https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-cshun-8b90ec

SYNOPSIS of “The Birthday Lottery”

On December 1, 1969, five fraternity brothers gather together to listen to the U.S. Army’s draft lottery, which uses birth dates to determine the order in which they will be called to serve in Vietnam. Broadcast on national television and radio, the brothers anxiously listen as dates are drawn, one-by-one, over an excruciating 90-minute period. When the last date is drawn, the brothers react to the realization that their lives have been changed forever. They also begin to turn on each other.

Richard Fouts’ THE BIRTHDAY LOTTERY Opens At Z Space, 3/29

Today’s teenage boys worry about a lot of things, but being drafted to serve in a foreign war isn’t one of them. At least, not yet. The Birthday Lottery, Richard Fouts’ new play about the Vietnam draft, opens on March 29, 2018, directed by Suze Allen. It runs for four performances only, March 29-April 1 at Z Space, 450 Florida Street in San Francisco.

“This play highlights, in real time, what young men felt as they listened for their birth date to be announced over radio and television on the night of December lst, 1969” said playwright Fouts in a recent interview. “The order your

birthday was drawn became your draft number. A young Roger Mudd was the only broadcast journalist who covered the event, who calmly told America’s young men that if they had been born on September 14th, they’d be the first to go.”

Actor Nick Coleus, who plays David, commented in the play’s background video, “You can feel the tension of what it must have been like to live through that excruciating night. Though it occurred 50 years ago, it feels relevant for today’s young men, especially since there appears to be no end in sight around Iraq and Afghanistan. And now North Korea is in the news every day.”

Playwright Richard Fouts recalls the moment when he decided to write the play. “With the 50th anniversary of the draft approaching, I’ve been listening to Vietnam vets tell their stories of how their lives were abruptly interrupted with the Army’s sudden draft. Many of them were just 19 years old at the time. Hearing their vivid memories of that night convinced me that their stories belonged on the stage, in an intimate setting that only live theater can deliver.”

Place: Z Space Main Stage, 450 Florida Street, San Francisco 94110

Opens: Thursday, March 29, 8:00 pm.

Runs: March 29, 30, 31, at 8:00 pm, Sunday, April 1 at 2:00 pm.

Tickets: $25 general admission, $15 seniors and students, $10 veterans (of any war, not just Vietnam)

Learn more & buy tickets at 866-811-4111 or https://www.thebirthdaylotteryplay.com/

All shows at Z Space are ADA accessible

For details, go to http://www.zspace.org/birthdaylottery

———————————————

“Ragtime” at Berkeley Playhouse: https://tickets.berkeleyplayhouse.org

——————————————–

Music by CARLY OZARD: http://carlyozard.com/

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-nn3vz-804f33

Emily Corbo is an actor, singer, and art maker based in San Francisco.

A commercial actor by day and theatrical by night, you can find her running to and from auditions and rehearsals throughout the Bay Area. When she’s not running to her next audition, she spends her time playing music, teaching figure drawing and scouring her local library for plays and books.

Favorite roles include Chrissie in “Religomania The Musical” at SF Fringe Festival and Jean in “Dead Man’s Cell Phone” at SF City College.

She holds a BA in Art History and Studio Practice from San Francisco State University. You can catch her in a workshop production of “The Birthday Lottery”, a new play by Richard Fouts, opening the last weekend of March at Z Space in San Francisco.

Please rate my podcast on Itunes!

www.rayrsgreenroom.com

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-kmtuv-7ea0e2

Suze Allen is a resident playwright at Three Girls Theatre and a co-founder of the company. 3Girls Theatre Company is proud to be one of the very few theater companies in the nation that produce only plays by women playwrights. 3GT seeks more than “gender parity” in the theater: the company has a vision of a world where stories told by women are heard onstage just as often as stories told by men.  In other words – 3GT wants to help change our cultural mindset!

Suze is a published author, teacher, dramaturg and director with credits on both coasts. She was the creator of Fresh New Works San Francisco, The Maine Playwrights’ Lab and Short Works Festival, Artistic Director for the SF Writers and Actors Lab, Director for Fertile Ground Writing Studio and the resident Dramaturge and playwriting instructor at The Playwrights’ Center of San Francisco. Her work and the work she has directed has played the Dramatists Guild’s SF Footlights, Tides Theatre, Brava Theatre, 450 Geary, The Marsh, Intersection for the Arts, Noh Space, The Phoenix, OutNorth Contemporary Art House in Anchorage Alaska and The San Francisco and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. Her show THE MANIC MAMA DANCE premiered at the Marsh Café and played Birthfest 2008. Suze co-authored the book, The Time-Starved Woman’s Guide to Emotional Well Being with SD Shanti and advises writers through her company Manuscript Mentor.

Suze will be directing a new play called “The Birthday Lottery” by Richard Fouts. The show opens on March 29th, 2017. The location is ZSpace in San Francisco, CA and it runs for 4 nights.

Please visit Ray’s Green Room to hear more episodes of this podcast or listen on Itunes.

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-9rdmn-7864c2

Ray on the Road is a brand new real time series. I will be creating episodes from the trenches: auditions, movie sets, back stage at theatres. Today I describe my audition with the innovative theatre company Word for Word. 

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-fxyrx-7832f6

This week we take a look at the 2013 film, Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix, and written and directed by Spike Jonze, the man with the coolest name in show business! Her marks Jonze’s solo screenwriting debut.

The film follows Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), a man who develops a relationship with Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), an intelligent computer operating system personified through a female voice. 

Jonze conceived the idea in the early 2000s after reading an article about a website that allowed for instant messaging with an artificial intelligence program. He wrote the first draft of the script in five months. Principal photography took place in Los Angeles and Shanghai in mid-2012. 

Her premiered at the 2013 New York Film Festival on October 12, 2013. Warner Bros. initially provided a limited release for Her at six theaters on December 18. It was later given a wide release at over 1,700 theaters in the United States and Canada on January 10, 2014. Her received widespread critical acclaim upon its release, and grossed over $48 million worldwide on a production budget of $23 million.

The film received numerous awards and nominations, primarily for Jonze’s screenplay. At the 86th Academy Awards, Her received five nominations, including Best Picture, and won the award for Best Original Screenplay. Jonze also won awards for his screenplay at the 71st Golden Globe Awards, the 66th Writers Guild of America Awards, the 19th Critics’ Choice Awards, and the 40th Saturn Awards. In a 2016 BBC poll of 177 critics around the world, Her was voted the 84th-greatest film since 2000.*

*Information provided by Wikipedia.