The people I drink with in November
Bill McKinlay, Nick Wardigo, and Mark Knight, enjoying pints at Growlers, somewhere on Eighth Street
Some family matters have kept me from writing, blogging, and doing the sorts of things that I write and blog about, so to compensate, I drank with some theater people last week. Which was appropriate.
It started on Thursday night, when I hoisted a few pints with David O’Connor, local director, proponent of the arts, and bearded crime fighter. Among his many exploits, he directed the PlayPenn reading of Hum, back in 2010. Mostly, we mis-spent two hours arguing over the nature of marketing. He believes it involves a certain amount of lying, whereas I prefer to think of it as highly-filtered truth for money. The one point we agreed on was that Philadelphia theater is, as a rule, awful at it.
Friday night, Aurora and I went to see the Luna Theatre’s production of Quills. I like this play, partly because it poses some interesting questions regarding censorship from the viewpoint of some truly deplorable characters, and partly because it’s the only play I know where the script requires a naked man to be on stage for half the show. I first saw this play at the Wilma Theater in 1997, and I swear, over a quarter of the audience walked out at intermission. Sadly, nothing similar happened at Luna’s production; I guess it was a different crowd.
My buddy, Mark Knight, was in the show (no, he wasn’t naked), so we joined him for drinks afterward at a place called Growlers (it’s on Eighth Street, a few blocks south of South Street), which is also known as “the-bar-formerly-known-as-Vesuvio.” I mention that because I’d misspent more than one night in Vesuvio back it the day, and I couldn’t figure out why the bar was so damn familiar. Anyway, the bar is notable because it had a gas-fireplace and it played a lot of 70s British rock, notably, T. Rex and Led Zeppelin (coincidentally, we were also drinking with Luna’s General Manager, who is a woman named Slade).
Bill McKinlay joined us there, as he had seen the show earlier in the week and had no desire to see more male nudity. Bill and Mark are the two pillars of the MacKnight Foundation, the good people who produced my play, Snowglobe, last year. Bill is also the fellow who used to run the Brick Playhouse (a topic I’ve blogged about in the past), and he’s interested in putting together a similar program again. This is something that’s been in the works for some time, but now it looks like it’s getting off the ground. If you’re someone who’s interested in that sort of thing, you should check out the MacKnight Foundation’s FaceBook page.
And, as a reminder, Orbiter 3’s launch party is tonight at 9. If you’re not busy binge-watching Scandal tonight, you should show up and help me hoist a few.
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