Due to the COVID-19 epidemic, Spooky Action Theater’s New Works in Action play-reading series has been shifted to a virtual meeting space on the company’s YouTube channel.
“We are excited to explore the possibilities of New Works readings online,” said Spooky Action Artistic Director Richard Henrich. “Theater usually happens in a physical performance space. But really, we are only bounded by our imagination. These livestreamed readings offer a chance to range unfettered through the world wide web, connect with ancient myth as it weaves into our present life, travel in time and halfway around the world and back.”
Access to each of the four readings is free and audiences are invited to stay for a talkback with actors, director, and playwright. The readings on YouTube will be live and shown one time only (meaning they won’t be available for later viewing).
MODERATION by Kevin Kautzman
Director:Â Brandon McCoy
Cast:Â Robert Bowen Smith and Amanda Forstrom
A darkly comic drama about social media content moderators losing their minds at work as they deal with the very worst content humanity throws online, while they struggle for advancement within an inscrutable technocratic bureaucracy.
May 24 at 3:00 PM
WE VICTORIANS by Matthew Kelly
Director:Â Tyler Herman
Cast:Â TBD
A 21-year-old assistant brings a sexual harassment suit against a respected white-glove attorney. Queer empowerment and old-school privilege collide in this radical interrogation of power in the Me Too Era, blurring distinctions between reality and myth, past and present, victimization and liberation.
May 31 at 3:00 PM
TRANSFERAL by Jack Novack
Director:Â Bridget Grace Sheaff
Cast: TBD
Kora is a young woman with a strong connection with death. When her partner, Cato, dies in a plane crash, Kora tries to bring him back. While her mother is trying to reconnect with her, Kora’s father returns unexpectedly and they have to face their fears about moving on. But is it possible to make the transferal from one phase of our lives to the next?
June 7 at 3:00 PM
CIRCULARÂ by Laura Shamas
Director:Â Katherine Chase Bryer
Cast: Jonathan Holmes and Lisa Hodsoll
Circe’s island. A strange warrior approaches. Or is it modern-day Afghanistan, and an officer approaches? A young army psychiatrist becomes entangled in the world of “The Odyssey” on her first tour in Afghanistan. What is real? What actually happened in combat between a soldier and her commanding officer is gradually revealed, on the road to healing.
June 14 at 3:00 PM
Spooky Action Theater is a dynamic, young theater company that has been recharging the audience’s imaginative, intuitive, emotional core by linking artists and audience in a collaborative enterprise. They believe a good play imparts a special kind of rapture. Albert Einstein coined the term spooky action at a distance to describe a bit of quantum mechanics even he found incredible: two particles can become entangled such that, forever after, a change in one is matched by instant change in the other, no matter what the distance between them. Spooky action happens when actors provide a bare framework to be fleshed out by the imagination of the audience, creating the world and action of the play.
Tax-deductible contributions can be made on the Spooky Action website.
