Barking at Butterflies is performed in Germany

Joe Bardin on September 7, 2018

 

KMC Onstage is USAG Rheinland-Pfalz’s own community theater, located in Kaiserslautern.  The program provides a wide variety of theatrical entertainment for youth, families, and adults. Enjoy our first production of the 2018-2019 season, the studio show “An Evening of One Acts.”  Our one act shows consistently compete for (and win!) awards for being among the best studio performances in all of Army Europe.

Performances are schedule for:

September 7,8, 14, 15 at  7 p.m.

September 9 and 16 at 3 p.m.

All performances will be held in the Kaiserslautern Community Activity Center (KCAC) on Daenner Kaserne, Bldg. 3109.

The one act plays we have selected for this season are as follows:

ALL DRESSED UP AND NOWHERE TO GO by Frank Canino
Two brothers and their wives keep watch at their dead brother’s casket. Nostalgia and memories, however, soon lead to some unpleasant and embarrassing revelations—and worse! It’s a family story—what can you expect?

ALEXANDER THE GREAT by James C. Ferguson
Alexander the Great arrives at a new city—ready to conquer—and runs into some uncooperative potential subjects. How much land does a person need anyway? Seriously!

BARKING AT BUTTERFLIES by Joe Bardin
Two Spanish water dogs reflect on life, love, humans, and butterflies.

HATTIE’S HUBCAPS by Cheryl Navo
Violet tries to talk some sense into Hattie, who has obviously lost her marbles. Hattie has sold her house, moved into a shack, and is spending her time collecting and painting old hubcaps.

A CHILL IN MY BONES by Angela Cerrito
When a regular customer enters her home, followed by Death, a psychic bends her opening hours and breaks a promise to her daughter. But what advice can she offer her worried friend whose time is almost up?

AND TWICE ON SUNDAY by Brad Sytsma
Some people excel in high pressure situations. Others, not so much. What happens when a tightly wound individual becomes so focused on the task at hand that he misses all the clues? A comedic spin on one of the most basic elements of spy craft exploring a common foible of human nature.

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Eggtooth Editions Chapbook Contest runner upness

Joe Bardin on March 15, 2018

Dear Joe Bardin,

The judges of this year’s Eggtooth Editions Chapbook Contest have selected Katie Quinnelly’s “Sparrow Pie” as the winning manuscript. We anticipate the release of the chapbook in May 2018.

However, we wanted to personally email you to let you know that your manuscript, “Body Archeology,” was a runner-up. We were compelled by your narrative of personal trauma and the vivid, honest way that you conveyed your experiences. We hope that you submit again in the future!

Further details about the winner, as well as a list of the runners-up and finalists, will be posted on the website soon, including an excerpt from the winning manuscript.

All best,

Will Cordeiro, co-editor

Check out the webpage here for details: https://eggtootheditions.tumblr.com/contestresults

WINNER

Katie Quinnelly for Sparrow Pie

The chapbook will be available for purchase May 2018.

RUNNERS UP

Nancy Cook for Uncertain Endings

Joe Bardin for Body Archaeology

FINALISTS

Stephen House for Black

Hannah Rodabaugh for We Traced The Shape Of Our Loss To See Your Face

Alexander Payne Morgan for A Question of Blood

Barry North for Reports from God’s Country

San Diego reading is shaping up

Joe Bardin on July 21, 2017

It’s been a pleasure to engage with John Tessmer, who is casting and directing the reading of Infinity Mirror at RAADfest. John direct the La Jolla Theater Ensemble play reading series, so he’s got great experience in doing actual readings. We’ve had a couple in depth conversations about the play and the event itself. This is going to be a very large room with several hundred people in it. So the actors will have to be quite animated to reach them. So far, John has cast nicely accomplished actors to make it happen.

 

Mark Zweifach and Jill Drexler, who will read the parents, Richard and Edna, both have great experience acting as well as directing. Jill is also Artistic Director at Scripps Ranch Theatre. The role of Jesse will be read by Kenny Bordieri, a talented young actor. And Jesse’s girlfriend, Natalie, will be read by Kate Schott, with her own resume of stage and film credits. 

I am flying over to SD next week to do the table read and looking forward to meeting the cast and hearing what they do with Infinity Mirror.

 

 

 

 

 

Reading in San Diego in August

Joe Bardin on May 27, 2017

I’m excited that the directors of RAADfest (www.raadfest.com) want to have a staged reading of Infinity Mirror performed, probably on the Thursday evening. I’m working on finding San Diego actors for the reading, and am looking forward to sharing this play with the audience of several hundred at RAADfest.

I’ve decided to do an essay collection

Joe Bardin on May 5, 2017

My nonfiction essay collection, Body Archaeology, traces the arc of my migration out of a middle class American Jewish existence that seemed severed from my body, and into the pursuit of a more physically felt and emotionally authentic way of being. This led me, of all places, to the exploration and advocacy of radical life extension and physical immortality. It’s an unlikely path, one I am seeking to make sense of myself in these essays, by looking back to the moments of suffering and discovery that became stations along the way.

Most of these essays have been published in literary journals including Louisville Review, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Superstition Review, Eclectica, and Rock & Sling, among others. Individually, they touch on everything from moving countries as a small child, playing intercollegiate basketball, a rift with family, loving an older woman, and surviving worst-case scenario spinal problems. But taken together they trace the through-line of a personal transformation all the way back to the very beginning.

Infinity Mirror staged reading is May 7

Joe Bardin on April 22, 2017

I’m excited for the staged reading of Infinity Mirror at Theatre Artists Studio in Phoenix (thestudiophx.org). It will be on Sunday May 7th at 7pm.

In this comedy/drama, Jesse, 25, is always trying to enlighten his family without success. After getting deathly ill while serving in the Peace Corp in West Africa, he confronts his mortality and becomes an immortalist, adopting an ultra-healthy lifestyle as a bridge to living forever. When he attempts to get his family to take this journey of super longevity with him, they react with their usual disinterest, distrust and stubbornness. But Jesse can’t let go. The more he pushes, the deeper they resist, until finally they explode, and he is forced to reckon with his own uniqueness.

We’ve got a strong cast doing the reading: Brenda Foley, Kevin Fenderson, Jason Hammond, Jason Issak, Barbara Acker and Bill Straus.

 

I’m looking forward to hearing the play read by someone other than me and in a place other than inside my own head!

 

 

Maya makes Rhode Island Film Fest semifinals

Joe Bardin on October 17, 2016

My screenplay, SEEING MAYA, was selected a Rhode Island International Film Festival semi-finalist. It’s a love story between a younger man and older woman set in Tel Aviv during and after the first Gulf War, and is also a kind of love letter to that city, where my life changed for the better, back in the early 90’s, a much more optimistic time. Somehow love stories have a special power to reveal cities and Tel Aviv is a fascinating place deserving of such revelation. There’s a powerhouse role for a 50 + actress, which is rarity in the business.

I was recently disappointed by a contest, so when I received the email from RIIFF I almost didn’t read it. It was very nice to see us on the short list!

Is there art without death?

Joe Bardin on September 5, 2016

Is there art without death? Joshua Oppenheimer and I have been discussing this with artists, as part of an idea for a film.

Joshua:

Artists want to feel art is eternal. A way of achieving a symbolic immortality deprived to the flesh. But what if the flesh is eternal, and art if transient, of its moment? Many artists I know feel the opposite way: I was just debating this with a painter and a composer. They both feel there is no art without death. I cannot accept this.

Berkley Brown:

 You can pick any year, any performance and any movie and I almost guarantee you that the Oscar winning performance of the actor was due to their ability to prove to the audience, critics, etc, that their suffering was real. The revenant is the most recent example of this. Heightened human suffering can be found in film, music, literature and in all mediums were as a human being is sharing an emotion with another. Our common emotion shared as human beings has been suffering.
We’ve joked you and I, about my love of action cinema and I fully admit to it. The films I absolutely love from the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s are so full of human carnage and torture that it actually is comical to enjoy these films. I mean, I can just throw on the movie “Heat” and I’ll love it every time. This is a movie about criminals, heists and for the most part, everybody dying. How can I possibly justify that movie to my radical life extension values? I really can’t, it just is.

I’m a huge blues fan and that genre essentially gave birth to my musicianship. Hearing those African American artists and feeling the realness of their pain / soul was a revelation for me. It took a hold of me and didn’t let go. I couldn’t put my guitar down or stop my singing exercises until I knew I was feeling that soul or suffering too. But here’s what is real, I’ll never know that amount of suffering. I’ll never truly feel it like that. I’ve never been shot at or lynched. I’ve never been physically abused or mistreated. I’ve shot quite a few guns and rifles but I could never shoot someone. I would actually never want to experience that kind of suffering at all.

So in conclusion, I’ve been an artist locked in the fantasy of suffering. I’m an artist who doesn’t need to feel the suffering to experience the beauty. I feel, for myself, a maturity is needed in art that has never been before. An art free from the shackles of never ending pain. An art of feeling the pain but seeing what’s after.