From the Dumpster #3: The Glory Holes of Laurel and Hardy

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The Casket Opens October 10th.

Rubber Repertory Theatre proudly presents...

THE CASKET OF PASSING FANCY

Created by Josh Meyer, Matt Hislope, Rebecca Beegle, and the ensemble.
Directed by Josh Meyer and Matt Hislope.
Lighting design by Jason Amato.

Costume design by Laura Cannon.

Set design by Ann Marie Gordon.

When: Oct. 10th-Nov. 1st, 2008. Thursdays-Sundays at 8pm.
Where: The BLUE Theater, 916 Springdale Rd. Austin, TX 78702

Tickets: Order online here, or call 1-800-838-3006.
YOU PICK YOUR PRICE: $15-$25.

Only 30 seats per night! Advance purchase recommended.

At last! The Duchess is ready to make her offers, and a lifetime of regret is on the line. In this dizzyingly intricate new production, Rubber Repertory sets out to do nothing less than fulfill every audience member's deepest desire. The rules of the game are simple. Those who dare to sit in the Duchess's parlour will be given the chance to claim one of 500 strange experiences. Pick one, pick wisely, come early, play often: Once an offer has been accepted, it will be eliminated from the show forever.

Over a year in the making, The Casket of Passing Fancy combines elements of Victorian parlour games, performance art, and live auctions to create a show that will be different for everyone who attends. You may find yourself exploring an unconscionable taboo or reveling in the beauty of the mundane. Your experience may last 5 minutes or 50 years. Your choice may bring pain or pleasure, sickness or health, sweetness or sour. All that's certain is that some will win and some will lose, but no one will emerge unchanged.

Featuring Carlos Treviño, Kris Olson, Thomas Graves, Joe Hartman, Silky Shoemaker, Matt Hislope, Paul Soileau, Rebecca Beegle, Michelle Flanagan, Taylor Flanagan, Heather Barfield Cole, and Jennifer Underwood as "The Duchess."

This show is made possible through generous support from the Rockefeller Foundation MAP Fund.

Extra! Extra!

We're lucky enough to be mentioned in a new interview with Wallace Shawn that appears in American Theatre magazine. If you're able to shell out $5.95 for the print edition, there are also some full-color photos from our production of A Thought in Three Parts and a splendid essay by Mr. Shawn about why he's drawn to write about sex.

From the Dumpster #2: Nicholson Baker's VOX

FROM THE DUMPSTER is a recurring series that will let you in on ideas we've had that never made it to the stage. While it's possible that a few of these will be salvaged at some point, most of them--quite simply--STINK. Feel free to heckle, steal anything you like, or offer a word or two of encouragement.

Nicholson Baker's novel VOX is the transcript of a single phone conversation between two strangers who meet on an adult chat line. The man and the woman swap stories, fantasize outlandishly, and explore all kinds of thoughts and feelings about sex. It may sound a little mundane, but the author has a way of perceiving life's tiniest details in odd and inventive ways. Some people find it unbearable; Stephen King compared the book to a "meaningless little fingernail paring." I like to think of Baker's writing as the type of thing Jerry Seinfeld might come up with if he was twice as smart, completely OCD, and didn't care about being funny.

Here's an excerpt: "I mean, just look at the drop in arousingness between Playboy magazine and the exact same women when they're moving from pose to pose on the Playboy channel. It's true that I don't actually get the Playboy channel, so I see everything on it through those houndstooth and herringbone cycles of the scrambling circuit, and I keep flipping back and forth between it and the two channels on either side of it because sometimes for an instant the picture is startled into visibility just after you switch the channel, and you'll catch this bright yellow torso and one full fran with a fire-engine-red nipple, and then it teeters, it falters, and collapses--and I've noticed that the scrambling works least well and you can see things when nothing is moving in the TV image, i.e., when it's a TV image of a magazine image, sort of as if the scrambling cicuitry is overcome in the same way I am sometimes overcome by the power of fixed pictures. I once stayed up until two-thirty in the morning doing this, flipping."

While I don't think VOX is Nicholson Baker's best work (probably Fermata or U and I), it's by far the easiest to adapt for the stage. Around 2004, we played around with the idea of staging it in two different houses in the same neighborhood. Half the audience would go to the man's house, and half to the woman's. At intermission, either the actors or the audience would swap houses. Like the characters they're watching, the audience begins the show blind to the other character's identity. I imagine they'd listen to the voice (on speakerphone) and make all kinds of assumptions that would come crashing down once the "switch" occurs. There's still a chance we'll do this someday, but it would require the right actors, the right houses, and some fairly pristine audio technology all falling into our reach at once.

we're entitled

What was once called The Filter will heretoafter be referred to as The Casket of Passing Fancy. The wonderful actress Jennifer Underwood has been cast in the role of THE DUCHESS. 4+ months of rehearsals are set to begin in June.