THE ALLEY THEATRE
www.alleytheatre.org
Gregory Boyd, Artistic Director
Dean R. Gladden, Managing Director
 

PRESENT

the World Premiere of

THE MONSTER AT THE DOOR

A New Play by Rajiv Joseph

Directed by Daniella Topol

April 29 through May 29, 2011
 

Neuhaus Stage

A MONSTER BALL

A Social Commentary on the World Premiere of Artist

Rajiv Joseph 's The Monster at the Door at the Alley Theatre

By Theresa Pisula
theresa@houstontheatre.com
May, 2011

What is it about this week?  Something weird is happening and I can’t quite put my finger on it.  Is it because the President of the United States Barack Hussein Obama successfully defeated and killed Osama Bin Laden by conducting a secret military operation?  Is it because it is the week of the royal celebration where the Duke of Cambridge Prince William Arthur Philip Louis, second in the line of succession to the British monarchy wed his beautiful princess bride Duchess of Cambridge Catherine Elizabeth Middleton?  No, no I don’t think that’s quite it. 

Is it because my favorite TV show GLEE showed their fabulous Lady Gaga episode this week?  Maybe.  Or is it because this is the weekend of the Manny Pacquiao – Shane Mosley fight at the MGM Grand Arena?  Wow, that was a sight to behold.  The stadium was packed with little monster gamblers bowing down to their rock god legend Manny Pacquiao, who was wearing neon yellow gloves which symbolized his fight against world poverty.  The same gloves that defeated his most celebrated hyped-up fight (to date) against Sugar Shane Mosley (Floyd who?).  One of the signs prominently displayed during the event was “Manny Pacquiao for President.”  In Las Vegas, Manny Pacquiao is king.  In the Philippines, he is an upcoming congressman and possibly a future president.

But you know what?  It’s none of the above.  I keep trying to ponder, what is it that makes this weekend so weird?  Is it because I spent my Saturday night at the emergency room instead of watching the Manny Pacquiao fight which I paid $70 for on Pay-Per-View?  Or is it because we won the Daily Four Texas Lottery?  No, no, I don’t think that’s it either.  What makes this week so bizarre and weird is because it is the week of the World Premiere of Rajiv Joseph’s The Monster at the Door at the Alley Theatre.

Alley Company Artist and Pulitzer finalist Rajiv Joseph is currently enjoying an astonishing year, with three plays opening in the next few months.  Gruesome Playground Injuries, which premiered at the Alley October 2009, opened on January 31 at Second Stage in New York City, featured Jennifer Carpenter and Pablo Schreiber.  His award-winning Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo was primed for its Broadway debut on March 31 and features Robin Williams. Rajiv's newest play The Monster at the Door (whose previous working title was The Medusa Body) was developed through the Alley Theatre's New Play Initiative, and I saw its world premiere on May 4, 2011 on the Neuhaus Stage.

 

In Rajiv Joseph's The Monster at the Door, meteors are falling, Sirens are calling, and priceless works of art are disappearing from the global headquarters of Connor Fergueson and White, a securities firm with blood on its hands. In this darkly funny play, five very different people are drawn together as the world around them crumbles, and their dreams of health and prosperity are threatened by something terrifying, just outside their door. It contains profanity, violence and adult (not-for-children) situations.  It is recommended for mature audiences.  

The Monster at the Door was directed by Daniella Topol, who made her Alley Theatre debut. Performances on the Neuhaus Stage begin on April 29, 2011 opens officially on May 4, and runs through May 29, 2011.

Last month, Rajiv Joseph was awarded a USA Fellowship. He was one of 52 artists, nine of them from the theatre world, given an unrestricted grant of $50,000. Winning artists were chosen from 302 nominated applicants and where awarded to those artists who "demonstrate artistic excellence, unique artistic vision and significant contributions to their fields."

"Like Gruesome Playground Injuries , Rajiv Joseph's new play is imaginative and conjures new stage worlds for artists and audiences," said Alley Theatre Senior Dramaturg and Director of New Play Development Mark Bly. "The Alley's collaboration with Rajiv is an extraordinary and unique one."

"Rajiv Joseph is one of the most exciting new voices in American Theatre and we are delighted to have him continue to work with the Alley Company" said Alley Theatre Artistic Director Gregory Boyd.

 

TV actress Portia who plays Maya in The Monster at the Door is familiar to audiences due to popular shows such as Ugly Betty, 30 Rock and Law & Order.  She has also been in several movies.  What makes her performance in The Monster at the Door memorable is because she plays an artist who is commissioned by Global Securities and Investment Company Connor Fergueson to create a colossal art piece.  Her work is to be displayed in the lobby of the global corporation’s headquarters.  Maya’s disdain for money and the evil it represents inspires her to utilize the million dollars she received from the corporation giant as the instrument to create her sculpture.  Hence, The Monster at the Door.

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Does anybody know what I really, really hate?  I hate money.  It's hot as hell out here New York but nobody can ever make me take off my leather!  I don't want your money, I want your soul, honey.

-----Transcribed from the words of Lady Gaga during one of her packed concert stadium nights at Madison Square Garden as seen on HBO (May 2011).

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Tonise commissions Maya to create a colossal art work that will be displayed in the lobby of Connor-Fergueson, a global securities and investment corporation.  (Pictured L-R) Portia as Maya and Rebecca Brooksher as Tonise in the Alley Theatre’s world premiere of The Monster at the Door. The Monster at the Door runs on the Alley Theatre’s Neuhaus Stage April 29 through May 29, 2011. For more information visit www.alleytheatre.org. Photo by Jann Whaley.

 

Rebecca Brooksher who plays Tonise is a proud New Orleans native.  Rebecca has been seen in popular TV shows such as Ugly Betty and has a recurring role on One Life to Live.  This season, she can be seen as Lana Timmerman on The Good Wife, and in the web series, The Confession directed by Kiefer Sutherland.  She is a Juilliard graduate (Group 34). 

In The Monster at the Door, Tonise is launched in a surreal journey that explores the mythic power of attraction, seduction and transformation.  Certain events surround her as she is transformed from a normal woman to one whose healing touch mysteriously leaves destruction and chaos.  Very much like Lady Gaga.

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Hands Up!  We've only got one more night together at Madison Square Garden Baby so you better dance!  Welcome to the Monster Ball.  Now Dance you mother-fxckers!!!

-----Transcribed from the words of Lady Gaga during one of her packed concert stadium nights at Madison Square Garden as seen on HBO (May 2011).

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JUST DANCE by Lady Gaga

Red One
Konvict
Gaga

I've had a little bit too much
All of the people starts to rush (start to rush babe)
A dizzy twister dance
Can't find my drink or man.
Where are my keys, I lost my phone.
What's going on, on the floor?
I love this record baby, but I can't see straight anymore.
Keep it cool what's the name of this club?
I can't remember but it's alright, alright.

Just dance. Gonna be okay.
Da-doo-doo-doo
Just dance. Spin that record babe.
Da-doo-doo-doo
Just dance. Gonna be okay.
Duh-duh-duh-duh
Dance. Dance. Dance. Just dance.

Wish I could shut my playboy mouth.
How'd I turn my shirt inside out? (Inside out babe)
Control your poison babe
Roses with thorns they say.
And we're all gettin' hosed tonight.
What's going on, on the floor?
I love this record baby, but I can't see straight anymore.
Keep it cool what's the name of this club?
I can't remember but it's alright, alright.

Just dance. Gonna be okay.
Da-doo-doo-doo
Just dance. Spin that record babe.
Da-doo-doo-doo
Just dance. Gonna be okay.
Duh-duh-duh-duh
Dance. Dance. Dance. Just dance.

And I ain't gonna' give it up, steady trying to pick it up like a call
I'm gonna hit it, I'm gonna hit it and flex and do it until tomorrow, yeah
Shorty I can see that you got so much energy
The way you twirling up them hips round and round
There's no reason at all why you can't leave here with me
In the meantime stay, let me watch you break it down.

Half psychotic, sick hypnotic got my blueprint it's symphonic.
Half psychotic, sick hypnotic got my blueprint electronic.
Half psychotic, sick hypnotic got my blueprint it's symphonic.
Half psychotic, sick hypnotic got my blueprint electronic.

Go. Use your muscle, carve it out, work it, hustle
I got it, just stay close enough to get it
Don't slow! Drive it, clean it lysol, bleed it
Spend the last dough (I got it)
In your Pocko (I got it)

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Oh dear Lady of The Monster Ball, you are such a source of inspiration to me.  However, personally, you will never be my queen.  In my eyes, the Queen will forever be Freddie Mercury.  Which I’m sure you will agree because you named yourself from one of Freddie’s monster hits Radio Gaga.  But you will forever be my divine lady of the Monster Ball.  With your hot sexy body and immense musical talent, you are someone I aspire to, and someone that Elton John has always wanted to be.

Now, you may ask, what has Lady Gaga got to do with The Monster at the Door?  The answer is: Probably nothing, except maybe for the fact that they’re both equally bizarre and a little confusing.  But then again, what isn’t nowadays?

Just like a lot of supernatural things such as Manny Pacquiao, Lady Gaga, Freddie Mercury, Princess Diana, Michael Jackson, the Beatles and The Monster at the Door, certain unexplainable powers continue to attract, mystify and seduce us.  For instance, we look at our past and we wonder how we ever considered Princess Diana’s wedding dress such a colossal representation of what was beautiful.  But that was the eighties.  This is the year 2011.  Whatever we are attracted to now, is what will shape our future.  Not that there’s anything wrong with the magnificent and sanctified Princess Diana.  History will now perceive her as the anti-fairytale.  And yes, Virginia, in the twenty-first century the anti-fairytale does exist.  It goes hand in hand along with your favorite Disney characters and fairy godmothers.  Or the label on Kate Middleton's wedding dress, which is an Alexander McQueen, can also be construed as an anti-fairytale.  Why?  Because Alexander McQueen committed his own death by suicide.  Ouch, Reality bites.  But isn't it just so.....enchantingly tragic?

In The Monster at the Door, Maya asks inquisitively and with much paranoia, “Do you know what death looks like?  I think Death is circling me.”  In these times Kate Middleton represents the beauty of life while Princess Diana represents the beauty of death.  But Death can be quite glamorous, you know, it just depends on how you look at it.  Just ask Princess Diana or Alexander McQueen.  It can be quite fabulously morbid or morbidly fabulous.  It all depends on your point of view.

As they are about to embark on a scuba diving expedition in Hawaii, Jesse explains to Fergueson, “I said, the baby is the baby.  And I am me.  And I said it just like that.”  Jesse is trying to rationalize to his newly pregnant wife that she simply has to differentiate between him and the new baby.  He is struggling to reconcile his new identification as a husband and father against his wife’s pre-occupation with their new child.  Jesse is brilliantly played by the striking Adam Green who has performed the New York Off-Broadway circuit.  He has a Masters of Fine Arts from New York University and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Harvard University. 

James A. Stephens plays Fergueson of Connor Fergueson, the Global Securities and Investment Company.  He has performed on Broadway, Off-Broadway and regional theatre.  TV credits include: In Treatment (HBO), Law & Order (NBC), All My Children, Another World and General Hospital.  He has been in several films which includes Sorcerer’s Apprentice (as Merlin), The Hard Way and The Last International Playboy.

And last but not least, there is Vince who is played by veteran TV actor Brian Reddy.  Vince is the security guard whose obsession with lottery tickets (the scratch-off kind), possesses him to steal The Monster at the Door.  After all, who will miss a million dollars especially if it’s displayed in the lobby as a work of art?  Brian Reddy has performed on Broadway and Off-Broadway.  He has been in several movies such as O Brother, Where Art Thou? Casino, Dante’s Peak, The Birdcage, Primal Fear and What About Bob?  TV performances include The Good Wife, Numb3rs, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Law & Order, Martin, Hope & Faith, Ed, Gilmore Girls and most notably, “The High Talker” on Seinfeld.

Don’t miss the bizarre and weirdly fascinating world of Rajiv Joseph’s The Monster At the Door.  The new play is directed by Daniella Topol and is now showing through May 29, 2011 at the Alley Theatre’s Neuhaus Stage.

Playwright Rajiv Joseph. Courtesy of TheatreWorks. Photo by Mark Kitaoka.  The Monster at the Door runs on the Alley Theatre’s Neuhaus Stage April 29 through May 29, 2011. For more information visit www.alleytheatre.org.

Rajiv Joseph Awarded USA Fellowship
RAJIV JOSEPH (Playwright) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, which opens on Broadway on March 31, 2011 with a cast featuring Robin Williams. Second Stage Theatre's off- Broadway production of Gruesome Playground Injuries (Alley Theatre 2009) opens January 31, 2011 featuring Jennifer Carpenter and Pablo Schreiber. Joseph was awarded the 2009 Kesselring Fellowship, received a Whiting Writers' Award in 2009 and was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for "Outstanding Play" for Animals Out of Paper. Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo also won five Backstage Garland Awards last year.

 

Daniella Topol Directs, Making Her Alley Theatre Debut

DANIELLA TOPOL (Director) is focused on directing and developing new musicals and plays. Her New York credits include Sheila Callaghan's Lascivious Something at Cherry Lane Mainstage, the off-Broadway commercial production of Susan Yankowitz's Night Sky , Judith Thompson's Palace of the End at Epic Theatre, the Women's Project and Productions of Trista Baldwin's Sand, Stanton Wood's The Snow Queen at Urban Stages, Jakob Holder's Housebreaking for the Cherry Lane Mentor Project (mentored by Chuck Mee), Sheila Callaghan's Dead City at New Georges, Peter Gil-Sheridan's Topsy Turvy Mouse for the Cherry Lane Mentor Project (mentored by Michael Weller), Zakiyyah Alexander's Sick? at Summer Play Festival, and Dreams This Way (Best of Raw Impressions Musical Selections). Regionally, she has directed the musical Pool Boy by Nikos Tsakalakos and Janet Allard at Barrington Stage Company; Instructions for Breathing by Caridad Svich at Passage Theatre; Kim Oler, Alison Hubbard, and Sean Hartley's world premiere musical of Little Women at Village Theatre and Forgetting by Trista Baldwin at The Playwrights Center. She has directed workshops of musicals at Goodspeed Musicals and Barrington Stage in conjunction with NYU's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program and readings and workshops for a number of New York companies including the Lark, New York Theatre Workshop, New Dramatists, NYU's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, Playwrights Horizons, Primary Stages, the Public, and the Roundabout. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon's directing program, Daniella has served as Artistic Program Director at the Lark Play Development Center, New Works Program Director at the National Alliance for Musical Theatre, Associate Producing Director of City Theatre Company and resident artist at HERE developing a new multi-media piece on floods called Water (Or the Secret Life of Objects) with Sheila Callaghan, Leah Gelpe, and Katie Down. Upcoming productions include Morini Strad by Willy Holtzman at City Theatre Company and Photograph 51 by Anna Ziegler at Theater J. Daniella is based in New York.

 

HOUSTON, TX – As part of the innovative partnership between the Alley Theatre and Ucross Foundation, last spring Rajiv Joseph was able to spend time at the Ucross Foundation writing The Monster at the Door. Ucross Foundation is a nonprofit organization which runs a prestigious retreat for writers, artists and composers in northern Wyoming.

ABOUT THE ALLEY THEATRE'S NEW PLAY INITIATIVE
The Alley Theatre's New Play Initiative facilitates the creative collaboration between playwrights, directors, actors, designers and dramaturgs during all stages of a new play's development. Central to this Initiative are readings, workshops, commissions, Affinity Series Symposiums and residencies. Three world premieres have been developed through this Initiative in the 2009-2010 season: Rajiv Joseph's Gruesome Playground Injuries, which ran October 16 to November 15, 2009, Jack Murphy, Gregory Boyd, and Frank Wildhorn's Wonderland, which ran January 15 to February 14, 2010, and Kenneth Lin's Intelligence-Slave , which ran May 23 to June 20, 2010. Along with The Monster at the Door, the Alley Theatre will produce the world premiere of Herbert Siguenza's A Weekend with Pablo Picasso as part of the 2010-2011 season. In producing these new plays, we intend to give each the fullest production values and support to bring forth and enhance the theatrical poetry and imagination that the playwright has poured into the play. This is the primary focal point and purpose of the entire New Play Initiative at the Alley Theatre - for the artists and audience to come together within the imagination of a living, working playwright and to help create a first production that will launch the new work to become what we all believe it will be - a play destined to become a classic for the future.

ABOUT ALLEY THEATRE AND UCROSS FOUNDATION
The Alley Theatre and Ucross established an ongoing, innovative partnership in 2009.  Each year they will create a writing residency for a playwright and a workshop that involves the playwright and the Alley Theatre artists to focus on a newly developed play.  Playwright Rajiv Joseph spent time at Ucross residency in Spring 2010.  Kenneth Lin, whose Intelligence-Slavehas its world premiere at the Alley in May 2010, had a highly successful writing retreat at Ucross in August 2009.

TICKET INFORMATION

Tickets to The Monster at the Door \start at $21. All tickets to The Monster at the Door are available for purchase at www.alleytheatre.org , at the Alley Theatre Box Office, 615 Texas Avenue, or by calling 713.220.5700.  Groups of 10 or more can receive special concierge services and select discounts by calling 713.220.5700 and asking for the group sales department. The added convenience of reservations by phone or Internet is available for a nominal fee. Tickets purchased in person at the Alley Theatre Box Office have a $1 building restoration fee.

The Monster at the Door is generously sponsored by Neuhaus Stage Season Sponsor Randall H. Jamail. The Alley Theatre is supported by the 2010-2011 season sponsor United Airlines, the official airline of the Alley Theatre.

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