Reading: On Rachmaninoff's Birthday

Tonight I'll be appearing in a private reading of On Rachmaninoff's Birthday, a three-act play by Alejandro Morales. I'll be playing Vladimir Nikolayovich Zubokov, a repressed Russian piano student in Leningrad in 1960, as well as the same fellow in Cuba, in 1989. I'm looking forward to it (even scraping the rust off my Russian dialect), as I like the script and have yet to work with Alejandro. I've met him through my association with Packawallop Productions. Communism: still bringing people together.

Packawallop: The Lounge Series

Tonight I'll be playing Garrett Pruitt in a scene from Christina Gorman's play-in-development, Far From the Trees, as a part of the development arm of Packawallop Productions. You may remember Christina as the playwright of the last show I performed in, Sacred Ground. The Lounge Series are regular events in which The Pack presents some of what's been brewing for playwrights in their regular meetings. I was fortunate enough to join The Pack last year by invitation and support from Christina, Josh Sohn and Laura Pestronk. It's a tremendously supportive group that doesn't shy away from honesty in its feedback, to boot.

Garrett is a nice role, from what I've read - I wish I could play him out in his entire arc. He's a disenfranchised doctoral candidate in astronomy, stuck back at his tiny home town after a terrible research mishap that cost his family plenty. In the scene we get to play tonight, he antagonizes a young researcher who's come in search of some petrified trees his uncle recently discovered on his land. It's fun, and tactical, and pithy. He's kind of a prick. Like I said: Fun.