THE NEW SUMMER FESTIVAL THEME IS...

The new Brick Summer Festival theme trumpets the end of print media, the Haitian Earthquake and the triumphal return of Republican power to Washington.

What.

Too Soon?

From June 4th to July 3rd, 2010, The Brick Theater, Inc. proudly presents

THE TOO SOON FESTIVAL
A premature summer theater festival.

Is the future happening now? Is the world whizzing past at a dizzying pace? Are you both running to catch up and hiding away from it all? Half-baked notions, frustrated youth, uncomfortable trends, traumatic events, terrifying predictions, raw nerves and un-come-upon comeuppances will be exploited, filmed, published, performed and presented before their time at THE TOO SOON FESTIVAL. Only at The Brick.

THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR AMAZING FESTIVAL NAME SUGGESTIONS! You contributed over 400 festival theme names (!) on

• Our Facebook Fan Page
• Our Twitter Feed
• The B(rick)log
  

The festival name was inspired by Adam McGovern, who suggested "The Too-Far Festival", and by Moira Stone, who commented "Too soon?", and many others who suggested a festival name involving themes about the encroaching future. Moira and Adam will receive Full-Festival Passes.

More to be announced soon, including awards to the winner of the Most-Posted Suggestions and to 3 random posters from each of The Brick's Facebook, Twitter and Blog pages! Check back here, here and here to find out who won!

To apply for The Too Soon Festival (and many other Brick programs), please click here.

NYTHEATRE.COM'S "PEOPLE OF THE YEAR 2008" INCLUDES 3 BRICK ALUMNI!

Congratulations to Gyda Arber, Michael Criscuolo and Ivanna Cullinan on their citations as nytheatre.com's People of the Year 2008!

All 3 are also Master Masons of The Brick.

What was that you said?

What is the ultra-secret society known as The Master Masons of The Brick?

We can't tell you that.

AND THE 2009 BRICK SUMMER FESTIVAL THEME IS...

... well, rather than just up and TELL you, why don't you treat yourself to the full multimedia treatment, in the form of the video that was presented at Friday night's announcement party?



Ladies and gentlemen, start popping!

THE FEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES

As anyone who’s spent more than eleven months around The Brick already knows, we’re known for our festivals. The New York Clown Theatre Festival, the Havel Festival and the Baby Jesus One-Act Jubilee are only a few examples of our past prowess as a Live Entertainment Aggregator.

At the center of our season each year, however, is our summer festival, which has explored a different theme each year since 2004’s Hell Festival. Coming up with an exciting, relevant themes is quite a challenge. We’ll be announcing this year’s Summer Festival Theme at Friday night’s opening party for The Granduncle Quadrilogy (doors open at 10pm!); however, we decided we’d like to share with you, our readers, a few of the discarded festival ideas that litter our pathway to glory. If you have any festival ideas of your own that you feel should be relegated to the gutter, please, share them with us!

FAILED FESTIVAL THEMES

• The Phlegm Festival
• The Politeness Festival
• The Vague Sense of Disquiet Festival
• The Slow Leaking Gas Festival
• The Baader-Meinhof Festival
• The Everybody Poops Festival
• The John McCain Festival
• The Festival Conducted Entirely Through Facebook
• The Just Say No To Hemorrhoids Festival (Sponsored by Preparation H)
• The Copyright Infringement Festival
• The Burning Piles of Money Festival
• The Ramen Noodle Festival
• The Lawyers, Guns, and Money Festival
• The Irrelevant-to-Current-Modes-of-Discourse Festival
• A Gertrude Stein Festival Is a Gertrude Stein Festival Is a Gertrude Stein Festival
• The Credit Default Swap Festival
• The Convertible Stock Options Festival
• The Unknownably Complex Financial Instruments Festival
• The Hank-Paulson-Is-Cute Festival
• The Empty Checking Account Festival
• The Running Low on Our Savings Account Too, Unless We Get Some Real Good Press Festival
• The Doing-What-We-Do-All-The-Time-Only-More-of-It-In-Less-Time-So-You'll-Pay-Attention Festival
• The Arts-and-Theatre-Journalists-Don't-Know-Their-Heads-From-Their-Asses Festival
  
• The Oh I Don't Know, Something With Kittens, People Like Kittens, Right? Festival
• The Blowjob Festival (free blowjob with every ticket!)
• The Eviction Festival

WE'VE BEEN BAD BLOGGERS

How could we not be if we didn't post this glowing Village Voice review from Garrett Eisler last week? Or invite you to catch up on the latest nytheatre.com reviews of our shows? Or the other positive reviews of Suspicious Package?

But seriously, we've been so busy at The Brick, and with presenting and producing all the wonderful shows at The Film Festival: A Theater Festival, that we can hardly be blamed. (And if you dare to point out that we have a fully-functioning Mac in the box office on which we can theoretically blog between shows we'll punch you in the jaw.)

However, we are not so behind the curve that we can't tell you about our excitement regarding the Film Festival Extensions that we'll be running throughout July! The schedule (with show blurbs) is below. Read it and weep!

Birthtaint
Written by Andrew Gilchrist
Directed by Julie Rossman
Dawn sees promise in the grandiose fantasies of her large-faced friend Daniel, who dreams of one day building a theater on a cliff. She also knows scant time remains before she's lost him to the loose and cocksure girls of the Cabaret Magnifique. But will Dawn's confidence avail her? Or will she find herself in a struggle for which she's not yet prepared? In her dreams, she was special… In reality, it was always her Birthtaint...
70 minutes
Mon 6/30, 10pm
Tue 7/1, 10pm
Thu 7/10, 10pm

Death at Film Forum
Old Kent Road Theater
Written and Directed by Eric Bland
www.oldkentroadtheater.com
Four hip, overweening cinephiles compete in the cruelest of cruelties: an Indie Film-off with one auteur left standing. Naturally the story ends in murder.
105 minutes
Wed 7/2, 8pm
Sat 7/5, 8pm
Mon 7/7, 8pm

The Stubborn Illusion of Time
Bone Orchard
Created by the Company
www.boneorchard.org
Born out of improvisation, The Stubborn Illusion of Time tells the story of a living man who stumbles into an old casket factory and emerges, his head bursting with what he has seen: ghosts frozen in a photograph. Bone Orchard plays off the film of their previous theatre piece, The Immediate Present to explore the nature of reality, illusion and time itself.
75 minutes
Sun 7/6, 8pm
Fri 7/11, 10pm
Sat 7/12, 8pm
Fri 7/18, 8pm
Sat 7/19, 8pm
Thu 7/24, 8pm
Fri 7/25, 8pm

Suspicious Package
The Fifth Wall
Created by Gyda Arber
www.thefifthwall.org
In this Brooklyn Noir, you are the Detective, the Starlet, the Heiress, or the Producer in the mean streets of Williamsburg, where technology, reality, theater and film meet. Are you a victim of circumstance or the guilty party? Personal video players accompany you through the mystery and prompt you through your lines, as you star in the show.
Sat & Sun, 7/5 - 7/27
By appointment starting at 4pm

Tod & I
Piehole Productions
Created by Piehole
Puppets, shadows, and sounds remind us what it is to encounter the strangeness of death for the first time, and show us why the woods beyond the funeral home can be the perfect place to play hide and seek. Get away from the flowers and formaldehyde and come out into the dusk with Tod and I.
50 minutes
Wed 7/9, 8pm
Fri 7/11, 8pm

Stayed tuned for more stuff!