[NEohioPAL] Fourth Wall Productions Announces Its Third Season

[Carli Miluk]

FOURTH WALL PRODUCTIONS ANNOUNCES ITS THIRD SEASON
Cleveland’s Newest Theatre Company Introduces Cleveland to New Works
 
(September, 2008) Fourth Wall Productions is pleased to announce these five shows as part of its Third Season.  In the past, Fourth Wall has produced five World Premieres (Plans Change, Schism, Malicious Bunny, Just Shy of Closure, and The Bank Guards), one Ohio Premiere (Stained Glass Ugly), two Cleveland Premieres (DOG SEES GOD: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead, Babes in America) and two workshops (All the Way from China and 2 Man Kidnapping Rule.)  
 
With Fourth Wall’s third season, we are proud to announce a collection of Cleveland area playwrights with four out of the five shows.  The season will open with Resident Playwright Matthew A. Sprosty’s college success All’s Fair in October, 2008.  Followed by (in 2009), The Blogger, Optimus Prime for President, Dogs of the Blue Gods, and closing with Eli & Kate in July.
 
ABOUT ALL’S FAIR
 
All’s Fair (Fall 2008) is Sprosty’s senior college thesis which had English students at Ohio University talking.  More often than not, college students were forced to go see the university’s theatre programs in order to garner them extra credit if they wrote a paper about it.  The papers that came in to the English professors after the students saw All’s Fair stunned the teachers so much that they forwarded them on to the creative team of the production.  The papers saying how much the students enjoyed the production, and how several returned to see it a second time with friends.  On the last night of All’s Fair at Ohio University, the production had to turn away seventy-five percent of audience members who turned up due to an already full house.  
 
The Story: All’s Fair is about one day in the American work place when a promotion becomes available.  Michael and Alice are at the same place in their careers, and want to take a step up.  The play asks the question of how much sexual inequality still exists in the work place.  Using two characters as the inner thoughts of Michael and Alice, the audience gets to see how tricky the battle of the sexes can be.
 
Since All’s Fair has been tested with the younger audiences and succeeded, Fourth Wall thought it to be the perfect introduction to a new season as young audience support overflowed with their last production of DOG SEES GOD: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead by Bert V. Royal.
 
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
 
MATTHEW A. SPROSTY graduated from Ohio University in the Spring of 2004 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Playwriting.  At Ohio University, he won the prestigious honor to have a school sanctioned production of an undergraduate full length play (a first for the University’s theatre department) entitled Ganareys’ 101.  After graduation, Sprosty has had four of his plays be World Premiered by Fourth Wall Productions (Plans Change, Schism, Malicious Bunny and The Bank Guards) all garnering him critical praise such as Linda Eisenstein in CoolCleveland.com saying “Sprosty is a writer to watch- his ear for the rhythms of dudedom is impeccable.”  
 
Since Malicious Bunny, Sprosty has started his path into Hollywood.  He has optioned one screenplay to Midas Entertainment which is scheduled to be shot in Los Angeles and Cleveland in the upcoming months.  The project, tentatively titled LSDA, is also already being looked at to be formed into a trilogy.  He has penned the short film The Morning After Drill for director Paul “Coy” Allen (director of the Timbaland video “Give it to Me”) to show off the up-and-coming acting talents of Nicole Zeoli.  
 
 
ABOUT THE BLOGGER
 
The Blogger (January, 2009) is Fourth Wall’s first production of giving the reins of control over to someone else.  To help theatre artists grow in the Cleveland area, Fourth Wall is setting out to allow artists to use their space, and to help with publicity in order to incorporate more local talent into Fourth Wall’s season, and get more projects off the ground.
The Story: The Blogger finds that spreading his message to “the people” is no small task.  Following the dictates of his audience, Vince skips out of rehab, leaves his wife and goes on the road in search of meaning and finds…Britney?!   It’s a journey across America and then some.
 
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
 
Greg Vovos is a playwright and director, as well as the Artistic Director of TITLEWave theatre, a company that produces exclusively original plays.  Since returning to Cleveland after earning his MFA in Playwriting from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Greg has directed at theatres all across town, including Dobama, Cleveland Public Theatre, Charenton Theater Company and TITLEWave theatre.  He has assisted at the Cleveland Play House, and has taught and acted at the Beck Center for the Arts.  He has also taught at Tri-C West and UNLV.  He has produced and directed many critically-acclaimed plays, including Julie Jensen’s WAIT! for which he was awarded a Cleveland Theater Collective Achievement Award for his directing.  His writing has been published by Dramatic Publishing, Originalworksonline and PPT Press, and his plays have been produced all over the world.  He also works as a dramaturg, reader and occasionally as an actor.  A member of the Cleveland Theater Collective, he believes strongly in the Cleveland theater scene.  While a student in Las Vegas, aside from being the President of the Graduate Playwriting Organization and a producer of Café Copioh, he also helped found The Asylum Theater, a professional theater company in Vegas committed to producing original works.  He has a BA in English from The Ohio State University.  He is married to Jean Marie and they have a son, Matthew, and a daughter on the way. 
 
 
ABOUT OPTIMUS PRIME FOR PRESIDENT
 
Optimus Prime for President (March, 2009) was first seen at Cleveland Public Theatre’s Little Box Series in 2008.  Fourth Wall Productions knew the storyline, and subject matter, would be perfect for their mission statement of getting the younger audience back into theatre seats.
 
The Story:  On a summer night following a baseball game, six friends meet in their favorite bar for their usual night together. However, this night something is different. From unresolved feelings to longstanding resentments to a devastating secret, they all have something important to say to each other. But sometimes, the truth is too hard to admit, and it’s easier to talk about cartoons.
 
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
 
MARGI HERWALD ZITELLI studied playwriting with Oscar winner John Logan at Northwestern University. Her work has been read or performed by Cleveland Public Theatre (CPT), CTC/CPT’s Dark Room, Cleveland Writer’s Theatre, Dobama’s Night Kitchen (DNK), and Habitat for Insanity sketch comedy. Her new play “Unethical” will première in February as part of Cleveland Public Theatre’s Big[BOX] series. As an actor, she has performed with CPT, Dirty Shakespeare, Bad Epitaph, DNK and the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival. Margi is a board member of the Cleveland Theatre Collective and city editor of the Cleveland Jewish News. 
 
 
ABOUT DOGS OF THE BLUE GODS
 
Dogs of the Blue Gods (May, 2009) is the only play of Fourth Wall’s third season from a playwright not in the Northeast Ohio area.  Since Fourth Wall began taking submissions in 2007, Ian Fraser has been a favorite of the readers of Fourth Wall-- not only because his plays are always extremely imaginative, but they all speak directly with our confused generation.  It took two years for Mr. Fraser and Fourth Wall to find a show of his that fit into our budget, and Dogs of the Blue Gods is perfect.  Fourth Wall is excited to introduce the Cleveland Arts Scene with South African playwright Ian Fraser. 
 
The Story: Dogs of the Blue Gods explores the way we are manipulated by those in power in our society and how it can erode our own sense of decency and fairness.  Following the story of four police dogs trying to figure out how to cope with their owner’s brutality and the lingering option of freedom— what we come to learn is we are all battling our demons, and most of the time- we let them win.
 
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
IAN FRASER is a South African playwright, writer, comedian, anti-Apartheid activist, artist, anarchist, and social agitator, now living in the USA. He began as South Africa's first street-level stand up comedian, 'ranting-verse' poet, and extremely acerbic anti-government satirist.  Fraser has won many awards for his plays, including the 1992 Amstel Playwright of the Year Award and the 1992 Tonight-AA Life Vita Award for Comedy, yet his consistently anti-establishment approach has meant that he remains relatively unacknowledged in South Africa today. His comedic work has been compared to those of Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks, and his dramatic writing to that of Bukowski, William Burroughs and Tom Stoppard. Critics characterized Fraser's work as alternatively swinging between brutality and violence, and delicacy, sensitivity and grace.
 
 
ABOUT ELI & KATE
 
Eli & Kate (July, 2009) is the second play from up-and-comer playwright David Allan.  Fourth Wall first introduced Cleveland to the writing talents of David Allan with last year’s Just Shy of Closure, and said that we hoped to help him develop more plays.  Upon seeing a documentary of the Theatre du Grand-Guignol, he decided to turn his short story, Eli & Kate, into a play.
 
The Story: Eli & Kate is a “torture” play about one man’s obsession with the women he cannot have, and their psychology of the type of men they want.  As Kate spends a quiet night alone, she has no idea that  a man has broken into her home, and is watching her.  He ties Kate up, and cuts her off from the outside world in the hopes of inducing Stockholm Syndrome on her (the disorder where the victim falls in love with her captor.)  Eli & Kate is a deeper look into the saying “You always hurt the one you love, and vice versa.”  One of Fourth Wall’s darker plays that is sure to leave the audience talking.
 
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
 
DAVID ALLAN is a Cleveland, Ohio playwright.  Since Fourth Wall’s production of David Allan’s Just Shy of Closure, Allan has been working with a local producer in order to turn the play into a script.  Now done, the script has been sent on to one of the “Big 5” agencies of Los Angeles and is currently in talks about being a possible low budget production.  David Allan is hoping the film will be shot in Cleveland, Ohio with local talent.  Eli & Kate is the second play he has ever written, and is looking forward to seeing if he can make a complete changeover from the “cutesy” romantic comedy writing of Just Shy of Closure.
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