A Creepy Imaginary Friend Named MR. MARMALADE Lurks at ISU FreeStage

If you are a theater fan and you haven't heard of Noah Haidle, well, you really ought to get out more.
Haidle has been described as "precocious and formidably talented" as well as "the king of quirk" and (my personal favorite), "the overachieving young playwright formerly known for hyperintellectual insouciance."

His work has been seen around the world, from South Coast Rep in California to New York City to England and Germany, with a triumph called Smokefall that was so well-received that it closed and then came back a year later in a larger space at the Goodman in Chicago. Here is Haidle's official bio from the Goodman:

Mr. Haidle's plays have premiered at the Goodman (Vigils), Lincoln Center Theater, Roundabout Theatre Company, the Huntington Theatre Company, Long Wharf Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, South Coast Repertory, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Summer Play Festival in New York City, HERE Arts Center, as well as many others around the United States and abroad. He is a graduate of Princeton University and The Juilliard School, where he was a Lila Acheson Wallace playwright-in-residence. He is the recipient of three Lincoln Center Lecompte Du Nouy awards, the 2005 Helen Merrill Award for emerging playwrights, the 2007 Claire Tow Award and an NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Grant. He is published by Methuen in London, Suhrkamp in Berlin, and through Dramatists Play Service in New York City. His original screenplay Stand Up Guys, starring Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin, produced by Lionsgate and Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, opened in February 2013. Smokefall opened at South Coast Repertory in April 2013. He is currently working on commissions from Lincoln Center Theater, Yale Repertory Theatre, South Coast Repertory, and is set to direct his screenplay The Rodeo Clown, produced by Olive Productions and Mosaic. Mr. Haidle is a proud resident of Detroit.

The Goodman production of Smokefall is headed to New York in 2016, but Haidle's work has already been seen on New York stages. Mr. Marmalade, his play about a precocious 4-year-old with a wildly inappropriate imaginary friend, played off-Broadway at the Laura Pels Theatre in 2005 with Mamie Gummer (Meryl Streep's daughter) as the child and Dexter's Michael C. Hall as the title character.

Mr. Marmalade and its twisted humor (built on a kid who imagines a companion with addictions to both cocaine and pornography) are perfect for Illinois State University's FreeStage program, which allows students to put on shows that color outside the lines. Coloring outside the lines is also perfect for this particular production of Mr. Marmalade, since director Kelsey Kott is inviting audience members to take crayons to her black-and-white show poster (seen below, colored in) and to bring play furniture and crayons to the show.

Doesn't that look like fun? You can add your own color to Mr. Marmalade this weekend, with performances at 7:30 Friday and Saturday and 4 pm Sunday in Centennial West 202. Admission is free, but seating is extremely limited (no more than 60 people per show) so you are encouraged to email Kelsey Kott at kmkott@ilstu.edu to reserve a seat.

For this ISU FreeStage production, Carolyn Asplund plays Lucy, the little girl with the vivid imagination, John D. Poling steps in as the dark and dangerous Mr. Marmalade, and Vince Lange plays Mr. M's unfortunate personal assistant.

FreeStage Fringe 2014 Ventures Into Face Off, Five Women, Shakespeare and Tuck

Illinois State University's Freestage Fringe Festival, the event created by the FreeStage student organization to promote "artistic growth and development for Illinois State University students through theatrical performances," offers a slate of student-produced, directed, designed, acted and sometimes written pieces to Centennial West this week

I'm afraid I missed the kick-off event in the Airport Lounge at Centennial last night, but there's still time to get to Shakespeare's Suicide Hotline, "a dark comedy written and directed by Larissa Strong," at 6 pm in Centennial West 202 and Alan Ball's Five Women Wearing the Same Dress at 7 pm in the same space. You may know Ball from his later successes American Beauty, True Blood and Six Feet Under. He's a Georgia boy, which lends a Southern Gothic flavor to Five Women, a comedy about bridesmaids directed for FreeStage by Arif Yampolsky, and starring Julia Besch,

Wednesday brings Face Off: Illinois State University Edition, which appears to be a local version of the Syfy competition show where special effects makeup artists vie to see who can create the best monsters, aliens, fairies, walking wounded, zombies and other exotic beings. For ISU, China Hawkins, Allison Kmichik, Josh Pennington and Sam Peroutka will be pulling out all the tools in their makeup kits at 7:30 pm on February 5 in CW 202.

Also on Wednesday, a group interp version of Tuck Everlasting will begin at 9:15.

Dance Inventions is the lone Thursday offering in a location to be named later, while all four shows -- Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, Shakespeare's Suicide Hotline, Tuck Everlasting and Dance Inventions -- come back on Friday. Five Women is up first at 5:30 pm, followed by Dance at 7, Tuck at 9:30 and Suicide at 10:30. They'll do it again Saturday, with the Face Off finals at 3:30 pm, then Shakespeare at 5:30, Tuck at 6:30 and Five Women closing out the Fringe Festival with a 7:30 performance.

To see the whole lineup, click here for the FreeStage Fringe Festival 2014 schedule posted on Facebook. You can also check out the main FreeStage page for more information on what it is and what it aims for.

ISU FreeStage Fringe Festival Happening Right Now

Yes, I'm late out of the gate with this one, but I only got the flyer today. And besides, there's plenty of FreeStage Fringe action still happening, with performances tonight through Saturday, November 10, 2012.

So what's up? Tonight your options are The Improvised Musical at 6 pm at Centennial West 301 and/or Where the Sidewalk Ends at 8 pm in Centennial East 115.

Tomorrow night, it's Still Ruminating, a Devised Piece at 8 pm in CW 301 and Axe Lizzy at 10 pm in the Westhoff lobby.

And on Friday the 9th, The Improvised Musical returns at 5:30 pm in CW 301, along with a pair called Sure Thing and The Mystery at Twickham Vicarage at 7 pm in CE 115, Under the Influence (poster seen above) at 8:30 pm in the CPA lobby, and Axe Lizzy making a reappearance at 10 in the Westhoff lobby.

Saturday gives the whole lineup another shot, starting with Where the Sidewalk Ends (poster at left) beginning at 2 pm (CE 115), The Improvised Musical improvising at 4 pm (CW 301), Still Ruminating ruminating at 6 pm (CW 301), Under the Influence influencing at 7:30 pm (CPA lobby), Sure Thing/Twickham revealing whodunnit at 9:30 pm (CE 115) and Axe Lizzy wielding that ax at 11 pm (Westhoff lobby).

And if you're thinking you can't afford tickets to six different shows, guess what? They're all free.

If nothing else, these plays give you the chance to see theatre happen in some cool, non-traditional spaces. Who doesn't want to see ax mayhem running around the lobby outside Westhoff Theatre or a moving piece about substance abuse put on right outside a performance of Noises Off?

That's not something you see every day.

The FreeStage projects provide an opportunity for ISU students to produce, direct, act and design in spaces on and off campus, with a special interest in experimental and original works, including works by women and minorities. FreeStage festivals are held at the end of each semester, with the same kind of flurry of activity and variety of theatrical choices you'll see this week.

The Whole Scoop on Saturday's ISU College of Fine Arts Celebration

We've talked about some of the bits and pieces of the Big, Huge, Totally LARGE Illinois State University College of Fine Arts Celebration happening tomorrow, like the workshops and performances from the School of Theatre, a host of FreeStage productions, and the PostCard Art exhibit and auction. That's from noon to after midnight on Saturday, April 28, in and around Centennial East and West and the CPA.

So where can you find the whole schedule in one place?

Yeah, I know it's too small here to really read. You can click on that image and see a larger version. Or you can see a bigger version of this nice, crisp, graphically lovely schedule on the School of Theatre's Facebook page. Or scan the not-so-nice, kinda-ugly list version I have prepared for you below.

12 noon to 7 pm: Airport Lounge open for food and beverage (Airport Lounge)
12 noon to 4 pm: 2012 Student Annual Exhibition (University Galleries)
12:30 to 1 pm: Acafellaz performance (outside Westhoff Theatre)
1 to 2 pm: Creative Drama workshop (Centennial West 301)
1 to 2 pm: "Macbeth" presented by Illinois Shakespeare Festival Outreach (Westhoff Theatre)
1 to 4 pm: Open Mic hosted by the Music Business Organization (Airport Lounge)
1 to 4 pm: Screenprinting demo (Westhoff lobby)
2 to 3 pm: FreeStage Outreach presents "The Student Cause Collaboration Project" (Westhoff Theatre)
2:30 to 5 pm: Illinois State Dance Theatre open technical rehearsal (CPA Theatre)
3 to 3:30 pm: Lighting Design demo with JM Montecalvo (Westhoff Theatre)
3:30 to 4:15 pm: Early Music Ensemble performance (Westhoff Theatre)
4 to 5:15 pm: FreeStage presents "An Evening with Tori Allen" (Centennial West 202)
4:30 to 6 pm: Improv workshop with Octavarius (Westhoff Theatre)
5 to 5:30 pm: Q and A with members of the Illinois State Dance Theatre (CPA)
5:30 to 6:45 pm: FreeStage presents "Boom" (Centennial West 202)
6 to 10 pm: Friends of the Arts presents PostCard Art [purchased ticket required] (University Galleries)
7 to 8:15 pm: FreeStage presents "Dinner" (Centennial West 202)
8:30 to 9:30 pm: FreeStage presents "Freeze Tag" (Centennial West 202)
9 to 10 pm: FreeStage presents "Miss Julie" (between Kemp Hall and CPA)
9:30 to 10:15 pm: "A in W" performance (Centennial East 08)
9:30 to 10:30 pm: Improv Mafia performance (Westhoff Theatre)
10 to 11 pm: FreeStage presents "On Stars Not Falling" (Garden area behind University Galleries)
10:30 to 11:45 pm: Octavarius performance (Westhoff Theatre)
Midnight: Theatre of Ted (Westhoff Theatre)

And there you have it -- enough entertainment for any twelve Saturdays! For more information, you can click on any of the links in this post, or go here for the School of Theatre at Illinois State Facebook page.

One More Freestage Option: "Miss Julie" Tonight at Gold Auditorium

In addition to the four plays performed in Centennial West 202 this week as part of ISU's Freestage event, there's also a lone entry in the Gold Auditorium. This one is August Strindberg's "Miss Julie," a paragon of "Naturalism," as well as a steamy and fairly repugnant little play about class, sex, power and the feminine mystique. Okay, it's really more about Strindberg thinking uppity women needed to be shoved back in their cages, but still... It's a pretty popular play even now because of the sexual content. Everybody likes a play with Victorians getting all randy and sweaty and the stuck-up society girl playing dangerous games with the help, right? She should be above him, given her social rank. He should be above her, given his gender. She shouldn't be lusting after a lowly valet. He shouldn't be letting a woman push him around. Is the world going to end if nobody pays attention to the rules?

Strindberg  wrote his "Fröken Julie" in 1888, just before the world broke wide open with new freedoms that came along with the automobile and the airplane, the phonograph and the movies, revolution, socialism and the fall of monarchies. We usually call it "Miss Julie" (with the "miss" signifying that Julie was the daughter of an aristocrat), but I really like that "Fröken." Not because it sounds like a swear word, although that's fun, too. But mostly because it sounds so old-fashioned to me, that a girl like this one, who wants to use and be used sexually, who has supposedly been brought up all wrong by a (horrors!) feminist mother, still gets to have her honorific. "Miss Julie" doesn't sound so much like the product of another time. "Fröken Julie" does.

Sean Graney, one of the founders of the Chicago theatrical company called The Hypocrites, offered a new take on "Miss Julie" in 2008, and that's the version being used for the Freestage production. At The Hypocrites, the set was like a box that the audience walked around and sat inside, and the production seemed to move backward in time, as if it started now but, by the end, was stuck firmly in 1888. We'll see what they do in the Gold Auditorium.

"Miss Julie" opens its Freestage run tonight at 9 pm at the Gold Auditorium, which is between the Center for the Performing Arts and Stevenson Hall. After that, two more performances remain, with more "Miss Julie" at 10 pm on Friday and 9 pm Saturday.

More Freestage Wednesday Night

Are you back yet from Tuesday night's Freestage shows? Time to start planning for Wednesday's?

There are five shows in this year's Freestage, a part of ISU's School of Theatre designed to offer “an opportunity for students to produce, direct, act, and design experimental and original works on and off campus.” I told you about two of them earlier today, the ones that started tonight. Those two were Tori Allen's one-woman show called "If You Like It Then You Should'a Put Some Gin in It" and Peter Sinn Nachtreib's apocalyptic "Boom."

But tomorrow... Tomorrow we move on to two new shows.

The first, scheduled for 7 pm at Centennial West 202, is "Dinner," written by Mike Capra and directed by James Martineau, which appears to be based on the short films Capra did for Youtube. Although I'm only seeing "Dinner: Meet the Karns" and "Dinner: Uncle Larry" on his channel, Capra refers to his work as a "treasure chest of underground comedy" and to "Dinner" specifically as a series where "we follow around the Karns family." That means we can expect a) comedy and b) family issues, as well as probably dinner of some sort. "Dinner" will continue at CW 202 Friday at 8:30 pm, Saturday at 7 pm, and Sunday at 1:30 pm.

And the fourth piece in the 2012 Freestage collection is Jacquelyn Reingold's "Freeze Tag," a play called "gripping and hilarious" by the New York Times. It involves a woman named Andrea, innocently trying to buy a newspaper in the East Village, who instead finds a strange newspaper vendor who knows all her secrets. Samuel French describes the play this way: "In this funny and touching play, two women are forced to confront who they are, who they were, and what it means to be a friend."

Directed by Sarah Phillips, "Freeze Tag" plays Wednesday night at 8:30 at CW 202, with performances Friday at 7 pm, Saturday at 8:30 pm and Sunday at 3 pm.

And, yes, when it comes to Freestage, all shows are free of charge.

(Note: The posters have Sunday at 3 pm in CW 202 for both “Boom” and “Freeze Tag.” Clearly it’s just one or the other. Based on the rest of the schedule, my guess is that 3 pm is really the spot for “Boom,” with "Freeze Tag" at noon, to stay before its performances partner "Dinner." But that’s just a guess.)

ISU Freestage Starts Tonight with "Gin" and "Boom"

The Freestage program at ISU, which “provides an opportunity for students to produce, direct, act, and design experimental and original works on and off campus,” begins tonight with a show called “If You Like it Then You Should’a Put Some Gin in It,” written and performed by ISU undergrad Tori Allen, and Peter Sinn Nactreib’s “Boom,” a fun look at the end of the world. No, really!

Allen’s show opens tonight with a 7 pm show at Centennial West 202, followed by performances Thursday at 8:30 pm, Saturday at 4 pm and Sunday at 4:30 pm. No word yet on what Allen is including in her original one-woman show, but she has graciously written some quotes for herself that promise this “Gin” is “astonishing,” “prolific” and “okay.”

So there you have it. If "astonishing," "prolific" and "okay" sound like your cup of gin, you'll want to catch Tori Allen's show.

“Boom” is a short play (about 90 minutes in its New York production at Ars Nova in 2008) that features a narrator who may be a museum guide talking to us from the future, and two mismatched characters, a gay marine biologist who thinks the world is ending, and a journalism student looking for a hook-up.

They may be the last people on Earth. They may not be real, but simply a sort of diorama to explain the end of the world. Or maybe it’s all just crazy talk.

“Boom” is directed by Josh Raether for Centennial 202, with performances tonight at 8:30 pm, Thursday at 7 pm, Saturday at 5:30 pm, and Sunday at 3 pm.

And as you may have guessed from the name Freestage, all performances are free.

(Note: The posters have Sunday at 3 pm in CW 202 for both “Boom” and “Freeze Tag.” Clearly it’s just one or the other. Based on the rest of the schedule, my guess is that 3 pm is really the spot for “Boom.” But that’s just a guess.)