The Box

a Narrative Experiment in Late Night Theater
produced & created by Padraic Duffy & Hans Gelpke
directed by Padraic Duffy (a cat wrote this play, Puzzler)

JULY 11, 18 & 25
Saturdays @ 11pm

Tickets are Pay What You Can, and are only available at the door

WORLD PREMIERE - From the Creators of Serial Killers! THE BOX is an experiment in randomly generated narrative. Given a collection of characters and settings from which to choose, writers will create fragments- small scenes and snippets that will then be put together randomly and performed each night. The hope is that a story will emerge - one that is dark, mysterious, and moving.

There are a million different stories in THE BOX. In the end, we will hear just one.

Read the Writers' Manual

Submissions are closed, but feel free to read the manual at the link above to learn about the world of THE BOX!

Cast

Leon Russom as Old Will
Ruth Silveira as the Fortune Teller
Rebecca Larsen as Eleanor
Bryan Bellomo as Young Will
David LM McIntyre as Chicken Dave
Dana Lyn Baron as Molly
Corryn Cummins as The Little Girl
Francisco Rodriguez as The Cannery Owner (July 11 & 18)
Curt Bonnem as The Cannery Owner (July 25)
Ian Patrick Williams as The Sea Captain

Writers

Neal Alvarez, Lemon Baardsen , Zachary Bernstein , Paula Cizmar, Bob DeRosa , Christopher DeWan, Mike Dressel, Erik Engman , Annette Fasone , Aaron Francis , Summera Howell, Jay Garrett, Nat Gertler, Marian Gonzalez , Jon Jory, Mildred Lewis, Sarah McKinley Oakes, Tifanie McQueen , Paul Plunkett , Ari Radousky , Erika Rose , Scot Shamblin , Jacob Sidney , Gregory Sims , Graham Skipper, Ann-Giselle Spiegler, Scott Stein, Vanessa Stewart , Caridad Svich, Sean Sweeney, Alisa Tangredi, Mac Wellman, Nathan Wellman , Ian Patrick Williams & Paul Hoan Zeidler

Crew

Stage Manager - Hans Gelpke
Light and Sound Design - Matt Richter
Costume Design - Matt Valle
Prop Design - Jessica Sherman
Additional Prop Design - Aaron Francis
Choreography - Cj Merriman
Original Music - Ryan Johnson
Projection Design - Ben Rock & Suze Campagna

Night One - July 11, 2015

SCENE 42: "A Short Trip" by Ari Radousky

SCENE 41: "Unfinished Business" by Graham Skipper

SCENE 43: "Embers" by Caridad Svich

SCENE 36: "The Only Way Out" by Scot Shamblin

SCENE 12: "The Diary" by Ian Patrick Williams

SCENE 33: "Sin Bag" by Paula Cizmar

SCENE 30: "Retracing" by Tifanie McQueen

SCENE 10: "Old Will and his Scar" by Alisa Tangredi

SCENE 7: "The Way of the World" by Neal Alvarez

SCENE 13 "Men String Barbed Wire 'Round the Earth" by Mike Dressel

SCENE 23: "The Locket" by Sarah McKinley Oakes

SCENE 3: "The Psychic and the Skeptic" by Aaron Francis

SCENE 11: "Being Remembered" by Paul Plunkett

Night Two - July 18, 2015

SCENE 21: "The Locket" by Ann-Giselle Spiegler

SCENE 18: "Hide and Seek" by Vanessa Stewart

SCENE 27: "Obliscence" by Marian Gonzalez

SCENE 39: "Broken" by Christopher DeWan

SCENE 9: "Dangerous Out Here" by Annette Fasone

SCENE 1: "Untitled" by Mac Wellman

SCENE 14: "Life Sucks When You See Everyone’s Future but your Own" by Alisa Tangredi

SCENE 24: "The Sirens" by Erik Engman

SCENE 4: "The Truth" by Summera Howell

SCENE 6: "You Look the Most Lost" by Zachary Bernstein

SCENE 37: "The Unquiet Dead" by Graham Skipper

SCENE 15: "What is a Man?" by Alisa Tangredi

SCENE 5: "The Stones" by Jay Garrett

SCENE 17: "Observance" by Tifanie McQueen

SCENE 40: "The One Who Jumped" by Bob DeRosa

Night Three - July 25, 2015

SCENE 35: "The Cliffs" by Jay Garrett

SCENE 2: "Untitled" by Nathan Wellman

SCENE 8: "Cannery Cotillion" by Lemon Baardsen

SCENE 38: "The Aftermath... or Not" by Erika Salomon

SCENE 20: "Aviary" by Scott Stein

SCENE 29: "The Gramophone" by Ian Patrick Williams

SCENE 31: "The Forest and the Pond" by Paul Hoan Zeidler

SCENE 32: "Okay, Here's One" by Jon Jory

SCENE 22: "Men" by Jacob Sidney

SCENE 25: "I Dream of Brine" by Gregory Sims

SCENE 16: "Requiem for a Chicken" by Bob DeRosa

SCENE 34: "Lost Cock" by Christopher DeWan

SCENE 28: "Smokes and Chickens" by Nat Gertler

SCENE 19: "Untitled" by Mildred Lewis

SCENE 26: "On the Edge of a Cliff" by Sean Sweeney

Press

@ This Stage Magazine

Sacred Fools Attempt to Think Entirely Inside The Box

Sacred Fools’ upcoming late night project, simply dubbed The Box, is a theatrical experiment that enlists multiple writers to create a single play from many voices, five pages at a time.

Participating writers are tasked with creating these five-page scene fragments, each one revolving around locations and characters imagined by co-producers and creators of the project, Padraic Duffy and Hans Gelpke. Submissions will be read and curated, and accepted pieces will make it into The Box to be selected at random for each performance.

The world of The Box is driven by the character Will, an old man who sits on his porch and shares tales of his life with the audience. Each of his memories is generated from a script fragment chosen for performance on that particular night. Will’s tales will materialize fully — with lights, sound, and a full cast of actors in a semi-staged reading format.

Duffy, who will be directing the production, hopes that, compiled, the script fragments will both create a sense of Will’s haunted past and work together to produce something greater than the sum of its parts.

“It’s exciting,” Duffy says. “We might have a very weird, complicated, dark narrative. Writers are trying to make connections blind, and I’m hoping that the audience will see connections that we didn’t.”

The writers won’t be completely narrative-blind, however; Duffy and Gelpke forged the world of Will’s memories into a series of evocative prompts. All of the scenes must follow the journey of Will’s younger self as he returns to his small New England fishing village after World War I. The village is fully populated with a cadre of stock characters and settings. The creators have been careful to leave these descriptions minimal, though evocative, in an attempt to inspire their writers rather than force direction on the plot.

“I tried to design it so that Will is an unreliable narrator, so that we don’t know if these stories are true, or if they’re partially true,” says Duffy.

Duffy and Gelpke are no strangers to late night experiments in live performance. However, after the success of Sacred Fools’ long-running shows like Serial Killers and Magnum Opus, they wanted to do something that put the spotlight squarely on the writer.

“I want people to come away really appreciating the writing. Whether or not it becomes a story that makes sense, I believe that the audience will be able to find a connection,” says Duffy.

--Eric Czuleger
© 2015 @ This Stage Magazine

- Sacred Fools Company Member

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