I’m pleased to announce that my new comedy, The Spectre of Death, will be performed by the Crowded Kitchen Players at Between the Lines Studio Theatre in Allentown, Pennsylvania from September 22 through October 1. It’s a play about a fading ’80s metal-band star and his unexpected daughter. Though it’s not a musical, I did have to write one song for the performance: the fictional mega-hit “We Are Going to Rock You…to Death!” I can’t wait to see what this talented troupe does with the script.
Thanks to critic Kathy McAuley for her kind and clever writeup of our Allentown table read of The Last Days of Cleopatra.
“It was all over the top – sort of like a party,” actress Sharon Ferry told McAuley. “I liked the sense of fun; it was so spirited, no subtlety, just flat out fun.”
Here is the cast list from last Sunday’s ( Feb 25th) table reading of Breseis.
What a wonderful table full of talent. Breseis is set in a small upstate New York college and features “Bree” who cannot be seen or heard by her awful professor.
I started with the character, Breseis from Homer’s Iliad and somehow ended up with a present day play set in a college. how? I don’t know. Catie Carlisle did a terrific job of being a young student and a magical creature from another time all at once.
Christina Masoni- Valerie Rigbee
Bre – Catie Carlisle
Harrison Robb – Brian MacDonald
Calvin Robb- Brian Lyons-Burke
Richard Geissen – Rich Follett
Lukas- Fletcher Lowe-
Hamilton – Colton Chaney
Tara – Alexandra Sage
James- Gabriel Alejandro
Cameron – Sarah Cushman
Yvonne- Stephanie Elza Yee
Tricia Katie Ganem
Folksinger- Charlie B.
I may have have finally found a place to put my smattering of knowledge of Greek myth. There is a minor character in Homer’s Iliad named Breseis. You might remember her as the war prize of Achilles. She was later seized by Agamemnon, which led to Achilles sulking in his tent and allowing the Trojans to start winning the battle of Troy. Breseis is a pivotal character in the Iliad, but she does not utter a single word, and that struck me. I’m in the middle of writing a new play about her. I’m setting it at a college in upstate New York, and I’m giving her plenty to say.
I’ve written a new comedy called The Spectre Of Death. [Sic.] It’s about a 60-year-old heavy-metal rocker living off the royalties from his one big hit who receives a letter from a 20-year-old woman claiming to be his daughter. Hijinks ensue. I’m pleased to say that Ara Barlieb, the artistic director of The Crowded Kitchen Players in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, has committed to giving this show a three-week run this summer. I know they’ll do a great job with it. The same company premiered my comedy Him and Jim several years ago.
My new-ish musical True North will have a staged reading at Catholic University in Washington, DC, on February 18 at 8 pm. The show, which is about two brothers who stumble upon an enchanted valley in Tennessee, will mostly be performed by singers who are new to me, but I’m pleased to be working with a few familiar faces, including the wonderful singer Alan Naylor, talented music director Josh Cleveland, and two admired colleagues I met through my women’s rights musical, 19: The Musical: singer/actor Meredith Eib and stage manager Elizabeth Dix. Catholic University dean Jay Brock will direct. The reading is open to the public, and I’d love to see you there. You should be able to find details closer to the date on my website or on Catholic’s events calendar.
My jazz band, Chaise Lounge, may be on permanent hiatus, but our music is having an afterlife—especially around the holidays. In years past, our numbers have been featured in made-for-cable holiday movies, and recently, Etsy used an instrumental version of our song “Trimmin’ the Tree” in one of their TV spots. (I also had an instrumental of my own picked up by Brach’s Candies for a holiday ad.) So if your ears perked up last month when a familiar tune came on the TV, it might have been one of ours.
Here is the link to all my plays!
https://newplayexchange.org/users/8897/charlie-barnett
This fall, I will be doing a workshop performance of my musical The Last Days of Cleopatra, a farce about the scandalous lovers Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and the making of one of the worst movies ever made: 1962’s Cleopatra. Everything about this show speaks to me: farce, the year, the preposterous egos in the film business, and togas. After two years of getting the rather heavy and dramatic When We Get There off the ground, I cannot wait to dig into a real musical comedy. Stay tuned.
The new Civil Rights musical that I started in April of 2020, When We Get There, has finally found its way to the stage, with two readings in New York’s West Village on June 27 and 28. I wrote the music and lyrics for the show, and my collaborators Richard Lasser and Robert P. Young III wrote the book. Our phenomenal cast included Q. Smith (from Broadway’s Come from Away), Nik Whitcomb, Amy Gaither Hayes, and the spectacular newcomer Shaakirah Nazim-Harris. Music director Mary Ann Ivan and director Pat Golden worked with brilliance and intensity to bring the piece together, and it paid off. The singing was top-notch, and to my eye, the show burned with drama onstage.
For the two weeks of rehearsals, I was on hand to transpose and revise the music—and to write two last-minute songs we decided we needed. But on performance days, I was in row 10…just watching. It was frustrating because I wanted to be playing, but I was determined to get my head out of the music and to experience the full show. It reminded me, once again, that theater is a collaborative art form, and that having your music interpreted by people with different experiences and sensibilities can bring out qualities and meaning in the work that you didn’t even know was there.
People keep asking what’s next for this show, and I’m afraid I don’t know the answer yet. We are hoping for a workshop or regional production, so please feel free to share the show’s website with any theatrical directors or producers who might be interested.