"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!

GRANDUNCLE ASCENDANT

Now that the holidays are approaching (like, the day after tomorrow), there is no better time to start using the blog to plug our holiday show. Of course, being The Brick, our holiday show involves not Christmas or Hanukkah or even, alas, Kwanzaa, but rather a made-up holiday known as Kisselsrite.

Anybody who was at the inaugural Baby Jesus One-Act Jubilee in December 2005 may recall a short play that I wrote called "Granduncle Tells the Children a Story of Kisselsrite During the War," a kind of alternate-world dark Arctic fairy tale. Well, Piper McKenzie (i.e. myself and Hope Cartelli) have decided to expand this concept into The Granduncle Quadrilogy: Tales from the Land of Ice, which you can find out more about at Piper McKenzie's website.

Among other things, we've partnered with Yarn AudioWorks to create three Granduncle-themed podcasts, in which Richard Harrington, as the title character, shares fables from his grim, fantastic world. The first one, "The Walrus and the School of Fish," went up last week, and today we posted the second one, "The Dog Who Liked People Too Much." (A third, "The Flight of the Mammoths," will appear on Tuesday, December 2.)

Please give these a listen if you can - they're only three minutes each, and they will fill you with a wintry, disoriented feeling that will hopefully remind you to give thanks for the warmth and coziness of what we hope to be a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Tweet Relief

Okay, seriously, how many of you out there use Twitter? It’s such an interesting new technology, but we’re not afraid to say that we’re still struggling with how best to use it. The problem is keeping tweets from seeming like microblogging spam – we don’t want to just flood you with Brick news that you can already find on this blog and in our e-blasts (though obviously we’ll be doing a little bit of that); we also want to set up new and interesting conversations, create special Twitter-only discounts and deals, and explore new types of communication that we don’t even know we can have yet.

Some other indie/off-off theater spaces and companies are Twittering these days, such as Ars Nova, Aztec Economy, the NY Neo-Futurists, and Vampire Cowboys, but searching doesn’t seem to reveal too many others. There are plenty of writers and artists and bloggers twittering, but there are no doubt many more we’re unaware of. And it’s difficult to suss out who potential past or future audience members might be, since search terms like “Brooklyn theater” are incredibly vague.

If you're thinking of using Twitter, why not start by dropping a line @bricktheater? We're even setting up a Twitter account for our next show, The Granduncle Quadrilogy: @granduncle.

And for current users: any recommendations about who @bricktheater might be interested in following? Is anyone using any other microblogging sites instead?

NOVEMBER REIGN

We have clearly been remiss about blogging this month as heartily as we'd like, but we hope to redress that in the coming weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia, hyper-millennia, and eons.

A great place to start is with a reminder that, holy crap, this is the FINAL WEEKEND for our current production, Lord Oxford Brings You the Second American Revolution, Live! Houses will get full, so do not miss your last chance to check out this one-of-a-kind amalgam of revisionist history, live television, cabaret crooning and dark clowndom!

The Greenpoint Gazette says, "Timely and funny ... draws on juxtapositions of history as old as our nation, and as new as McCain-Palin 2008. The fact that within that bloody scope we get some laughs, some sexiness, and some reflection is a tribute to the power of good writing, original work, and actual live people doing actual live things. Why don't you switch off your TV? Go see some theater."

A lot of good things come from Greenpoint, including many of our readers, so, yeah, there you go. Buy tickets HERE.

(Photo Credit: Ken Stein/Runs With Scissors Photography)

THE LORD OXFORD HOUR

Behold, you! A video message from LORD OXFORD and PATTY O'PATTICAKE regarding The Brick's currently-running show, in which they star, as themselves, in the show, that is currently running, at The Brick. You - behold!

'TIS THE SEASON

As pretty much every corner of the Brick Empire aside from this one is aware, we presently bask in the dawn sparkle of our first-ever official Mainstage Season. You can read all of the details of this momentous new epoch in theatrical history at bricktheater.com/mainstage.

Though we’ve been presenting programming more or less year-round since our inception in late 2002, to date we’re known most for our festivals (such as September’s third annual New York Clown Theatre Festival, for which we extend a hearty and belated thanks to all those who helped make it such a mallet-to-the-cranium success!). But this 2008-2009 Mainstage Season represents the first time we’ve brought together a carefully curated selection of shows under the same rubric, with each production being given the full range of The Brick’s resources.

So please, readers of the B(rick)log, join us in congratulating Robert Honeywell, Piper McKenzie, Old Kent Road Theater, Bone Orchard, Nick Jones, Rachel Shukert, and Third Lows for being so fortunate as to stand astride the Crossroads of Civilized Culture. How to best to do so? Why, by purchasing one of our insanely reasonable Season Ticket Plans, naturally.

Of course, the time to take best advantage of these deals is this immediate moment, because this weekend marks the debut of our first Mainstage Season event: Episode Seven of the ongoing serial Penny Dreadful, the first season of which played to sold-out houses several months ago – a situation surely to be repeated throughout the second season’s six episodes.

Additionally, there is a mere modicum of days left before the premiere of the first full-length run of the season, Brick Co-Artistic Director Robert Honeywell’s succinctly titled opus, LORD OXFORD BRINGS YOU THE SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION, LIVE! being the necessary and appropriate response to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's suppression of the freedoms and dignity of the European-American settlers and their descendants in the Royal Eastern American Colonies and the inordinate conferring of special favours and privileges on the merciless Indian savages and the former Negro slaves, in the year Two Thousand and Eight

Truly, an occasion to embrace by investing in a full season of Brick entertainment. We’ll have more to say about Penny and Lord Oxford in future posts – including interviews with the creators, inspiration round-ups, and other goodies – but for now, we’ll leave you to start marking your calendars and visiting bricktheater.com for tickets.

Did I mention that you should purchase some tickets? Sorry, but I’ve been accused recently of being a bit subtle for popular tastes.

THE GREY LADY AND THE RED NOSE

Nice piece in today's New York Times about the classes we have on offer as part of the New York Clown Theatre Festival. My only quibble is that the article seems to downplay how much damn fun these classes can be. Slots are still available, so this is your last chance to sign up and learn from some of the greats in the field - Jeff Raz, Christopher Bayes, Dody DiSanto, and Eric Davis!