Egg and Peacock Revision and Preface

Before you read what is probably close to what I would have liked to print on www.Bwog.net if the privilege were mine to have limitless time in editing, I must apologize to Jonah Block-Johnson. Your play wasn't sexual. I've mended my review to more closely represent my thoughts on the word-play and its context. Also I fail to mention in all my review the wonderful band that introduced each play. They bellowed out a balls-out rendition of Strauss' Also Spracht Zarathustra and brought down the house. Jonah was the conductor of the band. They stole the show in between every play, though they of course peaked early with the Strauss.
-Thomas Anawalt

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A night of student plays by any other name might not smell as sweet. Shall I compare thee to a Latenite anthology? Thou art more zany and more whimsical. A tad longer, too. The playwrights of KCST’s Egg and Peacock Festival were given starting lines for their works, and had to hand off a line for the next writer to take it and run with it. The imposition of the start/end lines offered playwrights the opportunity to dictate the silliness of what followed.

The night opened with "Demographics," (written by Chas Carey, directed by Will Scheussler) a more or less uninteresting power play between women. Enter highlight number one, Gabe Miner in frump-drag. "The Rise and Fall of Big Bank Films" (written by Andrew Martin, directed by Kate Stahl) came next and a funny little play it was. It involved prophesies of the upcoming election and drinking and clever dialogue. And I can't say for the life of me who or what the play was about. The third play, "The Abolition of Compassion" (written by Matt Herzfield, directed by Ameneh Bordi) contained the funniest scenario of the evening. An Islamic terrorist, played by David Iscoe, waltzes into a ladies room with thundering heavy metal, ready to kill, but refuses to gaze upon a breast. The fourth play, "Happiness in General," (written by Gabe Miner, directed by David Gerson) proved that opening the door from the hallway to light the darkened stage doesn't work dramatically and that dialog should always be audible. Mike Molina's play, "The Merit Badge" ended the first act. The direction by Dan Blank came together very well with the actors like a nightmare sitcom. Lakshmi Sundaram and Catherine Atwill played convincing boyscouts in the unlikely situation of cutting off murderers' dicks and deciding to ingest the evidence. With and without words, the two boyscouts received the biggest laughs of the 2 and a half hour marathon.

The second act was not for quitters. "Two Sausages" (written by Jonah Block-Johnson, directed by Mark Holden) was a mystery about sausages, dictated from the line at the end of Molina’s play, “Last time you said that, I was holding two sausages!” A change of subject at the start of Act II, while arguably impossible, could have been refreshing. "Old Lady Gets the Sack" (written by Josh Syzmanowski, directed by Beck Pryor) tickled me, I will admit. Sadly this was at the portion of the performance where the length of the individual plays started to become apparent. Jeff Julian wrote a play in which he played a writer who wrote poeticism into porn-scripts to the effect that nobody ever screws. This piece, "Esmerelda Does Edinburgh," (directed by Morgan Hardy) had its moments and was fairly convincing as a low-budget porn shoot set. Trying to find a tasteful way of calling it a period piece is not possible. The elaborate if not rather linear "Ruses are Red" (written by Abby Rosebrock, directed by Jake Green) contained several sex twists that repeated and repeated. Last but not least is "President Ricky Writes a Story" (written by Tyson Brody, directed by Jesse Horowitz). The play imagined a book series dedicated to a first Gay President, President Ricky. The series of novels was wrapped in a play about the peculiarities of artistic freedom, its imposed and natural boundaries as concerns profitability.

Fresh out of the 24 hour writing process, I can't badmouth one play for slapping the art of theater in the face. If anything they all slapped the face collectively together, and made merriment of it. Even the worst of the plays had its merit. If it wasn't the acting making up for the lack of apparent story (or vice versa), count on the sometimes beautiful and shocking moments that happen after a time-warped creative process like Egg and Peacock (one of the plays projected Obama as the Dem Nom and future prez). Though it looked like the writers had a good time, the rules seemed to limit rather than inspire dialog. A lot of the plays could have been sliced in half or maybe knocked off a third and still gotten the point across, if the play happened to have a point.