Knowledge Workings Theater Company

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  • RETROSPECTIVE’s UK Premiere = x-dimensional chess

    All Nine London Test Posts About RETROSPECTIVE’s UK Premiere 

    Obsessed with tests? Yes, but this post offers advice for all performing and presenting artists 

    The words test and toast qualify as etymological cousins. Language experts think that the former word meaning originally “a piece of burned brick, clay, or tile” derived from the Latin “tosta, from torreō (‘to burn, parch’).” That means our word ‘torrid’ is in this linguistic clan as well and London reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit as we departed yesterday after the conclusion of our run of RETROSPECTIVE. Torrid! 

    The other connection between TEST and TOAST is that after a theatrical experience like the just concluded run of RETROSPECTIVE — as depicted in our nine post series London Test — all participants including this playwright and his goddess of an Executive Producer wife are ‘toast’ as in the colloquial sense of burnt out, frazzled, exhausted. (Bonus phrase reference; the use of ‘toast’ in this way purportedly originates with words mostly written by Harold Ramis and dan Akroyd but spoken by Bill Murray as Venkman in Ghostbusters “as he prepares to fire a laser-type weapon … ‘This chick is toast’.” ) 

    He changed the line from the script; of course, he did

    Knowing that after such an adventure as RETROSPECTIVE , you’ll be the metaphorical equivalent of a word that originally denoted “A slice or piece of bread browned on both sides by exposure to an open fire, a grill, or other source of radiant heat (formerly often immersed in wine, water, or another beverage)” should prompt theatre makers and other artists to journal about their work while it’s unfolding. Creating performance or presentation involves activity (and often anxiety) on many different levels; the work is multi-faceted. It’s x-dimensional chess and you have to solve for chess just like in high school algebra.

    This is not just about theatre; my good friend and sometime cast member, Patrick Smith, just published his first novel The Last Revision. The event extends beyond the writing to the revision, negotiation, promotion, and reflection of all of the material. Talking to him in London when he came to see RETROSPECTIVE provided a rich travelogue of that journey from the book being done to the author never being done. Well, it’s just that Patrick is  not there yet. Waiting to capture the impressions and insights of your creating means you’ll miss a few. (Emily St. John Mandel, one of my favorite contemporary authors, seemed to turn her jottings from the experience of her hit novel Station Eleven into a whole other highly imaginative novel, Sea of Tranquility. So, there’s that possibility too from journaling during the work.)  

    Creation of ANY type is perplex. The wonderful Word Origins newsletter reminded me of one way of portraying the process: x-dimensional chess: 

    The earliest citation of three-dimensional chess in the Oxford English Dictionary is a literal one, found in H. J. R. Murray’s 1913 A History of Chess: 
    The latest derivative game of chess is Schachraumspiel, or Three dimensional chess (see Dr. Ferd. Maach, Das Schachraumspiel, 1908). 
    The German is literally chess-room-game or translated more idiomatically, spatial chess game Word origins is very cool

    Joe Queenan and I when writing Grudges in 2019-20 took advantage of the pretentiousness of the ‘playing x-dimensional chess’ term to skewer a certain political figure whose cult members claim he’s operating on that level, but as Dr. Spock knew (but NOT Dr. Einstein apparently) chess like creating art tests not just our cognitive intelligence, but also the emotional type along with resilience and adaptability. In writing the nine posts about our LONDON TEST, some elements likely escaped that documentation, but the journaling helped me to understand what this thing called theatre and myself within it is all about 

    The nonet of London Tests 

    London Test: 74 year-old Bronx Irish Catholic Guy Takes His Play to London contains the links to posts 1-4, which emerged as Substack notes 

    London Test # 5: Collaboration, Inspiration, Admiration 

    London Test # 6: Rothko knew what Rory knew 

    London Test # 7: Claps and Clunks 

    London Test # 8: “You’re going to love London audiences” 

    London Test # 9: “Time’s up; Pencils down” 

    Photos by Marjorie Phillips Elliott

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  • We asked our actors why they care and commit to #maketheaterlive

    Part I

    Here’s what our Noah Huntley(RORY McGRORY) & Sarah Louise Pearcy (PIPPA) said:

    March 12th, 2020.

    Do you remember where you were on that date? On March the 12th, 2020, my co-playwright, Joe Queenan, and I were set to audition actors for the staging of our second co-written play, Grudges. That’s the day the pandemic hit the fan in the USA with the NBA canceling its season, ERs overflowing, and travel of pretty much any kind cancelled, cancelled, cancelled. Theater also just stopped. Around the country, whether in Broadway palaces or school gyms, regional playhouses or East Village cabarets, theater just stopped. Every plan for a stage performance died.

    Theatre is a series of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
    Tom Stoppard

    But along with a few others, our then still relatively new company, Knowledge Workings Theater, refused to give up the creation and unfolding of those moments that encompass actor and audience, that give life to the text of a playwright, the scheme of a director, the arts of scenic, lighting, and sound designers. What distinguishes theater is that process and product are about making something live in a way that can simultaneously resemble our lives and show us another world. That four-letter word — live — can be an action verb or a descriptive adjective; both signifying In theater the vivifying reality of stage performance. So hatched our tagline #maketheaterlive. And that’s why we asked our four fabulous actors in the UK premiere of our latest play Retrospective at Barons Court Theatre May 14th – May 23rd to share why they are passionate about making theater live. Noah Huntley and Sarah Louise Pearcy offered the first installment of those answers above.

    Our making theater live in those dark days started in a compromise: the actors and performance were live, but the audience was spread somewhat to our surprise not only across North America but in Europe and Asia as well via Zoom. That’s the way in which we produced Grudges (which was our first time working with Jasmine Dorothy Haefner who plays Z in our upcoming UK production of RETROSPECTIVE—her third performance with KWT) followed by Within The Context Of No Context by George W S Trow, and the Swedish screwball comedy, Keeping Right. And through the generosity of these audiences to a GoFundMe, our actors got paid, which we think made them perhaps the best paid stage performers at that moment. Of course, that status derived from being were just about the ONLY stage performers due to the COVID restrictions, but a credit is a credit, right?

    Here’s a thirty second promo for those Zoom showings featuring my friends and fine actors John Blaylock and Lynne Otis.

    And then in 2021, we got to actually make theater live again through the gracious coproduction of our third play, Genealogy, at Broom Street Theater in Madison WI. Because that’s what’s important about theater: it’s live. You have to remember the lines right then. The lights have to go up at the right time and the sound effects have to go off at the right time. And the audience is right there. Happily for us at KWT, this ‘making’ continued through our productions of The Oracle (2022), The Jester’s Wife (2023), HONOR (2024), and now Retrospective, which debuted at the Broadway bound theater festival at the AMT Theatre on West 45th St. in Manhattan August 2025

    Other arts amaze, but theater is the one where you are least likely to know what’s going to happen. Oh, yes, there is a script, a text that the playwrights created and the director has formed a production on that foundation. But every night the connection between the actors and the audience can differ. They have to make theater live every time. No phoning it in, no running it back. Every night is new.

    The Irish critic Fintan O’Toole put it very well during COVID:

    “Live performers …make their own decisions, here and now, in this moment. In a filmed performance, the performer loses that power. It belongs to others – the director, the editor. But this also applies to us as members of the audience. At a live event, we choose where we look and how we listen. In a virtual event, other people are – sometimes heavy-handedly, sometimes subtly – making those choices for us. This is what we miss about live performance: the autonomy and integrity of the performer, our freedom to shape our own responses, the sense of our shared presence in space and time.”

    Shared presence and shared passion: that’s what Sarah and Noah note in their statements above about the importance of making theater live in their own lives. We hope to share that experience with as many theater goers as possible during Retrospective’s run May 14-23 in London. Please join us. Tix at this link.

    Some somebodies are about to #maketheaterlive at Barons Court Theatre

  • Coalition of The Thrilling: Australia, UK, USA Theatre Artists Combine for London Premiere of RETROSPECTIVE

    RETROSPECTIVE: The question puzzling famous painter, Rory McGrory, in this new comedy is ‘Asleep or Afterlife? Rory, who may or may not be dreaming, encounters his first wife and two other frenemies from his past amidst a show of his work. This mischievous menage claim they just want to help him get to next while he just wants to wake up. Which will it be?

    Make theatre live means making opportunities for creation, contemplation, and yes, comedy. Doing this work across national boundaries proves that there is a constituency that wants to bring people together for enlightenment and entertainment, to as playwright Marsha Norman once wrote, “provide a keyhole into some world that nobody has ever seen.” We want to produce what critic Hilton Als called “…a refraction of reality, containing feelings and thoughts that are put forth, first, in a primary text, which the actor interprets—an interpretation that the director supports or edits, in an attempt to help build, in a made-up world, an atmosphere of verisimilitude.” 
    And while we do that we think people should laugh because we heed the aphorism attributed to George Bernard Shaw that “If you want to tell people the truth, you’d better make them laugh …

    That’s why Retrospective at the Barons Court Theatre marks the UK premiere of the play that had its world premiere at the 2025 Broadway Bound Theatre Festival in New York. How did this happen? It’s an international collaboration:

    • Mon Sans Productions is run by its artistic director Liviu Monsted. Since Mon Sans is dedicated to producing original works with compelling themes and unique narratives, they decided to celebrate their 2026 London residency with an American play that asks the universal question of what happens…next? Mon Sans, an incubator for creatives looking to make their first or returning steps to theatre, will be bringing the work of playwright, T.J. Elliott, to UK audiences for the first time.
    • Knowledge Workings Theatre Company is a family-run, Off-Broadway, independent production company dedicated to creating provocative, thoughtful new works that question how we learn, grow, and remember. With a commitment to intimate storytelling and collaborative development, the company champions work that challenges assumptions and ignites conversation. But the person who brouight together Liviu and T.J. with their respective conmanies for this venture is…
    • Leo Bacica of Barons Court Theatre true to the spirit that brought his group the COMMENDATION FOR SERVICES TO NEW WRITING 2024 connected director and playwright. Zoom calls that run respectively at 8AM, 1PM, and Midnight allowed the trio to find common cause resulting in this project and continuing Barons Court Theatre’s focus on supporting artists who have come to the industry in non-traditional ways and who have limited networks in the UK.
    • Get your tickets now at this link for one of eight performances only
      starting May 14th

  • London Calling: RETROSPECTIVE Opens in the UK May 14th at Barons Court Theatre

    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 — encounter​ing his first wife and other haunting figures from his past amidst ​what they claim is a retrospective of his work.  This mischievous ménage ​s​wear they just want to help him ​’get to next​’ ​b​ut he just wants to wake up.   Further information and tickets available at the Barons Court website

  • Other places we lurk

    Why not post?

    A few other links:

    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.”

  • Can You Spot RETROSPECTIVE’s Director?

    by T.J. Elliott, Playwright

    If you do spot him, that’s one more reason to buy a ticket to our last two BBTF performances at this link

    2 Chances Left to SEE RETROSPECTIVE: CLICK HERE NOW

  • Z in RETROSPECTIVE Is Jasmine Dorothy Haefner; So Special, No One Else Would Do

    Jasmine Dorothy Haefner Brings So Much To All She Does
    click here to see JDH as Z in retrospective

    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)

    come on, click here now: see jasmine as z

  • Make Somebody See Something The Way You See It: Characters & Targets

    This is a truth for me, but only ONE truth. HT https://substack.com/@juliavendrell for the image

    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

  • Adara Totino astonishes as PIPPA in RETROSPECTIVE — 08/13,15, 16

    Adara Totino is PIPPA in RETROSPECTIVE
    Photo Credits — Bill Wadman

    “Fine acting always hits an audience with the force and oneness of the well made bomb — one is only aware of the blast or series of blasts at the time–afterwards you can study the devastation or think about how a bomb is made.“
    Alan Rickman

    Adara Totino detonates delightfully as PIPPA in the new play RETROSPECTIVE in the leading comedy performance of the summer. (Don’t miss the glorious burst of energy that is her performance; buy your tix now for 08/13-08/16 for BBTF at AMT Theatre 354 West 54th St. )

    Adara (PIPPA) and Jasmine Dorothy Haefner (Z) take in the action in the afterlife

    Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Adara attended the Actor’s Studio MFA Program, studying under luminaries such as Elizabeth Kemp, Susan Aston and Louis Colaianni. You may have been fortunate enough to see Adara in Edward Allan Baker’s DOLORES (ASDS Repertory) or Cyn Cooper’s I WAS A STRANGER TOO produced by Remember the Women Institute. To see Adara on stage is to cherish and never forget her ability to create a character so real and engaging that her story draws you willingly, bewitchingly into another world.

    Air hugs for everyone: Jeremiah Alexander (CLINT), Adara (PIPPA) and Jasmine (Z) are into it

    “The theatre is the place where extraordinary things happen, where you see people behaving, not as they do on the street, but as they might do in your dreams. Or your nightmares.”
    Simon Callow

    Who is Pippa the character that Adara embodies in RETROSPECTIVE?

    • Dead poet, deep-rooted rapturous rhymer
    • Tour guide to the afterlife
    • Feltering (look it up) ex-wife of Rory McGrory, acclaimed painter
    • Putative, but disputed, muse of Rory, now warily encountering her
    • Unclogger of earthly attachments and schmutz

    Rory thinks (and hopes) he’s dreaming; Pippa says he’s dead. To find out who’s right and see Adara Totino in her captivating turn on the Off-Broadway stage come see RETROSPECTIVE

    TIX FOR RETROSPECTIVE August 13-16 ONly
    TIX FOR RETROSPECTIVE AUGUST 13-16 ONLY
    Clockwise from bottom left” Jasmine Dorothy Haefner, Jeremiah Alexander, Mark Thomas McKenna, Adara Totino, our fab cast for RETROSPECTIVE at Broadway Bound Theatre Festival

  • August 13th Is Opening Night of Retrospective: Do You Have Your Tickets?

    Clockwise From Top Left: Adara Totino, Jeremiah Alexander, Jasmine Dorothy Haefner,
    Mark Thomas McKenna

    In mid-July, our cast gathered for their “etudes,” a time for the actors to dig into their characters. Edward Albee, one of the greatest English language playwrights once said that “Every good actor does two things: He does exactly what the author intended and he does it his own way.”  Etudes are a way of actors figuring out what that way is. The actors with our director, Gifford Elliott, are shaping now during our last week of rehearsals what the world of this play will be with the text as a foundation. Here’s a look at their adventures:

    The words of the play describe how famous painter, Rory McGrory, finding himself in a gallery with empty canvases puzzles over whether he is asleep or… in the afterlife? There, Rory encounters his first wife and two other frenemies from his past. This mischievous menage a trois  claims they just want to help him get to next while he just wants to wake up. These fine actors create a world out of these words with work that start this week, which we will be documenting here.

    Come enter that world August 13th (8PM), August 13th (5PM), August 13th (2PM). Tickets for our performances at AMT theater 354 West 45th Street in Manhattan as part of the Broadway Bound Theatre Festival are available at this link.

    RETROSPECTIVE is our tenth production since slip-sliding back into theatre again in 2018, and with Gifford Elliott directing this marvelous cast we think it’s going to be our best yet.  So, get your tickets today by clicking this link

    Adara Totino
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