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From out of the past
The critics proclaimed
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Our most recent production was a hit! |
Ran from July 23 - August 8, 2004 |
JSC/Alchemy Emerging Playwrights in Harry C. Cronin's
Directed by Alan S. Quismorio |
Harry C. Cronin tackles the controversies that have in recent years catapulted the Roman Catholic faith into public and media scrutiny. |
| Harry C. Cronin Playwright |
Alan S. Quismorio Director |
Pete Caslavka Actor |
JSC/Alchemy Emerging Playwrights | Jon Sims Center for the Arts |
| Mr.Cronin’s most recent San Francisco production was “Dooley”, originally produced by JSC/ Alchemy at the Jon Sims Center for the Arts (JSC) in December 2002. The play subsequently was remounted at JSC in the summer of 2003 and then moved to the New Conservatory Theater for an unprecedented third run earlier this year. His play “Memoirs of Jesus” was presented by the Epcor Center for the Arts in Calgary, Alberta in February 2003. Prior to its Canadian opening, the play had received two 1995 Los Angeles Drama-logue awards. His Los Angeles productions have included “Naomi”, “Skip and Reverend Garden” (produced by the Burbage Theater Ensemble and Theater of N.O.T.E.), “Fitzgerald and Hemingway” and “The Burghers of Calais” (produced by the Ensemble Studio Theater); and “The Children of Hercules” (produced by FIRST STAGE). He is a former McKnight Fellow at the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and a former Fellow at the National Endowment for the Arts. | Artistic Director of JSC/Alchemy. He is also a company member of Crowded Fire having been last seen in their recent production of Naomi Wallace’s “Slaughter City” at the EXIT Theatre. As an actor, his past stage credits include “A Language of Their Own” with the Asian American Theatre Company, “The Sweetest Hangover (& Other STDs)” with Brava! For Women in the Arts, and the Shotgun Players' “Troilus and Cressida”. He directed Harry Cronin's “Dooley” at the Jon Sims Center and at the New Conservatory. He has worked on projects with the Magic Theatre, Oakland Public Theatre, and Word for Word. He will follow “Dark Matters” with Dan Harder’s “Quartet #1 for Three Characters and a Cello” at the Actors Theater and Tom Kelly’s “Significant Others” at the New Conservatory Theater: both productions will open this fall. | A company member of Impact Theater for whom he last appeared in “Take the Money and Run”. He received critical acclaim for his performances in Michael D. Jackson’s “A Taste of Heaven” and the return engagement of Harry C. Cronin’s “Dooley”, both at the New Conservatory Theater earlier this year. He embarks this fall for the New York Fringe Festival to recreate the role he originated for John Fisher’s “Queer Theory”, staged at the Exit Theater last year. | Dedicated to developing works by San Francisco Bay Area-based playwrights. Its previous productions include Harry C. Cronin’s “Dooley, Joe Jennison’s “A Beautiful Man”, and Nicola Harwood’s “Horse Latitudes”. Alchemy is currently developing its 2005 Season with works by Erin Blackwell, Duy Nguyen, Jeffrey Hartgraves, and the latest from Harry C. Cronin under consideration. |
Supports artistic expressions of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender experience. The Center ensures access to the creative process, providing resources that support and promote new and existing arts programs. We believe that the process and product of creative activity have equal value, that all talent is worthy of development, and that artistic expression is essential to our community's health. |
| Playwright's notes | Director's notes | |
| When the Boston Globe published its famous series of articles on priest child abuse and initiated what would become a national media event, "Dark Matter" was one year old. The play had already begun the laborious process of development through workshops and staged readings. In the atmosphere of scandal, however, the play took a new direction. The media had turned the event into melodrama, with carefully defined villains and victims. The entire landscape was either good or evil, right or wrong, black or white. It was clear to me, however, that melodrama was not going to work. As I developed the play, two quite different frameworks began to emerge. The first was that of classical tragedy: a noble hero with a tragic flaw who eventually finds redemption and peace through suffering and catharsis. In a truly tragic universe, we might sympathize with Antigone, but we still understand Creon. Placing the play within such a universe would allow the suffering of all the participants to be revealed and valued. The second framework that emerged was Dante1s "Divine Comedy". The Three Inmates' monologues became the Inferno; the second three became the Purgatorio as the priest confronts those he has harmed; and the final speaker, Sister Mary Jude is a blind Beatrice, leading him into Paradise. |
Pete Caslavka in Dark Matter Original Logo: Maher Sabry |
It’s been almost a year since Alchemy staged its last production “A Beautiful Man”. But it’s been a dynamic near-year. The fruits of these ten months begin with “Dark Matter”, a play that scared the bejeezus out of me and Pete Caslavka simply because we’ve never done a theatre piece of this ilk before. (Our stage manager Rizzo and our lighting director Jarrod Fischer, on the other hand, have been annoyingly calm. As for Bob Bruman, he is his mad-artist self.) So why do it? Because, well, I’m always eager for new challenges and exercises in sadism—directing a solo piece fit that bill, and, seriously, what better choice than one written by a playwright I respect tenfold; and as for Pete, he was half-drunk when I got him to finally give his yes-okay. In the end, despite scheduling nightmares and the limited-resource nature of today’s small-theatre scene in the Bay Area, we’ve triumphed to get this show—so simple on paper, so demanding on its feet— to you today. The brilliant year we had last year, topped by the gracious laurels Joe Jennison’s “A Beautiful Man” received during and after the SF Fringe Festival, has been most encouraging. And, YOU, the audience, have been most encouraging. I will brush your curiousity a little by telling you that the foretold fruits of the past near-year will be lush. Since the Alchemy Program’s birth in 1998 (it was the Artists Alliance Against AIDS Emerging Playwrights Program then), I have pushed for its continuing evolution; and that is exactly what is happening. I hope you continue to support us, because what is there on the horizon is thrilling, bountiful, and, hopefully, glorious. |
Harry C. Cronin |
|
Alan S. Quismorio |
