THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID: John Benzinger and Rachel Garner in Fair Use
We should totally call dibs on Dad’s Garage Theatre’s Large Animal Games and Actor’s Express’s Fair Use as home-grown plays. Neither takes place in Atlanta and neither playwright currently lives here, but the local theater community can claim bragging rights to the world premieres of both witty comedies.
Large Animal Games takes its bow as part of a full season of new plays developed “in-house” at Dad’s Garage, although the company shares the co-world premiere of Large Animal Games with Impact Theatre of Berkeley, Calif. Writer Steve Yockey, currently playwright-in-residence at Marin Theatre Company, has long been a member of the “artistic family” of Dad’s, Out of Hand Theatre and Actor’s Express (as well as, briefly, a Creative Loafing employee). Fair Use by Chicago’s Sarah Gubbins was a finalist in the Alliance Theatre’s Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition, a national award that’s been cultivating a new generation of theatrical talents for more than half a decade.
Geoff "Googie" Uterhardt as gay rights icon Harvey Milk in the Onstage Atlanta production 'The Harvey Milk Show'
Gay rights icon Harvey Milk was murdered in 1978, but people refuse to let him go. A biography and Oscar-winning documentary in the ’80s were followed by the successful play The Harvey Milk Show composed by Atlantan Patrick Hutchison in the ’90s. Then, the dam broke with last year’s success of the Oscar-winning feature film Milk, starring Sean Penn.
Around that time, local director Barbara Cole Uterhardt and her husband, actor Googie Uterhardt, approached Hutchison about bringing the production back. “Sure enough, Patrick was willing to work with us,” Googie says. And now The Harvey Milk Show is back at Onstage Atlanta through November 21.
“They made some changes, added a song in that hadn’t been in for awhile,” says Googie. “Then I auditioned and got the part.”
“The part” would be the role of Harvey Milk, the gay community’s closest approximation of Martin Luther King, played by the only straight male actor in the entire production.
About five years ago, the Alliance Theatre asked me, possibly due to a clerical error, to take part in a panel discussion with the winner and runners-up in its first Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition. The clear winner for “funniest person in the room” that day was Megan Gogerty, whose Kendeda contender Love Jerry was produced — to no little controversy — at Actor’s Express in 2006. Gogerty returns to Atlanta to perform her one-woman show, Hillary Clinton Got Me Pregnant, at Synchronicity Theatre Nov. 5-22. A professor at the University of Iowa, she recently recorded an album of songs about “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
What are the origins of the show?
It’s a sort-of true story. I take some liberties with my life. It’s about two things. The first is my journey as a Democrat wandering through the Bush years, which coincides with a personal narrative about me deciding to have a family. It began when I was in Iowa City at a theater company that does a monologue festival. I performed one that I’d written a while back about meeting Hillary Clinton at a book signing. It went over super well. I used to do stand-up years and years go, so I thought maybe I should expand the monologue. Riverside Theatre said, “Do it! Great!” It had a short turnaround time, so I came up with a generic title, Megan Gogerty Loves You Very Much, which is true. I am Megan Gogerty and I do love you very much. And I decided to do Hillary Clinton.
[Kevin's] background includes improvisation, theatre and video work and his core strengths include ensemble growth and development, collaborative creation and the production of new and original work across multiple disciplines. “In addition to Kevin’s talent and intellect, he’s a whole lot of fun to be around,” said Managing Director, Lena Carstens. “In a time when we are presenting all new and original work, we’ll benefit from having fresh perspective from someone who’s already in the Dad’s family…even if he has been a distant cousin north of the border.”
Still waiting to understand Godot? The Letters of Samuel Beckett, the first volume of which was released last month, promises to shed a little light on the work of that famously tight-lipped, Nobel prize-winning author. Emory’s putting together a gaggle of events to celebrate his edited correspondence, including a seriously long marathon of his plays on film. If you’ve had chance to check out the book or saw Ed Albee and Salman Rushdie read aloud from it, then you might be ready to check out this six-hour program on Wed., March 19. I’d bring a snack.
Here’s a clip from a performance of Not I, to give you a hint of what you’re in for. Complete details after the jump.
About five years ago, the Alliance Theatre asked me, possibly due to a clerical error, to take part in a panel discussion with the winner and runners-up in its first Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition. The clear winner for “funniest person in the room” that day was Megan Gogerty, whose Kendeda contender Love Jerry was produced — to no little controversy — at Actor’s Express in 2006. Gogerty returns to Atlanta to perform her one-woman show, Hillary Clinton Got Me Pregnant, at Synchronicity Theatre Nov. 5-22. A professor at the University of Iowa, she recently recorded an album of songs about “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
