Stephen Tortora-Lee

THE OLDEST and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.   – H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror In Literature When I think of Howard Phillips (H.P.) Lovecraft’s Weird Stories I think of very intelligent people, facing the unknown. An unknown that is not known [...]

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The Thing About Dan, which ran last month, was the first play mounted by Slightly Altered States Theater Company,  written and directed by Sari Caine Glickstein, created in collaboration with actor Michael Hurst (Paul) and improviser Louis Kornfeld ( Zip). The production was very warmly received and many of the nights the cast was playing to sold-out [...]

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  David Lawson’s solo show, VCR Love, had a limited engagement recently at The Brick Theater.  Bold and innovative, this show explored the consequences, both positive and negative, of the increasing availability of porn in American society as seen through his own experiences. The story begins with Lawson’s first “exposure” to explicit nudity at the impressionable [...]

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LOL:The End – Beginning And End (2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)

by Stephen Tortora-Lee February 29, 2012 Dance

What do cell phones, natural disasters, and the industrial revolution have in common? LOL: The End (written and performed by Michi Ilona Osato, Una Aya Osato, and Yoshimasa “Sen” Osato) sets out to investigate how the world got to where it is, starting with Man’s earliest domination over nature in order to create shelter, and [...]

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The Terrible Manpain Of Umberto MacDougal: The Total Package Of Manpain (2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)

by Stephen Tortora-Lee February 26, 2012 Festivals

Because Frigid slots are limited to 60 minutes some shows have needed to trim their original running time.  Cutting down some of the material can sometimes break a beautifully crafted piece, as you just can’t fit it all in. Not so for Emleigh Wolf who has been bringing The Terrible Manpain of Umberto MacDougal to various [...]

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Coosje: The “Play” Is The Thing, But Each “Thing” Is A Collaboration (2012 FRIGID NEW YORK FESTIVAL)

by Stephen Tortora-Lee February 25, 2012 Festivals

A pear is always more than just a pear and a man is more than the sum of his collaborations.   Coosje the story of Claes Oldenburg (played by Steven Conroy) and his long-time collaborator and wife Coosje van Bruggen (played by Julie Congress). It is also the story of a Pear who is “self-aware” [...]

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23 Feet In 12 Minutes: Redux – A Fringe Festival Success Story

by Stephen Tortora-Lee November 16, 2011 Festivals

15 months ago I had the opportunity to review 23 Feet In 12 Minutes as it premiered in the 2010 NYC Fringe Festival.   Since then this show has made it to New Orleans and back with some wonderful work-shopping in the Cape Cod Theatre Project along the way. It came back to New York as [...]

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Pawn (Fringe Festival 2011)

by Stephen Tortora-Lee August 28, 2011 Festivals

When is a tragedy not a tragedy? When we realize the Only Way Is Forward and healing takes place on a lot of levels. In the folk-rock musical Pawn, by Karmia Chan Cao (playwright, director, and composer) we see a Canadian family split apart twice in 10 years, first by the oldest son being taken from [...]

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74 Minutes Of Stereo Radio Theater (Fringe Festival 2011)

by Stephen Tortora-Lee August 26, 2011 FRINGE 2011

    Schadenfreude, the German word meaning  pleasure derived from the pain and suffering of others could almost be a word to describe the dry, witty, quite thoughtful, and generally dark comedy of  74 Minutes of Stereo Radio Theater. This concept was wonderfully explained in Avenue Q  in 2003, but has been referenced in many other [...]

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Virtual Solitaire (Fringe Festival 2011)

by Stephen Tortora-Lee August 24, 2011 Festivals

As we get closer and closer to the futuristic realm of cyberpunk, that has been active in our collective imaginations since we first started understanding what computing was or what it could be, one has to ask the questions: What about the people it could hurt?  Would we even know what it meant to feel that [...]

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Romeo & Juliet: Choose Your Own Ending (Fringe Festival 2011)

by Stephen Tortora-Lee August 21, 2011 FRINGE 2011

  Just about everyone in Western culture has read or seen a rendition of Romeo and Juliet, and one thing that resonates most about this Shakespearean classic is the unfairness of the couple’s tragic ending.  But what if you could jump in at critical times and nudge the characters into making different decisions?  Would that be enough [...]

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Anna & The Annadroids: Memoirs Of A Robot Girl (Fringe Festival 2011)

by Stephen Tortora-Lee August 20, 2011 Art

Meet Anna.  In Anna & The Annadroids: Memoirs of a Robot Girl – an  interesting combination of modern dance, techno music, social commentary, science fiction, multimedia, and a bit of burlesque – Anna  is an android who is made of  ”pure synthetic organic flesh”.  So instead of being made only of metal with a “mind [...]

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A Way Of Man (Fringe Festival 2011)

by Stephen Tortora-Lee August 18, 2011 Festivals

Once upon a time…  How that can roll off one’s tongue with a savor that is like the sun kissing your forehead on a sweet summer’s night, as the glowing orb burrows into its deep red cave in the sky.  This is truly storytelling (with properly credentialed and sincere storytellers from the world famous International [...]

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You’ve Ruined A Perfectly Good Mystery! (Fringe Festival 2011)

by Stephen Tortora-Lee August 18, 2011 Festivals

One thing about Fringe Festival is that it encourages experimentation among the already experimental crowd of off-off-Broadway and regional theatre troops from around the country.  You can read more about their developmental process here, really quite fascinating actually. This piece is interesting in part because of the comedy interwoven into the structure (a fun mix [...]

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The Custodian (Fringe Festival 2011)

by Stephen Tortora-Lee August 17, 2011 Festivals

    What’s the difference between a janitor and a custodian? It’s all about a sense of responsibility for what you care for.  The Custodian is a story about trying to find one’s way in the world, the complexities of love, and one normal man’s struggle to learn how to fight back against the messy [...]

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The Unhappiness Plays (Fringe Festival 2011)

by Stephen Tortora-Lee August 16, 2011 Festivals

Negative Space Sometimes Shows Us The Way Out Sadness is a universal and necessary part of the human condition, whether you experience it from losing a job, a loved one or just find yourself at end of your rope.  But is “unhappiness” different than “sadness”?   Can lives be ruined when they are unhappy much more [...]

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The Shorebound Swim With A One Click Kick – It’s A Tough Swim, But Worth It (FRIGID New York 2011)

by Stephen Tortora-Lee March 2, 2011 Festivals

Have you ever had one of those dreams? Where you’re having one crazy twist after another, and you can’t wait to see what will happen next… and then you wake up confused not sure what it meant and it even might fade away soon after waking, but it leaves these potentialities of ideas buzzing in [...]

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