Who am I?

Where am I going?

What do I want from life?

All these are tough questions in their own right.  Now try having to answer them all for five people over the course of two measly little hours, in front of 60 people, in the basement of a pizza parlor.

Welcome to theatre my friends.

Take a script, cast it, make it interesting, believable, and stage it under dough spinners, the football game, and little Jimmy screaming at House of the Dead.  Don’t get me wrong…  House of the Dead is a GREAT video game, but when you are trying to examine the eternal varities, it does not a good companion make.

You see I act, direct, and fight choreograph for Impact Theatre of Berkeley.  A small, not for profit, nomadic (meaning we don’t own our own space… or even offices) theater company in the Bay Area.  We operate under 100 grand, waaaaaay under 100 grand, so that means there are two spaces we can afford to rent.

One is the Eighth Street Studio, a huge dance floor that is barely lightable and waaaay too big for most theatre productions to be staged with any sort of immediacy.

Or

La Val’s Pizzeria, which, inexplicably, has a “stage” in the basement.

Now maybe you are thinking that you can write off Impact as some small company putting on embarrassing works of drama that any high school could match with a drunk drama teacher and a coupla’ pimply faced leads who sang boy soprano in the church choir.

Well, motherfuckers, you are wrong.

We create some of the most vibrant, important theatre around.  You see we are dedicated to producing new works by emerging artists while keeping our ticket prices comparable to a movie ticket.  This keeps the operating budget in the toilet, and means that we all work for free. We are bringing a fresh, exciting experience to a new generation of theatergoers… and we are succeeding.  This is our sixth season, and we sell out most of our runs.

We ain’t a bunch of hippie fuckers trying to bring art to the masses.  We are doing plays about drug use, superheroes, raves, television, death, loss, and what it means to be human while doing drugs, discovering you are a superhero while your friend (that you’ve suffered a great loss with) dies in your arms all while being televised.

In short, relevant shit that grabs your ass and never lets go.

Sorry, let me get down from here.  Who knew soapboxes are so damn high?

So, La Val’s.

Not only does it have a giant screen TV that the locals can scream at…  Your kid (or your director) can play House of the Dead at amazingly loud decibels.

And this is where yours truly will be directing a new, world premiere play…

”Love is the Law.”

A romantic comedy set in a rave.  Oh, yeah.  A rave.  At least the basement part is right.

So look to these electronic pages every so often to check in with my sanity and see where we are at in answering all the above questions.

Remember beer and pizza makes theatre better.