By Nick Flynn
Directed by Marc Beaudin
September 29-30, October 1 and October 6-8, 2023.
Season ticket holders may choose their seats beginning on Monday, August 21. General ticket sales begin on Friday, August 25. All seats are reserved. Season tickets available until October 8. The link is on the 2023-2024 Season page.
Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins, by award-winning memoirist and poet Nick Flynn, will kick off the 2023-2024 season at Livingston’s Blue Slipper Theatre. The Blue Slipper is located at 113 E. Callender St.
The production, directed by Marc Beaudin, will run weekends, Sept. 29 through Oct. 8.
The play features four strangers who meet on a New York City sidewalk during a blackout. Unable to make sense of their predicament, let alone alter it, the four float aimlessly in and out of seeming reality only to find themselves even more lost when the electricity finally comes back on.
“Once again exploring the tenuous membrane that separates comfortable everyday existence from the desperate margins of society, Flynn portrays an urban dystopia unnervingly similar to our own world while poignantly tapping into the loneliness and peril of city life.”
The seriocomic play features four strangers who meet on a New York City sidewalk during a blackout. “Gideon,” played by Cornelius Murphy, finds himself locked out of his apartment, stranded on the street with nothing but a television and the company of three others: the specter-like “Alice” (Quenby Iandiorio), ringleader of the neighborhood; “Esra” (Emilee Frase), a young girl whose mother is M.I.A.—again; and “Ivan” (Hugh Kinslow), a marooned businessman with stories to tell. A mysterious “Voice” from an intercom (Clem Lighthall) seems to have control of the four, but who or what is it, and what game is it playing?
The playwright, Nick Flynn, has published twelve books, most recently This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire and Stay: Threads, Collaborations, and Conversations, which documents 25 years of his collaborations with artists, filmmakers and composers. He is also the author of five collections of poetry, including I Will Destroy You (2019), and has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Library of Congress. His acclaimed memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City was made into a film starring Robert DeNiro, and has been translated into fifteen languages.
The New York Times Book Review notes that “Flynn’s talents are considerable—he has a compelling voice and a wry sense of humor.”
The director, Marc Beaudin, has worked in theatre for 25 years as a director, scenic designer and educator at venues ranging from unheated warehouses and art galleries to a 1000-seat, state-of-the-art theatre. Directing favorites include Macbeth, Amadeus, The Exonerated, and The Women of Lockerbie, as well as the Blue Slipper productions of Talk To Me Like the Rain: Short Plays of Tennessee Williams, No Exit, Chekhov’s Squirtgun: Short Plays of Anton Chekhov, Dracula and Proof.
The Blue Slipper has been bringing a wide-range of community theatre to Livingston since 1964. For more information, call 222-7720.