Friday, Jan 31, 2025 at 7:30pm
Hosted annually by The Phoenix Theatre Company, the Richard P. Stahl Festival Of New American Theatre amplifies new voices and expands the canon of American theatre. The 2025 Festival will continue honoring our longstanding commitment to the development of new works, playwrights, and performers and include a variety of events that allow artists of all kinds to see their work come alive onstage. It will feature: a play reading, two musical readings, two Composer Lyricist Cabarets, Choreography Lab, and a return of the 24-hour Theatre Project. This is an opportunity to witness how a production goes from the page to the stage!
Schedule of Events:
Genius
Musical Reading
Book by Michael Heitzman and Ilene Reid
Music by Ilene Reid
Director Michael Heitzman
Music Director Alan Plado
Dramaturge Max Plata
Genius is a hilarious romp set in the Esquavil-groovy sixties, starring the most selfish, irresponsible charmer ever to moon an Oscar audience: Leander Starr, is a Hollywood director in the tradition of Orson Welles, whose artistic aspirations soar as high as his checks bounce.
Fleeing creditors, the IRS, and miscellaneous ex-wives, Starr escapes to Mexico with his faithful-to-a-fault valet, only to discover his hacienda is run by the bombshell from his first film, and inhabited by an ex-collaborator he cheated — Patrick Dennis, legendary author of Auntie Mame, who proceeds to skewer Starr and his hangers on with wit as dry as a gin martini. When sad-sack IRS Agent Guber shows up with handcuffs, Starr hatches a plan to pay off all his debts in one fell swoop: join forces with an unscrupulous exiled Hollywood producer and make a movie starring everyone from the wreckage of his past.
But it is Starr's estranged daughter, Emily, a sheltered debutant who brings Starr's genius plan to its full fruition - causing him to behave, for once, unselfishly.
