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.

ANTIDEPRESSANT WATCH: STEPHEN COLBERT

Thursday night, "conservative" Stephen Colbert confessed his addiction to happy pills.

"It's been tough keeping my mood up with the innauguration less than two weeks away," he bemoaned. The Comedy Central pundit then sampled his Innaugural Advent Calendar's daily offering.

"Zoloft? Paxil!"

See him medicate here.

MEDICAL THEATER

From today's New York Post...

ANXIOUS APPLE IS NOW PILL CITY
By ANDY GELLER

Nervous New Yorkers are popping more pills.

Prescriptions for anti-anxiety drugs, anti-depressants and sleep aids are surging as residents struggle with the economic crisis, Crain's New York Business reports.

"If we looked to diagnose the city, I'd say it has an anxiety disorder," psychotherapist Dr. Mel Schwartz told the weekly.

In September and October, sleep-aid prescriptions reportedly rose by more than 7 percent, to 366,870, compared with those months in 2007.

You heard it here first - the City is primed and ready for The Antidepressant Festival...

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

"THE FESTIVAL FACTORY"

What do we have in common with P.S 122, Soho Rep, St. Ann’s Warehouse, The Civilians, The Classical Theatre of Harlem, Les Freres Corbusier, Elevator Repair Service, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Red Bull Theater, the Chocolate Factory, La MaMa and the LAByrinth Theater Company?

We’re all included in this week’s New York Magazine feature about essential indie theater spaces!

It’s tremendous to be in the company of each and every one of these spaces and companies, and we hope to be able to continue contributing to the cultural conversation for some time to come. Thanks to New York mag for the shout-out.

Also, note that our tagline is “The Festival Factory.” Though as you all know we offer much more than just festivals, we’re proud to acknowledge their importance in our overall gestalt.

And what better segue than to mention that we’ll be announcing the theme for the 2009 Summer Festival at this Friday night’s opening party for The Granduncle Quadrilogy? The party’s expected to begin at around 10pm, but we see no reason why you shouldn’t come for the performance ahead of time!