Flux Sunday, September 13th

(What is Flux Sunday?)

We’re back! After a break in August for our 4th Annual Retreat at Little Pond and our Food:Soul of Volleygirls, we’re back for the month of September.

We started with a more intimate crowd than usual, but that was lucky for me as I was the only playwright (beedle dee, deedle dee, dee).

Director Heidi Handlesman, hot off Bird House, returned after a long absence to helm two scenes from my new play, Dark Matter. This play follows Maxine, a physicist working with her mentor Nikolay at Princeton. At a conference, they drink and mock Afruz, a physicist more known for his showman mass appeal than his scientific accomplishment. Then Nikolay tells her that he has hired Afrux to work with them at Princeton.

This is the first of several shocks for Maxine: she then gets a call from her partner Winny that her father, the roguish charmer Jimmy, has managed to get his hands on the car keys. Suffering from the early stages of Alzheimers, Jimmy crashes the car.

Meanwhile, Maxine’s daughter Marie, sick with a possibly terminal illness, is falling under the spell of her ne’er-do-well older cousin Donny. Determined to give her every experience life has to offer, Donny leads her down some dark alleys.

It was great to spend some real time with the play: Carissa Cordes and Lynn Kenny shared the role of Marie, David Crommett read Nikolay, Jane Taylor and Mariam Habib shared Maxine, Ryan Andes played Donny, Tiffany Clementi played Winny, Anthony Wills Jr. read Jimmy, and with her usual daring, Candice Holdorf played a wee bit against type as the older male Bengali physicist Afruz.

Highlights included Candice’s Afruz handing the peace offering of the gum to Maxine; Ryan’s bewildered amusement as Marie cleverly traps him in a lecture from Maxine; Anthony’s realization that Jimmy’s “How fast?” story was actually a ritual he plays with Marie and Donny; Lynn’s reaction to the East Coast Chronic.

Thanks to everyone for a great return to Flux Sunday – if you were there, what else would you add to this brief history?