A Review of Revenge, Part 2
from NYTheatre.com

by Martin Denton · December 9, 2005
The funniest new holiday comedy in town right now is-of all places-at the tail end of a bill of short plays called Revenge 2. Entitled Blue Christmas, this giddy romp by Scott Baker is about a department store Santa with a secret, one that I will not give away except to tell you that it's tied in with the cockeyed notion that faking your own death is the best revenge of all. Baker's off-kilter, joyous yuletide tale is populated with an outrageous gay elf named Mistletoe, played to perfection by Mike Dressel; a caustic but grounded store employee named Irene (Alyssa Simon at her deadpan best); a harried store manager (Bill Green); a very pregnant customer who may or not be having Santa's baby (Billie Davis); and, as the unlikeliest of Santas, the delightful Stephen Bittrich. I laughed out loud more times than I could count at Baker's playful jokes.
It's a merry finish to a program that's as eclectic and varied as anything on stage in NYC right now. True to form, TheDrillingCompaNY have once again enlisted eight playwrights to create new work on a single theme, in this case the eponymous notion of revenge. (A previous bill on the same subject played earlier this season; read about it here.) The items here range from Kate McCamy's exploration of a law suit gone awry, The Deal, in which a documentary filmmaker and his cameraman sue each other in an attempt to end their squabbling; to Tom Strelich's intriguing Still Life #2, which depicts (I think) God's awesome revenge on a blasphemous artist; to Katharine Clark Gray's dark satire Served Cold, which imagines a company whose business is to send out nasty items (e.g., cockroaches, dead flowers, feces from a variety of animals) as "gifts" to ex-friends and/or enemies of customers (if this company doesn't already exist in real life, somebody is going to seize upon it now; let's hope Ms. Gray gets the royalty she deserves for dreaming it up!).
Stephen Bittrich (the same fellow who wears the Santa suit in Blue Christmas) has written Bee for this collection; it's a fascinating, futuristic thriller about a man who has been summoned for interrogation but doesn't seem to know why. Bittrich plumbs deeply into the idea of revenge, comparing and contrasting it with instinct: does a bee, when it stings, exact revenge or merely fulfill pre-programmed survival mechanisms? Does a murderous, scorned lover? Bee is acted with splendid precision by Karen Tsen Lee and Ron Dreyer (as the interrogator and the interrogated, respectively) under Dan Teachout's direction.
Thor's Hammer, by Nicholas Gray, takes place in the warden's office of a prison, where an inmate has been brought in for questioning regarding the recent murder of his cellmate. It turns out to be a crime of passion-but the reason that the prisoner has taken revenge is a neat surprise. Don Carter is spookily convincing as the prisoner; Bill Homan plays the warden.
The two most powerful plays on the bill are also the darkest. P. Seth Bauer's Stop the Lawns is a disturbing slice of life, set in a basement where three New England kids who are bored with mowing lawns are hanging out. The way they decide to fill their time leads them down a most unexpected path; this play packs a real wallop, especially as we understand that it's the very emptiness of these young men's existence that seems to be the source of their explosive malaise. Gabriele Forster directs Tobias Segal, Alessandro Colla, and Michael Schreiber to stunningly effective performances in this jolting and taut drama.
Medea Unharnessed, by Molly Rice, revisits perhaps the most famous revenge story of all time. Structured meticuloously, the play gives us Medea and Jason narrating bits of their history in spare, poetic, but very accessible language. Catchwords in Jason's version, especially (like "witch" and "barbarian"), help us understand Medea's wrath in a way that more traditional renderings of Euripides seldom achieve: condensing the story to its starkest elements yields a savage potency. Kara-Lynn Vaenie is the director, with Heather Anderson and John Giampetro impressive as the legendary lovers-turned-enemies.
 Revenge 2 sports a very effective unit set by Rebecca Lord that adapts easily to the various locales required by the eight plays. Miriam Nilofa Crowe's lighting is appropriate throughout as well. All in all, it's another anthology evening that TheDrillingCompaNY can be proud of.

From the nytheatre.com article on TheDrillingCompany Artistic Director, Hamilton Clancy:

nytheatre voices

Hamilton Clancy

Hamilton Clancy is Artistic Director of TheDrillingCompany.  Since their inception, the company has, each season, presented an evening of short one-acts joined together by a common theme or 'word'. 
TheDrillingCompany is in its fourth year. Could you tell us a bit about how it came about and who was involved in its beginnings?
The idea emerged while on a weekend trip with an actress I had begun dating. I reflected before renting a car that I would learn whether she and I should continue dating by how well things went 'in the car' . During the weekend I shared this and we laughed about how true it was. How you get along in a car is telling for relationships. My date suggested we write a play set in a car, but not being a playwright I thought it might be a long time before I got around to it. When I got back to town, someone called and told me they had $800 dollars and wanted to know if I knew a show we could do. I thought about the car. I returned the call from Jenifer Chrysler (the Chrysler) who wanted to do some new work with quality actors and directors and I proposed 'In the Car', an evening of new plays that were all set in a car. She asked what my company's name was. I pitched TheDrillingCompany because we were 'drilling' into a theme. I called a dozen playwrights, and got nine plays. The DrillingCompany was born in three performances at The Producer's Club in Manhattan in 1999.
The date I had spent the weekend with acted in the first show, and after a year stopped being my girlfriend. Her name was Karen Kitz, and now it's Karen Kitz-Clancy.
Lizabeth Allen and Ross Stoner were co-founders. They helped me through the first two years and were instrumental in helping the company take shape. After about two projects I learned two things that were valuable: writers create best in seclusion, and if you treat every actor as if they're a star, they'll deliver performances worthy of it.
Each year you commission playwrights and artists to create new work around a common theme. How do you decide on the theme and especially how did you decide on this year's theme, Both?
The theme is a poetic choice for us. Like a word of poetry it's chosen because of an artist's intuition that it will generate greater reflection. As artistic director, I choose the themes normally after some review with other core company members. In choosing themes I listen, read and reflect. I try to get a sense of something that is universally topical: of the present moment but in some way not attracting focus in the moment.
I had been inspired about three years ago by the experience of a friend who was bi-racial who referred to herself as a BOTH. When we would have conversations, it struck me how she had to negotiate conflicts of identity in our culture because she was "more than one thing." As I reflected on the theme, I began to notice a similar negotiation around sexual identity for some; of professional identity for others. My theory is that the seeds for peaceful resolution of polarized peoples lie in the hearts of the individuals whose heritage is mixed with the two cultures.
Interestingly, what has been reflected in plays submitted is that the two different cultures most explored were two I was not even thinking of as cultures: men and women. Reflecting on identity caused female playwrights, obviously (and naturally, in retrospect), to reflect on pregnancy – which is a lot like being more than one.
How do you select your scripts and is there an open submission process?
We normally commission 20 to 25 playwrights to write plays on the chosen theme. When commissioning a writer, I offer him or her the story of how we were drawn to the theme and encourage them to write as it strikes them. I'm more interested in their reflections than my own but I want to give them an idea of how the theme was chosen so their imagination might be unexpectedly inspired in a certain way. I give writers six weeks to compose their new work, and offer our services for editing and review during those six weeks. After we receive plays, we gather together and read them as a company in what I call a Read-A-Loud. At the Read-A-Loud, every play we receive is read aloud in a cold reading format by actors. I also employ a dramaturg to read plays outside of the Read-A-Loud, to get the perspective of the reader's ear as well as the actor's. I then poll core company members on their reflections and try to determine which plays land together best as a group. We often have an embarrassment of riches.
Once you have decided on the plays, how do you decide on the sequence and how to create them into a full evening?
In the past, I have always tried to begin the presentation with something I don't know if the audience will accept because (perhaps) the form is unusual; to conclude the first act with our most joyful, or humorous work; to open the second act with our most dramatic or thought provoking work; and to conclude the evening with the piece that, for me, most embodies the theme. Having said that, each collection requires a variety of compromises based on technical requirements of a play, availability of actors, and inclinations of other artists involved in a project. My goal is to create the most fluid singular evening of theatre, because I believe hearing several writers around a common theme is in part no different than hearing several actors around a common writer. There can be the similar unity of experience.
This season, in addition to these evenings of short plays at 78th St. Lab, the company will also be producing a full length, Big Apples at Access Theatre (downtown). How are you managing both ventures and why did the company decide to expand at this time?
Managing both ventures at the same time has been the real life "BOTH" for us.  We were approached by Access Theatre with the opportunity to further develop Big Apples (which we has already produced at 78th St. Theatre Lab). It was a difficult decision, but for me it came down to recognizing who we are and where we are. I think taking advantage of the chance to improve and develop the work and reputation of the company is wisest at this point in our growth. It's exciting to see some of the projects we have begun in short form develop into full evenings in the theatre. We'll do so again in January with a run of Mutant Sex Party, a play originally conceived for one of our shorter evenings by Ed Manning, which now we will co-produce with 78th Street Theatre Lab in a full-length form.
You have a long relationship with 78th St. Theatre Lab. How did this come about and what does this venue and its resources give to the company?
We began at 78th Street Theatre Lab as a renting company in the year 2000. They had some spare nights available that another theatre was not using. We produced our evening on another company's set, as a lot of young companies find themselves doing. We brought a longer residency in at the end of the same year, and artistic director Eric Nightengale began giving our company priority in reserving space at the theatre because he sensed our artistic sensibilities were harmonious. 78th St. Theatre Lab has a fantastic reputation and legacy for growing theatre work from the ground up. Eric Nightengales's curating of that space is one of the most unheralded achievements in New York theatre.
We have been "in residence" at the theatre for the past two years. The Lab gives us a place to call home. Our audience and our designers have become accustomed to the space and its inventive possibilities. The area serves the company geographically as a kind of mid-point between a lot of different cultural influences. The Lab has access to resources we do not and vice versa. We share them with one another with the common goal of providing the opportunity for something good to begin. We have found that creation takes two fundamental elements: time and space. The Lab offers us both, affordably, at different times and in different ways. We, in turn, try to create the best work possible with the other resources we are able to gather.
You are an actor and a director. Which are you currently finding more satisfying and why?
I find acting more satisfying when I am in a satisfying role. What actor wouldn't? The same is true of directing – I find it immensely satisfying when I am directing a great play with good actors. The real question, it seems to me, is which are you most satisfied doing when the task is common to you? Right now, for me, the acting challenges I find most satisfying are harder to come by – because they are so rare. I decided when I began the company that the only way to control the quality of your artistry is to make the highest quality decisions in the work that comes to you. Right now, I'm drawing directing challenges. It takes such time and patience.

Windows on the World, written by Peter Kelly and directed by Diego Daniel Pardo, takes a difficult subject and makes it funny, satirical, and heartfelt. This dark comedy takes a look at socialite Inez Perce-Shallow-DelaPentaloon, her children Martha and Stewart, her ex-husbands, her superficial sycophants, and a cater-waiter, and how they live their lives on September 10, 11, and the aftermath. Inez is the social-climbing, often married and hilariously vain woman who is the centerpiece of the show: "I am a woman, and there are limits. And it pisses me off." She is a woman and the audience can certainly hear her roar.

Windows artfully brings to life the hilariously shallow needs and wants of Inez and company, while one taxi driver plots his jihad, another Muslim taxi driver changes his mind, and the cater-waiter wonders why the hell he moved from New Mexico to live in New York. After September 11, they must all attempt to rebuild their lives as the city is flattened around them.

The cast does an excellent job with the material. Carol Halstead and Elizabeth Flax give terrific performances as Inez and her housekeeper, Dizzy, and Getchie Argetsinger is remarkable as Penny Henny, the Greek chorus of the play. David Pixley also does a commendable job in four very different but funny roles. There is a splendid score by Thom Garvey, which creates and sustains the mood from scene to scene.

The staging is somewhat experimental and quite cartoonish, but it is effective and adds to the satire. At times, it is hard to hear the actors over the sound and the action moves so fast that it is sometimes difficult to follow. The first act is stronger than the second, but the story is marvelously and sharply written. Filled with alliterations and verse, the text is lyrical and resonates. This show is not a dirge on September 11, it is a testament to the resiliency of humankind, and how we must all "fumble onward together-and you can't fight that."