My good buddy, playwright Julia Lee Barclay, is responsible for writing and directing some genuinely offbeat, out-of-the-box theatrical experiences. One of them, entitled We Live in Financial Times, is going to be performed as a stage reading down in Washington, DC on November 5. You can get a bit more info about the performance at this site here.
I've read the play, and I have to say it is a mind-bending piece of work, replete with audience participation, meta-referential bits, free-floating weirdness, and plenty of good old-fashioned bolshy agitprop attitude. It's pretty much unlike anything I ever wrote, with the possible exception of Monster, 1959, which is probably one reason I think it works so well. It manages to be by turns hilarious and infuriating, and if it usurps one's expectations of how theater is supposed to work--well, good!
It is, in other words, well worth a night out. So if you're in the area, drop by 5th and K Street and check it out.
Julia also maintains an ongoing blog, which isn't so much about her playwriting as it is about some stuff going on in her personal life, and also about the book she's working on now (which is inextricably tied up with her personal life, as you will see if you check out the blog).
Some links to her work, and/or reviews of it, can be found here and here and here. There are more links on her blog.
She's a good egg, this Julia person, and I've known her, on and off, for 32 years. If she' can put up with me for so long, she must be a very nice person indeed. So take a look!
Below, here is what Julia herself has to say about the evening:
"Dear friends of reality,
If you live in or near Our Nation's Capitol and don't want to spend the Monday night before the elections biting your nails, pacing, drinking yourself silly or watching endless political prognostications most or all of which will prove wrong, here's another option:
Come to a staged reading of my play We live in financial times, Part 1: Blackberry Curve at the estimable Busboys & Poets on 5th & K in Washington, D.C.. Performance Monday, November 5 at 6:30pm in The Cullen Room. For details go to:
"We Live in Financial Times is a darkly funny theatrical shell game wherein the conventions of character and story (in the form of Mike and James, investment bankers alone with an angry female voice they do not understand) collapse and attempt to frantically reassemble. Global capitalism as tragic farce."
The fabulous actors include Phil Dickerson, Marietta Hedges and David Paglin. I'm directing this one...
We are especially excited to welcome the economist Dean Baker along for a talkback. He's the guy who predicted the 2008 crash before it happened and guess what? No one listened. I think we best be listening to him now...yes?"
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