LAS CRUCES – While researching today’s upcoming theater
season story, I learned that the Las Cruces Community Theatre will be resuming
its one-act play festival (March 30 through April 4), but Mark Medoff won’t be
choosing and directing a winning entry this time.
He got a really good excuse. Or make that excuses.
As of this writing, he’s in the process of casting a
big-name star to portray Marilyn Monroe in “Marilee and Baby Lamb: The
Assassination of an American Goddess.” The play is slated to premiere on
Broadway next spring.
But many of us saw it here first, in its out-of-town, off-Broadway
(way off: about 2,120 miles) performances last October.
The Tony Award-winning, Academy
Award-nominated Medoff, who wrote and directs the play, has described the
story is a “reimagining of the relationship between Marilyn
Monroe (Marilee) and ‘Baby Lamb,’ Monroe’s nickname for Lena Pepitone, who
began as Marilyn’s seamstress and over the last six years of the icon’s life
became her confidant, her best friend, and her secret.”
The play was inspired by three years
of interviews with Pepitone by Dennis D’Amico, a New York-based
producer, musician and former Las Crucen, who was a student of Medoff’s at
New Mexico State University in the 1970s.
Which brings us to more of those really good
excuses for Medoff’s absence from involvement in theater projects in his
longtime Las Cruces home this season.
“I have five directing jobs,” he mused.
“Johnny Cash,” is a touring piece he’s
written and cast, with D’Amico producing, about the musical legend.
He’s working on a piece called “Decades of
Divas” with Franke Previte, the musician and songwriter who won an Academy
Award for Best Song, for “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life,” with co-composers John DeNicola and Donald
Markowitz for the soundtrack of the iconic 1987 movie “Dirty Dancing.”
Medoff will also direct “DelikateSSen,” a new work by prolific veteran playwright Richard Atkins.
“It’s about a family that
survived the Holocaust and opened a delicatessen in New York,” Medoff reports. “It
will open at Centre Stage in Greenville, South Carolina.”
He’ll direct his own new
play, “Time and Chance,” slated for a July opening at the Axelrod Performing
Arts Center in Deal, New Jersey.
In his spare time, he’s working on project
dear to his heart, a book, “Hope Full: A Reckoning With the Universe,” about
his granddaughter, Hope Harrison, who was born with Trisomy 18, a severe
chromosomal anomaly.
In summary, over the next year, that adds up
to a book, several writing and co-writing projects and five directing gigs at
sites from South Carolina to New York and New Jersey. There’s a chance that one
of the projects might have some rehearsals here, but it’s a long shot.
Las Cruces’
“Broadway of the Southwest” nickname and reputation owe much to Mark, a
cofounder of American Southwest Theatre Company, founder of Creative Media
Institute and long-time teacher at NMSU and area workshops. For decades, he’s
been an enthusiastic participant in all of our major theater companies, as
playwright, director, producer and sometime actor, as well as an award-winning
filmmaker who’s chosen Las Cruces and New Mexico for several of his projects. He
has a cameo role in Rod McCall’s “Rose,” starring Cybill Shepherd and James
Brolin, shooting in Truth or Consequences this September.
To refresh your memory,
Medoff’s “Children of a Lesser God,” one of 16 Medoff productions launched in
Las Cruces, went on to win a Tony Award for Best Play. Other Medoff plays
first seen in Las Cruces that ended up on New York stages include “When You
Comin’ Back, Red Ryder,” “The Wager,” “The Hand of Its Enemy,” “The
Heart Outright,” “The Majestic Kid” and “Prymate.”
And “Marilee and Little Lamb” will become No. 8.
After hearing about his current and future
projects-in-the-works, I’d be willing to bet there are more Medoff plays bound
for New York stages in his future. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mark, who’s only
76, is shooting for an even dozen.
S. Derrickson Moore may be
reached at 575-541-5450, dmoore@lcsun-news.com or @derricksonmoore on Twitter.
No comments:
Post a Comment