HASHTAG MAYHEM! "Well-paced, well-crafted, well-executed".

(Left to right:  Bryan Damske & Jeffrey James Ircink in CHOKING THE CHOAD IN BEL AIR.)


I've been away from my blog for a bit. Busy producing/acting/directing a series of short, dark plays I wrote under the collective title, HASHTAG MAYHEM! Reviews have been great and I'm extremely proud of the production. This is the first time I've produced my own work - fully-staged - and it was quite the task. The overwhelming satisfaction, for me, is not just the people who attended or the reviews, but it is the reality that what I had envisioned in my head while writing these 6 plays is what I'm seeing on stage. For that, I thank the directors, actors and Aaron Kopec of The Alchemist Theatre. Without their efforts and hard work, my words remain on the paper.

Our 3-week run closes this Thursday-Saturday, April 4-6 at The Alchemist Theatre in Bay View, Wisconsin. You can check out the review which appeared in the paper edition of The Shepherd Express here - as well as an in-depth review by the same author is his theater column. Curtains.

For production photos and detailed information you check out two sources - our production blog, and our Indiegogo fundraising campaign page. And you can still contribute and share the Indiegogo page. 7 days left.

If you're in the Milwaukee area, you can purchase tickets at the door but I advise you to get them online here. I have about 40 people attending on Friday and Saturday (total) and the show may be packed.

Everyone has a dark side. What's yours? Come play with us - or I'll find you. You can bet on it.

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Hashtage Mayhem. The Alchemist Theatre. Spring 2013.

 

 

#EVERYONE#HAS#A#DARK#SIDE. #WHAT'S#YOURS? The ball is in play. Director's meeting this weekend. Audition dates to be set. Venue picked. Promo video shot. HASHTAG MAYHEM - an evening of 6 short, dark plays by Jeffrey James Ircink. @ The Alchemist Theatre in Bay View, WI. March 21-23, 28-30, April 4-6. You'll laugh. You'll wince. And a nerve will be struck.

Produced by Babbling Bohemian Productions and The Horny Goat Hideway. Mark your calenders now. More sordid info to follow.

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FOOLS eat too, you know!

The cast of FOOL FOR LOVE (minus Derek, who had to run home)...lunching between the matinee and our last show this past Saturday. Left to right:  Bethany Erin Peters, Alex Grindeland, Gracie Lee, Aaron Kopec & Erica Case, owners of The Alchemist Theatre in Bayview, WI and me.

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FOOL FOR LOVE after-show shenanigans!

Great show last night at The Alchemist Theatre in Bayview. What an honor for me...none of these people have seen me in a full stage production. Left to right:  Tina (my best friend from h.s.) and her mom, Judy, me, Aunt Ev & Uncle Bob Nowak (dad's youngest sister), Joe Nowak and his lady, Ashley, and Tani, my Aunt Ev's childhood friend from Muskego.

Didn't want the evening to end. Come to the show....click here for ticket information. We run this weekend and close on June 18th. Interesting sidestory...the Nowak's bumped into their friends from Grafton who had read the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel review and scooped up tickets pronto. The gentleman (or "guy") said we should do our show at the Milwaukee Rep (ha) AND this couple's son married Jessica Lange's niece - Lange has been partnered with the FOOL FOR LOVE playwright/actor Sam Shepard for decades. Small world.

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New FOOLS meet old FOOLS.

FOOL FOR LOVE cast at Riverside Theatre in Iowa City 1997, left to right: Christie Katol (MAY), Levy Lee Simon (EDDIE), Jeffrey James Ircink (MARTIN), Luis Sierra (THE OLD MAN).

FOOL FOR LOVE cast at The Alchemist Theatre in Bayview (Milwaukee) 2011, left to right: Bethany Ligocki Peters (MAY), Alex Grindeland (EDDIE), Derek Burton Morris (EDDIE), Jeffrey James Ircink (THE OLD MAN).

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Revisiting "Fool For Love" at The Alchemist Theater, June 3-18.

That's me (above, left) as MARTIN in Riverside Theater's production of "Fool For Love" , April 1997. I haven't acted in a fully-staged theatrical production since 2004. It's about time. Fourteen years later, I'll be making my Milwaukee stage debut as THE OLD MAN (haha...amusing) in The Alchemist Theatre's production of Sam Shepard's "Fool for Love", June 3-18. The playwright, on turning into his father:

'You think about it, you talk about it, analyse it, and then all of a sudden you have become the thing that you were most vehement against. It's very Greek. They invented this shit. Or at least gave it a name.'

One of a number of actor/playwright Sam Shepard's tour-de-force plays on how fucked up life can be, "Fool for Love" was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and won an Obie for Best Play. His other plays include: "True West", "Buried Child" (nominated for a Tony, 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Drama), "A Lie of the Mind" (Drama Desk award), "Curse of the Starving Glass" and "The Tooth of Crime". Here's the New York Times review for "Fool for Love" from 1983.

What Sam Shepard specializes in is the ill-made play. He's a genius at it, an originator whose creative impulse owes more to the fractures of life than to the strictures of drama. Often critically dismissed because he doesn't write by the rules: long considered willful, intractable, amok - for all that, the truth is that Sam Shepard is the single most important American playwright since Eugene O'Neill. - Boston Globe, December 15, 1985

The Alchemist Theatre & Bayview Lounge is located in the heart of Bayview (suburb immediately south of Milwaukee). It was voted #1 theater venue in 2010 by WISN-TV, runner-up in the Shepherd Express' Best of Milwaukee/2009, and co-owner Aaron Kopec was voted by the Shepherd Express as Entrepreneur of the Year in 2008 and runner-up in 2009.

Get your tickets here (and for more info on the the production). Get'em now. Click "TICKETS" on the left panel. Otherwise I will hunt you down. Oh -I have the least amount of dialogue in the play AND I never leave the stage. I sit in a rocker observing the action (I speak softly and infrequently and carry a carry a glass of bourbon). Alex Grindeland - Eddie, Bethany Peters - May, Derek Burton Morris - Martin.

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