Charles E Denk

2022 Theatre Festival in Black & White

Miles to Go
By Charles Denk
Directed by Ranney Lawrence

Two musicians, one old, one rising, meet by chance in a Pittsburgh bar. The older, a contributor to the jazz scene of the 1950’s, delivers a colorful but dark warning to the younger musician. Whether tragedy will be the final chorus is unresolved.

Part of the Three Rivers Arts Festival, June 3rd-12th
At the Trust Arts Education Center, 805 Liberty Avenue, 4th floor

PPTCO’s signature Theatre Festival in Black & White returns with a selection of short plays, each paired with a director from a different background. The festival brings together playwrights and directors who may have different religions, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or access/disability needs, etc. This year’s festival will also be an opportunity to showcase the talents who have been participating in our Ground Up Theatre training program, making the event a true building block of theatric development in Pittsburgh.

Co-presented with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust as part of the Three Rivers Arts Festival, and free to the public. Live theatre is back!

Miles to Go is part of Program B, which runs 90 minutes.

Friday June 3rd, 6pm – Program A
Saturday, June 4th, 3pm – Program B
Saturday, June 4th, 6pm – Program A
Sunday, June 5th, 3 pm – Program B

Wednesday, June 8th, 6pm – Program B
Thursday, June 9th, 6pm – Program A
Friday, June 10th, 6pm – Program B
Saturday, June 11th, 3pm – Program A
Saturday, June 11th, 6pm – Program B
Sunday, June 12th, 3pm – Program A

Charles E Denk

Un-spoken stories for The Moth Story Slam, part 3

You may have heard it on the radio. Real people, real stories. The Moth.

Now, of course, The Moth is moth-balled, along with everything else. Since I have no plays coming up, I thought I’d post my un-spoken stories for The Moth here. This one is about what we did with my father’s ashes.

Thirty cities world-wide hold local “Story Slams.” Pittsburgh was one of the first. Every month, if you want to tell a story in front of three hundred strangers, you put your name in a hat. Your story has to be: a) true; b) about yourself; c) five minutes long; d) on a theme announced in advance; e) told without notes. Members of the audience judge you, but there’s no prize. It’s hilarious, unless you’re the one on stage. Each month they choose ten people. I’ve put my name in the hat five times, gotten picked once.

Never give up–never surrender!

All my plays can be downloaded from here.

Charles E Denk

Un-spoken stories for The Moth Story Slam, part 2

You may have heard it on the radio. Real people, real stories. The Moth.

Now, of course, The Moth is moth-balled, along with everything else. Since I have no plays coming up, I thought I’d post my un-spoken stories for The Moth here. This one is about a Halloween party I hosted–for the neighborhood moms.

Thirty cities world-wide hold local “Story Slams.” Pittsburgh was one of the first. Every month, if you want to tell a story in front of three hundred strangers, you put your name in a hat. Your story has to be: a) true; b) about yourself; c) five minutes long; d) on a theme announced in advance; e) told without notes. Members of the audience judge you, but there’s no prize. It’s hilarious, unless you’re the one on stage. Each month they choose ten people. I’ve put my name in the hat five times, gotten picked once.

Never give up–never surrender!

All my plays can be downloaded from here.

Charles E Denk

Un-spoken stories for The Moth Story Slam

You may have heard it on the radio. Real people, real stories. The Moth.

Thirty cities world-wide hold local “Story Slams.” Pittsburgh was one of the first. Every month, if you want to tell a story in front of three hundred strangers, you put your name in a hat. Your story has to be: a) true; b) about yourself; c) five minutes long; d) on a theme announced in advance; e) told without notes.

Members of the audience judge you, but there’s no prize. It’s hilarious, unless you’re the one on stage.

Each month they choose ten people. I’ve put my name in the hat five times, gotten picked once. Now, of course, The Moth is moth-balled, along with everything else. Since I have no plays coming up (same as Shakespeare and Shaw, Mamet, e), I thought I’d post my untold stories for The Moth here. The first one is about how I came to adopt my cat, Montgomery.

All my plays can be downloaded from here.

Charles E Denk

Relieve your isolation with this spoken word activity: The Coronavirus Plays

I answered a challenge from the 2020 One-Minute Play Festival to write a micro-play about human response to the “crisis.” (We might as well call it a “plague.”) You can access all 620+ plays submitted to that challenge here.

It is a lot of plays! But each is 1-2 pages, typically with two characters. You and a partner can browse, and if something strikes your fancy you can perform it for each other. People used to read poetry to each other; the spoken word is powerful and entertaining. If you’ve ever been in a play you know the experience of engaging with another player as nemesis, lover, frustrated parent, or many other roles. Whether serious or silly, nothing beats a play.

Liberate yourself from your constricted environment from time to time. Share these plays with your housemate or over the telephone. I guarantee it’s better than quizzing each other about obscure words in the dictionary.

Charles E Denk

Coronavirus Micro-play

The One Minute Play Festival issued a challenge: 24 hours to write a micro-play about the current emergency. My submission is called End Times Priorities.

Have you had an exchange with a person whose response to the Coronavirus pandemic was radically different from your own? And then when you drill deeper (if you dare), you find an even weirder branching of reality from yours? Marc Maron described this as, “In your brain, a new fact binds with a [pre-existing] feeling. Done!”

Charles E Denk

More characters walk into a bar… (Some are alive, some not so much.)

This is the premise of Mythburgh, a short-theatre series that features the outrageous legends, zany characters and eerie locales that make Pittsburgh fun. I’m thrilled to be included again! (See previous post.)

On November 10, 8pm at Brillobox, “Murder Discorporated” sets Addison (Lydia McShane) of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History on a new investigation of the skeletons in her closet. Mob hitman Johnny “The Knife” Bazzano wanders into what he hopes is the Lepus Literary and Social Association, looking for some action. What he finds is plenty of admirers– death-dealing being a popular pastime Sunday nights at Brillobox. The last seating at the Lepus Club was decades ago, but Addison and the gang still have uses for Johnny!

brillobox

Mythburgh is a production of 12 Peers Theatre. The performance is pay-what-you-can, but be sure to come early and grab something from the bar (pay-what-they-say, capish?). Google map…

Charles E Denk

Some characters walk into a bar…

This is the highly generic premise of Mythburgh, a short theatre series that features the outrageous legends, zany characters and eerie locales that make Pittsburgh fun. An Air Force bomber that disappears in the Monongahela River; a flying saucer crashing a Super Bowl party; Pig Hill, the steepest street in the Burgh. Got the idea?

On September 23, 8pm at Brillobox, “Bone Wars” explores the karmic burden of a dinosaur-sized ego. Written by yours truly, and starring my friend Lydia McShane, it’s my Pittsburgh playwright debut. Please come by early for a drink and enjoy the fun.

If you can’t make it there, catch it on Facebook Live by visiting https://www.facebook.com/12PeersTheater/ just before showtime. Cheers!apatosaurus-on-right_wide-a8aa5eeeca8bee1bd94b19d7a6ad3048a421c407-s1400-c85

 

Charles E Denk

I’ve moved to The Burgh!

Pittsburgh’s theatre scene is rich and welcoming. I immediately subscribed to three companies, and sampled productions from many more. There are great opportunities for aspiring playwrights, and I’m proud to announce my Pittsburgh debut production will be “Bone Wars,” a September installment of 12 Peers Theatre’s Mythburgh series. This one-act features a famous dinosaur controversy, a ghost, an obsessive paleontologist, and a reasonable amount of privacy invasion thanks to you-know-what-internet-company-that’s-just-a-platform.

More details later…