directed by Alex Levy

featuring Lauren Dunagan, Josephine Keefe, Nina Law, Catherine Leong, Colin Fairchild, and Matthew Wrather

An incessantly ringing cell phone in a quiet caf. A stranger at the next table who has had enough. And a dead man — with a lot of loose ends. So begins Dead Man’s Cell Phone, a wildly imaginative new comedy by playwright Sarah Ruhl, recipient of a MacArthur ”Genius” Grant and Pulitzer Prize finalist for her play The Clean House. A work about how we memorialize the dead — and how that remembering changes us—it is the odyssey of a woman forced to confront her own assumptions about morality, redemption, and the need to connect in a technologically obsessed world.

Thursday, May 6 at 7:30pm
Friday, May 7 at 4:30pm
Saturday, May 8 at 7:30pm

1330 MacGowan Hall,
UCLA School of Theater Film and Television
(Enter on Hilgard near Sunset; park in Structure 3.)

Tickets are free; open seating; first come, first served.

IT MATTERS WHERE YOU’RE BURIED
by Beth Campbell

Directed by George Ferencz
Featuring Sheila Dabney as Brick Top
Lee Beebout as Jim Comstock
and Matthew Wrather as Itchy

Brick Top, cabaret chanteuse and saloon keeper to the stars of the Lost Generation in Paris, gives an interview to Jim Comstock, editor of the West Virginia Hillbilly newspaper, in her bar in Heaven.

Where ever I am, that’s Brick Top’s. As a gin joint it ain’t bad.
—Brick Top

February 14, 2009 at 7:30pm
La MaMa Annex, 74A East 4th Street, NYC [map]
Free Admission /No Reservations

The cast is led by Glenn Seven Allen as Batteaux, who sings, dances, and acts with grand finesse.… Standouts include…Matthew Wrather, who, in addition to dancing, is a featured pianist in a couple of numbers.

Only two more chances to see me in the show–check out the main post for details.

Our play, Fall Out is a 10 minute comic bromance about the apocalypse. I’ve been rehearsing with the director and other actor, and it will be a good time. I especially like the format of the evening: It runs from 11pm–3am (we’re second on the bill, so if you’re just coming for me, you’ll be out around midnight), there’s a band and full bar, and tickets are only $5. I hope to see you there!

Fall Out

written by Larry Pontius
directed by Nelson T. Eusebio III
with Jason Robinson and Matthew Wrather

Friday and Saturday, August 15 and 16
The show runs 11pm–3am. We’re second on the bill.

Wings Theater (154 Christopher Street) [map]
Between Greenwich and Washington in the West Village

$5 admission

If you’re in the area, I hope you can check it out. Tickets are cheap ($15!), and the schedule is a little weird. I’ve heard that the prime-time shows sell quickly, so reserve online now!

Gorilla Repertory presents
the New York Int’l Fringe Fest. production of

KNB

The Romatical, Comical, Nautical Musical

written and directed by Christopher Carter Sanderson
musical director: Allison Tartalia / choreographer: Erin Porvaznika

All’s Fair in Love and the Global War on Terror? A sailor wonders what is making his life truly miserable as his Navy Reserve Boat Unit sings and dances its way toward impending deployment.

The Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts, Pace Univ. [map]

Sunday 8/10, 6:45pm
Thursday 8/14, 3:00pm
Sunday 8/17, 1:45pm
Thursday 8/21, 7:30pm
Saturday 8/23, 9:45 (pm, i hope)

tickets ($15! Cheap!) are available on the Fringe Website

I spent the weekend before last in Fall River, MA, home of several Korean War vintage U.S. Navy ships, including the destroyer USS Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. I was there to shoot a flashback/dream sequence for The Raft, an independent short film directed by Robert Jones.

The movie stars Ed Asner (!) as a grandfather who tells his grandson about a particular incident in WWII. The grandson then imagines the incident as his grandfather has told it, but with himself in his grandfather’s role as Captain. New Haven friends and NHTC regulars Peter Chenot and Christian Shaboo were in the scene with me, and we had more bonding experiences than we’d ever imagined—or wanted—as we stayed awake for two 6pm–6am working “days”, explored Newport, RI (I’d never been) during the downtime, and drove home to New Haven at 5am on a Tuesday.

Here are a few more pictures (click for larger versions):

That’s right—you can see me in the Cornerstone Productions Holiday show, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, a song-and-dance spectacular which, for me, represents several firsts:

• First time impersonating Elvis in front of a paying audience
• First time lifting a scantily-clad vamp over my head mid-dance
• NOT the first time dancing onstage with girls in their underwear (that would have been 1998, in Santa Monica Playhouse’s production of Backstreet, a musical based on Sholom Asch’s God of Vengeance, for which I also co-wrote book, music, and lyrics)

Interested in seeing the musical spectacular that’s blazing like a meteor across the Connecticut shoreline? Contact me for info…

We’re appearing this month with the Keith and Mazer Trio, fronted by the phenomenally talented Megan Keith.

The show starts at 8pm and should go until about 10:30 or 11, but don’t feel like you have to show up (or stay!) for the whole thing. NHTC started doing these monthly comedy shows because we wanted to create an alternative theater experience, one where you don’t have to decide to buy a subscription months in advance to pay an extortionist’s price for the privilege of sitting in an uncomfortable seat and not moving for three hours. Come, go, eat, drink, flirt, leave, return, stay, laugh, heckle… it’s all good. See you there.

Working with New Haven Theater Company, I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in this project since November, 2006—the New Haven Advocate called our Black Friday storefront theater the “most widely seen 365 event” in New Haven—and it will be a blast to wrap the project up by performing the Third Constant, Inaction in Action, and the final play of the year on the Long Wharf mainstage.