Working Title: The Move, The Packing, The Thrush and The Woodpecker

This week Will Leschber barely makes it out of his moving truck to speak to Custom Made Theatre about The Thrush & The Woodpecker.

Hello there dear readers! You all are a dedicated bunch. I gotta give you props. Not only are you here now reading away, but we even tried to trick you all by saying that the last Working Title blog entry was a goodbye blog! Well, as you may know, it was a farewell Bay Area blog but it is not the last Working Title blog, no siree bob blog… we can’t trick you! Tricks are for kids. Let’s keep this party going from across the country!

So I can’t tear myself away. Even after the 3500-mile journey from San Francisco to Phoenix to Austin then Kansas and on to Connecticut in a 26’ box truck towing a car, even after unloading a ridiculous amount of moving boxes, even after getting my bearings and loosing sleep and battling landlords and praising new daycare workers and thanking in-laws and parents…even after all that, I can’t tear myself away from San Francisco indie theater. You guys deserve the best. So I have a few more suggestions to help wet your whistles and prep your brains as you dive into the new offerings from Bay Area theater.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Brian Katz, Artistic Director at Custom Made Theater about The Thrush & the Woodpecker, a new play by Steve Yockey that has its rolling world premiere beginning in a few short weeks. If you think that driving cross-country with a dog and a dad sounds dramatic and surprising, that has nothing on this revenge play. Starring local legend Stacy Ross, Shotgun Players Company Member Fontana Butterfield, and hot up-and-coming actor Adam Magill (Berkeley Rep’s Macbeth, SF Playhouse’s Stupid Fucking Bird), The Thrush and the Woodpecker tells the engaging story of a mysterious stranger who arrives to turn the world upside down for Brenda Hendricks and her son Noah, who’s recently returned from college unexpectedly. What avian secrets lie in wait?! We’ll see…

I asked Brian Katz the best film to pair with the new and unusual Thrush/Woodpecker and like a good Artistic Director, he offered up the question to his wonderful production team to get a myriad of opinions. Here’s a sampling of recommendations:

Kitty Torres (costumer) suggests: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca. Since the play and the film definitely share the same levels of obsession and deceit.

Liz Ryder (sound) concisely recommends: The Birds!

Leah Abrams (Custom Made Theater Company’s Executive Director) offers up: The 2006 thriller Notes on a Scandal because its two female characters strike me in a similar way, a mix of perfectly normal/really off-kilter in their own way. AND Hitchcock’s The Birds. I think it’s the film that terrifies me most – there’s the obvious havoc wreaked by said birds, and also just that sense of the supernatural invading seemingly normal people in the real world.

With the uncanny, supernatural, deceitful, unnerving recommendations Thrush/Woodpecker sounds to be quite an intriguing experience. The play opens August 4th and runs until August 20th. More info can be found at www.custommade.org.

Theater Around The Bay: It’s All In The Name

Guest blogger Fontana Butterfield shares how her improv troupe found the perfect name.

We were finishing our rehearsal and had 10 minutes to figure out a name for our improv troupe. Postcards needed to be made, our first show was already sold out. The clock was ticking. Many names had been thrown into the soup. Everything else but finding a name was going like gangbusters.

The three of us met at a rehearsal for an Armando Company show produced by the improv company Leela. Soon after our Armando show, Mariah sent an email to Claire and me saying she had this crazy fantasy where the three of us would quickly form a trio for the sole purpose of submitting to the all women comedy festival “All Jane, No Dick”. The name of the festival was so perfectly fucked up, we had to do it. We had four days to book space, rehearse together, gather an audience and tape a “show”. It was ballsy. Luckily we are also teaching artists with built in studio stages, random directing students with really good cameras and an audience of improv students.

It happened. We filmed a “show” and came up with a very trippy name on the spot based on audience suggestions. “Father’s Day Remix”. Yeah. It was one of those funny-when-we-said-it and then just plain weird on the tongue. We did not book “All Jane, No Dick” but we did create something that excited us to the core. I feel like I manifested this troupe in my little lady heart. Yes, I actually wrote it in my precious thoughts journal. I want a new troupe that’s small and mighty and is made up of members that are, I’m gonna say it, even better at this than me.

So there we were, in our rehearsal space, sitting in a tiny circle, throwing out names. The past week I had been consumed with names like “Lady Parts”, “3 Chicks Squared”. We even laughed our faces off for far too long and almost went with something like “Sister, Woman, Sister” (homage to The Kathy and Mo Show). And then Claire said it out loud. “Why does it have to have gender in the title?” Boom.

Why does it have to have gender in the title? We are three improvisers. Check. Then we broke it down. Why do we do this? What’s it all about? This is one of those moments in life where you remember everything with all your senses. The room, the sounds, the light, the position of Claire’s face, the posture of Mariah’s back all expectantly listening to Claire say what it is that turns her on most about this magical work. “It’s about being in this moment, it’s about the right now.” The Right Now. This is how we do it.

Find out more about The Right Now Improv Trio by checking out their website at http://therightnowimprovtrio.blogspot.com/. They are performing next at FemProv Fest ’14, headlining the opening show: http://www.femprovfest.com/