Adam Koplan, Artistic Director

Last month, while the company was workshopping an update of FCT’s 1998 family puppet musical 1001 Nights, at The Center for Puppetry Arts (CPA), I watched as one of the best puppeteers in the country brought an ordinary pillow to life as a dancing genie. Just a pillow with some tassels. And voilá—a  funky, Motown-inflected genie who moved like a young Michael Jackson. Partnering with these world-class artists at the CPA reminded me that back before we officially called ourselves the Flying Carpet Theatre, we considered names that had the word “alchemy” in them.  We’ve always been after transformational magic, and it remains a central element in our work.

This year, with your help, we are planning to work this kind of alchemy on Flying Carpet Theatre itself: spinning ten years of hard work and inventive artistry into shimmering success on a much bigger national stage. What does this transformation look like?

First, we take Manhattan! (and the Bronx, and Queens…) In the fall of 2012, we will bring our Atlanta hit, The Medicine Showdown, on a multi-borough tour of NYC.  Taking our cue from the “throw up a tent” aesthetic of the medicine shows that we’re recreating, we will travel to multiple venues to perform for students, health professionals, and New York theater lovers.  The play’s serious themes—public health communication and commercialism—are leavened with country comedy, amazing tap dance, and folksy blue grass.  We can’t wait to introduce The Medicine Showdown to the Big Apple.

And after that…we go national!  In 2013, we will launch a new Atlanta production and national tour of 1001 Nights. The family-friendly musical is not just a fantastic show that took the NYC Fringe Festival by storm 13 years ago, it’s also a notable early work from multi-Tony-winning composer/lyricist Robert Lopez of Avenue Q and Book of Mormon. We look forward to introducing this great show to you and audiences around the country. We know you and your families will be charmed and delighted.

And then…can I get a Hallelujah? As you know, Flying Carpet’s mission is to tell great stories set within a milieu of a specific performance genre. Our next production-in-development, Caught Up, will take audiences to church, telling the tale of a heretical modern day evangelical preacher through four Sunday services that incorporate song, dance, public speaking, and spectacle.  This project will convert even the most skeptical audiences into Flying Carpet believers.

In our work to date, your support has been the magical element that has allowed us to meld base materials into theatrical gold.  Please help us continue our enchanted ride with a contribution—each $100 donation pays for a costume, each $500 a puppet, each $3,500 gift supports an actor’s performance, and $12,000 allows us to rent a theatre for a production’s run. We appreciate your participation at the level most comfortable for you.

We are grateful for your involvement and invaluable support.  See you at the theater!

Sincerely,

Adam Koplan, Artistic Director

Artistic Director, Adam Koplan

Come see genies, Broadway-style tunes, and puppets!  I’m so pleased to announce that Flying Carpet Theater (FCT) will partner with Atlanta’s Center for Puppetry Arts (CPA) to present scenes and songs from Tony-Winning Composer Robert Lopez’s family friendly musical, 1001 Nights, on Sunday Nov. 20 at 4:30pm.

This invited workshop and discussion is open to patrons (that means you!) of FCT and CPA. Tickets are free but seating is very limited. Please call the CPA ticket office at: 404.873.3391 to make a reservation. Find the address and directions below.

This upcoming reading and workshop will be the first step towards a national tour of a new production of 1001 Nights.  But before I lay out all the big plans, let’s go back about a dozen years…

In 1998, Robert Lopez and I met as interns at Playwrights Horizons.  The summer after our internship, we created a family musical that was based on the Arabian Nights tales and Flying Carpet produced it as one of our first shows, complete with a live band and an ensemble of puppets and performers.  The piece was a hit—it was a sell-out in the NYC International Fringe Festival and the best-selling children’s show that year.  We then extended and did two mini-tours.  Since then, Flying Carpet has continued to grow, and Robert’s career has taken off too.  He won his first Tony for Avenue Q, a show that redefined puppetry on Broadway and this year his new show The Book of Mormon dominated the Tonys in nearly every category.

Even back in 1998, it was clear to me (and to our adoring audiences) that Robert was a major songwriting talent. He and I have long discussed that this early work was so strong that it deserved a larger audience.  And now it will find it.  In 2013 we’ll launch a national tour for this delightful musical.

To create this new production of an old hit, we have begun a partnership with Center for Puppetry Arts because of their expertise in puppet design, deep relationships with Atlanta’s families and young audiences, and a sterling national reputation for high quality theatrical experiences.

So if you think a hummable tune, Ali Baba and his 40 thieves, and muppet-like genies sound like fun, please join us in Atlanta for this free workshop presentation!

The CPA is located at 1404 Spring Street, NW (at 18th) Atlanta, GA 30309.

Center for Puppetry Arts Parking Lot:

Limited free parking is available at the rear of the building. Limited handicapped parking is available.

For further information about directions or parking please go to

http://www.puppet.org/about/directions.shtml

From "The Medicine Showdown"

What are they up to?

You hear a lot from us about vaudeville and entertainment.  But at the center of every Flying Carpet Show is a writer’s unifying vision. We are dedicated to promoting emerging voices and wanted to share what some of our collaborating authors are up to…

Amy Boyce Holtcamp (The Mystery of Chung Ling Soo)

Amy is currently living in Columbia, SC where she continues to write and direct plays.  Recent projects include directing Julius Caesar at the New Orleans Shakespeare Festival at Tulane and producing her original work Odysseys as part of a University of SC conference about coming home from war.  Her play, String Theory – written with Michael Barakiva and Sarah Braunstein – was performed at Vassar College this past fall.

Eddie Harrison (The Mystery of Chung Ling Soo Screenplay Adaptation)

Eddie is currently living in Scotland and writing for film and television, including co-writing thriller Helter Skelter with director Richard Jobson.  Recent projects include story-editing the eleven part documentary series Dannsa, recently shown on BBC Scotland, and producing short film The Strange Awakening of Gracie Ambrose . See more of his recent work at http://www.youtube.com/user/panyatna#p/u/3/mHPApDFrsT0.

Michael McQuilken (A Day in Dig Nation, Extropia)

Michael recently graduated from the Yale School of Drama where he was a member of the 2011 graduate directing class.  He is currently continuing development of his original music play JIB (which can be seen/heard at www.michaelmcquilken.net along with loads of other songs, videos, photos, etc.) and is about to embark on a European tour as the drummer for Amanda Palmer’s new band, THE GRAND THEFT ORCHESTRA.

Tommy Smith (A Day in Dig Nation, dramaturgy for Liliom)

Tommy is currently living in New York City.  Recent theatre includes Pigeon (Ensemble Studio Theatre; dir. Billy Carden), The Wife (Access Gallery;  dir. May Adrales), and Sextet (Washington Ensemble Theatre; dir. Roger Benington).  His feature film Figment was also optioned by Ridley Scott’s production company ScottFree.  For full plays and info, please visit http://smithsmith.wordpress.com

Topher Payne

Topher Payne, our “man in Atlanta,” is a celebrated author and man about town. He has won multiple awards including BEST LOCAL PLAYWRIGHT Creative Loafing Reader’s Choice Awards, 2010; BEST LOCAL WRITER The GA Voice Reader’s Choice Awards, 2010; BEST LOCAL PLAYWRIGHT The Sunday Paper, 2010, WINNER, BEST PLAY OF THE YEAR Metropolitan Atlanta Theatre Awards, 2009.and was recently the Grand Marshall of Atlanta’s Gay Pride Parade.

What are you working on right now?

I’m in the midst of playing with genres lately- I’m loving the experience of seeing what develops when I immerse myself in a wholly unfamiliar world.  This year I wrote my first romantic comedy, “Tokens of Affection.”  It  premiered at Georgia Ensemble back in January, with Flying Carpet company member John Stephens.  Then I tried my hand at farce with “Lakebottom Proper” at the Springer Opera House, with Flying Carpet company  member Jo Howarth. (I try to take a company member with me everywhere I go.)  Right now I’m developing a script with Pinch n’ Ouch Theatre, who were just named Best Emerging Theatre Company by Creative  Loafing.  I wanted to do something with a lot of sex and violence, but that’s also sort of witty and charming.  Like if Oscar Wilde had written “Fight Club.”  And in January, I’m playing David Frost in “Frost/Nixon,”  which is a dream role.  I’m really over the moon about it.

What has your experience at Flying Carpet been like?

Flying Carpet challenges me to grow beyond the limits of my own imagination.  The experience has taught me so much about collaboration, and the collective spirit of performance.  It’s asking a lot of a group of artists to put ego aside and let the best idea win.  But if you can embrace that, you carry it into every other endeavor.

Who do you look to for inspiration?

I don’t look for it, I just stay open to it finding me.  News stories, things my mother leaves on my voicemail, dreams, surreal nuggets of history…  I eavesdrop unapologetically and let imagination take over from there.  Last week I saw an old roommate for the first time in years, and he responded to a criticism with “Don’t you judge me.”  That’s a catchphrase one of the characters in “Lakebottom Proper,” and until I heard him say it I really thought I’d come up with that on my own.

Please finish this sentence: Flying Carpet Theatre is a great creative outlet because ______

You’re really all in this together, and you succeed or fail based solely on your willingness to take responsibility for everyone else in the room.

If you could go back in time to visit any era where would you go and why?

Okay, maybe I’m just a killjoy, but until the 20^th century people were still getting cholera from drinking water.  And sewage systems were draining into rivers and lakes in all major cities until the 1940s.  Which means they stank to high heaven.  So I believe I’d stay right here, thank you very much.  But if I’m taking that way too literally, then I’d go back to 1931 and try to play with the Group Theatre. I would, however, bring my own water.

Topher Payne

What are the highlights of your career thus far?

Theatre critics are generally pleasant to me in reviews, but not particularly effusive.  But in 2010 I was voted Reader’s Choice for Best Playwright in three different publications, and in 2011 I won the award twice again.  It was such a great reminder, you know?  The people who buy the tickets, who support theatre in this city, believe in my work.  That was humbling and fortifying.

Seeing “Lakebottom Proper” at the Springer Opera House, on the same stage that had hosted Oscar Wilde, Truman Capote, and Franklin Roosevelt.  That was a good day.

But the moment to end all moments was the first read-through for “Tokens of Affection” at Georgia Ensemble Theatre.  It was the first time I premiered a script at an Equity house, and the first time I’d directed my own work.  I hadn’t worked with any of them before, but I was a fan of their work.  A goofy, awestruck fan.  And now I was expected to lead them into this uncharted territory.  I sat at the table as the producer, actors, design team, and staff assembled, and there were so many dang people in that room- literally several hundred years of combined theatrical experience coming together for a script I’d written as a love letter to my husband.  I just kept thinking, “If this thing fails, I got no one to blame but me.”

Which Flying Carpet show was your favorite to work on, and why?

You’d think I’d say “Medicine Showdown,” because after years of stage managing for the company I was finally getting to write.  And that was extraordinary.  But it’ll always be the marvelous Chinese conjurer.  The productions of “Chung Ling Soo” in Atlanta, then Scotland, then Ireland, represent a period of tremendous growth for me as a person, and as an artist.  I feel like I grew up on those productions.

How do you and Tommy balance family life and the life of an artist?

That would be a better question for Tommy, since I believe most of the compromises are his.  You learn from mistakes.  Last year I was in tech for a show on my first wedding anniversary.  I’d forgotten to list it as a conflict when I was cast, because I wasn’t yet accustomed to having a wedding anniversary.  I was actually more upset about it than he was.  Now I know: October 16^th-18^th are blackout dates.  Without exception.  It’s a tricky thing, isn’t it?  I don’t get overtime pay for writing a script.  And I can go twelve hours at my desk, forget to eat, ignore the phone, because I’m playing with my imaginary friends.  Wow.  The more I think about this the more I wonder how my husband would answer this.  Best not to ask him.  If he’s not questioning it, no reason to start now.

How does your normal Atlanta theater work compare with FCT?

My own theatre work starts in a very solitary place, and doesn’t involve other artists until after the first draft is complete.  This can take weeks, months, some take years.  But with Flying Carpet, we don’t start with a draft.  We start with an idea, and we build.  So the messy part I usually keep concealed from view is right there in the open.  It’s like swimming naked.  Unnerving and oddly liberating.

I get ideas for stories now that I would have dismissed before, because my scripts tend to be traditional in format: single setting, dialogue-driven, realistic in presentation and concept.  Those wackos at FCT opened me up to possibilities I’d never attempt alone, but seem feasible in the group-manufactured madness.  I end up making notes like:

Ask Adam how a 50-year old woman would go over Niagara Falls in a barrel on stage.

What is your dream writing assignment?

I wanna write a smart horror movie.  They’re so rare, and horror is the only genre that can’t be reproduced on stage, because its success is entirely dependent upon the audience feeling unsafe, if only for an instant.  If an audience felt unsafe at a play, they’d leave.  Or maybe not.

Ask Adam how to do a really scary horror story on stage without people leaving.

Adam Koplan

By Adam Koplan, Artistic Director of The Flying Carpet Theatre Co.

Much like technology companies invest in promising ideas, theatre companies engage in research and development. Staged readings are one of our methods of fostering new work, and this month, we are supporting a reading of a charming new musical, The Unfortunate Squirrel, by Sonya Sobieski.My enthusiasm for the theatrical development process dates back to my post-college course at L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, where I studied physical theatre.  My relatives chuckled that I had gone to “French clown school” (they thought I was aspiring be the next Jerry Lewis), but in fact, Lecoq’s vision of theater was much more expansive.  Describing the rehearsal process as a “laboratory,” he approached it as a state of open-ended inquiry that often began with a group of actors improvising and refining ideas in a studio.

After returning to New York City as an assistant director at Playwrights Horizons, I first got to know Sonya Sobieski. As the theatre’s literary manager, Sonya introduced me to the ways institutional theatres support new work—from commissions that sustain a playwright’s writing process, to generous preview periods that allow revisions during a run with live audiences.

Sonya, in addition to being a wonderful advocate for writers, is a talented playwright herself and has moved on from Playwrights Horizons to become a fulltime writer.  I’m pleased that Flying Carpet is able to support Sonya with a staged reading, an event whose utility she helped me to understand. Actors bring plays to life, so before an author has a “production ready” draft, it is invaluable to hear a well-performed version in the middle of the writing process and get feedback from a live audience.  Please join us for the reading on May 25 at 4pm at Ripley Griers in Manhattan.

Other Flying Carpet R&D News:  FCT regulars are collaborating on a piece about Ponzi schemes that satirizes the seductive power of PowerPoint. It’sThe Office meets Bernie Madoff meets the PowerPoint presentation you probably just had to sit through at your own workplace. This new work should be ready for a reading in November and a run in 2012.

One of the most important parts of our R & D process is you. Your participation, as our patrons, at our readings or symposia helps us to see what elements most resonate with audience.  We relish your feedback!  As always, thanks so much.  I look forward to seeing you soon at the theatre, rehearsal space or lecture hall!

Matt Seidman in Liliom

Matt Seidman is a founding member of Flying Carpet Theatre and has created and toured new work with FCT in the US and UK, including Liliom, The Mystery of Chung Ling Soo, and Extropia. He is an integral part of the Flying Carpet Team, and is now working on developing a new work with other  company members.  He has helped to create many of FCT’s most memorable productions, and has toured with them throughout the U.S., Ireland, and the U.K. We caught up with this well-traveled performer to talk about karaoke, drag queen nurses and The Unfortunate Squirrel.

What are the highlights of your career thus far?
Certainly, performing to sold-out houses and five-star reviews in the Edinburgh Fringe production of Chung Ling Soo. It was so far beyond our expectations, it was a little like a dream, and a little like celebrity—people stopped us in the street to tell us how much they loved the show. I was doubly proud that that we’d created the show essentially from scratch, that we’d figured out how to tell the story in a unique, entertaining, visually stunning way. It was great to get to revisit the show last summer in the workshop at Emory; a whole new set of fascinating conundrums popped up in the conversion from stage to screen that shed light on some of our original struggles. I think we’d do a great production of the show for stage now…hope we get the chance…Adam?

What are you working on right now?
I’m about to start work on a workshop of a new musical called The Unfortunate Squirrel. Flying Carpet is producing one of the readings; Adam connected me with the playwright Sonya Sobieski. I can’t wait because a) most of my singing these days comes in the form of over-the-top, more-growls-than a-pre-hibernation-brown-bear karaoke renditions of ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ and ‘Midnight Special’ and b) my character, Guy, has two solos and is described simply as ‘A cad’. In addition, I’m psyched about the potential for an upcoming show with the Sundance Playwrights Lab in which I’d play an Israeli documentary film maker in 1970s Tel Aviv who becomes ensconced in the world of Phillipine immigrant drag queens that double as nurses for the Hasidic elderly. Typecasting!

What has your experience at Flying Carpet been like?
Creating our own material can be phenomenally difficult—and hugely rewarding. Hammering out the narrative, scene structure, dialogue, staging and character development over the course of a standard rehearsal period makes for an intense process. With each show, we’ve significantly streamlined our approach, and have gotten both more creative and more efficient. Adam is a gifted facilitator—he knows how to get the best out of people, and he is always willing to try an idea to figure out if it has potential, or if it’s really as bad as it first appears.

How does your regional theater work compare with FCT?
Regional theater requires a fairly different mindset. You have to carve out your creative space, typically confined to your own character’s actions. It can be collaborative, even delightful, but there’s always the sense of having to please a certain audience. With FCT, I always know that Adam will accept as much creative input as I can whip up, and I can take on as much creative responsibility as I want. It’s sort of night and day: the difference between fulfilling one director’s, or one theater’s interpretation of a play—and working through the much more difficult, much more exciting question of what the play actually wants to be.

How do you and Hilda balance family life and the life of an artist?
Well, Hilda and I are both fairly psychologically fixated (she’s working towards certification in Jungian analysis at the Jung Institute of New York; my mother is a therapist…) so we use the 3 P’s: process, process, process. We talk though things, perhaps ad nauseam at times, but it keeps us on the same page. Our kids keep us young.

How do you get into character?
It depends on the character…but as I start to work on the show I typically want to get to the point where I can think and talk (or improvise) as the character. I want to be able to be in the character off the page, so I’ll take an aspect or circumstance of the play and talk to myself about it, start to walk the line between my thinking about it and the character’s perspective, until I’m able to move in and out of what feels more like his thought or speech patterns. Along the way, I frequently find a physical pattern too—how he walks or holds his weight, a squint, or a gesture—that clicks me in. Then that gets incorporated into my pre-show ritual, so that I’m thinking, and moving in character backstage before I enter. Some shows it’s easier to move in and out of character—with Billy Robinson in Chung Ling Soo, I could literally be eating a hamburger and talking about soccer scores, then walk onstage and feel right at home. With Liliom, I stayed away from people backstage, didn’t shoot the shit, didn’t chatter between scenes or intermission. I kept to myself and stayed in character before and during the show. That guy needed some space.

If you could go back in time to visit any era where would you go and why?
I really want to know what the hell happened during the Cambrian Explosion.

Any last words?
I’m just starting rehearsals with Adam and FCT on an as-yet-unnamed project that’s seems sort of a Glenngarry-meets-David Blaine. No idea which directions it’s really headed: can’t wait to figure it out!

What are you working on right now?
A museum in Russia, another in Chattanooga, a baker’s dozen of various retail and architectural lighting designs, developing an artist residency program on our Catskills campus, and thinking a lot about puppets – parades – and pageants

Who are some of your clients?
Our design firm, Invisible Circus, does a fair amount of retail and architectural lighting design. For the past decade we have been the lighting designer for Nordstrom; we also work with Anthropologie, Dior, Armani, and L’Oreal. We design museum lighting with Technical Artistry another New York firm, including the exhibit lighting for the Nascar Hall of Fame, Liberty Memorial WWI Museum, and the Griffith Observatory.

What is your design process or day to day design routine?
Each day is its own beast…but sometimes it is a mad circus full of a very strange and gibbering cast of character with travel to exotic malls in the heartland and dingy European theaters…… but much of the time it is not very sexy…a paperwork shuffle. Theater projects are the most freeing….you get to bury yourself in a subject or a story and cast out for connections between all its dirty bits….and then it all blinks into a brief existence and is gone. Ephemeral and vague.

What has your experience at Flying Carpet been like?
I have never felt more like a part of a creative company than in my work with Flying Carpet. The process allows for a project to grow (which is really exciting)…and all along the way you help nudge it a little this way or that, add an idea or help flush out a detail. In the end the final piece always feels whole and of a single voice…..but when you know the right angle to look at it from you get to see all the facets that make it up. That is exciting and (not to be too cliché) a bit magical…..

Who do you look to for inspiration?
There are a few artists that I can count on to get my brain firing…

Artists Dave McKean and Ted McKeever (both known primarily for their work in comic books). McKean was a major inspiration for the scenic deign on The Medicine Show. He creates amazingly rich layered allegorical worlds through digital collage. McKeever on the other hand creates these beautifully terrible Kafka-esqe landscapes.
(never really put together the similarity in the names before…could mean something)

Musically I can never go wrong with Bob Dylan or Tom Waits.

The light sculptures of Christian Boltanski and Joseph Cornell’s boxes……

And writers…..that is a really long list…..lately it has been China Mieville, KB Baker and Warren Ellis, and of course, Phillip K Dick.

Please finish this sentence: Flying Carpet Theatre is a great creative outlet because_____.

The projects are engaging, the people inspiring, the worlds visually intriguing, and….the conversation is always open. The process is always a dialogue….among artists

Do you listen to music when you are designing? If so, what is your go to artist or song?
I tend to listen to talk radio and audio books when I am working…….mainly non-fiction (fiction draws me in a little too much)

If you could go back in time to visit any era where would you go and why?
While it is really tempting to go ride a dinosaur…I think the late 1800’s. There was a lot going on…a real paradigm shift. In the last 30 years of that century year you could have had a dinner party with H.G. Wells, Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Tesla, Chung Ling Soo, Vincent Van Gogh, Marie Curie, Freud, Susan B Anthony, Queen Victoria, and Jack the Ripper.

I am not sure what to serve at that dinner…..but I think about it….often

What are the highlights of your career thus far?
Three come to mind (and they are all theater related).

Once working on design late at night in the redwoods of Shakespeare Santa Cruz’s outdoor theater, a deer wandered out of the mist and into the light cue I was creating onstage…it was an absurdly magical moment

When the parachute set opened and closed in FCT production of Lilliom.

A crazed tour to the Seattle Fringe Festival with my first theater company back when we were all too young to believe in limits and had no doubt that we would accomplish everything. I don’t think I have the perspective to say if the show we did was any good….but the members of that company are still some of my favorite people to work with today.

Which Flying Carpet show was your favorite to work on, and why?
Chung Ling Soo takes that prize. The show worked on so many levels …and it was a real success in terms of the scale and function of the design

Adam Koplan

As the Artistic Director of the Flying Carpet Theatre Company, I am often asked at the close of our one-of-a-kind shows “how did you DO that?” While some wizards might urge you to “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” I’d like to give you a glimpse of the magic behind the Flying Carpet Theatre Company. So for this inaugural Flying Carpet newsletter, we’ll let the genie out of the bottle and explore our unique approach to choosing material and what defines the Flying Carpet experience.

In the theatre, there is often a clear distinction between a play, designed mainly for intellectual edification, and a variety or vaudeville show, which is created mainly for entertainment. Both are performed in a theater, but the emotional experience of a production of Death of a Salesman, for example, would be very different from performances by some of my heroes—Bill Irwin’s hilarious clown act, the fabulous tap dancing of Savion Glover, and Ricky Jay’s mind boggling sleight of hand.

Flying Carpet’s mission has been to blur these two categories of theatrical experience. We want to combine the narrative sweep of an emotionally gripping play with the good ole’ fashioned “gee whiz” of vaudeville entertainments often associated with a bygone era. We want you to feel as though Tennessee Williams and Ed Sullivan mated artistically and gave birth to a Flying Carpet show!

For this blend to feel organic, we often tell stories about entertainers. With stage illusions and Peking Opera style movement, we explored the life and mysterious death of Chung Ling Soo, a real-life magician who masqueraded onstage and off as a Chinese man. We also told a story of the impact of the influenza epidemic on 1918 on a small town in 1918 which was forced to decide whether to ban a traveling Medicine Show led by a charismatic snake oil salesman. This unfolding drama was performed with snippets from a historically accurate and highly entertaining Medicine Show, complete with tap dancing.

The shows we currently have in development are all based on different forms of popular entertainment. Each one, however, is made of that unique, creative Flying Carpet blend of imagination, mystery, and emotional connection:

• A revival-tent church service will be the structure to present a musical about a real-life televangelist.

• The life story of author Philip K. Dick will serve as inspiration to a stage play that incorporates sci-fi movie conventions.

• We will explore the Kafka-esque bureaucracy of the modern hospital using the quick-costume-change conventions of a Charles Ludlam farce or, more recently, Greater Tuna.

So, as you can see, we’re quite busy with a full slate of ideas. In my next letter, I’ll explain how a Flying Carpet production goes from “idea” to ready-for-the-stage. And if we meet at the next FCT show, please ask me how we did it…I’d love to tell you!

Thanks so much and I’ll see you at the theatre!