della Ventura's performance, "Masterful." Director Albert Acevedo took audiences on a thought provoking journey, and it paid off intensely.

To close the season was Wendy McLeod's "The House of Yes." Once we ate up all of that delicious oatmeal, audiences were treated to Alliance's third hit of the year. Miami Herald once again praised, "Directer Adalberto J. Acevedo keeps his deft cast walking a tightrope between comedy and tragedy." The dark and incestuous script could have easily scared and audience but as Thorp said in the New Times, "... thanks goodness for the Alliance, which not only has the will to produce an oddity such as The House of Yes but also knows how to pull it off." The House of Yes ended yet another successful season, and there will be plenty more next year.

After a brilliantly well done fundraiser with "Small Membership", it has been recommissioned by GableStage to be put on at the start of next season for the World Premiere of Brothers Beckett by resident playwright David Michael Sirois.

Have a wonderful holiday season from all of us at Alliance, and we are looking forward to seeing you in our audience for the 2011 season.

A look at Small Membership by Mark Della Ventura.

2010-11-14T20:06:00.000-08:00

On November 8, 2010 @ 8 pm, GableStage generously opened up their space to The Alliance for a benefit performance of “Small Membership,” an original, full-length one person show by Mark Della Ventura. The event was a huge success with some of our community's most talented theatre artists in attendance. Here is a look at the star studded night.

A quiet moment before the doors open and the performance begins.

Florida Media News / ENV Magazine gives House of Yes another RAVE review!

2010-11-14T14:04:00.000-08:00

THE HOUSE OF YES GETS NOD OF APPROVAL

AS ALLIANCE THEATRE LAB PROVES ITS WORTH

By Ron Levitt

Florida Media News / ENV Magazine

MIAMI LAKES , FL -- The emerging Alliance Theatre Lab company recently received word that it will be Carbonell-eligible for the 2011 season, and – if its current production is an example of the kind of work it will spawn – then it gets a hearty “yes” to its acceptance as a major group competing with other stage venues for the big South Florida awards.

Alliance actually Is an outgrowth of a company founded by director Adalberto Acevedo in 2001 as The Modern Stage. After three years of successful shows, the theatre took some time off to regroup, add new members, and refocus its mission. In 2005 the theatre resurfaced as The Alliance Theatre Lab, and went on to present several critically acclaimed productions, including an A-One viewing of David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago. In 2009, The Alliance produced its first full season. Together, the new Alliance has refocused the company as an ensemble of theatre artists that focus on contemporary work that “provoke, challenge and engage” its audience.

And, its current presentation – The House of Yes by Wendy MacLeod – certainly lives up to its mission.

It’s a gutsy production for any Company to generate, but this one – with a topnotch cast, superb direction and creative energy – is a minor milestone. Any play – especially one steeped in cutting edge taboos such as incest amidst a cartoon-like dysfunctional family – is assuredly one which will evoke after-the-curtain-falls discussion. It is especially notable when Director Acevedo presents this unique play in a predominately black set, with 18 surrealistic empty frames as a backdrop for the twisted characters in this unique theatrical presentation.

Do you want a simple definition for this play? How about that it’s a vivid X-rated version of children playing house? If that isn’t enough, how about dysfunctional siblings playing the Kennedys so they can make love to one another? Or is this a screwball comedy with political meaning? Or about never saying NO to anything? The list of craziness could go on and on!

Just what is this play all about? Well, it’s about twins – the obsessive Jackie O. (a volume of talent named Jehane Serrales) and Marty (a terrific David Sirois) who have a relationship built on erotic sex. Marty has been living in New York but returns home for Thanksgiving (amidst an impending hurricane) with a fiancé Lesly ( Brigitte Kali). Lesly – the normal one in this play -- is welcomed (well, sort of ) by her fiance’s twin, the mother ( a volatile and frightening portrayal by LaVonne Canfield) whose clock has stopped when her husband deserted her, and especially by the twin’s younger sibling Anthony (a memorable Justin McLendon), who wants the intruder for himself. That’s the crux of this 20-year-old play – and it’s a plot that is funny, tragic and mind-bending.

In addition to its remarkable cast, much of the credit obviously rests with Director Acevedo and the author. Acevedo presents a play which is disturbing in its subject matter, yet makes it one which we don’t want to miss a word penned by playwright MacLeod. (Nor miss a moment watching Jackie O, in her pink pillbox hat, play games with her sibling.).

Let’s add a little more about the cast. It consists of several Alliance regulars who obviously work well together. Sirois, Serrales and McLendon especially are notable, All three are handsome people who steal scenes one by one and often together. They are a trio to watch as the Alliance navigates amidst competition from some of the larger venues in South Florida. This playhouse – on Main Street in Miami Lakes – may be small but this production speaks volume on this Company’s ability to generate cutting edge works. You will become a fan!!

Miami New Times goes NUTS for The House of Yes and so will you!

2010-11-09T10:53:00.000-08:00

The House of Yes is a delightful play that will nevertheless make you squirm. It is about incest — incest presented with such gushing gusto it could make V. C. Andrews blush.

And if the Alliance Theatre Lab didn't exist, South Florida audiences probably would never get to see it. Most theaters would find The House of Yes too rude, too ugly, and too potentially offensive to conservative subscription holders. The Sol Theatre might have done it, but it's gone. Mad Cat could have done it, but it's down to about one show a year, and it's doubtful the troupe would pull anything this weird in its new digs at the Arsht Center. The Naked Stage could do it, but it's a little too serious.

So thank goodness for Alliance, which not only has the will to produce an oddity such as The House of Yes but also knows how to pull it off. Alliance director Adalberto Acevedo, who is probably the most twistedly exciting director in SoFla, believes in the ethic of "going big or going home." He inspires his actors to gamble, to wander far beyond the ordinary repertoire of gestures, attitudes, and poses. Working with a play full of such otherworldly scenes as those in The House of Yes, Acevedo goes into a creative warp-drive that absconds with audiences to places they have never seen before.

The play takes place sometime in the early '80s, in a house about to be walloped by a hurricane. It is Thanksgiving. Brother Anthony (the charming Justin McLendon) and sister Jackie O. (Jehanne Serralles) sit anxiously by a window, awaiting the arrival of Marty (David Sirois) — Jackie O.'s twin brother and, as we discover, a great deal more. He is bringing a "guest" for the holiday — his fiancée (Brigitte Kali Canales) — though no one in the house is aware yet. He hasn't known just how to tell them. Jackie O. is crazy and potentially dangerous. (She is nicknamed "Jackie O." because she spends most of her time imitating the former first lady's '60s fashions, especially the ensemble worn November 22, 1963.) Marty suspects learning of his engagement might send her over the edge. Which it does.

Serralles plays Jackie O. with a kind of Technicolor derangement that's enthralling and scary, one part Margaret Hamilton wicked witch, one part Delilah. She is the flagship nut in a houseful of them. Her mother, Mrs. Pascal, is played by LaVonne Canfield as a great edifice of consumptive womanhood, never letting go of her babies, whose lives she means to fold into her own. As pictured by Alliance Theatre Lab, the family is a black hole, and Marty's engagement is a mad dash to escape its gravitational pull.

Miami Herald calls The House of Yes - " edgily funny and disturbingly watchable.

2010-11-09T10:46:00.000-08:00

Wendy MacLeod's The House of Yes is a way-out-there absurdist comedy that not many South Florida theaters would even consider presenting. The play is too strange, too steeped in taboos, too potentially offensive for companies nervous about alienating mainstream theatergoers.

Fortunately, such a script is precisely what appeals to the folks at the Alliance Theatre Lab, where dramatically challenging and intense plays keep the troupe's adventuresome audiences coming back for more.

Just how odd is The House of Yes, which has lost not a bit of its edge since its 1990 premiere? Plenty. The play's pivotal characters are twins, Jackie-O (Jehane Serralles) and Marty (David Sirois), siblings who have long experienced a mutual, irresistible erotic pull.

Their childish games weren't classics like cowboys and Indians; instead, the two reenact the Kennedy assassination, Jackie-O in a pink suit and pillbox hat, her handsome brother waving to the ``crowd'' before history takes its course, and sis comforts her ``dying'' brother -- with sex.

Marty has been living in New York, almost escaping the chic suburban madhouse where Jackie-O resides with their manipulatively voyeuristic mother, Mrs. Pascal (LaVonne Canfield), and the twins' younger sibling Anthony (Justin McLendon), a recent college dropout. But he has made the mistake of coming home on Thanksgiving Eve, during an approaching hurricane no less, to introduce his fiancée Lesly (Brigitte Kali Canales) to the family. That Jackie-O doesn't exactly embrace her future sister-in-law is hardly a surprise.

For all the dark turns, The House of Yes is often edgily funny as Lesly, the ``normal'' one, tries to cope with her beloved's strange family and the knowledge that a happy future with Marty doesn't seem to be in the cards.

Director Adalberto J. Acevedo keeps his deft cast walking a tightrope between comedy and tragedy, and though repetition will undoubtedly tighten the play's timing (which would be a good thing), the power of the piece is undeniable.

Working on a predominantly black set decorated with metaphoric elegant -- but empty -- gold picture frames, the actors play these mostly twisted characters as if this family dynamic were the most natural thing in the world, a device that makes The House of Yes all the more disturbingly watchable.

Sirois expertly navigates Marty's journey from near-salvation to emotional capitulation, and Canfield makes Mrs. Pascal a truly disturbing matriarch. Serralles is initially far too over-the-top crazy. But once the mentally mercurial Jackie-O again has access to her drug of choice -- Marty -- the twins become equal partners in MacLeod's version of a Greek tragedy.

Miami Artzine RAVES about The House of Yes

2010-11-09T10:41:00.001-08:00

Wendy MacLeod's play, The House of Yes, spawned a successful movie in 1997 and it's easy to see why at the Alliance Theatre Lab's current production of the show. It's a bright, vicious and ultimately tragic ninety minutes, teetering on the edge of cartoon land but with Adalberto Acevedo's direction never crossing over.
Dysfunctional families can be boring, everyone's got one somewhere, but the family Pascal shown here are never that as they reach the heights of role playing, incest and murder. And, of course, brother boffing brother's fiancée, cheered on by mother, is only a slight bump in the upward path.
Jehane Serralles is Jackie O, twin sister to David Sirois' Marty and whose penis she is holding in a womb shot (prelude to the money shot, I guess) or so LaVonne Canfield, their mother, insists. The twins continue their uh, close relationship, finally consummating it the first time they play at “Killing JFK”. A simple game, really. Jackie O in a pink suit and pill box hat shooting blanks into Marty whom she then comforts carnally as he lies dying. Nice kiddie games.
Jackie O, recently released from a mental hospital, flashes around the living room like a demented grasshopper, strutting in her heels, sliding on her knees. Up, down, to, fro. Give her the pills, please. And then not only does a hurricane loom, but her beloved brother Marty arrives home with his betrothed. Now there's a confrontation not to be missed.
Anthony, (Justin McLendon) the younger brother of the twins and not a shining light in his own right, can't wait to tell the very normal fiancée Lesly (Brigitte Kali) about the little sporting incest being played out downstairs while she's busy drying her hair upstairs. Of course this leads to the aforementioned boffing.
Smothering and abetting mother Pascal (is daddy really dead and buried in the back garden?) insists that Lesly leave the house, despite the near hurricane, because she doesn't want the twins' fun and games to end. After all a sister does need her brother. Every now and then.
There's a mess of subtext going on here and make of it what you will, but this production, with its brightly polished staging and fine acting lets you simply enjoy the sex, the death, the craziness and the fun of it all.
The New World School of the Arts should get a loud cheer here as all five excellent cast members are graduates who shine on Alliance's stage.
Adalberto Acevedo and stage manager Amy Spadafore designed the realistic set with Will Cabrera and Howard Ferre providing the very professional lighting and sound design/original music.

First Look: The House of Yes

2010-10-24T21:38:00.000-07:00

Here is your first look at The House of Yes by Wendy MacLeod.

The House of Yes plays November 4 - November 21, 2010
Thu-Fri 8:00 PM
Sat 5:00 PM
Sun 2:00 PM
Industry Night TBA

Adults - $25.00
Students - $15.00
Seniors - $15.00
Call 305.259.0418

Don't miss your chance to see this cult favorite when it plays The Alliance Theatre Lab.

Small Memebership by Mark Della Ventura plays Gable Stage

2010-10-19T21:01:00.000-07:00

Don't miss this

ONE NIGHT ONLY EVENT!!

ALLIANCE THEATRE LAB FUNDRAISER AT GABLESTAGE

Alliance Theatre Lab presents a staged reading of “Small Membership,” an original, full-length one person show, November 8, 2010. “Small Membership” is a story about a big boy with a small problem. Meet Matt, a 25 year old seeking attention and guidance from a group of strangers. The show centers on male insecurity and through a series of flashbacks we see his childhood and adulthood struggles with puberty, sexual orientation, anxiety, heartbreak and self-determined celibacy. (Contains Strong Language and Adult Content.)

A Staged Reading of “Small Membership”
November 8, 2010 @ 8 pm

Hosted by

**GABLE STAGE**

GableStage has generously opened up their space, free of charge, to help Alliance Theatre Lab with their fundraiser. The fundraiser features South Florida actor/playwright Mark Della Ventura and will be directed by Alliance Theatre Lab’s Resident Playwright David Sirois. All proceeds go to Alliance Theatre Lab.

Ticket Information:

Ticket Price: Suggested Donation
General Admission: $10 / Students: $5

Location:
GableStage is located at The Biltmore Hotel at
1200 Anastasia Avenue, Coral Gables, FL 33134

For more information, please call (305) 259-0418 or e-mail thealliancelab@aol.com

Alliance Theatre Lab 2011 Season Auditions

2010-10-10T18:08:00.000-07:00

The Alliance Theatre Lab is holding auditions for its 2011 season on Saturday, October 16th from 10AM-5PM at the Main Street Playhouse (6766 Main Street, Miami Lakes).

Please prepare two contrasting monologues that together will last under three minutes.

Call (305)-259-0418 or email thealliancetheatrelab@aol.com to reserve an audition slot.

MASTER HAROLD AND THE BOYS

This play about a young white boy and two African servants is at once a compelling drama of South African apartheid and a universal coming-of-age story. Originally produced in 1982, it is now an acknowledged classic of the stage, whose themes of injustice, racism, friendship, and reconciliation traverse borders and time.

Harold – White male (17-22)

Willy – Black male (mid 30s-mid 50s)

Sam – Black male (mid 40s-mid 60s)

BROTHERS BECKETT

Kevin Beckett is a Yale Alumnus who is awaiting the arrival of his beloved girlfriend named Tuesday, who will be spending a perfect week with him and his high school drop out roommate and brother, Brad. When Kevin divulges to Brad he will be proposing, Brad tries to find any way possible to keep his brother from moving out of their bunk bedded, pink walled studio apartment.

Kevin Beckett, 26 – Brad’s brother and roommate. Clean cut Yale Alum who is hopelessly devoted to Tuesday.

Brad Beckett, 32 – Kevin’s older brother and quick witted high school drop out. He will stop at nothing to destroy his brothers relationship.

Tuesday Gretchen Jacobson, 22 – Kevin’s soon to be fiance. She is a recent graduate of U of Miami, and finds herself needing to reveal more than she expected.

Joyce Elliot, 30 – Brad’s best friend. She's a sharp and funny girl who can also be one of the guys. She has her doctorate in Meteorology.

Doug, 22 – The Next door neighbor. The everyman. The buddy. The pal. The legend.

FOOL FOR LOVE

The scene is a stark motel room at the edge of the Mojave Desert. As the recriminations pour out, and the action becomes, at times, physically violent, the desperate nature of these relationships becomes apparent—they cannot get along with, or without, one another, yet neither can subdue their burning passion. The poignancy of their situation (they are half-brother and half-sister as well as lovers) is pointed out by the play's two other characters: a hapless young man who stops by to take May to the movies; and a ghostly old man (perhaps their father) who sits in a rocking chair at the side of the stage, sipping whiskey and commenting wryly on what he observes. Will their love, the curse of the past which haunts them, remain forever damned and hopeless?

Eddie - 25/35 The play's protagonist. Dressed in cowboy gear from head to toe, Eddie is a larger than life, multi-dimensional character. He has trouble distinguishing between reality and fiction.

May - 23/33 Eddie's lover. Simultaneously strong-willed and vulnerable. May is a good match for Eddie in that she can keep up with his verbal gymnastics and power plays.

Old Man - 50/60 Eddie's and May's father. The Old Man appears only in the minds of May and Eddie.

Martin - 20/30 A large, simple, and kind man who works maintenance for places around town like the high school stadium.

Ad campaign for The House of Yes revealed!

2010-09-26T20:55:00.000-07:00

Here is your first look at the poster designed by Gert Rodon for our up-coming production of Wendy MacLeod's The House of Yes. The production brings to a close one of the most successful seasons for our young company. Don't miss this cult classic when it makes it way onto our stage November 4, 2010.

MEET THE PASCALS: First look at The House of Yes

2010-09-24T07:30:00.000-07:00

In The House of Yes, no one has ever heard the word “no.” But, in the Pascal home, nothing is as it seems and no one can imagine the dark secrets that fester in a world with no boundaries. When Marty (David Sirois) brings his fiancé Lesly (Brigitte Kali) home to meet his family, it is a mistake that he quickly regrets but cannot escape. This especially upsets his twin sister Jackie-O (Jehane Serralles) who wants to keep Marty all to herself. The cast is rounded out by younger brother Anthony (Justin McLendon) and the family matriarch Mrs. Pascal (LaVonne Canfield).

"Gripping, funny and worth its reputation." --Time Out, London

"MacLeod gets us there with a fertile and original screwball voice that puts her in a league with such erudite young satirists of America's privileged class as Nicky Silver and Richard Greenberg." --Newsday

Don't miss this dark comedy when it opens at The Alliance Theatre Lab on November 4th 2010.

November 4 -
November 21, 2010
Thu-Fri 8:00 PM
Sat 5:00 PM
Sun 2:00 PM
Industry Night TBA

Adults - $25.00
Students - $15.00
Seniors - $15.00
Call 305.259.0418

Job Opportunities with The Alliance!

2010-08-29T07:42:00.000-07:00

The Alliance announces our upcoming auditions for "The House of Yes" by Wendy McLeod on Sunday, September 19th from 12-5PM at the Main Street Playhouse (6766 Main Street, Miami Lakes). We are holding open auditions for two parts:

LESLIE: Female, early to mid-twenties

MRS. PASCAL: Female, 50-60 years old

GUIDELINES

1)Please prepare 2 contrasting monologues not to exceed 3 minutes.

2)Bring your headshot and resume.

3)If applicable, bring your Equity or EMC card.

4)Be prepared to read from the script.

Please call (305)259-0418 to reserve an audition slot.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Alliance is also accepting resumes for an Assistant Stage Manager for "The House of Yes" to be trained for a Resident Stage Manager position opening in 2011.

Please send cover letter and resume to alliancesm@yahoo.com by September 27th.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Finally, The Alliance is holding auditions for the 2011 season on Saturday, October 16 from 12-5PM and Sunday, October 17 from 10AM-3PM at the Main Street Playhouse (6766 Main Street, Miami Lakes).

The 2011 season includes:

"Master Harold and the Boys" by Athol Fugard

"Brothers Beckett" by David Michael Sirois

"Fool for Love" by Sam Shepard

Please follow guidelines above and call (305)259-0418 to reserve audition slot.

Meet the Playwright: Wendy MacLeod

2010-08-27T06:57:00.000-07:00

Wendy MacLeod's play THE HOUSE OF YES became an award-winning Miramax film starring Parker Posey, earning a Special Jury Award at Sundance. The play has been done at Soho Rep, The Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin and at The Gate Theater in London, where it was published in Plays International, and most recently at The Washington Shakespeare Company. JUVENILIA premiered at Playwrights Horizons, as did THE WATER CHILDREN, which was then done at L.A.'s Matrix Theater and cited as "the most challenging political play of 1998" by the L.A. Weekly and earned six L.A. Drama Critics Circle nominations. THINGS BEING WHAT THEY ARE premiered at Seattle Rep and performed at Steppenwolf in Chicago in 2003 where its sold-out run was extended twice. Most recently it was done at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor. Her plays SIN AND SCHOOLGIRL FIGURE both premiered at The Goodman in Chicago, and Anvil Entertainment has optioned SCHOOLGIRL FIGURE for film. Her prose has appeared in The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, POETRY magazine, and the Kenyon Alumni Bulletin. A New Dramatist alumna and a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, she is the James E. Michael playwright-in-residence at her alma mater, Kenyon College, and has been a guest professor at Northwestern University's film and theater departments.

Author's note

The play started with a particular house, a house I saw in an elegant suburb of Washington, D.C. There was just something about this chic, moneyed house that made me want in. And Lesly begins the play wanting in.

The title came from a graffiti I saw written on a bathroom wall: "We are living in a house of yes." And that made me think about Edgar Allan Poe and pornography and mostly about amorality. The play is about people that have never been said no to. It's about an insularity I see in the upper classes, people who have cut themselves off from the rest of the world and are living by the rules they've invented.

It is a great mistake to imagine the play is "camp" because the characters pretend to be Jack and Jackie Kennedy. To do the play that way is to undermine its emotional truth, and the love, however twisted, between the characters. Mrs. Pascal desperately loves her daughter and is trying to protect her, and the twins love each other deeply, tragically. However to speak of such thinks is "déclassé" and the characters only allow themselves that luxury at one or two points in the play. It is that tension between the Noel Coward veneer and the Pinteresque subtext that makes the play both funny and moving.

Some common questions. What's the deal with Anthony? Why does he do what he does? Perhaps because he truly loves Lesly and shares his brother's longing for "normalcy." Perhaps he's out to finally outdo his older brother. Or perhaps he tears Marty and Lesly apart for his sister's sake.

What's the deal with the assassination game? The construct of the two Kennedys allows the twins to make love to each other. In a blurring of events, they have confused the Kennedys with their own parents and we are merely watching an X-rated version of children playing house.

Finally, who is telling the truth at the end of the play? Did Mr. Pascal walk out on the family or was he, in fact, murdered by Mrs. Pascal? I will only say that every actor must present their character's version with absolute conviction.

Wendy MacLeod
August 1995

House of Yes comes to The Alliance Theatre Lab

2010-08-07T22:15:00.000-07:00

Autumn is just around the corner and the Alliance is gearing up for our fall production. We are pleased to announce that coming to the Alliance this fall will be Wendy MacLeod"s brilliantly funny The House of Yes.

The Pascals, for whom the clock stopped with the Kennedy assasination, are shut in as a Thankgiving hurricane swirls outside. Arriving ahead of the storm's eye are Jackie-O's twin brother, Marty and his fiancee Lesly. The obsessive Jackie is keen to renew her long-running incestuous affair with Marty, which is fine by the mother, who's still lamenting her husband's desertion, and by puppyish younger brother Anthony who immediately desires Lesly. The resulting battle over Marty becomes something of a class struggle between the Pascals' poetic insanity and Lesly's plebian pragmatism.

"...A fascinating blend of frivolous family politics and menacing political allegory....It is wickedly funny, disturbing and vividly written....MacLeod writes funny, frightening dialogue, and she touches the nerve of our cozy, vicarious involvement with acts of public violence" --San Francisco Chronicle

"Gripping, funny and worth its reputation." --Time Out, London

"MacLeod gets us there with a fertile and original screwball voice that puts her in a league with such erudite young satirists of America's privileged class as Nicky Silver and Richard Greenberg." --Newsday

The House of Yes will run:

November 4-21, 2010

Thu-Fri 8:00 PM
Sat 5:00 PM
Sun 2:00 PM
Adults - $25.00
Students - $15.00
Seniors - $15.00

Call for tickets and information
Call 305.259.0418

Alliance announces new ORIGINAL PLAY READING SERIES!

2010-06-28T22:20:00.000-07:00

The Alliance Theatre Lab is looking for new plays. We are now excepting submissions for both our 2012 season as well as our new Original Play Reading Series. If you would like to see your play produced at The Alliance Theatre Lab, read the guidelines below and be amongst the first to submit your play.

Play Submission Guidelines

E-mail all plays to the address below

Full length plays for Season Productions

*A one-page synopsis of the script
*A character breakdown
*Contact information
• Only unproduced works will be accepted
• Plays that have had staged readings are eligible.
• No adaptations, musicals, children's plays.
• Cast size maximum: 5
• Length: 70-120 minutes.
• Genre style should be based in realism and naturalism. If your setting is in a spaceship or in Hitler’s head don’t bother.
• Please do not submit works that have been previously submitted.
• Submit plays in PDF or DOC form.

The Alliance Original Play Reading Series

*A one-page synopsis of the script
*A character breakdown
*Contact information
• Only unproduced works will be accepted
• Plays that have had staged readings are eligible.
• No adaptations, musicals, children's plays.
• Cast size maximum: 8
• Length: 1-15 minutes.
• Genre styles can have a wide range, but make sure it can be producible.
• Please do not submit works that have been previously submitted.
• Even if the works are not picked… they can be optioned to be workshopped.
• Submit plays in PDF or DOC form.

Send to: allianceplaywright@gmail.com

The new Original Plays Reading Series will be held August 20th and 21st at the Main Street Playhouse.

Star studded closing night for Coyote on a Fence

2010-06-27T22:32:00.000-07:00

The South Florida Theatre Community came out to show their support for The Alliance Theatre Lab and its production of Coyote on a Fence by Bruce Graham. The closing night performance was a who's who of South Florida Theatre. Here are some pictures from the star studded event.

The talented Katie and Antonio Amedao.

Antonio Amadeo and the brilliant Avi Hoffman.

Director Stuart Meltzer.

Alliance Ensemble member Jehane Serralles.

The closing night audience mingled with the actors after the show.

Bill Schwartz and his lovely wife.

Alliance Ensemble members Travis Reiff and Cliff Burgess.

Coyote on a Fence was one of our most successful shows to date. With rave reviews and packed houses this soulful play helped the Alliance reach a new height in our theatre's young history. Thank you to all who came out and helped make this show such a huge success.

Miami Artzine RAVES about Coyote on a Fence

2010-06-21T13:27:00.000-07:00

And Then God Said to Me...

by Roger Martin on June 21, 2010
Jehane Serralles, Mark Della Ventura, Kirsten Upchurch, and Travis Reiff/photo by Roger Martin.

Bobby Reyburn has a can of gas and a match. He burns down a church. With 37 people inside. Naturally God told him to do it. What a monster is Bobby. Well, no, not really. Not as played by Mark Della Ventura in the Alliance Theatre Lab's Coyote on a Fence by Bruce Graham.

Della Ventura, fascinating as Bobby, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood who hates Jews and Blacks, was gang raped so badly he walks with a limp, sees out of only one eye, is uneducated and ignorant, and was birthed by a prostitute. And of course he desperately wants to see his name in the prison newspaper. The prison being in Texas and his cell being on Death Row next to long-time con John Brennan, editor of the aforesaid prison paper.

Brennan, played by Travis Reiff, is an almost celebrity, his writings on the deaths of his Death Row fellows and his arguing for the abolition of the death penalty having brought him to the notice of the BBC and the New York Times. He's an educated man, plays chess by mail, writes on an old typewriter without a ribbon (carbon paper), reads and tries to tell the world he is innocent of shooting a man in a drug deal. Travis Reiff is a grounded actor whose stage weight is always there. No missteps here as John Brennan.

Brennan is the arrogant King of the Row and then suddenly the seemingly innocent Bobby Reyburn is put into the cell next to him. Reyburn changes Brennan's disdain to forbearance and then, ultimately, friendship. See them playing catch in the exercise yard.

There's a Greek Chorus at work, too, in Coyote on a Fence. Kirsten Upchurch, as prison guard Shawna DuChamps, sucks beer from a bottle, willingly uses her baton, and protests a little too much that she's not worn down by all the years and all the executions. She just goes home to bed at night and forgets all about the prison life. Right.

New York Times reporter Samantha Fried, played by a just right Jehane Serralles, meets Brennan in the prison. She wants to write about his life and ideas but the interview ends badly with Brennan, cuffed, on his knees and being choked into submission by a baton across the throat as DuChamps screams for respect.

There's no doubt this is a political play but this is forgiven and forgotten with the force of Adalberto Acevedo's direction and the performances of his cast.

Mike Stopnik designed the realistic set (check out the ingenious exercise yard). The equally good sounds and lights are by Howard Ferre and Will Cabrera.

A note here about the Main Street Playhouse where the Alliance Theatre Lab is presenting Coyote on a Fence through June 27. It's a small, intimate black box with raked seating in Miami Lakes at 6766 Main Street. There are good restaurants within walking distance and free parking nearby. For more information call The Alliance Theatre Lab at 305.259.0418 or visit www.thealliancetheatrelab.com.

We're a HIT: The Miami Herald raves about Coyote on a Fence

2010-06-14T19:47:00.000-07:00

'Coyote on a Fence' provokes Death Row questions

Travis Reiff plays a death row inmate guarded by Kirsten Upchurch in the Alliance Theatre Lab's Coyote on a Fence.

BY CHRISTINE DOLEN
cdolen@MiamiHerald.com

Crime and capital punishment are center stage in Bruce Graham's Coyote on a Fence, an engrossing drama that deliberately raises more questions than it answers.

The Alliance Theatre Lab production, one of the troupe's most powerful and polished shows to date, sends its audiences back out onto Miami Lakes' Main Street pondering forever-incendiary issues: justice, vengeance, the legal system, racism and the ``why'' of horrific crimes.

Graham's play focuses on a pair of Texas death row inmates. John Brennan (an intense, engaging Travis Reiff) is an educated man who once worked at the prison as a drug and alcohol counselor. Opposed to the death penalty, adamant about his innocence, he has created a prison newspaper to push his views and humanize those who are executed.

John's new next-cell neighbor is Bobby Reyburn (Mark Della Ventura), a slow-witted, cheerful man with a ruined eye and a damaged hip. After a horrific childhood -- his mother was an alcoholic prostitute, and the hip injury came from a gang rape when he was 12 -- Bobby embraced the acceptance he found in a community of white supremacists. His crime: torching a black church with 37 people trapped inside, 14 of them children.

Feeling that justice will be served when Bobby, who spews repulsive pronouncements about blacks and Jews, keeps his date with the executioner would be easy. But Coyote on a Fence doesn't settle for easy. Both Graham's writing and Della Ventura's masterful performance keep the play from becoming a clear-cut study of guilt and innocence.

Also part of the drama are a prison guard (Kirsten Upchurch), whose drunken conversations with an unseen journalist in a bar reveal the emotional cost of maintaining her tough-gal exterior at work, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter (Jehane Serralles) who has decided to write about John and his appreciative obituaries. Both women play their parts well, but casting Serralles in a role written for a male brings a slightly creepy dimension to her initial scene with John, who asks about her marital status then wants to see a picture of her 5-year-old daughter.

Working on Mike Stopnick's set, with its lived-in cell for John and barren one for Bobby, the cast and director Adalberto Acevedo take the audience on an intense, difficult, thought-provoking journey.

Christine Dolen is The Miami Herald's theater critic.

First look at Coyote on a Fence by Buce Graham

2010-06-06T22:14:00.000-07:00

Here is a look at the final production shots for Coyote on a Fence.

Illiterate but likable, Bobby Reyburn is a funny young guy who loves to do impressions. He's also a member of the Aryan nation, a racist predator convicted of a horrific crime. John Brennan is educated and arrogant, a serious writer who may only be guilty of doing society a favor. As each awaits his fate, one evokes sympathy, the other derision. In vivid scenes, COYOTE ON A FENCE explores the disturbing question: Can one be innocent though proven guilty? This penetrating new drama offers no clear verdict, just utterly compelling theatre.

Travis Reiff plays condemned prisoner John Brennan.

Travis Reiff and Kirsten Upchurch in a scene from Coyote on a Fence.

A confrontation in the prison's exercises yard.

Travis Reiff, Kirsten Upchurch and Mark Della Ventura.

Coyote on a
Fence
by Bruce Graham
June 10 -
June 27, 2010
Thu-Fri 8:00 PM
Sat 5:00 PM
Sun 2:00 PM
Industry Night TBA

Adults - $25.00
Students - $15.00
Seniors - $15.00
Call 305.259.0418

The Alliance Theatre Lab performs at the Main Street Playhouse
in Miami Lakes.

6766 Main Street
Miami Lakes, FL 33014

Inside the Alliance: First look at Coyote on a Fence in rehearsal.

2010-05-31T22:55:00.000-07:00

Here is a look at Coyote on a Fence currently in rehearsal at The Alliance Theatre Lab.

Still under construction, here is your first look at the set design for Coyote on a Fence by Bruce Graham.

The set designed by Mike Stopnick conveys the isolation of the men housed on death row.

Jehane Serralles plays New York Times reporter Samantha Fried, who interviews inmate John Brennan played by Travis Reiff.

Kirsten Upchurch plays prison guard Shawna DuChamps

Travis Reiff as John Brennan creator of The Death Row Advocate a prison news paper that helps humanise the men on death row.

Mark Della Ventura plays the child like Bobby Alvin Reyburn, a prisoner accused of killing 37 parishioners in an African American church.

Together the two men help illustrate the human stories of men we have all come to know as monsters.

Coyote on a Fence opens
June 10 and runs till June 27
Thu-Fri 8:00 PM
Sat 5:00 PM
Sun 2:00 PM

Adults - $25.00
Students - $15.00
Seniors - $15.00
Call 305.259.0418

The Alliance Theatre Lab performs at the Main Street Playhouse
in Miami Lakes.

6766 Main Street
Miami Lakes, FL 33014

The Playwright's Cabin

2010-05-21T11:31:00.000-07:00

Resident Playwright David Sirois, has launched a new blog called the Playwright's Cabin. Now it is easier than ever to keep up with all the wonderful work that Mr. Sirois is developing and get the inside information on the new works being produced at The Alliance and The State Theatre Project. You will also get a close up look at the playwright's mind from one of our area's most gifted young writers. Be sure to check out our side bar link and enjoy your visit to The Playwright's Cabin.

Coyote on a Fence - kick off party!

2010-05-10T21:39:00.000-07:00

On May 7th 2010 the cast and crew of Coyote on a Fence gathered at the home of Artistic Director Adalberto J. Acevedo to celebrate the kick off of our rehearsal process as well as to say Bon Voyage to our Managing Director, Justin McLendon who is going off to the French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts for the summer. The party was a great success and we all wish Justin good luck and look forward to his return this fall.

Development Director, Amy Spadafore.

Everyone enjoyed the food and drinks.

Sound designer Howard Ferre explained his approach to designing the sound for Coyote on a Fence.

The beautiful and talented Aubrey Kessler.

David Sirois kept the party goers in stitches all night long.

Old friends reunite as Will Cabrerra joins the design team of Coyote on a Fence.

Artistic Director Adalberto J. Acevedo welcomed guest into his home.

The old gang is together again as the team from Burn This (one of Alliance's most successful shows) reunites for Coyote on a Fence.

FIRST LOOK: Coyote on a Fence trailer

2010-05-05T23:54:00.000-07:00

Alliance Ensemble members take to the South Florida stage

2010-04-30T08:47:00.000-07:00

Alliance members are popping up all over town! In everything from main stage productions to One Person shows, the talents of our ensemble members are on display all over South Florida.

The State Theatre Project will be presenting Pussy Cat on a Pedestal. Two world premiere works written and performed by David Hemphill and Alliance ensemble member and Managing Director, Justin McLendon. The presentation consists of two one person shows. The first is Mr. Hemphill's Lessons in (Ex)cess and the second will be Mr. McLendon's Final Meow. The shows are being directed by our very own David Sirois who is not only one of our ensemble members but also our resident Playwright and Dramaturge.

The shows run May 4 & 5 at 9:00pm.
They will be performed (upstairs) at
FLAVOUR 2895 Macfarlane rd. Coconut Grove.
For tickets and reservations
visit www.eventbrite.com or call 706-284-5879

You can also catch ensemble member Cliff Burgess in Florida Stage's
upcoming premiere production of When the Sun Shone Brighter By Christopher Demos-Brown. The play tells the story of Mayor Jose Sanchez-Fors, Jr. of Miami. He is a charismatic politician of unlimited potential, but his own lust for power entangles him in a web of sex, lies and ambition. A sultry story from a new South Florida voice. (This play contains brief nudity and adult themes)

Performance Schedule:
Wednesday through Saturday at 8:00pm,
Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday at 2:00pm,
and Sunday at 7:00pm.
call the box office at:
561-585-3433 (Inside Palm Beach County)
800-514-3837 (Outside Palm Beach County)

Last up is the beautiful and talented Bertha Leal who will be tackling David Mamet's incendiary Oleanna at Pinecrest Repertory Theatre. for information on this production please call (305) 378-8239.

Passing the Torch

2010-04-20T06:48:00.000-07:00

The art of theatre is ephemeral. It lives day to day and changes moment to moment. If a theatre is to be successful, it must to be willing to change along with the nature of its growth. We have been very lucky at the Alliance to have had wonderful, generous, talented people who have helped us grow along the way. If it was not for the hard work of these individuals, the Alliance would not be the success it is today. However as the company continues to grow and our ensemble becomes a bigger part of our identity, we find ourselves having to say goodbye to some talented company members and anointing new ones.

It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to Skye Whitcomb and Jennipher Whitcomb, but it is also with great pride that we welcome the energy and talents of our new management team. Their faces are not new to our audiences. They have been part of our acting ensemble for some time. Some have been with us longer than others. In the case of Aubrey Kessler, Ms. Kessler was in our first production of Seascape with Sharks and Dancer. As for our new Managing Director Justin McLendon, he just joined our company this year. However anyone who meets Mr. McLendon is automatically overwhelmed by his energy and enthusiasm for the Alliance. He is one of the most committed individuals we have come to know. As for the rest of the team, their talents have been self evident for some time. It is the natural growth of the Alliance that has made it possible for the members of our ensemble to take on leadership roles. Our Artistic Director whose vision gave birth to the Alliance will stay the same. It is his guidance that has provided the backbone that allows The Alliance Theatre Lab to stand tall amongst the theatres in South Florida.

Here is a look at our new managment team.

Justin McLendon - Managing Director

Amy Spadafore - Director of Development

Jehane Serralles - Company Manager

Aubrey Kessler - Production Manager

Travis Reiff - Associate Director

David Sirois - Resident Playwright / Dramaturge

**Paul Sirois has also joined the Alliance team as our Executive Director.

Based on a true story. Coyote on a Fence reveals the truth behind the execution of James Beathard

2010-04-12T07:35:00.000-07:00

Ask the American playwright Bruce Graham about the origins of Coyote on a Fence, and he can pinpoint the exact moment of conception. At home one day in 1997, he read a story in The Philadelphia Inquirer about James Beathard, a convicted killer and editor of the Texas Death Row Journal, a tabloid published by an anti-death-penalty group, in which Beathard wrote obituaries of his fellow inmates at the prison in Huntsville, Texas. The obituaries always looked for the positive and never referred to the men's crimes, Beathard told journalists. "Everyone, even your worst enemy," he said, "deserves some honour and respect after they die."

Graham had spent most of the previous two years working on film and TV scripts dominated by short scenes and had been looking for a story that would allow him to write long, uninterrupted stretches of dialogue. "So when I read about James Beathard trying to find something good to say about people that we all consider monsters, sometimes rightly so," he explains, "the drama of it just jumped out at me."

He wrote to Beathard, enclosing two earlier plays - Minor Demons, about a lawyer trying to win back his wife, and Moon over the Brewery, an upbeat family comedy - and by chance they got through the prison vetting system. "I used stationery from a theatre I was working in, and for some reason they thought I was a publisher. Publishers are allowed to send things to prisoners, but a stranger off the street, like me, can't."

The Huntsville authorities would not let Graham visit Beathard, who had already been on Death Row for more than 12 years, or speak to him on the phone, so letters were their only means of communication. "James was very wary because he'd been burnt in interviews before," Graham says, "and his first couple of letters were very formal." Gradually, he won Beathard's confidence, and their correspondence became more personal. Graham sent Beathard pictures of his four-year-old daughter, Kendall (the prisoner's response, "She's an absolute angel! How can you discipline someone with a face like that?", features in Coyote on a Fence), and Beathard revealed more about life behind bars and his own story.

In 1984, Beathard was unemployed and desperate to raise the cash he needed to fight a child-custody battle with his ex-wife. A friend, Gene Hathorn Jnr, duped him into taking part in a non-existent drug deal. While Beathard waited nearby, Hathorn shot dead his own father, stepmother and stepbrother. A complex series of plea bargains and double-crosses, with Beathard refusing to perjure himself to face a lesser charge, ended up with both men sentenced to death. When Hathorn subsequently retracted his false testimony, Beathard's conviction stood on a technicality: new evidence had to be introduced within 30 days of a trial, and that deadline had passed.

Such a clear-cut miscarriage of justice is perfect documentary material, and indeed Beathard's case attracted the attention of a BBC television team, but it lacks the moral ambiguity that fuels the best prison drama. So, once Graham felt that he had done sufficient background research on Death Row and had Beathard's voice in his head from the letters, the time came "to push those things out of the way, separate myself from the truth and play make-believe". He wanted "to make the audience feel repulsion and sympathy" for Death Row inmates, whereas Beathard inspired only the latter emotion.

In Coyote on a Fence, therefore, Beathard becomes John Brennan, a former prison drugs-and-alcohol counsellor, sentenced to death for killing a drug dealer, and now penning obituaries for the Death Row Advocate. His next subject will be his new neighbour, Bobby Rayburn, an illiterate, anti-Semitic racist who has burnt to death 37 black churchgoers. The surrogate for Graham, whose wife and daughter are Jewish, is Samantha Fried, a Jewish New York Times reporter with a young daughter, who comes to interview Beathard. The play follows the months leading up to Rayburn's execution, and Graham switches between Brennan-Fried conversations, Brennan's increasingly paternal relationship with Rayburn and retrospective observations by a prison guard, Shawna, addressed to another, unseen journalist.

When Graham sent the script of Coyote to Beathard, he received a card saying: "Great job. Reviews to follow."

Don't miss Coyote on a Fence byBruce Graham
June 10 -June 27, 2010
Thu-Fri 8:00 PM
Sat 5:00 PM
Sun 2:00 PM
Industry Night TBA

**Originaly published in The Independent Thursdady, March 25 2004

Coyote on a Fence plays the Alliance Theatre Lab

2010-04-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

The stage has barely been swept and the paint is not yet dry, but the Alliance is moving forward with plans for our next production. Bruce Graham's Coyote on a Fence will have its South Florida premier on the Alliance stage. This hard hitting look at the death penalty and its affect on the humane Spirit, was met with critical acclaim when it was produced at New York's Blue Heron Arts Center.

Illiterate but likable, Bobby Reyburn is a funny young guy who loves to do impressions. He's also a member of the Aryan nation, a racist predator convicted of a horrific crime. John Brennan is educated and arrogant, a serious writer who may only be guilty of doing society a favor. As each awaits his fate, one evokes sympathy, the other derision. In vivid scenes, COYOTE ON A FENCE explores the disturbing question: Can one be innocent though proven guilty? This penetrating new drama offers no clear verdict, just utterly compelling theatre.

The Alliance production will feature the talents of ensemble members Travis Reiff and Jehane Serralles. Joining them are Kirsten Upchurch and Mark Della Ventura. The production will be directed by Artistic Director Adalberto J. Acevedo and will feature the return of Howard Ferre to the South Florida theatre scene. Mr. Ferre is one of our area's most gifted musicians and sound designers. His work at MDCC and The ACME Acting co. was hailed by South Florida critics and audiences alike. We look forward to working with Mr. Ferre and the rest of the cast and crew on what is bound to be one of our most talked about production. Please join us when Coyote on a Fence opens on June 10, 2010.

Travis Reiff**

Mark Della Ventura

Jehane Serralles**

Kirsten Upchurch

**denotes Alliance Ensemble member.

"Orphans" Review - 4 Miami New Times

2010-03-30T12:48:00.000-07:00

Alliance Theatre Lab's Orphans gets loving treatment

By Brandon K. Thorp
published: April 01, 2010

It's not easy to be funny when you're choking on your necktie. It's not easy to project ephemeral things such as character, motivation, and soul when you're bound, gagged, and tied to a chair. Travis Reiff does that and more as Harold, a criminal of unspecified type and soon-to-be father figure to orphans Treat and Philip.

You can tell almost everything about Reiff's character from the way he wiggles around in that chair — glancing about the room, seeing everything, making good-humored noises, and evincing less rancor at his captors than an honest, if calculating, interest in the strange turn his life has taken.

And how did it happen? He was drunk in a bar, apparently — whether he was actually drunk is a minor mystery that theatergoers can wonder about postshow — when he was taken home by Treat (David Sirois), a grown orphan and stick-up artist who, for whatever reason, allowed the man into his house. That house is shared with Treat's younger brother, Philip (Justin McClendon), a shut-in innocent with all the world-wariness of a manic 12-year-old. At some point, after Harold seems to pass out, Treat decides it might be worth looking in the man's briefcase. There he finds stocks — lots and lots of stocks worth lots and lots of money. So now Harold is tied to a chair, and the orphan brothers want to hold him for ransom.

It's an interesting situation, and most theaters would flub it, because this interesting situation is meant to segue into a yet more interesting and vastly more complicated one. Soon Harold is employing his captors, and his captors are slowly coming to think of him as a weird combination of father, mentor, and savior. This isn't P.S. Your Cat Is Dead. Though funny, it's not supposed to be a comedy. We're supposed to take this stuff at face value, be moved by it, be enamored of it — coast along on its weird eddies of human emotion and see where they take us. It's a delicate operation.

Overacting is a very real danger here. Consider: Treat and Philip are alone. Motherless. Fatherless. Ignorant of the ways of the world. Treat has hard-won street smarts and not much else, and you get the sense he'd be a sweet kid if life hadn't put him in such a wretched position. As it is, he tries hard to be hard. Meanwhile, Philip, the shut-in, is a naif with a heart of gold — allergic to everything, illiterate, liable to spend a day staring out the window, falling in love with the nicely dressed passersby, and in the evening recounting their visages to his brother, who listens gamely and tries to humor the boy while mulling over grimmer, more adult concerns.

The sheer preciousness of it all is an invitation to ham, but the brave actors of the Alliance Theatre Lab resist. They give Kessler's old script a loving treatment, as intimate as the tiny theater's warmly lit stage. There is very little bombast in this Orphans. There is, rather, a quiet sense of filial devotion struggling to assert itself beneath Treat's put-on violence. "It's amazing how people stop struggling once there's a little blood," notes Treat, sounding more than anything like a lost kid in need of a hug.

He will soon be offered one. Reiff's Harold steps into the orphans' home with such an inflated sense of paternalism he's more like a cartoon than a dad. Charmed rather than scared by Treat's swinging of a switchblade, Harold views the snarling young thug as a kind of puppy. Harold's presence in the house feels like a big, creepily misplaced embrace. His warm, booming voice is like an aural tongue bath.

So they form a kind of family. And just as Treat took the abuses of the world so his younger brother wouldn't have to, now Harold, Christ-like, will bear the abuses for them all.

That this is so moving has less to do with the tricky script than with bravura performances from all three leads, particularly from the young McClendon. His whole performance is a great, big hope engine. In the early scenes, he expresses such clear and unforced joy at the arrival of a new jar of Hellmann's mayonnaise — his favorite food, which he has slathered atop StarKist tuna sandwiches every day for years — that you can almost see how such niggling pleasures could sustain a life, could make it worth living. McClendon suffuses his character with such a wholesome sense of humanity that when he begins, at Harold's urging, to expect more from life, his growing experience of the world reaches the audience like the breaking of a long-awaited dawn. If you want to see something recklessly, gustily beautiful in a theater, see this.

If there is a problem with Orphans — and there's not, but I'm just tossing out a hypothetical — it's how very much the play's quasi-tragic ending hurts after Kessler, Acevedo, Reiff, et al. have spent the last hour cranking up your hopes and making you believe that, in their make-believe version of northern Philly, justice exists. It doesn't, though — not here. And given the sweetness and hope evinced in the Orphans' giddy first half, the omission feels almost sadistic. It's not, of course. It's just art. Maybe a happy ending would have been too easy — a betrayal of the big, gritty world being imagined on the stage. Nevertheless, I left dwelling less on the play's gloomy denouement than on all the bright and humor-filled moments that came before. They're really wonderful, some of them transcendent — and their memories are more sustaining than mayo and liable to keep longer.

"Orphans" Review 3 - The Playground!

2010-03-23T20:04:00.000-07:00

Orphans: Alliance Theatre Lab

by Alexis Scheer

Photo by Acevedo, who directs (L-R) David Sirois, Travis Reiff, and Justin McLendon.

One thing I love about theatre is the individual theatre company itself. They all have their own feel and personality. And if you frequent the local theatres a lot you find yourself coming back to certain theatres—not just for the great productions, but also for the “family” feeling. I think that’s the true success of a company, to produce strong shows and make your audience feel like they’re home. So before I even talk about how great I thought this particular production of Lyle Kessler's Orphans was, I have to commend the true spirit and spunk over at The Alliance Theatre Lab. Adalberto J. Acevedo directs an emotional and anger charged piece that reaches its full potential in the hands of its brilliant actors.

The play starts in an eerie blue light with Phillip (McLendon), the childish younger brother, blowing bubbles and staring out a window. His abusive older brother Treat (Sirois) is the one in charge, supporting the both of them with his daily robberies and muggings. Their relationship is odd—sometimes playful and other times soberly aggressive. Throughout the play we learn about their unconventional life style, like how Philip never leaves the house and diet consists of StarKist tuna with Hellman’s mayo on toast (yum!). One day Treat brings home a mysterious drunk man, Harold (Reiff), that he plans to rob and hold for ransom. Harold, who also grew up as an orphan, takes an odd liking to his kidnappers and works to turn their lives around. And it all comes to an emotional, and not so predictable end (that I’ll save).

Sirois gives a heated performance, diving into Treat’s violent rage fearlessly and whole-heartedly. McLendon handles many of the more tender moments with starry-eyed innocence, and a lighthearted smile. Reiff’s Harold [on the surface] is a cross between Santa Clause and your favorite college professor, but skillfully keeps what lies beneath just at your fingertips.

Acevedo’s imagined Northern Philadelphian house is just right in it’s rundown condition, and I loved the unseen staircase and kitchen (awesomely done). Skye Whitcomb’s lights are evocative, and Jennipher Murphy’s costumes are appropriate. I especially loved Acevedo’s sound design (Tom Waits—excellent).

If You Go:
Orphans
The Alliance Theatre Lab at Main Street Playhouse
6766 Main Street
Miami Lakes, Fl 33014
Playing Until April 4
Thu & Fr @ 8, Sat @ 5, Sun @ 2

"Orphans" Review 2 - Miami ArtZine!

2010-03-23T13:57:00.000-07:00

Orphans

My wife was in tears last night...

by Roger Martin

..and so were other audience members, such was the power on stage at The Alliance Theatre Lab's Friday night performance of Orphans, written by Lyle Kessler.

Adalberto Acevedo directed and Justin McLendon, Travis Reiff and David Sirois performed at such a pitch that “I laughed, I cried” became the truth once again. Rocketing around the stage, leaping furniture, slapping, tripping, wrestling, slamming into walls and onto table tops, Sirois as big brother Treat and McLendon as little brother Phillip create the perfect “you're the stupid, sickly little brother who can't read and can't leave the house, and I'm the big brother who's protecting you by beating you down.”

And then Treat, who 's putting food on the table (mayonnaise and canned tuna) by cutting people and stealing their jewelery and wallets, brings home a drunk he's met in a bar. It's Harold, played by Reiff. Treat ties him to a chair and poor little pajama clad Phillip (he wears a batter's helmet when he feels threatened) looks at Harold with such delight we swear he's just been given a new puppy. His smile lights the theatre.

Harold is a Business? Man from Chicago who is part Colonel Stoopnagel, Senator Claghorn, Jubilation T Cornpone and Foghorn Leghorn (Google 'em). And a sweetheart, kind and generous. Sometimes. Sirois' Treat is a punk, see him preening in his new suit, foul-mouthed, manipulative and fearful. But when he cries, we cry with him. McLendon's Phillip is a jitterbug, hysterical at times, viz his singing black man, and cunning as a native dog. Harold changes Treat and Phillip, not much of a plot, really, but how he handles them and they him, is fascinating. Which I guess is all you need.

Adalberto Acevedo designed the set, a messily cluttered living room that pulls us in, and the very effective sound, and Skye Whitcomb designed the excellent lighting for Orphans, a well presented, well acted and well directed show.

Orphans runs at the Alliance Theatre Lab through April 4. Main Street Playhouse, 6766 Main Street, Miami Lakes. For reservations call 305.259.0418 or visit www.thealliancetheatrelab.com.

"Orphans" - The Miami Herald Review!

2010-03-19T10:01:00.000-07:00

Review: "Orphans" Examines the Primal Need for Connections

by Christine Dolen

If Harold Pinter and Sam Shepard had teamed up to write a play, the result might be much like Lyle Kessler's Orphans.

Kessler's three-character tragicomedy, a staple of edge-loving theater companies ever since Chicago's Steppenwolf staged it to great acclaim in 1985, owes much to both Pinter's mysterious The Caretaker and Shepard's volatile True West. When done well, Orphans becomes both a vehicle for bravura acting and a multilayered examination of the primal need for connection.

The Miami Lakes-based Alliance Theatre Lab has just opened an engrossing, accomplished production of Kessler's play. Director Adalberto J. Acevedo effectively explores the script's many emotional colors -- whimsical humor, explosive violence, long-buried need -- with a trio of actors who impressively deliver both the charged and tender moments in the play.

Acevedo's artfully lived-in set and deft sound design, Skye Whitcomb's emotion-underscoring lighting and Jennipher Murphy's costumes (which tell their own story of change) effectively serve the story, drawing us more deeply into the dysfunctional universe of two long-orphaned brothers and the stranger who changes everything.

Phillip (Justin McLendon), the younger brother, is a housebound, uneducated savant whose only ties to the outside are the world according to television and the life-sustaining ``care'' provided by his older brother. Treat (David Sirois) is a violent, volatile thief whose daily haul has supported both brothers since childhood, when their mama died and their daddy ran off.

Inside their messy North Philadelphia row house, Treat indulges his brother's dietary obsession (StarKist tuna with Hellman's mayonnaise on toast), then alternates between playfully chasing Phillip and pounding him into the floor. How the brothers have managed to live this way is a question Kessler chooses to leave a Pinteresque mystery.

When Treat brings home a drunken businessman he intends to rob, everything changes. Harold (Travis Reiff), a Chicagoan who reveals that he too grew up an orphan, feels an emotional connection to his often-furious captor. He sets about altering the brothers' lives, to everyone's mutual benefit, leading to an emotional breakthrough at the play's end. But that growth comes at a heavy price.

Alliance's Orphans cast digs into Kessler's characters with obvious relish. Sirois' Treat is the personification of frustration, explosive anger and unacknowledged need. Reiff's often-jolly Harold is a manipulator whose emotional tool kit includes his own brand of menace. And McLendon's childlike Phillip provides both plentiful laughs and utter sweetness.

Orphans has been around a long time, since before a 24/7 connectedness could penetrate even a world as self-contained as the one inside the brothers' row house. But as Alliance's production demonstrates, the mystery Kessler conjures and the emotional truths he explores haven't become dated at all.

Christine Dolen is The Miami Herald's theater critic.

"Orphans" Opens March 18!

2010-03-17T22:30:00.000-07:00

Here is a look at some phenomenal production photographs of the Alliance Theatre Lab's production of Orphans by Lyle Kessler. All pictures were taken by the lovely and talented Gertrude Rodon.

Orphans opens March 18th and runs through April 4th. Thursday and Friday night performances are at 8:00 pm, Saturday performances at 5:00 pm, and Sunday performances at 2:00 pm. For tickets, call 305.259.0418 or click on the little "Admit One" ticket icon there to the right.

As well, we've partnered with Buca di Beppo, right across 67th Avenue from the theatre, to bring you "Dinner and a Show"! Just present your ticket at Buca di Beppo, and receive 20% off meals and beverages! Of course, the discount doesn't include the gratuity, so be sure to tip your bartenders and wait staff well!

Don't miss what is without a doubt one of Alliance's best shows yet!

David Sirois plays Treat and Justin McLendon plays Phillip.

David Sirois and Justin McLendon tie up Travis Reiff in a scene from Orphans by Lyle Kessler.

Travis Reiff as Harold, shows Phillip some encouragement.

FIRST LOOK - Orphans by Lyle Kessler

2010-03-13T22:54:00.000-08:00

Du-etties are here

2010-03-12T22:28:00.000-08:00

After minutes of intense negotiations we are proud to announce that The Alliance Theatre Lab is now the new home of the Du-etties, featuring Alliance Ensemble member David Sirois. Check out the film/video tab at the top of the page and enjoy some of the funniest films since Schindler's List.

Inside The Alliance - How it all comes together.

2010-03-11T20:59:00.000-08:00

In The Empty Space Peter Brook writes, "I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space, someone is watching him, and that is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged." When I first read Mr. Brook's book, this passage became my battle cry. When I first started my career as a Director, I would tell my production team, "There is no need for a set. We can create theatre with our bodies. We can create environments through light and shadow. The truth in theatre can be found in the actor, not in how pretty the flats that surround him are." But in my later years, I discovered that this is not always the smartest way to go about telling a full story.

Every play is different, and every story needs different theatrical tools to help convey its true nature to an audience. Orphans is written in a naturalistic style, a style that I was introduced to as a member of the ACME Acting Company. At that time, I was a wide eyed collage student and soaked up as much information as I could. ACME and its directors, Juan Cejas and Bob and Barbara Lowery, helped introduce Naturalistic Theatre to me, and my eyes began to change. My attitude about theatrical design changed. I began to understand the impact that a play's environment has on the emotional lives of its characters.

Designing the sets for the plays I direct has always been very important to me. The few times that I have allowed someone to step in and design for me have not been as fulfilling. Not to say that I have not worked with great designers; I just feel that as a director, I want full control of the environment of the play. Every stage picture in Orphans tells a story. As the director it is my job to tell the full story and bring the audience into the world that I have created for this play.

With that in mind here is a look at how our set for Orphans by Lyle Kessler has come together.

** Naturalism is a movement in European drama and theatre that developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It refers to theatre that attempts to create a perfect illusion of reality through a range of dramatic and theatrical strategies: detailed, three-dimensional settings (which bring Darwinian understandings of the determining role of the environment into the staging of human drama); everyday intervening in the human action; an exclusive focus on subjects that are contemporary and indigenous (no exotic, otherworldly or fantastic locales, nor historical or mythic time-periods); an extension of the social range of characters portrayed (away from the aristocrats of classical drama, towards bourgeois and eventually working-class protagonists); and a style of acting that attempts to recreate the impression of reality (often by seeking complete identification with the role, understood in terms of its 'given circumstances', which, again, transcribe Darwinian motifs into performance, as advocated by Stanislavski). It tries to imply the realistic stage presence of humans in everyday life and it is trying to put across sometimes even a moral or a meaning of the story.

Inside the Alliance - Video Blog - The Rehearsal Process Begins

2010-02-28T19:39:00.000-08:00

The Alliance Presents "Angel Eaters" by Johnna Adams

2010-02-23T10:29:00.001-08:00

So, who doesn't like brilliantly f**ked-up theatre? Anyone? Anyone?

Thought not.

Ever eager to please, the Alliance presents a staged reading of Johnna Adams' darkly disturbing play Angel Eaters, as the inaugural event for our bimonthly play reading series. We invite all of our friends and colleagues to join us as we celebrate some of the most brilliant work you've never heard of.

Angel Eaters is the first play in Johnna Adams' trilogy which introduces us to a family cursed with the ability of raising the dead. Like a twisted variation on the sin eater, the angel eaters are able to resurrect others by eating the goodness out of the dead. Angel Eaters begins the journey in Dust Bowl-era Oklahoma. We meet Myrtle, whose husband has just died, leaving her and her two daughters even more destitute than they were before. One daughter, Nola, is bitter and hard, raging against the pathetic existence life has given her. The other, Joann, is haunted by an angel to whom she speaks in birdsong, and claims to be able to raise animals from the dead. When two con men from a local carnival claim to be able to restore Myrtle's husband to life, the message of Joann's angel takes a darker turn, and Joann must decide if she must fight God in order to bring her father back.

Ricky Martinez and Eileen Suarez of New Theatre have graciously donated the use of the Burstein Family Stage (4120 Laguna St. in Coral Gables) to us for this reading. As for the actors themselves, we've assembled both veterans and relative newcomers to the South Florida theatre community:

Myrtle: Barbara Sloan*
Nola: Meredith Bartmon
Joann: Anne Chamberlain
Azazyel: Aubrey Shavonn*
Fortune: Scott Douglas Wilson
Enoch: Mark Della Ventura
Doc O'Malley: Wayne Robinson*

(* denotes a member of the Actor's Equity Association)

The reading will be on Monday, March 8, at 7 pm at New Theatre. Tickets are only five dollars, and the proceeds go towards our upcoming production of Orphans by Lyle Kessler. After the reading, hang out for a brief talkback with the actors and the Alliance about this script and other scripts we're considering for the future.

So, come out and see some twisted, deliciously dark, thought-provokingly f**ked-up theatre! Or we'll assume that you prefer Neil Simon. And then we'll mock you mercilessly.

Inside The Alliance - The first read through.

2010-02-19T08:25:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, February 16th, marked the beginning of our rehearsal process for Orphans by Lyle Kessler. As with every show we produce, the cast and crew first gathered at the home of our Artistic Director Adalberto J Acevedo to celebrate the beginning of our creative process. These small gatherings have become a tradition at the Alliance. They help bring the cast and crew together and help us remember that what we do is entertainment. Every theatre artist owes a bit of their inspiration to Dionysus, so what better way to start our creative process than to drink a bit of wine and taste a little of what Costco has to offer? ( A dip in the Jacuzzi doesn't hurt either.)

Check out the post below for pictures of this event.

Our First Read

6:00pm - Actors and Crew meet at the Main Street Playhouse for the first read through of the play. This is one of the most anticipated days of our rehearsal process. Actors had been given their scripts months ahead of time, and they and the Director have been anxiously waiting for this day to come. The days before the first rehearsal are always filled with anxiety and anticipation. The Actors have started to form their ideas of the play, and the Director and Stage Manager have been busy plotting out the rehearsal schedule and working with the design team. Today will bring all of the artists together for the first time. We often joke about this day being like the first day of school. After introductions are made and some off color jokes are told, everyone sits down and reads through the script.

And so we begin

This first day is not about the Actors. It is not about the Director. It is not about sets or lighting or any other theatrical element. This day is about the script. This is the first time that our Director, Adalberto J. Acevedo, has heard the script being read by these three actors. It is a day for all of us to explore the script. When asked about the first day of rehearsal, Acevedo said, "It is important to let the script breathe and allow the story to unfold for us in the same way that it will unfold for the audience who come to see it on opening night." Little is talked about on this day. There may be a few questions about rehearsal schedules and costume and set renderings may be shown and discussed, but this day is mostly for us the hear the play in its entirety and allow the playwright's words to affect us .

Questions and Answers

At this early stage in the rehearsal process, some preliminary questions do come up. Who are these characters? What are their relationships to each other? How does the environment of the play affect the characters? Most of the answers to these questions are found in the script, but this is also when the Director's research starts to become essential. Actors love facts. They like knowing what the actual locations in the script look like. The season that the play takes place in is of particular importance. All of these questions are addressed as soon as the Director starts to share his research with the cast and crew. Adalberto J. Acevedo has said, "Part of my preparation for directing any play consists of my putting together a Director's prompt book and directing journal. In my book there may be things like reviews of previous productions, pictures of the actual location that the play takes place in and character collages that help me narrow the feel or mood of the play. Preliminary drawings for the set design are also included. I tend to design most of the shows that I direct. This helps me have a firm grasp of the environment of the show." Through this important research, the themes of the play begin to take shape. Loss, control, love and redemption must be discussed if we are to do justice to this play. Before the actors are dismissed, Adalberto makes sure that they understand our philosophy of collaboration. "We encourage our actors to explore and contribute their ideas during the rehearsal process. I want them to feel that they are safe to try any idea that pops into their heads. At this stage of the work we are like painters applying broad brush strokes to the canvas. The painting will not start to take shape until each color starts to inform our eye. Actors must feel that it is OK to try painting outside their comfortable lines so that we can discover the human truth that is in the script."

9:00pm - The cast is dismissed and we all go home and prepare for the next day of table-work and exploration.

2010 Theatre Season Kicks Off!

2010-02-13T15:11:00.000-08:00

On a cold and rainy February 12th, the Alliance celebrated the kick off of our 2010 theatre season. Some of South Florida's most talented theatre artists gathered at the home of Artistic Director Adalberto J. Acevedo to help the Alliance celebrate what will be an exciting new year of cutting edge theatre.

The fire pit helped warm up the cold Miami night.

The talented and beautiful Meredith Bartmon

Alliance Ensemble member Jehane Serralles and acting phenom Jackie Rivera

Anne Chamberlain, Alliance Ensemble member David Sirois, and Meredith Bartmon

Orphans cast members David Sirois and Justin McLendon

Mark Della Ventura and Managing Director Skye Whitcomb discuss the upcoming Coyote on a Fence.

Jehane and Jackie enjoyed the food and the DRINKS! (Perhaps a little too much.)

Mark finally got his hands on a copy of Coyote.

Cutest couple Meredith and Mark.

Alliance Board members Alexander Wilmerding and Miguel Fernandez added a bit of class to the event.

David and Travis, two of the Alliance's most gifted actors, will star in Orphans opening March 18th.

Inside the Alliance: Preparing for "Orphans"

2010-02-11T11:04:00.000-08:00

Next week, we begin the rehearsal process for the next Alliance production, Lyle Kessler's twisted and funny Orphans. Our three actors -- Justin McLendon, Travis Reiff, and David Sirois -- are chomping at the bit, eager and impatient to begin the journey which will take them from the printed word to the creation of truth on stage. But even before we begin rehearsals, there are many steps which must be taken in order to bring us to this point. It is that long, arduous, process, fraught with debates, compromises, and plenty of meetings, which we'd like to share with you now, as part of what will be an ongoing series delving into what it takes for a theatre company like ours -- teetering on the edge of creative madness, as Albert puts it -- to produce the hyperrealism you see on stage. Ladies, gentlemen, and children of all ages, welcome to the second installment of "Inside the Alliance."

Choosing the Play. As a company which operates on a calendar year rather than a fall-to-spring year, the Alliance tries to have the shows for each season chosen by the summer before. Sometimes this works, and sometimes alterations to the season have to be made, such as this past year's production of Sexual Perversity in Chicago in place of Swimming in the Shallows. For several months, the members of the Alliance and our ensemble read plays, swap them around, discuss their merits and flaws, and fight for our favorites. Several criteria have to be kept in mind, including budgetary concerns, the size of the cast, our performance space, and of course the type of plays the Alliance is known for -- edgy, darkly humorous pieces which give insight into the contemporary world. Often we choose lesser-known works by well-known playwrights, like Sexual Perversity, or brilliant gems of plays which have been somehow overlooked by the Florida theatre scene, like this summer's Coyote on a Fence. In the end, Artistic Director Adalberto Acevedo weighs all the arguments and detractions, and finalizes the season, looking for common threads which connect the shows not only to each other but to the Alliance's mission as a whole.

Meetings, Meetings, and More Meetings. A couple months out from the beginning of the rehearsal process, the Alliance begins to have regular meetings to discuss the ins-and-outs of putting on the production. Amy Spadafore, our marketing director, begins tossing around ideas on how to market the production, and whether or not we should attempt to approach a particular group that might have a special interest in that particular show. Fundraisers, like last month's highly successful Punk Rock Scavenger Hunt, are discussed, and the logistics are nailed down. Jennipher Murphy, the company manager, throws out ideas on how to involve ensemble members who are not in the show, and how best to create a cohesive, trusting bond among the cast and crew members. Parties and get-togethers are planned, the contracts are drawn up, and names for crew members are bandied about. Skye Whitcomb, the managing director, discusses the budget concerns, placing the ideal alongside what is fiscally possible until an acceptable compromise is reached. Aside from production costs such as set, props, costumes, and payroll, money must also be set aside for rent and royalties. Artistic Director Albert Acevedo presents his ideas for the overall composition of the production, especially the creative concerns. His input into the other three areas allows a cohesive whole to form, the gestalt of the production if you will, and this vision will continue to shape the production until the final curtain call.

Ever Onwards and Up. Hopefully it goes without saying that the Alliance is always looking for new ideas and expressions of the creative spirit. During the course of pre-production, often we come up with new ideas to help the Alliance become that little bit better, that little bit more which continues to push us to do better and better work. There are two recent, excellent examples of this. The first, of course, is our ensemble. We've gathered seven theatre professionals, all of whom have worked with us in the past, to help us formulate a style that is uniquely Alliance. The ensemble is more than merely our professional colleagues; they are our family, and they push us to become what they believe us to be. We love them all, and are humbled by their faith and trust in us. The second is our bimonthly play-reading series, to be inaugurated in March with Johnna Adams' off-off-Broadway hit Angel Eaters. Through this, we hope to widen our scope to include more and more people in our Alliance family, and to share with our friends in South Florida some of the wonderful work which is being done in tiny theatres -- like our own -- all over the country.

So, as we begin the second phase of our preparation for Orphans -- the rehearsals -- we hope you've enjoyed this little peek into our world. We'll be back next week with another installment of "Inside the Alliance," and we invite you to share our journey as we create our art. I'd like to leave you with a little tidbit from one of my earliest acting teachers: "Artists," he said, "are the closest profession to God, for only we create for the sheer love of creating."

Pacem!

A Reading of "Angel Eaters" by Johnna Adams

2010-01-23T12:30:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, the Alliance is only able to produce three shows a year. So last fall, Albert got the brilliant idea of using staged readings to allow us to showcase work from off-off-Broadway and off-Broadway to a Miami audience, an audience which might not otherwise be exposed to some of the amazing work that's being produced away from the Great White Way.

So, we're now beginning to put together the logistics for the first of what will become a bimonthly (and hopefully eventually monthly) reading of some of the most incredible work you've never heard of. To inaugurate this new addition to the Alliance lineup, we're presenting Angel Eaters, the first play in Johnna Adams' disturbing trilogy which debuted at the Flux Theatre Company in New York.

The trilogy introduces us to a family cursed with the ability of raising the dead. Like a twisted variation on the sin eater, the angel eaters are able to resurrect others by eating the goodness out of the dead. Angel Eaters begins the journey in the Oklahoma of the Dust Bowl, with Myrtle, whose husband has just died, leaving her and her two daughters even more destitute than they were before. One daughter, Nola, is bitter and hard, raging against the pathetic existence life has given her. The other, Joanna, is haunted by an angel to whom she speaks in birdsong, and claims to be able to raise animals from the dead. When two con men from a local carnival claim to be able to restore Myrtle's husband to life, the message of Joanna's angel takes a darker turn, and Joanna must decide if she must fight God in order to bring her father back.

At the moment, we're putting together the logistics for the reading, but keep an eye out for the details. Trust me; it's a brilliantly f**ked-up play, and you sure as hell won't want to miss it.

Pacem!

Alliance fundraiser proves to be a great success!

2010-01-15T10:23:00.000-08:00

The Alliance Punk Rock Scavenger Hunt Fundraiser was a huge success!

Marketing/Development Director Amy Spadafore played host to a full house that rocked till the early hours.

Artistic Director Adalberto J. Acevedo with Amy.

Mad Cat's Ann Scully and Alliance ensemble member Breezy Kessler

The Alliance team celebrates a successful night at Churchill's Pub.

Alliance ensemble member Jehane Serralles works the door and rocks the smile.

Managing Director Skye Whitcomb

Breezy and Skye enjoy a drink before the bands take the stage.

Alliance ensemble member Travis Reiff with Marketing/Development Director Amy Spadafore.

Artistic Director Adalberto J. Acevedo showed his wild side with Travis and sponsor, Jillian and DJ Frankie.

Skye was all smiles.

Let the music begin!

Thanks to Churchill's, the fantastic bands, and all those who came out to support the Alliance!

Punk Rock and Scavenger Hunts! What?!

2009-12-15T15:10:00.000-08:00

So, what do you call a fundraiser that combines a punked-out scavenger hunt and a punk rock concert featuring four local bands? A punk-raiser? A punk-venger hunt?

No, you call it a f'ing good time for a f'ing good cause, that's what you f'ing call it! (Sorry, Albert says we gotta keep the blog PG).

On January 14, join the Alliance as we raise some cash for the March production of Orphans with a little help from our friends at Churchill's Pub. The night kicks off with a scavenger hunt through the twisted streets of Miami, starting at 6 pm. You've got two hours to find whatever items the warped, sadistic mind of Amy Spadafore can come up with (please, only use legal methods; we don't have bail money for you).

Then, meet back at Churchill's for a make-your-ears-bleed-and-brag-about-what-you-don't-remember-doing-the-next-day concert, courtesy of the Gutter Queens, To Be Hated, Johnny Sexfuk, and Radioboxer with DJ Nayra! You might as well ask off work for the next day, because we'll be partying until 3 am, and only wusses go home before the party ends. The winners of the scavenger hunt will be announced about halfway through the concert, and will be given prizes so fabulous I don't even know what they are yet!

What's that you ask? How can you, insanely fun theatregoer that you are, become involved in such a sweet deal? Here's the deal: you can work solo, or you can work in teams of up to three people. Email us your team, so we get an idea of how many people to expect.

The Rules:

$5 a person registration, $15 for teams
Up to three people per team
Only one vehicle per team
Each item is assigned a point value
Team or individual with the most points wins!

Amy's Helpful Hints:

Team price is $15 no matter how many people (so get 3)
Scavenger hunt entry fee includes admission to concert
Each item has a point value and can be adjusted for creativity - just because you have the most ITEMS doesn't mean you have the most POINTS - strategerize!
Don't drink and scavenge! Save it for the concert!

Come help the Alliance raise funds for our next great show! Or we will send the Alliance attack pug, Iago, after you.

And if you tell me that you can't make it because you have tickets to see Phantom or -even worse- Neil Simon, I swear to God I will beat you with Albert's baseball bat.

See you there!

Meet the Playwright: Lyle Kessler

2009-12-10T07:15:00.000-08:00

Lyle Kessler was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Initially an actor, he appeared in the Philadelphia premier of Waiting for Godot opposite Bruce Dern. He studied acting with Lee Strasberg and was accepted into the Director's Unit of the Actors Studio. There, Mr. Kessler wrote and directed his first one act play, The Viewing, which he subsequently directed at the Lucille Lortel Theater.

Kessler's films include Orphans, directed by Alan J. Pakula and starring Matthew Modine and Albert Finney. He wrote and executive produced The Saint of Fort Washington for Warner Brothers, directed by Tim Hunter, starring Danny Glover and Matt Dillon. A partial list of his other films include Gladiator, with Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Brian Dennehy, and Touched, written and co-starring Mr. Kessler, Robert Hays, and Ned Beatty.

No matter his success in Hollywood, Mr. Kessler has always made his way back to the theatre. His plays include The Watering Place, produced on Broadway, Robbers at the American Place Theatre, Possession at EST and Unlisted at L.A's Tiffany Theatre. Orphans was directed by Gary Sinese at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre and then moved to its successful New York run. Albert Finney won the Olivier Award in London's West End production. Orphans is performed continually in almost every country in the world. Mr. Kessler's plays have been published by Random House, Grove Press and Samuel French Inc..

Kessler and Mark Rydell co-moderate the Writer/Directors Unit of the Actors Studio West. Mr. Kessler served as the Director of the Sundance Screenwriter's Lab. He also participated in the Sundance Screenwriters Conference in Hungary, working with writers from all over Eastern Europe.

Mr. Kessler was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Playwriting Grant and won the New York State Council on the Arts Playwriting Award.

Mr. Kessler and his wife actress Margaret Ladd are Founders of the Imagination Workshop located at UCLA'S Neuropsychiatric Institute. Using a unique Artistic Methodology, actors, writers and directors create scenes and original plays with psychiatric patients, veterans, and 'At Risk' students in the L.A Public Schools.

The Alliance Theatre Lab is proud to present the play that helped launch Mr. Kessler's distinguished career. Orphans will open March 18 and run until April 4, 2010. Directed by Artistic Director Adalberto J. Acevedo, the show will feature Travis Reiff**, David Sirois** and new comer Justin McLendon.

** denotes a member of the Alliance Theatre Lab acting ensemble

The Ensemble

2009-12-06T17:49:00.000-08:00

en·sem·ble (n-smbl)
A unit or group of complementary parts that contribute to a single effect

The Alliance Theatre Lab is proud to announce the formation of our acting ensemble. We have asked several of our areas top actors to join our team of theatre artists and help contribute to the future of our company. Through the development of our ensemble The Alliance is reinforcing its committed to collaboration and artistic risk. We will continue to provide the provocative, challenging and engaging theatre that you have come to expect from The Alliance.

It has always been the wish of our Artistic Director, Adalberto J. Acevedo to develop an in house acting ensemble whose trust in each other and the material they are working on, would help elevate the work that the company has been doing. Our future productions will feature members of our ensemble along side fresh south Florida talent. We look forward to expanding our ensemble as the future of The Alliance continues to grow. So we welcome the following artist and look forward to the exciting work that is ahead of us.

Joining our team as The Alliance's permanent ensemble are:
Travis Reiff
Jehane Serralles
David Sirois
Bertha Leal
Jennifer Toohey
Cliff Burgess
Aubrey Shavonn

The Alliance Announces the Cast for "Orphans"!

2009-12-06T08:22:00.000-08:00

Three weeks ago, at our 2010 season auditions, the Alliance sat down with eighty actors from all over South Florida. As usual, we had our share of the brilliantly talented, the underexperienced, and the "does-anyone-know-you-escaped-from-the-asylum" actors (only a few of these this time, though, thank God). Mark Della Ventura was gracious enough to help us out, and we think that the fact he didn't run screaming from the theatre bodes well for our season.

The goal of these auditions and callbacks was to cast all three of our 2010 productions: Orphans by Lyle Kessler (March 18-April 4), Coyote on a Fence by Bruce Graham (June 10-27), and A Skull in Connemara by Martin McDonagh (November 4-21). After hours of callbacks, lots of coffee, and an entire bottle of cheap red wine, the Alliance is proud to announce the cast of Orphans, our opening show for the 2010 season!

Harold: Travis Reiff**

Treat: David Sirois**

Phillip: Justin McLendon

** denotes a member of the Alliance Theatre Lab acting ensemble

First produced by the famed Steppenwolf theatre, Orphans is the story of two brothers -- Phillip, a wildchild naif whose illiteracy and innocence belie a feral intelligence, and Treat, a switchblade-wielding thief who manipulates his brother into remaining dependent on him. Into this den of dysfunction comes Harold, a not-so-legitimate businessman who takes the "Dead End Kids" under his tutelage. At its core, Orphans is a warped and disturbing father-and-son story.

Congratulations to these fantastic actors! We're looking forward to working again with Travis and David, who were in our most recent production, Sexual Perversity in Chicago. And we're excited to welcome Justin McLendon into our cult- er, acting family. Tickets are already on sale at TicketLeap, and if this show is anything like the last, you'd better get them quick.

We'll have the casts for the other two shows announced within the next couple weeks. Pacem!

Sexual Perversity in Chicago takes the lead in recent Playground poll.

2009-11-30T08:47:00.000-08:00

Our friends at The Playground, ran a poll asking South Florida audiences "What SoFla Show Will You Make Time For?" and you guessed it, Sexual Perversity in Chicago came in first. We would like to take this time and thank everyone who took the time to vote and to Alexis Scheer for helping make Sexual Perversity in Chicago our most successful show to date. Here is a copy of the poll that ran in The Playground on November 26th 2009.

November Poll Closed
Song of the Day: "Rosemary" (How to Succeed)

In a recent poll I asked "What SoFla Show Will You Make Time For?". And here are the results!

Congrats to the cast and crew of Sexual Perversity in Chicago over at the Alliance Theatre Lab!

Keep on the look out for future polls!

NEW TIMES LOVES SEXUAL PERVERSITY

2009-11-11T07:24:00.000-08:00

A Healthy Blast of Filth
Sexual Perversity in Chicago takes a stand for sexual normalcy in Miami Lakes.
Share

By Brandon K. Thorp
Published on November 10, 2009 at 2:39pm

Left to right: Jehane Serralles, David Sirois, Bertha Leal, and Travis Reiff
Details:
Sexual Perversity in Chicago By David MametDirected by Adalberto Acevedo With Bertha Leal, David Sirois,Jehane Serralles, and Travis Reiff Through November 22 The Alliance Theatre Lab; 6766 Main St., Miami Lakes305-259-0418; thealliancetheatrelab.com

The sexual perversity showcased in Sexual Perversity in Chicago is neither very Chicagoan nor very perverse. That is, if you judge perversity by things done rather than things thought about. But like most people in Chicago and elsewhere, Deborah, Danny, Joan, and Bernie — the denizens of this David Mamet joint — think about sex a lot more than they have it, and the less they have it, the weirder their thoughts about it become.

This may not have been Mamet's original point in writing SPC in the early '70s, but that's the play's most obvious message during its run at The Alliance Theatre Lab. SPC's first, ludicrously entertaining scene has Danny and Bernie (David Sirois and Travis Reiff, respectively), seemingly all jacked up on something or other, hashing over Bernie's sexual encounter of the night before. He's in a bar and this knockout is trying to buy cigarettes, only she forgot her money in her hotel room. So Bernie does the decent thing and offers to spot her, after which she invites him to the room for payback. They somehow wind up in the shower, and Bernie's soon doing her in the legless-doggy position on the bed. She instructs him to yell "BOOM!" every 30 seconds or so and calls in a friend to provide military sound effects — machine guns, dive-bombing planes, the whine of incoming artillery. When she lights the room on fire with a tub of gasoline — intentionally, to intensify climax — Bernie makes a run for it and bumps into the fire department in the elevator.

There is a pause after Bernie finishes his story, during which he stands there, panting, wild-eyed and scared, as we and Danny reflect on the deeper implications of all he's said. Then Danny says with a sigh: "Nobody does it normally any more."

Bernie's story was bullshit, of course, as is nine-tenths of everything that comes out of his mouth. We learn this by and by, and in a more staid production we may ponder what deep traumas in Bernie's youth have rendered him incapable of telling the truth, or of having good, sane sex in adulthood. (Or even good, sane conversations.) But I think director Adalberto Acevedo was having too much fun to worry about such somber things, and this version of SPC provides no time or space for them. This production is about antics and four actors' transcendent ability to get wild and dirty and crazy onstage.

SPC's story is skeletal, just a lift-off point for the sex rants Mamet puts in his characters' mouths. Basically, Danny and Deborah (Bertha Leal), two lost young Chicagoans, manage to overcome their sexual hangups long enough to initiate a relationship, but not long enough to really fall for each other before their union crumbles. Bernie and Joan are less nimble, their hangups more well-hung, and they resent the couple's successful acquisition of sex partners and mates. Joan (Jehane Serralles) spends the play saying terrible things about Danny, whom she hardly knows, and Bernie spends much of the play trying to hide his resentment and support his buddy, but ultimately can summon nothing so much as passive aggression.

Forget the story, though. The deep pleasures of this SPC — and there are many — come from individual moments of dramatic ingenuity that have nothing to do with Mamet's vision or anything else. Consider Jehane Serralles' amazing acid tongue, so potent it might burn holes through her lovely cheeks before the run is over. When at one point Danny — rightly — suggests she jam a lamp up her ass, she cools down and sucks the heat out of the room with a subtle movement of her head. "That's very telling," she says, with a slow-spreading crocodile smile, in a voice as managed as a controlled demolition. "On your suggestion, I'm supposed to rend and torture myself anally." In this moment, her character looks more comfortable than in any previous scene, as though she's settling into a role for which she's long prepared and "truly" relishes: a front-line combatant in a gender war.

Another pleasure: Travis Reiff's fantastic over-the-top misogyny and sexual angst. They make him difficult to share a room with but delirious fun to watch. Witness his breakdown as his Bernie tries to congratulate Danny on his new romantic venture. By the time Bernie forces himself to say, "You are one fortunate son of a bitch," he's so upset that he might as well be saying, "I've just discovered my family dead in the basement." The disconnect between the words and the quavering, loathing-filled mouth that says them is scary and mesmerizing.

But the greatest pleasure, and the best bit of acting, in Acevedo's SPC comes during Danny and Deborah's courtship, in a scene on a bed in Danny's apartment, as they talk to each other in cutesy little-kid voices and Deborah squirms around on Danny's lap. I couldn't tell what they were saying — the audience was laughing too hard at whatever it was — but watching their faces was enough. I don't know if I've ever seen two actors better capture the euphoria of fresh infatuation as it really is. The infinitely knowing smiles of fresh cohabitants, luxuriating neither in each others' words nor even their real personalities, but simply their presence; the presence of this new person who, for inexplicable reasons, has deigned to open their thighs and heart. You see all of this on their faces, and on Deborah's especially. They are thinking and feeling their parts, moment by moment. It's a revelation.

Again, none of this has anything to do with Mamet's vision, or the revelation about love and lust he was attempting to communicate during his own sexually perverse youth. In a softer, less antics-crammed production, we might pause to wonder what it means when Danny complains of his home life with Deborah: "Everything's fine. Sex, talk, life, everything...until you want to get closer, to get 'better.' Do you know what the fuck you want?" In other productions, that line comes across as the war cry of an eternal adolescent in chains. Here, it's all but swallowed. There are no fireworks in it, and it provides no opportunities for artful mugging. So the show goes on.

Acevedo and his actors lack the kind of hangups that severely restricted Mamet's characters. Their philosophy of playmaking is more libertine — more "if it feels good, do it." It's a philosophy that many have mouthed, but few have ever lived up to. Certainly, it's one that has never sufficed for Mamet or his creations. I say fuck 'em. SPC feels great.

EDGE REVIEWS SEXUAL PERVERSITY IN CHICAGO.

2009-11-11T07:20:00.000-08:00

Sexual Perversity In Chicago
by Michael Martin
EDGE Contributor
Tuesday Nov 10, 2009

It is true that big things often come in small packages. Such is the case with the Alliance Theatre Lab’s current production of David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago now playing at the intimate Main Street Playhouse in Miami Lakes.

A powerfully talented cast of four justly portrays Mamet’s characters from one of his earliest works. The explicit language sounds less shocking today than when the play was first produced in 1976, however Mamet’s deftly defined battle of the sexes still rings true with many present day couples.

Not unlike the 70s television show, Love American Style, the script contains a vast amount of quick vignette scenes. Often, a large amount of blackouts causes annoying disruption on behalf of an audience. Mamet’s keen flair for writing, however, leaves a sense of yearning for the next scene to be lit.

The author’s characters become so well defined, thanks in large part to the superb cast, that an air of eagerness soon permeates the confines of the theatre space as the audience anxiously awaits any new developments.

Bernie Litko (Travis Reiff) and Danny Shapiro (David Sirois) are best friends and work colleagues. Though the pair bond through shared stories of their adventures as single men trying to conquer the unassailable mount of complexity known as "woman", their approaches to dealing with the opposite sex vary widely.

Deborah Soloman (Bertha Leal) and Joan Webber (Jehane Serralles) are roommates, and likewise profess different ideologies when it comes to dealing with the human male species.

What really works here is director Adalberto J. Acevedo’s keen casting. Each actor infuses their character with realism, allowing the audience to easily relate to their characters’ individual plights.

Reiff masterfully commands the stage from the start. His clever use of tone and body language allows us to discover a Bernie that is wrought with insecurity issues, which the character continually attempts to conceal with manifested bravado.

Sirois likewise utilizes a suave naturalness to his tone that convincingly produces a likeable Danny despite his crude treatment of girlfriend Deborah during their breakup.

Leal exudes a perfectly coquettish behavior for her Deborah, who’s claim that she has lesbian tendencies may in fact be more a political stance rather than a sexual preference.

Serralles contains the unique ability to present the likeable bitch in her rendition of Joan, a woman who views herself as scorned by men so often that she has since adopted an unwavering bitterness concerning the gender.

Reiff is also credited with sound design. The spectacular choices of 70’s music that plays between each short scene perfectly add in creating the set time period for the piece. Amy Spadafore intelligently dresses the confined space to portray the required different locales, accompanied by Skye Whitcomb’s focused lighting that highlights these variances.

Overall, Acevedo delivers a production wrought with convincing talent and justly serves David Mamet’s original intent.

Sexual Perversity in Chicago continues through November 22 at Alliance Theatre Lab, 6766 Main Street, Miami Lakes, FL. For more information, visit the Alliance Theatre Lab website.

Michael Martin has been an active member of Actors’ Equity for over 20 years. As a professional actor, he has toured many parts of the US and the world. Originally from St. Louis, he now resides in Miami.

Sex and Foul Language: GO MAMET!!

2009-11-10T10:29:00.000-08:00

Sexual Perversity in Chicago. Those of you who missed it - we've still got two weekends (that EIGHT performances, folks) left for you to catch up! If you're in a production and can't make it over the weekend, we also have Industry Night November 16.

With that said, here are some pictures from one of our last dress rehearsals to wet your appetite:

The Miami Herald Raves About "Sexual Perversity in Chicago"!

2009-11-07T22:40:00.000-08:00

THEATER REVIEW
Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago a pleasure for audience
BY CHRISTINE DOLEN
cdolen@MiamiHerald.com

David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago is a play of a certain era: early Mamet, post-sexual revolution, pre-AIDS.

Written in 1974, the play flits from one short scene to the next, providing a snapshot of twentysomething big city ``romance'' and serving as a window into the younger Mamet's mind. This is a work that is funny, foul-mouthed and more than a little misogynistic; still enjoyable, but a harbinger of better things to come from a talented playwright.

The Miami Lakes-based Alliance Theatre Lab is winding up its year with a time-tripping performance of Sexual Perversity. The preshow music is vintage Marvin Gaye, setting a sensual mood as only he could do. The costumes, such as one guy's three-piece suit and wide tie, also say '70s. The rest -- the attitudes, sexual come-ons, fast physical intimacy among strangers -- is classic Mamet.

Sexual Perversity in Chicago follows the romantic fortunes of two guys and two gals.

Bernie Litko (Travis Reiff) is -- to put it succinctly -- a pig. Perpetually on the prowl, he sees women as things to be chatted up, slept with and physically discarded, though they'll linger as the subjects of Bernie's graphic tales of his sexual exploits. Bernie's work buddy Danny Shapiro (David Sirois) seems to be a more evolved type, and he jumps into an actual relationship. But it's not long before this Mamet man reveals that, just under that sensitive surface, he's not so different from Bernie.

Danny's squeeze is Deborah Soloman (Bertha Leal), who jumps into bed and a live-in relationship without much more thought than she'd give to buying a new dress. Not smart. Her tart-tongued roommate, kindergarten teacher Joan Webber (Jehane Serralles), doesn't much care for Danny (or any guy) and can't wait for the inevitable breakup to crow, ``I told you so.''

Director Adalberto J. Acevedo keeps the play hurtling forward as he turns actors who weren't born when the play was written into spot-on interpreters of Mamet's crude, fast-paced battle of the sexes. Reiff runs wild with Bernie's outsized vulgarity, Serralles gets Joan's frostiness, and Leal finds Deborah's empathetic vulnerability. Sirois does wonderfully layered work as Danny, sliding from decency to nastiness so convincingly that you feel as let down as Deborah does by a good guy gone bad.

Though Alliance still needs to raise its game when it comes to design work, its production of Sexual Perversity in Chicago gives four talented young actors the chance to take a walk on the wild side through Mamet's outrageous, R-rated world.

SOLD OUT OPENING NIGHT!

2009-11-06T20:53:00.000-08:00

Here is a look at the sold out opening night performance of Sexual Perversity in Chicago by David Mamet.

Thanks to our wonderful audience, and to the brilliant cast and crew for making it happen! Tickets are going fast for this one, so be sure to click on those tickets on the right-hand sidebar, and let the internet gnomes whisk you to TicketLeap to get your tickets!