[Squishy] NCTC November E-News

Fri Nov 5 20:08:42 PST 2004

The New Conservatory Theatre Center
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NCTC November E-News
November, 2004

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The Kinsey Sicks Return in "Oy Vey in a Manger"

They're baaaaack!  

Hide your lipstick and your favorite Christmas carol because the Kinsey Sicks - America's favorite dragapella beauty shop quartet - is stopping by NCTC again this holiday season to warm your cockles and tickle your funny bone.

Like the omnipresent fruitcake, the Kinseys are becoming a holiday tradition here at NCTC, and we couldn't be more excited!

Premiering last year in the Decker Theatre, "Oy Vey in a Manger" was not only a smash hit, but also a triumphant homecoming for the Kinseys who appeared at NCTC many times during the early days of the group's 10-plus year history.  These days, the girls tour all over the U.S. and abroad, performing up to 80 shows each year.

The Kinseys will debut several new songs for this year's incarnation of "Oy Vey in a Manger," and they'll reprise last year's favorites like, "Have Yourself a Harried Little Christmas"and "Soylent Night".  There are bound to be visits from the barnyard animals and some misguided carolers too.  So, if you want to help the Kinseys Sicks in their global effort to stamp out holiday cheer, give our box office a call 'cause the tickets are going fast.  (Hey, they make great Chanukah gifts too - buy eight and celebrate with us every night!)

The Kinsey Sicks: Oy Vey in a Manger
Nov. 24-Dec 31; Wed-Fri @ 8 pm, Sat @ 7:30 & 10 pm
Special New Year's Eve shows @ 7:30 & 10
Holiday Week Tuesdays, Dec 21 & 28 @ 8 pm
Tickets: $30 (Wed & Thur), $35 (Fri & Sat)

Visit the Kinsey Sicks Website
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The Pride Season Subscriber Appreciation Party

We Are Family and we're all proud to be members of the NCTC family.  That's why we're celebrating our family this month at our annual Subscriber Appreciation Party on November 15th at the Savoy Hotel.  

A family is held together by what it has in common, most often a shared last name or bloodline. As a family gets larger, the variety of people gets wider and more diverse, so much so that the shared last name is the only thing left in common, prompting the exclamation often heard at reunions, "How can I be related to that person!?" 

Thankfully, for all of us with family members we would sooner leave unclaimed, there are also the chosen families we cultivate by way of association. Our chosen families reflect not our past, but our present: who we are today and what is important to us right now.

We are lucky at NCTC that our ever-growing family is composed of some of the most dedicated, generous, and wonderful people in the Bay Area. Without the support of our subscribers and dedicated patrons who devote their time, money, and energy to our mission, we would be lost.

To celebrate this chosen family, we're having our own family reunion -- the Pride Season 10 Subscriber Appreciation Party - the perfect chance for all of us to get to know each other. The evening will include performances by Miss Coco Peru, star of stage and screen, and singer extraordinaire, Mr. Spencer Day, (a family member that makes us all proud of good genes).  You'll also see some familiar faces from the theatre staff and stage, and a chance to have an appetizer or a drink while you make new friends.

Whether you are a long-time subscriber or new to our family, this party may be the best family function you've attended in years.  Remember, our friends are our chosen families, and our subscribers have continued to make NCTC a history-making success story for the past 25 years. To RSVP, call the Box Office or email: margot at nctcsf.org

The Details:
November 15, 2004
Savoy Hotel
580 Geary St. @ Jones 
7 pm - 9 pm

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NCTC Prepares to Launch its Annual Appeal

As another busy year at NCTC winds down, and Pride Season Ten continues to leave you laughing in the aisles, we are diligently putting the finishing touches on our 2004 Annual Appeal mailing.  With a great year of growth and change almost behind us, we turn to you, our extended family, as we look forward to our 25th anniversary year in 2005.  

At the center of this year's drive is the continuation of our Decker Theatre Adopt-a-Seat program, which sprang into action last month upon the completion of our recent renovation.  To refresh your memory, a contribution of $500 or more gives you the opportunity to dedicate a seat to you, a loved one (a perfect Holiday gift idea!) or in memory of someone dear to you with an engraved brass nameplate that will be displayed permanently on the right arm of one of the chairs in the Decker Theatre.

Our goal, as always, is to not only continue to provide you with the entertaining theatre you've come to expect from NCTC, but to also to build and nurture our organization so that we can keep on evolving and meeting the needs of our ever-changing community.  Our youth programs are more in demand than ever as cuts in arts and health education statewide continue to deprive young people from some of the opportunities many of us had when we were kids.  In response to this need, we plan to increase our satellite drama programs that bring our classes directly to the schools, as well as launching "Outspoken", our exciting follow-up to "The Other Side of the Closet", based on material and actual stories gathered through our post-show discussions.

NCTC's 2004 Annual Appeal is set to go out the middle of this month.  For more information, contact Development Director Mark Gagne at (415) 861-4914, or e-mail him at mark at nctcsf.org.  And thank you again for continued support and patronage!

More About Donating to NCTC
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YouthAware's "The Other Side of the Closet" Promotes Tolorance and Safer Schools

This October, NCTC's YouthAware Educational Theatre kicked off its fourth season of touring the groundbreaking homophobia and hate-crimes prevention program for teens, "The Other Side of the Closet". Written in 1997 by Canadian playwright Edward Roy, the production is a highly successful play that communicates information about teens grappling with issues of peer pressure, youth violence, homophobia, behavior norms and expectations, self esteem, discrimination and stigmatization, identity and the meaning of true friendship and camaraderie. 

First performed by NCTC in 2000, "The Other Side of the Closet" has now been seen by over 30,000 youth and educators from throughout Northern California. "I wanted to do a piece for young people on issues of homophobia for a long time, " says Executive/Artistic Director Ed Decker, "Then the Mathew Shepard incident occurred, and it increased my desire to make this happen."

Evaluations have shown that this unique and effective theatre-in-education approach for youth developed at NCTC has worked to dispel myths and present facts about health and well-being in a clear and effective manner. The use of drama for and by youth in community education connects with the individual's emotional self and encourages communication about sensitive issues. 

The show itself is but one element designed to address new standards for teaching tolerance in a broad and inclusive high school curriculum. NCTC works with each school to create a network of support for this work. We provide pre-and post-show lesson plans, along with fact sheets and information on community resources such as LYRIC, PFLAG, and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network. Each production is followed by a facilitated discussion between the audience, actors, and YouthAware staff to discuss the issues brought up by the production. 

A comprehensive three-year outcome evaluation of "The Other Side of the Closet" was completed in 2003. Most respondents saw long-term benefits including the normalization of discussions of sexuality, lessoned fear in facing sexual identity issues among gay and straight students, increased consciousness of the effects of hate language, and an improved climate for discussion both in the schools in which the play was performed and within their broader school districts. 

With the help of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, in 2003 NCTC received a $150,000 Federal Congressional Appropriation, enabling us to publish the "The Other Side of the Closet" along with a guide to integrating tolerance education into the classroom and additional educational resources. Copies of the play and study guide are now available at no charge in hard copy books and via download from our website. The program has become a national model for tolerance education. The impact of this is tremendous, and we look forward making other YouthAware programs available on line in the future.

In a 2004 study by the California Safe Schools Coalition, 91% of students reported hearing students make negative comments based on sexual orientation, and two out of every three students who identified as LGBT reported being harassed based on actual or perceived sexual orientation. As long as there's a need, YouthAware will continue to offer "The Other Side of the Closet" to urban, suburban, and rural schools and community-based organizations. To find out how to bring "The Other side of the Closet" to your school or organization, contact YouthAware Programs Director Sara Staley at (415) 861-4914.

For More Information About YouthAware
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Playwrighting Workshop Nurtures Queer Writers

On January 25, 2005, NCTC begins another session of its growing Playwriting Workshop, the third to be presented since the program was launched in January 2004. Conceived by Artistic Director Ed Decker as a play development class for Queer writers, this innovative workshop offers a safe and nurturing environment for intermediate to advanced playwrights. 

As led by local playwrights Garret Groenveld and Tom W. Kelly, author of NCTC's current Pride Season Ten production, Significant Others, this unique workshop starts from the point where other writing classes stop. "Tom Kelly and I have both experienced stupefaction from teachers who didn't understand the context of our scripts, and so much time was wasted justifying that we can write queer material and write gay sex scenes," says Groenveld. "In our workshop, it is already assumed that the class will have a complex understanding of these issues." Kelly adds that the "wonderful" experience of building the program has been "inspirational".

Certainly Ed Decker knew his idea was in good hands when he first approached Groenveld and Kelly, who are both experienced writers with shows that have been produced in San Francisco and beyond. Kelly has been a fixture at NCTC, with four plays that have appeared on our stages, including "Temporarily Yours", "Paradise Divided" and an earlier version of "The Virgin Tango", the final play in the current "Significant Others", which appeared first here as part of the popular collection of one-acts, titled, "Sexy Shorts." Groenveld, for his part, has had his plays presented at Theatre Rhinoceros, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival and PlayGround, where he currently serves as Education Coordinator.

Both Groenveld and Kelly feel that teaching this workshop has energized their own writing. "Teaching writing here has brought to mind the strengths and weaknesses of my own work," reflects Kelly. Groenveld agrees, "Teaching always clarifies your own position on what you believe to work in the craft." Perhaps, the biggest reward, however, has been watching their students' work evolve, with the ultimate goal of nurturing scripts that will eventually find their way onto one of the three stages here at NCTC. "The biggest impact is that I feel we're building a community of writers."

NCTC's Playwriting Workshop will be held every Tuesday from 7 to 10 PM January 25 through March 29, 2005. For more information on joining the class, call us at (415) 861-4914, or click on the link below. Who knows-maybe you'll be the next Terrence McNally.

Visit Our Playwright's Corner
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Behind the Scenes With: Cat Stevans, Tech Director

At the age of four, I was taken to my first theatre production, "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown," and from that night forward, theatre has been my oxygen. Instead of watching the actors performing, my eyes were fixated on the stage manager in the booth and the mysterious figures that came out onto the pitch-black stage. They crew moved around on the as if they were performing a dance. I was also fascinated by the lights and how they hung so many up in the air, and with the props, costumes and set pieces. I don't remember a single line that was spoken that night, but it was the best production I had ever seen. Thus began my love affair with technical theatre.

21-years later, I'm living my childhood dream of working in the theatre. I have been here at NCTC for over 2 years, serving this past year as Technical Director. People always ask me, what does a technical director do? To sum it up, a technical director makes sure that every element besides acting, dancing or musical direction comes together, especially in terms of scenic design. This includes things like assuring all the black and white wall art in, "Men from the Boys" was set to scale or checking that the costumes from "A Taste of Heaven" and "Dooley" were period appropriate. There was painting the stained glass windows for "A Man of No Importance," or finding numerous crazy props for "You Should be so Lucky". The list goes on and on. With every show comes a question, "How can we make this happen", and for me, that is the most exciting place to be during a production. Taking a verbal idea from a playwright or director (or even yourself), and then working out a tangible way to visualize it, is the hardest and most rewarding thing I've ever done.

Being at the New Conservatory Theatre Center is such a reward not only because I'm doing theatre, but also because of who I work with, the shows we produce and the challenges that come with each and every one of them.

Read More About the NCTC Staff
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At A Glance With Lance Lookout

Well my sweets, as I write this the ghouls have descended upon us and young whippersnappers from Fremont mingle with the native queens and clones in the Castro. But Lance is safely ensconced in his office. That's right; I'm forgoing the debauchery of Halloween just to deliver to you this month's gossip and inside info. Deadline, shmedline. Don't say I don't love you.

Was it just an apparition, or was that really Barry Humphries who took the stage of the Decker Theatre earlier this month? Yes, those lucky enough to nab tickets to the sold-out benefit spent a lovely evening listening to Edna's alter-ego reminisce about his start in the theatre, the creation of his most famous character, and some special audience interactions he's had over the course of his career. And how lucky we were, as Mr. Humphries himself reminded us, to get him on his only night off from performing his latest show, "Dame Edna: Back with a Vengeance" before its Broadway debut. With our own Tony Award-winning Playwright-in-Residence, Terrence McNally moderating the conversation, there was celebrity name dropping galore. How many degrees of separation? Among the mutual friends mentioned: Nathan Lane and Zoe Caldwell among others. 

And did you catch a certain NCTC staffer making his stage debut at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre last month in "Secret in the Wings"? Don't worry; I'm sure he'll still return your calls. Well, I'm sure he'll return mine.

Guess who wins the NCTC couple of the month award? In one weekend, this terrific twosome saw "Sex and Mayhem", "And Then They Came for Me", and "Pageant". Talk about a theatrical rollercoaster! We promised them a few nights off before "Significant Others" opens on November 13th. My sources tell me that the cutie-patootie cast simply lights up the stage. And don't miss our special "Date Night" on December 8th! See you soon, boys!

Lance just loves the family-friendly fare at NCTC. I can't wait to indulge my inner child with performances of Maurice Sendak's "Really Rosie" beginning November 13th. Maybe it's the memory of Carole King belting out the tunes when I was just a wee lad. So don't forget to gather your young (or young-at-heart) friends together over the holidays for a performance featuring the best and brightest youth performers from the Bay Area. Among the most prized of Rosie's lyrics: "Dear Academy, take note/I should get the Oscar vote/If you don't, I'll bite your throat/Signing off now, quote unquote". That's right, sing out sister.

Well, the witching hour has now officially passed. And in the spirit of "Hallmark" stores nationwide (and the great American tradition of crass commercialism), I'm switching my attention (as well as my office décor) to the Holiday season, making my list and checking it twice. I hear told from one of my most reliable sources that special three-show packages for the rest of NCTC's Pride Season Ten are available for giving, as well as tickets to the jolly fare that is Really Rosie. Nothing like a little live theatre to stuff that special someone's stocking! Until next time, au revoir and auf wiedersehen!

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"PAGEANT" is Extended for 2 More Weeks!

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November Performance Calendar

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Buy Tickets On-Line

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"Really Rosie" for the Whole Family

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Discount Subscriptions Still Available

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For more information on any of the articles in this month's edition of the
E-News, please call (415) 861-8972 or visit our website: www.nctcsf.org

E-NEWS CONTRIBUTORS: Lauren Elaine Davidson, D. Robert Foster,
Mark Gagne, Margot Melcon & Cat Stevans

E-NEWS STAFF: Scott Cox, Lauren Elaine Davidson, D. Robert Foster
& Mark Gagne

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