Knowledge Workings Theater Company

Tag: #playwright

  • 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

  • London Test # 6: Rothko knew what Rory knew

    London Test # 6: Rothko knew what Rory knew

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  • London Test: Parts #1-4

    London Test: Parts #1-4

    Tracking the myriad but rewarding tasks & challenges of mounting our play, RETROSPECTIVE, in London

    “If you can provide a keyhole into some world that nobody has ever seen, that’s the play that will get you the notice you finally deserve.” 
    Marsha Norman 

    As previously noted in our other blog, Testing: A Personal History, everything can be thought of as a test; “That by which the existence, quality, or genuineness of anything is or may be determined” as the Oxford English Dictionary definition runs certainly fits our UK premiere of this existential comedy. Dr. Samuel Johnson, however, may have described more closely the reality of production when his dictionary set a test as a ‘means of trial’.

    Post # 1: Taking RETROSPECTIVE to the Pub

    Post # 2: Getting Technical

    Post #3: This IS a Dress Rehearsal

    Post #4: What happens on Opening Day?

    We’ll keep you ‘posted’ on the ‘test’ results. Tune in daily at our Substack or periodically here at KWT.

    And we’ve just been added to London Pub Theatre’s Top Picks for May!!!

  • RETROSPECTIVE by T.J. Elliott: Bringing the text to life

    The actors’ art and the director’s craft combine in the rehearsal rooms to make theatre live

    [Read London Pub Theatre magazine’s interviews here with Playwright T.J. Elliott and Director Liviu Monsted on the making of the play and more]

    The question puzzling famous painter, Rory McGrory, in Retrospective is ‘Asleep or Afterlife? Rory, who may or may not be dreaming, encounters his first wife and two other frenemies from his past amidst what they claim is a show of his work, a retrospective, but all Rory can see are blank canvases. This mischievous menage claim they just want to help him get to next while he just wants to wake up. Which will it be In this rollicking reunion — a wild dream to recount or going down for the count?

    That’s the world our company is busy creating in London at Barons Court Theatre. The photos offer a glimpse into their work but only attending live May-14th – 23 will convey the magic being mixed by Noah Huntley, Sarah Pearcy, Jasmine Dorothy Haefner, and Benjamin Parsons directed by Liviu Monsted

    Buy Your Tix Now Here

    Select the performance to attend here

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

    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

  • Our War Correspondent (Bravely) Covers Portland Hellhole

    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.

    Not really, but maybe next year?

  • The Dead Speak Up for RETROSPECTIVE

    The Dead Speak Up for RETROSPECTIVE

    BUY TIX HERE WITH DISCOUNT CODE FNFBBTF

    Click on Mr. Williams or even do The Rose Tattoo on the cake to buy your tix

    Take a plunge: click on Monroe and Miller for your tickets

    Click on Anton and buy Tix for you and your Three Sisters

    Click for TIX
  • Sixty Seconds on RETROSPECTIVE

    Sixty Seconds on RETROSPECTIVE

    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 in RETROSPECTIVE Triumphs As Clint Belinsky, Accidental Artist

    Jeremiah Alexander in RETROSPECTIVE Triumphs As Clint Belinsky, Accidental Artist

    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.

    See Jeremiah in RETROSPECTIVE: click for tix
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    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

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

    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