Check out this article about my farce, “Philosophus,” which is receiving its world premiere on Thursday, September 13th at Alleyway Theatre in Buffalo, New York!
“Philosophus” is premiering the weekend of Curtain Up!, the annual festival in Buffalo that celebrates the opening of the city’s professional theatrical season.
(Article by playwright Donna Yoke)
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Philosophus
Alleyway Theatre
by Colin Speer Crowley
Winner of the 2017 Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition, Philosophus is receiving its world premiere at Alleyway Theatre for Curtain Up! “It’s not unusual for our new plays to undergo edits and rewrites beginning as much as twelve to eighteen months before they are ready to be put into a season schedule, but Philosophus is one of those rare scripts that came to us ready for first rehearsal,” says Alleyway Artistic Director Neal Radice. “It is also not unusual for a play described as a comedy to not succeed in making me laugh during first reading, but Philosophus had me laughing out loud from the first page.”
The year is 1757. The great philosopher Voltaire, along with his trusted companion Collini, is on the run. It seems Voltaire has stolen a treasured notebook from Frederick The Great and the monarch’s men have him surrounded in the German city of Frankfurt. “The playwright describes it as a ‘historical farce,’” says Radice. “Alleyway Theatre is dedicated to staging the play as it is imagined by the playwright, that is, not imposing some directorial conceit. The only variation I have made is casting a male actor in a female role, which the playwright has not only approved, but heartily endorsed.”
The play comes with a subtitle that makes clear its style and wit: “A true and terrible recounting of the horrible events to befall one François-Marie Arouet, otherwise known as ‘Voltaire,’ at the vile hands of despotism and tyranny, as represented by Baron Franz von Freytag and his insidious persecution of said philosopher, which, over the course of a few weeks, dictated the fate of liberty and freedom in the historical trajectory of Western civilization.” Promises Radice: “It’s as absurd, off-beat, and funny as it sounds, and I have a perfectly funny cast: Christopher Standart, Andrew Zuccari, James Cichocki, Emily Yancey, and Chris J. Handley as Voltaire,” Radice says.
Tickets: alleyway.com, 716-852-2600
