Hustler, WI
by Asteroidb612 Theatre Company

Hustler, WI

"In an ideal synergy of show and space, the Asteroid B612 Theater Company is presenting Hustler, WI at Chashama & 217. The theater's entrance is right on 42nd Street, and the play's three characters (a prostitute, a john, and a pimp) look as if they could have wandered in from a pre-Giuliani Times Square."

Mike Keller, as Bags, pulls off a showy and complete performance... Ali Stover sells the audience on her sexuality and toughness...

Offoffline.com

nytheatre.com review

Martin Denton · August 5, 2006

I look forward each year to my trips to The American Living Room because I know that I will see theatre that I won't see anywhere else—work that will surprise, startle, challenge, and usually delight, because it's provocative, smart, genre-defying, and barrier-breaking.

This year—and note that the 2006 festival is being held at 3LD's space waaaay downtown instead of HERE's comfy Soho digs (which are undergoing extensive renovation this summer, hence the change in turf)—proved no exception. I attended two evenings of TALR and got to see four short theatre pieces, all of which seem ultra-worthy of continued development and future production.

A return trip a couple of days later exposed me to new works by playwrights and directors I am familiar with. Well, "new" may not be precisely accurate in one case: The Dorothy Building , by Trav S.D., was in fact written almost 20 years ago, and its feel—a fascinating blend of Ionescoan absurdism with hardcore sci-fi—may be somewhat jolting to those familiar with Mr. S.D.'s antic vaudevillian shows/persona. Directed by Michael Scott-Price and performed with precision by a cast of five, The Dorothy Building is a real find, introducing us to a strange, eerie place (an apartment house? an institution of some kind?) where everybody is named Dorothy and, as we discover, to which all of its denizens have been brought for reasons of a cosmic nature. Funny and spooky and always off-kilter, it's a weird study of conformity and bureaucracy; more fundamentally, it's just a compelling yarn, neatly told. The actors here are George Trahanis, Rich Renner, Nathasha Uspensky, Georgiana Avram, and Maggie Cino. Kudos to the crackerjack design team, who made this performance feel much more polished than one might expect in the TALR lab setting: Kevin Dodd (sound), Joyce Liao (lighting), Renee Mariotti (costumes), and Scott-Price himself (set).

The Dorothy Building
In this absurdist play, the guests in a boarding house are all identical. And they say New Yorkers don't know their neighbors. - Around Town (Don't miss!) section of TIME OUT NY August 3-August 9, 2006 Issue.

"campy sci-fi rhapsody" – Backstage (from review of "The Dorothy Building" by Trav S.D.)

Taking in Two One-Acts at the American Living Room
Kevin Doyle's Fo(x)y Friends and Trav SD's The Dorothy Building

American Theater Web Review                  8/10/2006

While construction continues on the permanent home it now owns, HERE Arts Center is presenting their annual "American Living Room Festival" a little further at the recently opened 3LD Arts and Technology Center downtown on Greenwich and Rector Streets. While the hallway leading to the theater might lead audiences to think they've inadvertently wandered onto a set for the original "Star Wars" movies, the black box at 3LB nicely mirrors the Living Room's normal home, and in fact this year, couches are used as the first row of seating for the Festival that runs through the end of the month.

A trip to the Living Room is always an invigorating experiment for theatergoers. Artists are given two performance slots to present works-in-progress that can range from multimedia fantasias to new dance-theater pieces.

Earlier this week, two one-acts took to the stage at 3LD – Kevin Doyle's Fo(x)y Friends and Trav SD's The Dorothy Building.

Trav SD 's vaguely "Twilight Zone"-ish The Dorothy Building is something of a conundrum at this juncture. The piece is set at the reception area of a sort of automaton-filled office building, manned by people all known as Dorothy.

Dorothy 19 (an able Maggie Cino) pretends to answer silent phones until the organization's founder Dorothy 1 (played with panache by George Trahanis) arrives. #1 is there to greet a new recruit, who will become Dorothy #13545. Even as she anticipates the new arrival, #1 worries about her failing health and implies that #19 might be chosen as her successor.

When the new recruit – a drunken businessman - arrives, he fights against the transformation that he discovers he's about to undergo. The strain of inducting this man (who's brought to life by the rubber-faced and bodied Rich Renner) proves to be too much for Dorothy #1. It's her time to die, and this is where "Building" baffles. The performer playing #1 moves upstage and in a dim pink light removes his white dress and changes into khaki shorts and loudly patterned shirt. Dorothy #1 has returned to being a man, and extols the freshness that he feels, awaking from what he perceives as a long nap or a kind of frozen, suspended animation. As he departs, Dorothy #19 assumes leadership of the organization and the newest recruit arrives to take her place at the switchboard, his transformation into female creature being complete.

On one level, theatergoers might interpret "Building" as a sort of allegory about the importance of men discovering their feminine sides. Another way of interpreting the play would be to see it as a sort of metaphor for homosexuality (after all "friend of Dorothy" is a long-standing euphemism for gayness). The fact that Dorothy 1's return to masculinity creates such joy in the character would make this latter interpretation deeply troubling. One hopes that Trav SD will expand what he has started in "Building" – an intriguing work-in-progress.

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The American Living Room continues through August 30 at 3LD Arts & Technology Center (80 Greenwich Street). For further information, including complete schedule and ticketing, visit: www.here.org.
-- Andy Propst