RECORD STORM SPREADS RUIN!
5M, 3F, 1M/F
85 minutes
A corrupt administration. A leader clinging desperately to his power. A devastating flood.In 1938, Los Angeles Mayor Frank Shaw, on the verge of being ousted from power, broadcasts over the radio airwaves to a drowning city. His citizens, some living and some dead, converge on City Hall to offer him one last chance at salvation from his past deeds, before he is overtaken by a record storm.
Commissioned by the Los Angeles History Project, 2008 Workshop Premiere at the Autry Museum.
CLICK HERE FOR SCRIPT SAMPLE
 BARE
3 M, 3 W
90 minutes.
Pope John Paul II and Terri Schiavo, both on feeding tubes, meet in the moments
between life and death. A hungry grizzly Bear appears to bless them with the St. Francis Prayer.
CLICK HERE FOR SCRIPT SAMPLE
STRUT
3M, 2W
70 minutes
A play with Music.
To the smooth grooves of a jazz quartet, Dave and Essie get Gershwined.
It's 1947, it's Newark, it's a hot Saturday night. The kind of night that
lasts a
lifetime.
Feet float. Bodies fly.
Twenty years.
Memory loses shine.
Twenty more.
Heads now encased in surgical halos, unable to walk, Dave and Essie can
still swing.
The dance never stops.
The dance never stops.
The dance never stops.
"Strut" was a finalist for The Jerome Playwriting Fellowship.
CLICK HERE FOR SCRIPT SAMPLE
 LABO(U)R
12 M/W
90 minutes
Developed with Son of Semele Ensemble
Appearing as Chaplin-esque vagabonds, labor class workers dance, pratfall,
tumble and roll through more than a century of evolving consciousness in a
sometimes absurd attempt to make a mark ... or perhaps just a smile.
CLICK HERE FOR SCRIPT SAMPLE
THE FANTASTIC FELINE TRILOGY:
King Cat Calico Finally Flies Free!
6M/2F, an ensemble of 3-10M/F
80 minutes
Heidi Hendrickson has an obsession, a compulsion really - she has 150 cats in her eleven hundred square foot apartment, including sixty dead ones in the Frigidaire. She has an especially intimate relationship with the alpha cat, one King Cat Calico who keeps trying to escape this hellish tuna filled, feces stained prison, to no avail. A fun filled exploration of loneliness, possession and the need to claim one's place in this uncertain world. Featuring a cameo by Rush Limbaugh, singing(literally) the praises of Oxy-Contin, or what he lovingly refers to as his "little blues."
Recommended by THE LA TIMES and LA WEEKLY
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SCRIPT
A Terrific Tale of Ancient Terror!
2F, 1M
80 minutes
A Stand Alone Prequel to King Cat. Heidi K. Hendrickson is raised in a giant burning crib until she is 18 years old by her father Ptah, the Ancient Egyptian God of Creation and her mother, the Egyptian Lion Goddess Sekhmet.
CLICK HERE FOR SCRIPT SAMPLE
Everybody Comes to Griff's
2M, 1F
90 minutes
After being attacked by cats on a lonely street, Heidi enter a body modification shop where she is transformed into a feline. Griff, the body mod artist transforms into a vulture. Together, they make a baby Griffon.
CLICK HERE FOR SCRIPT SAMPLE
 CURRENT
4 M, 3 W
90 minutes
Inspired by a true story. Stan, the one eyed man, is struck by lightning more than eight times over the course of forty years. Stan also doubles as the cyclops, the ancient figure who fashioned lightning bolts for Zeus .
CLICK HERE FOR FULL SCRIPT
MCGOOGLE
7M, 6W - some doubling is possible.
A vaudevillian romp through the Oklahoma City Bombing, Parkinson's Disease, gulf war syndrome and our current War in Iraq. Features David Koresh, Timothy McVeigh and Mohammed Ali as they await their respective destinies.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL SCRIPT
Panophobia
 Sliding Into Hades (Winner of the 2008 LA WEEKLY AWARD in Playwriting)
Womb
KING CAT CALICO FINALLY FLIES FREE!
LA Weekly
by Steven Leigh Morris:
"GO"
KING CAT CALICO FINALLY FLIES FREE! Edgar Landa’s animated staging of Aaron Henne’s new play is a remarkable exercise in serious goofiness, a comedy about loneliness, abuse and addiction. This surreal romp crawls inside the head of an animal hoarder who’s arrested for criminal neglect of the 150 felines residing in her tiny abode (15 were found in her freezer) and we watch the critters, played by the graceful ensemble, shuffle through the big yellow door, while our heroine, Heidi K. Hendrickson (Laura Carson), struggles to push it shut. The plot consists of both Heidi’s trial, some flashbacks and depictions of her fragile mental state and chronic addiction. (An appearance by a pill-popping Rush Limbaugh [Charls Sedgwick Hall] strains the metaphor a bit.) During the raid on Heidi’s house, King Cat Calico (Mark McClain Wilson) breaks free, so the play also examines what "freedom" really means. We see hints of Heidi’s molestation by her father (Don Boughton), who, in a repeated tableau from the confines of a screened yellow box, guiltily offers Heidi a kitten before driving away to kill himself. Despite the cartoon take on a harrowing theme — the judge (Elizabeth Clemmons) and court-appointed psychiatrist (Michael Kass) contort in sexual paroxysms while trying to do their jobs — Henne’s depiction of Heidi’s obsessive-compulsive disorder is right in line with the empirical research in the field, though it’s unlikely Heidi would have been jailed after a first offense, especially when the charge is animal neglect, not cruelty. However, this production never ceases to engage the imagination, thanks in part to Reagan’s whimsical costumes, while set designers Maureen Weiss and Josh Worth have carved emblematic cubicles and cages around the newspaper-lined stage floor. (Steven Leigh Morris)
 LA Times
by David C. Nichols
"RECOMMENDED"
"How many cats do you know who have the power to deny their instinctive urges?" asks the title character of "King Cat Calico Finally Flies Free!" Not many, and Aaron Henne's absurdist dramedy at Son of Semele isn't too optimistic about human urges, either. When this alliterative account of a reclusive cat collector and the alpha male of her dreams goes for psychosexual mayhem, purring anarchy reigns.
Meet sweetly eccentric Heidi K. Hendrickson (the excellent Laura Carson). Heidi faces trial over the 150 cats (60 in the refrigerator) trapped in her 1,100-square-foot apartment (smartly evoked by Maureen Weiss' yellow-hued set of detritus-stuffed compartments and a newspaper floor).
The real defendant is Heidi's sanity, which is where King Cat Calico (the formidable Mark McClain Wilson) comes in. A crowned renegade, King's attempts to escape from Heidi's obsessive-compulsive clutches have left him at tether's end. Overseen by a porn-reading judge (Elizabeth Clemmons) and a lascivious German shrink (Michael Kass), metaphors of survival and denial merge into an abstract portrait of thwarted identity, with Heidi's dead Papa (Don Boughton) holding at least one key to her needy neuroses.
Under Edgar Landa's agile direction, the designs are sharp, with Cricket Myers' soundtrack outstanding. The feral, funny cast ingests the contrasts in tone like tuna. All the actors-as-kitties in designer Reagan's costumes are delightful, arching and spitting with perverse glee.
Such aplomb scores past some scratchy patches. Although Charles Sedgwick Hall embodies Rush Limbaugh's id with hilarity, the reference feels arbitrary, and Henne could expand the tabloid reporter (Ray Paolantonio). Nonetheless, the ripe imagination on tap should be catnip for the adventurous. Dog lovers may need tranquilizers.
 |
“Sliding Into Hades”
By Aaron Henne
Developed by the KOAN ENSEMBLE
Conceived By Ron Sossi
Odyssey Theatre Ensemble
2007
|
SLIDING INTO HADES
LA WEEKLY
GO!
Playwright Aaron Henne’s play is an evocative riff on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, cunningly fashioned by director Ron Sossi into a surreal, tour de force fantasia of ghosts, dreams and metaphors. The tale is told by Orpheus (Alan Abelow), who, as an old man, recalls losing the chance to save the life of his beloved Eurydice (Diana Cignoni). In flashback, we see how Eurydice dies on her wedding day — and how her descent into Hades is marked by a terrifying series of visions during which she gradually sheds every aspect of herself, from her identity to her memories. As a young Orpheus (Eric Losoya) storms Hell to get his love back, he endures a variety of infernal confrontations. In his intellectually acrobatic and ferociously imaginative production, Sossi envisions a Boschian vision of Hades where the dead push shopping carts like zombies and Orpheus is forced to ford places like "the Swamp of Shame" or "the Desert of Despair." Although some of the play’s conceits occasionally stumble into the Pond of Pretentiousness, the production is still a provocative meditation on the depths of grief and of death’s ultimate dissolution of identity. Vivid performances are offered by Abelow, Losoya and Cignoni — but special mention must also be made of Beth Hogan’s sibylline turn as the genial yet sinister god Pluto.
LACITY BEAT
Theater Critic's Choice: ‘Sliding Into Hades'
The Odyssey Theatre's resident Koan Ensemble transforms the ancient Greek myth about Orpheus's unsuccessful attempt to retrieve his wife Eurydice from the underworld into a stirring meditation on the aching inevitability and finality of death. As told by writer Aaron Henne, much of the tale is in flashback, from the perspective of Orpheus (Alan Abelew) as he faces his own last moments of life. The younger Orpheus and Eurydice are vigorously contemporary – and distributed among several actors, further emphasizing the universality of the experience. Director Ron Sossi and a crackerjack design team conjure a series of gripping images and sounds.
BACKSTAGE WEST
"...an imaginative and aesthetically lovely piece awash with indelible
imagery and cerebral depth."
HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
"... swift and full of energy and endearing charm..."
LA TIMES
"...gorgeous and moving..."
|
