The Shotgun Message

by A. Rey Pamatmat

directed by Pat Diamond

Journalist Kent MacDonald is no saint and certainly no savior. At least he never meant to be until 17-year-old Jared — the primary source of his article on teenage camwhores — winds up missing after turning in his pedophile clients to the FBI. In a lurid world of online sex, naïve parents, and kids who know too much, it’s up to Kent to find Jared, bring him home, and save both their souls in the process.

with Alex Hernandez, Jennifer Lim, Teresa Avia Lim, James Lloyd Reynolds, and Tom E. Russell

Presented by Ma-Yi Theatre Company at The Beckett Theatre, 410 West 42nd Street, Saturday, February 25 @ 2:30 p.m.

For information on all the Winter LabFest readings, click here.

Shotgun is the play I was talking about when the New York Times announced that I received the PONY Fellowship. It is loosely based on the story of Justin Berry — a boy who got a webcam at the age of 13 and over the course of 4 years started out as a camwhore, then became a realtime prostitute, eventually began helping other teenagers follow the same path, and then started turning his clients in to the FBI. After marrying this story with my love of Ross MacDonald murder mysteries, The Shotgun Message was born.

It’s a definite return to a darker part of my consciousness. If you were introduced to me through Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them or Out of Joint, though, I hope you’ll still give this tale about another kind of lost, abandoned children a chance to work on your imagination. Besides, you’ll get to see several old friends play around with a new play, including Pat Diamond (who directed the world premiere of Thunder Above, Deeps Below), Jennifer Lim (who starred in DEVIANT and recently made a star turn in David Henry Hwang’s Chinglish on Broadway), and Teresa Lim (who first brought Edith to life at the 2011 Humana Festival).

See you Saturday!

The Magic Theatre’s Asian Explosion 2012 begins this Thursday and includes a reading of the full-length version of Out of Joint (which was originally presented as a one-act at Perry-Mansfield this past summer). The reading will be directed by Sean San Jose of Intersection for the Arts and will feature a full cast of 14 actors. Yeah. 14. What am I nuts?

Out of Joint

by A. Rey Pamatmat

directed by Sean San Jose

Dr. Kajish creates a time travel formula to save mankind by giving it endless second chances. But as people skip indiscriminately through time humiliating enemies, saving lives, and negotiating perfect vacations, the universe unravels in this romp through the recent future, the distant present, and a past still to come.

with Byron Abalos, Lauren Bloom, Catherine Castellanos, William Dao, Stephanie Dermott, Kat Evasco, Alex Hsu, Anna Ishida, Danielle Levin, Melissa Locsin, Stephen Muterspaugh, Brian Rivera, Liz Sklar, and Katie Tkel

At The Magic Theatre, Friday, February 10 @ 5:30 p.m. For more information please call the box office at (415) 441-8822

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If you happen to be a resident of my home coast (east, that is) and can’t catch my time travel shenanigans in San Francisco, don’t fret! Ma-Yi Theatre Company is doing a reading of The Shotgun Message two weeks later as part of the winter spate of LabFest Readings. For this one, I’ll be reunited with my long-time collaborator Pat Diamond, so it’s a bit of a family affair. We aren’t fully cast for this one yet, but I’ll let you know when we are!

The Shotgun Message

by A. Rey Pamatmat

directed by Pat Diamond

Journalist Kent MacDonald is no saint and certainly no savior. At least he never meant to be until 17-year-old Jared — the primary source of his article on teenage camwhores — winds up missing after turning in his pedophile clients to the FBI. In a lurid world of online sex, naïve parents, and kids who know too much, it’s up to Kent to find Jared, bring him home, and save both their souls in the process.

Presented by Ma-Yi Theatre Company at The Beckett Theatre, 410 West 42nd Street, Saturday, February 25 @ 2:30 p.m.

Two very different plays on two very different coasts. I’d love to see you at either or both!

To start things off right, here’s a press release from Mu Performing Arts regarding their upcoming production of Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them, the fourth and final production of the NNPN Rolling World Premier (but not the final production of Edith in 2012 — hooray!). There is a great passage about director Randy Reyes’s personal connection to the play that makes me believe we’re in good hands in Minnesota. If all goes as planned, I’ll be in Minneapolis for the opening night in March!

In other news, that previously mentioned first public reading of my murder mystery The Shotgun Message as part of Ma-Yi‘s LabFest series will be in mid-February. I also have a couple of visits to San Francisco in my near future; one in early February for a reading of Out of Joint at The Magic and a second in April for the Bindlestiff Studio’s West Coast premiere of Thunder Above, Deeps Below! I’ll post details for all of these opportunities to catch my work as they become available. Spring 2012 will then come to a close with B Street Theatre’s presentation of Edith in Sacramento, CA.

Finally, here’s a last little morsel from 2011: Manbites Dog’s production of Edith was honored in IndyWeek’s “Best  Triangle Theater of 2011″ list for Best Direction, Best Ensemble, and Best Production! Congratulations to Jeff Storer and the cast for their amazing work.

I hope your 2012 is off to as excellent a start as mine!

I’ve been in full on writing mode. As part of my PONY Fellowship, I’m a participant in The Lark‘s Playwriting Workshop, which keeps me on task generating new pages every week. Consequently, I’ve been a writing machine, and it’s taken a lot of my attention lately. But there’s news to report, and so report I will!

Image Design: QuickBrownFox Studio

Most importantly, the first licensed production of Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them opened at Manbites Dog in Durham, NC (e.g. this showing is not part of the NNPN Rolling Premiere, and — except for a few e-mails with director Jeff Storer — they did it all on their own!). Edith is officially all grown up and starting on some adventures without me. They’ve gotten great reviews and have one more week in their run, so please be sure to check them out. You can check out some production shots on The Upstager, and here are some links to those reviews:

Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them at Manbites Dog (Indy Week, December 7, 2011)

A. Rey Pamatmat’s “Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them” Teaches Important Lessons in Tolerance (Triangle Arts & Entertainment, December 8, 2011)

Next, I had a closed door reading of my latest play The Shotgun Message at The Lark at the end of November. I’m doing a little tinkering at the moment, but there will be a public reading of the play by Ma-Yi Theatre Company sometime in early 2012. I will keep you posted. The play is my take on a murder mystery and involves a journalist investigating an under-aged Internet prostitute who disappeared shortly after deciding to turn in all of his pedophile clients to the FBI. It’s a dark, gritty theatre noir more in line with my plays DEVIANT and Thunder Above, Deeps Below than with something like Edith, and it’s been great fun writing in those moral shades of gray once again.

Also, there were a few more reviews celebrating Actor’s Express‘s awesome run of Edith. Links to those are below, and I’ll update the press page soon.

Theatre Review: ‘Edith Can Shoot Things…” at Actor’s Express (Atlanta INtown, November 6, 2011)

Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them, an Atlanta Theater Fans Review (Atlanta Theater Fans, November 8, 2011)

Finally, here’s a little bit of a tease. The following picture is from a bit of fun Teresa Avia Lim, Jon Norman Schneider, Cory Michael Smith, and I had a few weeks ago. It’s not great quality (I took it on my phone, through a thick layer of glass, with 80 light sources and no polarizing filter), so I apologize for that, but I’m sure you can make out the gist. It’ll be some months before you see the fruits of our “labors” (labors being in quotes, because we had such a great time that it didn’t seem like work at all), and I’ll definitely keep you in the loop about that.

Ralph del Rosario as Kenny and Rose Le Tran as Edith in Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them. Photos by KICK Strategy.

Review: Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them (Access Atlanta for the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, November 1, 2011)

Theater review: Sweet coming-of-age comedy “Edith Can Shoot Things,” at Actor’s Express (ArtCriticsATL.com, October 30, 2011)

Review: Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them at the Actor’s Express Theatre (PurePolitics.com, October 31, 2011)

Also, there was one more straggling rave review of the Miami production that came out the day before the show closed (oh, well).

Give the Girl a Gun (Miami Art Zine, October 30, 2011)

I’ll update the Press page with pull-quotes and all that jazz later this week!

In celebration of Georgia week, I’ve done some related updates to the site. I’ve updated the Press page for Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them to include those glowing print reviews of the New Theatre production. The update includes two equally positive blog reviews that I hadn’t published here previously.

Cara Becker as Arc, Christopher Cowan as Bby, & Yadi Guevara-Prip as Indy in Out of Joint. Photo by Melissa Gelder.

I’ve also added a gallery for the Perry-Mansfield production of Out of Joint. It was great fun remembering how gorgeous that production was. Look at that design!

Finally, I’ve updated the site itself so that you can subscribe to posts by E-mail as well as RSS. I’ve also added a post archive so you can search for any past news or events more easily.

It’s been a fun week seeing Out of Joint come back to life and grow in the process and seeing Actor’s Express take such great care in their production of Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them. Thanks for everything Georgia, and I hope to see you again soon.

My week in Georgia is coming to an end, and I plan on going out with an air rifle BANG. Tonight Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them makes it’s third NNPN Rolling World Premiere stop at Actor’s Express in Atlanta, GA. There will be a performance and post-show reception with the artists (including me) at the theatre — please join us for both!

Additionally, I’ve updated the Edith gallery to include photos from the New Theatre production in Coral Gables, Florida.

Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them

by A. Rey Pamatmat

directed by Freddie Ashley

starring Ralph del Rosario, Rose Le Tran, and Tucker Weinmann

For a performance calendar and tickets, click here. For full cast and crew information, click here.

This week Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them will make it’s third NNPN Rolling World Premiere stop of four in peachy-keen Atlanta, Georgia. I’ll be heading to Actor’s Express in Atlanta on Wednesday for the last bit of tech, previews, and opening. You can join me there for a post-opening reception on October 29 after the show! For a performance calendar and tickets, click here. For a little information about the show and the NNPN, visit AE’s Artistic Director’s blog here.

At the moment, though, I’m at the Savannah College of Art and Design working with their performing arts students on a new draft of Out of Joint, the play first performed at the Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts Camp this summer. The script is growing from one-act to full-length size in a way I hadn’t, at first, imagined to be possible. The students have been more than game with the weirdness of this time-bending jaunt, and the script gets stronger by the day.

John Robert Warren as Benji and Natasha Waisfeld as Edith in Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them.

RAVE.

Kids as not-quite adults in ‘Edith Can Shoot Things’ (Miami Herald, October 17, 2011)

Cool.

Juan Gonzalez Machain as Kenny and Natasha Waisfeld as Edith in Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them.

The first review for Edith’s Miami adventure is a good one! Check out Miami New Times and then come check out the show!

New Theater’s Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them is Worth a Shot (Miami New Times, October 15, 2011)

It’s my last day in South Florida. I’ll be catching this afternoon’s matinee and then heading on back to New York City. Come join us this afternoon at 1, especially if you’re under 25 — get to the theatre early enough and you could see the show for free!

For a performance calendar and tickets, click here. For full cast and crew information, click here. For information on the 25 under 25 promotion, click here.