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Bethany Larsen |
Co-Development Director
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MOST RECENT PRODUCTION:The Third Date - my ten-minute play for Milk Can's "The Disorder Plays."
CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Re-writing and pre-production for Malfi Inc.
THREE WORDS THAT DESCRIBE ME: Very, very talkative
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MORE ON BETHANY...
Bethany grew up in New Jersey. The Sopranos-area kind of New Jersey. In high school, she worked in an Italian pastry shop, and learned to tell the difference between a cannoli, pignoli and a sfogliatel. She also played the piano, the cello, twirled a baton, twirled a flag, played a kid in Bye, Bye Birdie who sings that awful telephone song, and then finally, after being none-too-talented at any of the above artistic endeavors, her high school English teacher encouraged her to write a play and have it performed in the school's Drama Club show. She did, and it wasn't bad. The next one she wrote won the New Jersey Young Playwright's Award and was performed at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Finally having some received validation, she attended Fordham University as a playwrighting/theatre major. While at Fordham, she had the pleasure of studying with Matthew Maguire, Elizabeth Margid, Michael Massee and Michael Mayer, to name jut a few. She also co-founded the Fordham Playwright's Project, a club that gave students the opportunity to write and produce their own works. A version of the program still exists, and playwrighting is finally its own major at Fordham.
She has worked as a stage manager (favorite project: a three month tour of Pippi Longstocking), hostess (remember the Harley Davidson Café?) and a bookkeeper/office manager, the current gig that pays her bills. Luckily, she is fortunate enough to work with an amazing group of people at a busy, theatrical press office, and she gets to be reminded every day of how difficult it is to balance a rich artistic life with a financially viable one.
Her plays have been variously read or performed by the Prospect Theatre Company, Rattlestick Theatre, the Looking Glass Theatre, and the writing group Big Chunk (now called Unbound Playwrights).
Fusing her administrative skills with the creative endeavors of Milk Can has been a dream come true.
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SHORT PLAYS |
Do We Really Have To Sleep Together Till Death Do Us Part? |
|  Yellow and Henri's marriage has never been exactly blissful. But in art, as in life, the devil you know beats the devil you think you know because you've seen them hanging around....
Produced as part of Milk Can's "The Matisse Plays" in January 2005. |
YELLOW: He never does, honey. It's not in his nature. He doesn't love us. He's just stuck with us. You're not the first, believe me.
GIRL: Henri? (Henri says nothing.)
YELLOW: Why don't you run along, back to your little frame, sweetie.
GIRL: But--
YELLOW: He'll probably come visit you. He can't keep away. He always goes for the flashy ones. The famous, the familiar. But he always comes back to me.
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From Bethany:
This was my entry into the 2005 10 Minute Play Festival: The Matisse Plays. The play is about an artist, Henri, who cheats on his wife/painting "Yellow" with the "Girl With a Pearl Earring" from Vermeer's painting. Yellow catches them in the act, but teaches her younger counterpart a thing or two about the nature of marriage.
I had lots of fun with this one because it came at me from such a different angle than other things I'd written. When I picked my Matisse painting springboard out of a hat, I hated the painting so much, I despaired of ever having an idea. Then I thought: artists must like one painting more that another, and it led into the idea that an artist might cheat on his shrew-y mean painting wife (in my mind, the painting I was assigned) and a more famous, "pretty" painting, like Vermeer's "Girl With a Pearl Earring."
This was also the first time I worked with my friend Tom Nondrof in a creative capacity. His quirky sense of humor and laid-back working style fit the piece perfectly, and overall we had a lot of fun. One of my favorite things is the headdress that Tom's girlfriend Antonia made for the Girl With a Pear Earring to wear--it looked just like the painting, and when Leslie Baden put it on her head, it was hilarious that you knew exactly who she was. |
THE LANCASTER COUNTY BLUES |
This 10-minute play is about a pious Amish Ma and Pa and their rebellious teenage daughter Rachel, who wears lots of makeup, talks on a cell phone and might be a lesbian. When her parents object to her moving to San Francisco, instead insisting that she will be married, God intervenes... in a kind of unexpected manner.
Produced as part of Milk Can's "The Receipt Plays," May 2004.
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92 Jonquil Lane |
A one-act play about a divorcing couple who, while packing up their house to split up and move, are visited by the oddly familiar young couple who are about to move in.
Produced by the Prospect Theatre Company, January 2003, director Jeff Stanley.
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FULL-LENGTH PLAYS |
SOMETHING BLUE |
On the eve of Lorna's wedding, she and her roommate Sam are visited by her drifter sister Berry, who is on the run from her mobby ex-boyfriend. Then they are taken hostage by her. Well, not exactly taken hostage, just not allowed to leave. OK, taken hostage. The sisters' opposing views on life are tempered a little by Sam's simple desire to be a good waitress/actress, and they are all figuring out a solution when ex boyfriends, fiancées and other complications show up. The play is about the nature of family, love, marriage and finding an identity that is all your own.
Characters: 3 women/3 men mid 20's to late 30's.
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From Bethany: "This is one I would love to go back to, as it's kind of sitcom-y now, but I think there is lots of room to create a theatrical story about two sisters who are polar opposites, and a dippy roommate. I love all these women, and even though I originally wrote the play years ago, they have stuck with me all this time and want to be reimagined in a more theatrical way. I'll get to it..."
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KRAZY GLUE DOES SO HOLD THE UNIVERSE TOGETHER |
Lilly's mother abandoned her family, and they are not doing so well. Her sister Fran moved back in to run the show, which she may be doing a little too stringently. Their slow little brother Frankie won't learn his fractions, and their father's inventions keep blowing up in the attic. Lilly may not go outside, but she has a rich inner life, and the paper clips she eats help her keep herself together. A donation solicitor may be the only person who can help her move on with her life--as sometimes a chance encounter changes everything.
Characters: 2 women/ 3 men, teens to 40. |
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