Its great when the company that’s going to produce your play does work that definitively doesn’t suck. That’s what I found out on Saturday night at iTheatre Collaborative’s performance of By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, a complex and challenging play that they staged with great confidence and coherence, under the evidently excellent direction of Charles St. Clair. Vera Stark is written by Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage.
Nicole Belit, who played Vera Stark, was tremendous, as was Brenda Jean Foley and Todd Michael Isaac, and Tom Koelbel, all of whom will be performing in Love Disorder, which bodes very well in terms of talent.
I also got the chance to chat with Mike Traylor, hilarious in his role as Herb Forrester in Vera Stark, who will direct Love Disorder. The fact that he was funny as hell on stage, playing a sort of wildly effeminate culture talk show host, was quite encouraging.
Chris Haines, who along with his wife Rose, are the directors of iTheatre Collaborative, was gracious enough to announce Love Disorder, and that I was in attendance. One women down the row, clearly a patron of the arts, promised to come opening night November 14th, and to bring many friends, if I gave her a birthday kiss. Being the entrepreneurially minded artists that I am, I quickly agreed, holding off on delivery until she, and her friends, actually show up for the show at the Herberger’s Kax stage.
I am jazzed to be collaborating with iTheatre Collaborative, and look forward to sitting down with Mike and Chris sometime next week to talk about the look and feel of Love Disorder.