DEATH BY TOILET SEAT
posted by James Reel
I’ve got two theater stories in the current Tucson Weekly, and the editorial staff manged to put the word “edgy” into both subheds.
First, an approving review of the latest at Live Theatre Workshop:
OK, so you sit down at Paula Vogel's The Baltimore Waltz knowing only that it's a play about a brother and sister rampaging through Europe while one of them dies from a mysterious disease.Read the rest here. Then move on to a preview of the doings of a new company—or, I should say, an old company that’s been elsewhere for a decade:
In the second scene, you find out that the brother is gay (he's a San Francisco children's librarian just given the pink slip, so he's maliciously having his little innocents cut out and wear pink triangles, just like he does). "Oh, no," you think, "not another AIDS play." But then it turns out that it's his straight sister who's been diagnosed with the disease. "Thank god," you think, "not another AIDS play." And then you find out that she's succumbing to Acquired Toilet Disease, which afflicts a very small segment of the population—unmarried elementary-school teachers—and is transmitted via toilet seats. "All right," you think, "at least it's not another damned earnest AIDS play."
Ken Tesoriere calls his theater company Coyote Ramblers, which makes perfect sense. Tesoriere has been a rambler all his life—a teenage racecar driver, a freelance journalist roaming the United States and Europe, a painter, a novelist, a playwright and director. The Manhattan native launched Coyote Ramblers in Tucson in 1993, ran it for three years, got fed up with the local scene, moved his operation to Los Angeles, won some nominations and awards, got fed up with the L.A. scene and came back to Tucson last year.You can get the full scoop here.
"For good," he says. And maybe that's true.
But reviving Coyote Ramblers in Tucson hasn't been easy. Health trouble slowed Tesoriere down, but more critical was his difficulty finding a space where he could operate Coyote Ramblers as a part of Lyric Arts, an organization that at full force will present visual art as well as theater, offer acting and art classes, and put on staged productions and readings.
The company's first staged offerings in Tucson in nearly a decade are coming up Nov. 3-19 in a cozy space at ArtFare. Tesoriere is presenting three short works of his own under the group title American Album, Volume One (Women on the Verge).
