Starving Artists:
The Plays
The Plays
Information on Starving Artists Theatre Company Productions:
Holding Back the Ocean (1991)
Director & Design: Colin Watkeys
"We understand one another, Madame Pele. You were out of your
mind with lust. I know the feeling. Gouge and scrape and spew fire, making
a bed for your man, a bed that burns, a bed to melt the skin. We've both
come home and the ocean can't reach us here.
The whole island floats in strangeness. Sharks and shark gods circle beyond the reef. We hiked across the lava floors of Kilauea, and when we knew we were alone we got naked and lay on the warm rock, listening to the murmur of the volcano, feeling her waiting. And once, near a waterfall, I watched a young hula dancer in the rain.
E' ho mai
Ka ike mai luna mai e
I na mea huna no'eau o na mele e
E ho mai e ho mai e ho mai '"
The island of Hawaii:- the crater of Kilauea, the world's most active volcano and home of the fire Goddess, Madame Pele who dwells in the firepit Halema'uma'u.
Alexander has come to honor the passionate and unsentimental power of Pele's rage; instinctively, Alex knows that in the fury of the volcano Goddess lie the infinite possibilities of creation and renewal.
While the two of them were on a brief trip to Alex's unlamented hometown in Texas, Alex lost his Hawaiian lover Caleb to the fury of murderous gay-bashers.
The killing was brutal and bloody.
As Alexander gives vent to his grief and rage, interludes of authentic Hawaiian chants and traditional male hula dancing begin to dominate the action. Alex has connected with something older, darker, and richer than the heartless conservative Christianity he grew up with in Raymondville, Texas. And now he can pledge himself to fighting for realities of love and passion - no boundaries of gender - no notions of age - no limits in space or time.
Mark Pinkosh played the dual roles of Alex and Caleb.
Ryan Keola Brown was the dancer.
Written in 1991, the play is dedicated, lest we forget these griefs are not fiction, to the memory of Matthew Shepard.
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Holding Back The Ocean
Holding Back The Ocean
Sleeping With You (1993)
Director: David Prescott.
Design: Colin Watkeys
Honolulu. Sweet Polynesian fragrance in the warm blue
night, jasmine flowers and wild ginger. The hula moon drifts through palm
trees and lonely men break from the blueblack shadows. Over in the bars,
Patti Smith is singing Because the Night and lonely lovers reach
out their hands to one another.
Young and wise before his time, Marco tries to rescue his beloved Andrew from the hustling life of Waikiki's underbelly. Wandering the magical and ancient City of Refuge, Pu'uhonua O Honaunau, Andrew connects with the spirit of place--where taboo breakers and defeated warriors could make a break for the City of Refuge and assure themselves forgiveness and renewal. AIDS will claim Andrew in a moment of quiet reflection, at the side of his Beloved. And Marco will take his spirit to a latter-day City of Refuge--the Community he finds at last, the fellowship he and Andrew craved, at the legendary March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Human Rights.
`Feel the mana. Feel the power of the dead.
Feel the safety.
Love without reins or shackles, blazing power here
in this sacred place. Wild power.
Stretching in the sun, the taboo breakers are here: the hurt, the shattered,
a family, a tribe of sanctuary seekers.
Forgiveness has nothing to do with sin and blame.
Everything to do with renewal.
His hands tell me I'm safe. His fingers tell me I'm loved.
Forever and forever his breath in my ears
the touch of his face
he says it's safe, so safe .
Where do I end ?
Where does he begin ?'
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Sleeping With You
Sleeping With You
Kissing Marianne (1994)
Director: David Prescott
Design: Douglas Kuhrt
Text Published in the anthology Staging Gay Lives, edited by John Clum, Westview Press/HarperCollins ISBN0-8133-2505-6
Sleepy Santa Cruz, California.
On one side of town, the giant redwoods loom in the forest. Over by the deep and windswept bay, the waves glitter rose and green in the sundown.
Joshua and his dog Tyler are looking for someone long lost who may be closer than they think--an old and secret passion is about to spark into new life.
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Kissing Marianne
Kissing Marianne
Road Movie (1995)
Director: Lorenzo Mele
Design: Douglas Kuhrt
Text of Road Movie Published by Nick Hern Books
ISBN # 1 85459 301 3
- Edinburgh Fringe First winner 1995
- The Stage (UK) Award for Acting Excellence 1995
- Manchester Evening News Award, Best Actor in a Visiting Production 1996
- Toronto World Stage Festival 1996 and
- Dublin International Theatre Festival 1996
The now-legendary show that takes its audiences on a road trip across the United States - Joel has met the love of his life and nothing can be the same again. Ride away with him into the sunset, in search of love and passion.
And discover something unexpected - a new vision of the American Dream, one that is fit for the new millennium.
Mark Pinkosh performs all the roles in this gripping and hilarious and profoundly moving play - taking us from lonely desert nights to the consolations of shadowy encounters in the heart of the cities, from a glimpse of America's grief-struck modern history to cheap motels and all-night diners, where the waitresses' hair is high as a flag on the Fourth of July:
`Look at `em. Waitresses in diners. Women who came from back East in old Buicks and Studebakers, driving and driving until their cars ran outta gas, their purses ran outta dollar bills and their men just --ran out. Women who sank to their knees right here in the desert, and waited for someone to wrap a diner around them. These women are survivors'
Meet the survivors of Road Movie - Joel, Scott, and the amazing women who point the way - Myra, Dharma, and Ma Deva.
`Brilliantly satirical US odyssey - wildly irreverent and convulsively funny'
- The Irish Times
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Road Movie
Road Movie
Viper's Opium (1996)
Director: Lorenzo Mele
Design: Douglas Kuhrt
- Fringe First Winner, Edinburgh Festival 1996
- Official Dublin International Festival event 1997
Under the Los Angeles moon, coyotes prowl the rain-soaked
streets, rattlesnakes slither among the wet neons, heat melts the sidewalks
in a cityscape out of Blade Runner via Hammett and Chandler. The time is
now. Whose movie are you living in?
Meanwhile Cricket and Curtis, two innocents at large, roam the darkness in search of grace, harmony and the human touch.
Mark Pinkosh and Kathryn Howden play the two lost souls wandering the edges of paradise.
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Viper's Opium
Viper's Opium
Earthquake Weather (1997)
Director: John Tiffany
Design: Douglas Kuhrt
In California, we find Maggie (Annie Louise Ross), an agoraphobic Scottish actress hiding in her hilltop eyrie, drinking away the hurts of past glories and betrayals. Meanwhile, lost on the freeway in the aftermath of a seismic jolt, small-time movie mogul Angus Montevideo (Mark Pinkosh) is a man with a mission - to lure Maggie back into the big time spotlight.
But Angus is a man with demons of his own, and he has now to confront himself, teased and tormented along the way by Maggie's gardener-cum-companion, Monet Moon, herself finding fame in the shadow of the Hollywood sign as a Cable TV show host, reading Tarot cards on the airwaves and finding transformation at every turn. As the neon city shakes and trembles, a sthe hawks cry high in the hot blue dusk, the three find themselves in a passionate dance of need and craving. And yearning for a happy ending, whatever it takes to get it.
Earthquake Weather premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, during the 1997 Edinburgh Festival.
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Earthquake Weather
Earthquake Weather
Never-Before-Seen Familiar (1998)
Director & Design: Lorenzo Mele
The American Dream is struggling for the light in Los Angeles.
The night winds blow hot sand out of the Mojave desert and the city's air-conditioners are breaking down.
A group of women gather in commemoration of Jackson, with only his journal as an aide-memoir.
Need and anger collide in a meditation on grief and loss, performed by award-winning Kathryn Howden, Starving Artists' favorite actress. A disparate group of women honor their friend, son, brother and guiding light.
Ultimately, his gifts of memory, love and emotional support can never be taken from the living, even as we mourn the dead.
"This movie is mine, my very own life and I didn't know how to take part in it"
Commissioned by IQUN Festival, Manchester UK, 1998.
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Never-Before-Seen Familiar
Never-Before-Seen Familiar
Don't Forget Me (2000/2001)
Written and Directed by Godfrey Hamilton
Commissioned by and Premiered at Paisley Arts Center, Paisley, Scotland.Angus, a successful film producer, as brash and jaded as they come, and Chip, a young wannabe, for whom the bubble has yet to burst, embark on a flirtatious friendship. Thankfully free of camp clichés, Godfrey Hamilton’s portrait of homosexuality is as honest and unsentimental as his depiction of the Hollywood dream itself; this is as much a piece about a love affair as it is about sexuality.
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Don't Forget Me
Don't Forget Me
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