Welcome to Knowledge Workings Theater. Below is our blog giving updates on our work, the art of self-producing, and the theater world at large. Check out our book on self-producing, 13 Ways of Looking at Self-Producing and stay tuned for our new projects. – KWT
Our excellent artwork above by Sarah Lewis Smith heralds our upcoming London run
Yep, it’s happening: get thee to Merrie Old England during the lusty month of May to see this new production. Mon Sans Productions in collaboration with Knowledge Workings Theater will produce the UK premiere of Retrospective by T.J. Elliott at Barons Court Theater in London opening May 14th and running for eight performances. Liviu Monsted of Mon Sans will direct this comedy about a famous painter — who may or may not be dreaming — encountering his first wife and other haunting figures from his past amidst what they claim is a retrospective of his work. This mischievous ménage swear they just want to help him ’get to next’ but he just wants to wake up. Further information and tickets available at the Barons Court website
Started our series Chasing the Dead: Amateur Adventures in Genealogy. That motive has hovered over me for many years now and Halloween/All Saints Day this year (or Samhain as the Celts celebrated the event) seemed a good time to start publishing in pieces my new book Chasing The Dead. After all, any method — shy of Ouija boards and seances — that gets me closer to that connection of my family that is gone suits me.
This journey started for me fifteen years ago, when my eldest brother John marshaled three of his siblings — Jim, Brendan, and myself — to undertake a genealogical mission to Ireland. Two years later in August of 2012 while recovering from cancer, I drafted Chasing, a digressive account of that trip that yielded discovery of aspects of my own personality, my relationship to my family and its past along with John’s ancestry artifact targets: a baptismal record here, a ruined ancestral cottage there, the bridge our mother walked to convent school.
And we made it onto Jimmy Kimmel in early October 2025 with our war reporting from the front lines in Portland: here’s the full uncensored footage
In this piece on bureaucracy , I note that given my work in theatre, which many of you have indulged by actually coming to these performances and as my mother would’ve said there’s a special place in heaven for all of you — not that you will all be in the same special place because that would be kind of crowded but you will each have your own special place), my time writing should be spent on plays, but I just could not shake the compulsion to point out the insanity of what is currently festering in our federal government. I’m not one of those guys who is trying to get people to pay to subscribe to my Substack or whatever. In this case, however, I would like to get as many people as possible to read this essay. If subsequently they can point out where I’m wrong (or maybe a really terrible typo), that’s always a good thing for me: not done learning yet. But if I’m right, then the essay might convince people of the need for active resistance immediately to the musking of our government. That’s why I’m going to encourage my friends to at least take a look and then if the piece doesn’t drop them into a coma, I hope they suggest to others that they take a look at this piece. (It’s like a literary Ponzi scheme except nobody gets any money.)
I think you would enjoy clicking on the link. And then reading the essay. I mean who doesn’t like an essay of over 3000 words that references Sigmund Freud, Hammurabi, Hannah Arendt, Dire Straits, and Robert Frost?
Thank you for reading this far. I close with the central philosophical statement of my late brother Mike Elliott, “F**k ’em if they can’t take a joke.”
Luck is the residue of design as Branch Rickey wisely opined. And our co-founder, T.J. Elliott, had the good luck to plan his visit to Portland to be at the opening of Claire Elliott’s show at One Grand gallery of her paintings AND his grandson’s magnificent Paw Patrol themed fifth birthday party just as POTUS designated that city to be a ‘hellhole’ in need of military intervention. His journalistic work ended up on the Jimmy Kimmel show — go to 7:07 at this link — and garnered 54,000 views on YouTube. Knowledge Workings is proud of this daring reporting by such an old man.
Here’s something that I learned over the years that used to be called ‘the elevator pitch’, the spiel for a product or in this case new 90 minute comedy, RETROSPECTIVE, delivered in under 1 minute. Did this one work? I’ll find out by how many tickets we sell. Oh BTW, the link for tix is below; message me for the discount code, or if you need a complimentary ticket. These 3 performances — August 13th (8PM), August 15th (5PM) and August 16th (2PM) are prelude to what we hope will be a longer run and we’re looking for backers or co-producing theaters. Feel free to apply https://broadwayboundtheatrefestival.ludus.com/index.php?show_id=200484720
Jeremiah Alexander smiling because he knows how much audiences will love his portrayal of Clint Photo Bill Wadman
For playwright, T.J. Elliott, and actor, Jeremiah Alexander, this collaboration stems from September of 1978. Alan Brody as the male leads in a regional production of George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple. First, they were fellow actors, then for a time roommates, and later, and always, friends as both moved to NYC to pursue careers in theater. They both studied with acting teacher legend Terry Schreiber and appeared on stages that happened to be in cellars, barrooms, lofts, and even occasionally a real theatre.
A pledge was made by T.J. once he turned to playwrighting in the early 1980s that one day he would work with Jeremiah and benefit from his chum’s comedic talent, irrepressible energy, and unique intuition. Necessarily working straight jobs and happily raising a family with wife and now Executive Producer, Marjorie Phillips, however, kept that rendezvous from happening until now, but the result is worth the wait. Jere enchants and entertains with the antics of Clint Belinsky, described in the script of RETROSPECTIVE as “late 60s, looks even younger, artist & enjoyer of life.” The last part is an understatement; Clint is a painter who admits, “Art was cool but some days I just heaved the paint up there and hoped for the best.” This so-called ‘seminal figure in the Soho crowd‘ concedes his “talent lay in a different direction” than his fellow painter and our protagonist, Rory McGrory (Mark Thomas McKenna), and apparently that direction took him into the arms of both Rory’s wife, Pippa LeFebvre (Adara Totino) and her best friend/his worst enemy, the ferocious critic, Z (Jasmine Dorothy Haefner). Rehearsals run long because we can’t stop laughing at Jere’s sparkling, loopy creation of this one of a kind character.
Jeremiah’s return to the stage comes after a long career in film, television, & commercials. Television credits include Mozart in the Jungle, Howl, All My Children, One Life to Live, & The Guiding Light. On film, Jere can be seen in Unfaithful, Inside Man, Goosed, &Half Baked. But where you really must see him to enjoy up close the laughter and charm he brings to his work is in RETROSPECTIVE. Get your tix today at this link or on TDF
What forces form a fine actor? Experience. Intelligence. Discipline. Feeling. All of these but also the skill and courage to make their own path through not just each work but through ‘the business’, and a capacity for reflecting on each moment in the career (which sometimes careens) and constantly learning. John Gielgud in his 1963 book Stage Directions captures the way this needs to play out:
“I think an actor has to find his own especial way of working, selecting his effects from what he has found out for himself in all kinds of different experiments at rehearsals and—experiments of movement, experiments of give and take with the other players—in order to gain the necessary flexibility to contribute to and fit in with the director’s intentions as far as possible.”
Jasmine Dorothy Haefner possesses all of these qualities, a judgment I can make with authority having cast her in three plays and directed her twice.
She was Candy, the MAGA Cuban-American in Grudges,
and Micky in The Oracle
She was a unique Hollywood force in Joe Queenan’s TOP HATE
And many different people in 2-Faces at Edinburgh Fringe
How did her ‘especial way of working’ emerge? As one observer put it, “After ten years in the entertainment industry, she’s done almost every job except light fire to the hoop the lion jumps through.” And I can add that neither the lion nor the fire would give her pause with the commitment she applies to everything she does. All that she’s learned, all the experimenting and discovery that she undertakes excitedly and assiduously combines with an innate sensitivity and creativity to make her so valuable especially in the creation of a new work particularly a comedy that dares to imagine an afterlife where a menage a trois — with a ‘plus one’ — tries to sort out who is still attached to whom so they can all get to next, whatever next is
In writing RETROSPECTIVE and imagining the character of Z, critic of…everything, having the voice of Jasmine in my head was a joyous inspiration. And now that our director, Gifford Elliott, is getting this play up on its feet her embodiment of this wickedly funny character has blossomed into even more than even I envisioned. That’s why you’ll regret it if you miss her performance as part of the Broadway Bound Theater Festival this August 13th (8PM), 15th (5PM with talkback) and 16th (2PM)
Talking to one of our actors during a rehearsal for RETROSPECTIVE (opening August 13th for just three performances at AMT Theatre 354 W. 45th St. in NYC, get Tix here), the topic of persuasion arose. My characters are ALWAYS persuading someone to ‘see something the way you see it’, to feel or act in a different way. This tendency in my characters may stem from my growing up around a table filled with meat, potatoes, and debate. As the youngest of five boys with a clever younger sister, contention and dissension over ‘what was what’ proved a daily part of the agenda. You protested your preferences about art (such as we experienced it), sports, books, school, politics, TV shows…everything. Entering the outside world, arguments not only failed to daunt me; they enlivened my spirit, a cause for both my marvelous wife’s forbearance and chagrin.
But theater is also a natural place for persuasion. Declan Donellan in his book The Actor and The Target makes the point that, “For the actor, all ‘doing’ has to be done to something. The actor can do nothing without the target.” Therefore, the playwright also has to understand what target he has given to the actor and how these various targets interact. Donellan makes the important point that, “the actor cannot act a verb without an object.… All an actor can play are verbs, but even more significantly, each of these verbs has to depend on a target. This target is a kind of object, either direct or indirect, a specific thing seen or sensed, and, to some degree, needed. What the target actually is will change from moment to moment. There is plenty of choice. But without the target the actor can do absolutely nothing at all, for the target is the source of all the actor’s life.” Didion’s verbs above include make, wrench, and trick, a nifty trio.
Target — ‘something aimed at’ — can show up many ways in a play, As Didion suggests, the target hostilely might be the site of a planned attack, that mind to be wrenched in a different direction, but it might also be lovingly the locus of an attempt at salvation or seduction, an entirely different sort of wrenching. Statements like Joan Didion’s have the shock of recognition for me: my characters frequently are trying to ‘wrench around someone’s mind’, but because of my Bronx/Jersey Irish Catholic influences they do so talking fast, smart-ass, but only sometimes hostile. The other times, they come off canny or cunning, articulate to the point of exasperation, which, of course, can make people laugh when they see themselves or their intimates/enemies in what transpires on stage. The fun flows from other characters also ‘targeting’ but in the opposite direction. Then we get what Peter Brook called “a duo creating a world together“, a world like our own with winds blowing every which way and no knowing whose cause (if any) will win.
Who is persuading whom? Pippa (Adara Totino) and Rory (Mark Thomas McKenna) gently wrenching each other’s mind
“The play does not exist in the theater as a written text until it has been absorbed in the process of production. Drama is ‘translated’ or transformed into the person of the actor — “the body of the art of the theater”, as Stark Young put it.“ Harold Clurman, On Directing
‘The body of the art of the theater‘: Watching Mark Thomas McKenna* in rehearsal for RETROSPECTIVE, this quote came to mind. These words suggest one of the most important truths for any playwright or director: it’s mostly about the actor in theater that matters, theatre that moves us. Actors may not be everything in theatre but they form the essence of what we want to see on stage. Alan Ayckbourn, one of our greatest living playwrights and the clearest explainer of playwrighting, agrees; “Theatre is not about the writing, it’s not about the directing. It is about that, but in the end it’s really about the actors and the audience and most audiences – aside from the cognoscenti who sit there being experts – come to watch a bit of acting.”
Mark brings to this work (with our three other stellar actors featured on this page) more than 35 years of experience acting, devising, teaching, producing, and presenting ensemble created work for the stage. He blends the mimodynamics of two years at Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris with improv training from Second City. He incorporates insights gained at HB Studios with the great Herbert Berghof right alongside the clowning technique gained from studying with the great vaudevillean Avner Eisenberg better known as Avner the Eccentric. The latter skill showed up big time in his portrayal of Don Quixote.
But fundamentally Mark brings himself to the play, a grand artist who never stops learning while sharing his talent. Clarity of utterance, agility of movement, depth of feeling, generosity of spirit, and quickness of thought characterize his work. Make sure you see him as RORY in one of our three performances in RETROSPECTIVE
Clockwise from Bottom Left: Jasmine Dorothy Haefner, Jeremiah Alexander, Mark Thomas McKenna, Adara Totino [Cast photos by Bill Wadman]
