Cassandra Snow, Gadfly Artistic Director and director of The Wolves Above speaking, and I am so relieved and excited to finally be writing about my own show! I chose this script for a lot of reasons that artistic directors choose scripts for festivals that I won't bore you with--balance of sci-fi and fantasy and queer and feminist among them--but it was my first choice from the very beginning. This is one of the longer pieces in the festival, but I probably read it quicker than most of the other script submissions I was so intrigued.

The show is, basically, the story of a woman/robot named Venus who becomes self-aware due to a glitch in her programming. As she finds out more and more about the two men who created her and the war of 2092 that sent them underground, she starts forming her own thoughts and ideas for the first time to both heartbreaking and inspiring ends. I have been working with a dream cast in G Zachariah White, as a scientist with less than honorable intentions and methods, and Indira Addington as the aforementioned  Venus. Both White and Addington are back with Gadfly after performing in our fall production of Othello. Rounding out the cast as the idealistic but still so-very-human Booker is Nikolas Martell, an actor and poet who hasn't graced the Gadfly stage yet--but many will recognize his name as the poet who penned the poems from our hit show QUEER!

The Wolves Above goes up Friday the 13th, then shows again on the 15th, 19th, and 21st at Nimbus Theatre. I highly recommend a whole festival pass as all three of these fine talents show up in other shows, but tickets for a show, a night, or the festival are available here.

It's not often a show falls into our lap proclaiming to slay gender essentialism right in it's title--which is why when director Kristin Fox chose this show as her piece for the festival, our geeky little hearts rejoiced. A cutting look at various geek mythologies and how they as well as the cultures they create treat geek girls or anyone outside the binary, this show centers around endlessly endearing protagonist Sam as Gargle takes her through multiple dimensions to help him fight many platonic ideals--including masculinity and femininity.

A cast that is a wonderful mix of Gadfly returning talent Indira Addington, Steve Modena, G Zachariah White, and Fox herself alongside newbies Cheyne King and Lauren Diesch. Our Othello fight director Steve Looten Jr. also lends his talents to this show--but I don't want to give too much away!

Playwright Alex Reed gave us a great little blurb that we're just copying and pasting. He had this to say about his show: "Sci-fi is my favorite genre because, at its best, it can fundamentally change the way you perceive the universe. Space, time, probability: all can be shattered, pieced together, pulled, stretched, inverted, and twisted in every combination imaginable. But when it comes to social issues, much (though certainly not all) sci-fi can be disappointingly regressive. In universes of literally infinite possibility, it’s aggravating to see a sci-fi production reaffirm conventional gender norms, assuring us that society is fine just the way it is, rather than stimulate our imaginations through visions of better societies. When I created the character of Gargle McFury for a one-act I wrote for a Directing class, I wanted he/she to shatter all boundaries conceivable. He/she exists outside not only time, space, and probability, but outside every category we might use to classify a person, especially sex and gender. For this one-act, the second in the Gargle McFury saga, Gargle is able to share a little of this freedom from categorization and labeling with one of us mere mortals, a sci-fi fan who feels constrained from expressing her fandom because of her gender. I hope that this play can deliver on some of that promise of the sci-fi genre: the opening of possibilities and the expanding of the imagination."

This show opens on Saturday the 14th, just in time for the opening weekend party, and then performs the 16th, 20th, and 22nd. Tickets, as always, available here at Brown Paper Tickets.

See you at the shoW

Artistic Director Immanuel Elliott fell absolutely in love with Falling Awake the first time he read it, and once Cassandra read it she could see why. This wonderful story of Kip, who died in war and his boyfriend Landon, sister June, and best friend Billie meeting again exactly one year later is absolutely captivating as they attempt to find refuge in sleep. Their grief-induced dreams force them to face what they are running from, and force us to take a look into the unapologetic nature of dreams and how we cope with loss.

Playwright Alexis Scheer from Boston Conservatory had this to say about the conception of the script itself. "Falling Awake has been with me for a while. I started writing it when I was 17, a year after I lost a good friend in a scuba diving accident. My "Final Frontier" is Dreamland: a place we all rediscover every night. I'm interested in the new land our subconscious explores when we close our eyes," and here at Gadfly we can assure you that Scheer channeled her grief in a breathtaking, truly uniquely relatable way.

Director Mel Day was elated to receive this script, and has remained one of the most enthusiastic directors of "The Final Frontier Festival." Her cast, Lauren Diesch, Autumn Rasmus, Ian Donahue, and Jason Rodney have been pouring their hearts and souls into this work as they confront the issues of grief in the script, as well as the challenge of working on a fantasy piece. 

Don't miss Falling Awake at "The Final Frontier Festival", performing third in Set B on June 14th, 16th, 20th, and 22nd at Nimbus Theatre. Tickets are for sale here per show, night, or festival.