Portrait of Playwright Dan LeFranc, Playwrights Horizons, 2012

Portrait of Playwright Dan LeFranc, Playwrights Horizons, 2012

Portraits 

Peter Sumner Walton Bellamy©2014

Photograph taken with Hasselblad film camera.
Film hand-developed by photographer

The Big Meal

By Dan LeFranc; directed by Sam Gold; sets and costumes by David Zinn; lighting by Mark Barton; sound by Leah Gelpe; production manager, Christopher Boll; production stage manager, Alaina Taylor. Presented by Playwrights Horizons, Tim Sanford, artistic director; Leslie Marcus, managing director; Carol Fishman, general manager. At the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, Clinton; (212) 279-4200, ticketcentral.com, playwrightshorizons.org. Through April 22. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes.

WITH: David Wilson Barnes, Griffin Birney, Tom Bloom, Anita Gillette, Jennifer Mudge, Rachel Resheff, Cameron Scoggins, Phoebe Strole and Molly Ward.

Portrait of Playwright Nick Jones, 2012

Portrait of Playwright Nick Jones, 2012

at

Malmaison, residence of the late Roger Prigent (1923-2012)

Portraits 

Peter Sumner Walton Bellamy©2014

Photograph taken with Hasselblad film camera.

Film hand-developed by photographer

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Trevor  

By Nick Jones

OLIVER

...all the exciting jobs go to the young ones. Plus, they prefer to work with chimps before their genitals become engorged.

TREVOR. I know I know. Then how do you do it then? How do you stay relevant after puberty? I mean, you still have a great career. I see all the costumes you get to wear.

OLIVER. Truthfully, it takes everything I got. To behave. at this age. But you’ve got to behave. you’ve got to.

TREVOR. I know. Sometimes I...I do things I’m not proud of. I knocked a cup over.

OLIVER. You shouldn’t knock cups over. you’ll never get ahead that way. You have to fight those urges.

TREVOR. It just seemed fun.

OLIVER. Of course it’s fun. you think I don’t know it’s fun? you think most days I wouldn’t rather just be going berserk, smashing watermelons and hurling clods of my own feces? Oh my god what a release that would be. But you’ll never get work that way. I knew a guy, worked in the Barnum Circus all-chimp production of Hamlet, started beating his trainer with a prop skull. you won’t be seeing him on stage again. People don’t understand that kind of humor. you’ve got to be able to sit still, and follow instructions.

TREVOR. I try. Sometimes I don’t understand the instructions.

OLIVER. Well if you can’t understand instructions, then just sit still and bear your gums so it looks like you’re smiling. Believe me, if you can just do that—if you can just behave—the world will open for you.  

Peter and Lisa Bellamy, 13th Wedding Anniversary, October 27, 2001

Happy Anniversary to my lovely wife Lisa, on the happiest day of my life

Peter and Lisa Bellamy
After Wedding Ceremony

October 27, 2001

Narthex, Saint Bartholomew's Episcopal Church

Portrait of Playwright Samuel D. Hunter, Clubbed Thumb at The Ohio Theater, 2010

Playwright Samuel D. Hunter, Clubbed Thumb at the Ohio Theater, 2010

Five Genocides, written by Samuel D. Hunter and directed by Davis McCallum, plays June 13 - 19 2010

Portraits 

Peter Sumner Walton Bellamy©2014

Photograph taken with Hasselblad film camera.
Film hand-developed by photographer

Portrait of Playwright Cynthia Hopkins, Soho Rep Theater, 2010

Portrait of Playwright Cynthia Hopkins, Soho Rep Theater, 2010

Portraits 

Peter Sumner Walton Bellamy©2014

Photograph taken with Hasselblad film camera.
Film hand-developed by photographer

  

THE TRUTH: A TRAGEDY

Written, composed and performed by Cynthia Hopkins; directed by DJ Mendel; designed by Jeff Sugg; choreography by Faye Driscoll; sound and voice-overs by Mr. Mendel. Presented by SoHo Rep, Sarah Benson, artistic director; Tania Camargo, executive director. At SoHo Rep, 46 Walker Street, TriBeCa; (212) 352-3101. Through May 30. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes.

(pre-recorded) There’s a melancholy, folk quality, as of hand-made furniture out of wood. Before there were stereos, and when the idea of automobiles was novel and romantic. An old grey saltbox farmhouse with rolling hills and a small vegetable garden in back. There’s holes and tears in all clothing, and everything is old, used, possibly mended but always torn and dirty. There’s a stench of urine; but also some operatic, orchestral strains of music in the background. And there are long stretches of pause, where time is slowed way down. And then a bizarre comment inappropriate enough to make you laugh... tinkering around in the garage with ancient tools left over from the Stone Age. Before television. Vinyl records. Naval aircraft. And some items brought back from China by distant ancestors. Decay, in its terror and sadness and beauty. Oriental rugs, and multiple pairs of broken glasses. A lifelong teacher and volunteer, never celebrated. Anecdotes of drunk driving in the Navy, and the car wrapping itself around a tree on the front lawn of a motel, and love letters from a girl back home flying up into the air and fluttering around in a ballet. Haunted by the unfinished memoir. Quoting epic poetry on the hospital gurney, and the ridiculous, condescending language of medical professionals. A fool in a Shakespeare play. Real live piano. There lies the harbor, the ocean waves; there moves the sea, the vessel puffs her sail. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks, the long day wanes, the slow moon climbs, the deep moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, ‘tis not too late to seek a newer world.

In Ancient Greece, they didn’t even have anxiety or depression or alcoholism, just plain old INSANITY which took the form of a Goddess who was liable to swoop down and randomly inhabit your mind, because some other God or Goddess had it in for you, in which case you were just TOTALLY FUCKED. So this modern invention of tragedy, Aristotle had no way of imagining at all. It’s not the moment right after someone has gouged his own eyes out because he realizes he had sex with his mother, or some mother about to slit the throats of her children. It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, years and years and years down the line, wasting away in some nursing home, on a multitude of an array of drugs, in a delerium haze, never having had children in the first place, and haunted by the notion that I SHOULD have had children and then realizing it’s entirely possible I DID have children and I DO have children, I just can’t remember what their names are or what they look like or where they live...

I like the theater, because everyone has
to sit down, and shut up. Ritual, repetition, reflection.

((Being a wildly energetic silent physical comedy routine resembling an ancient comic running through his material – all of it – at lightning speed, backstage in his imaginary dressing room, in manic preparation for his big moment on the big stage with footlights lighting him up and a giant scarlet curtain as his backdrop and a monumental crowd like an ocean roaring him on, a moment that will more than likely never actually occur.))

Oh I know a poem: “All experience... is a
crack... through which shines... the... the unknown world.” And then later on in the poem he still thinks there’s something to be gained from the unknown world. 

Portrait of Playwright Jordan Harrison, Main Stage, Playwrights Horizons, 2011

Jordan Harrison, Main Stage, Playwrights Horizons, 2011

MAPLE AND VINE

By Jordan Harrison; directed by Anne Kauffman; sets by Alexander Dodge; costumes by Ilona Somogyi; lighting by David Weiner; music and sound by Bray Poor; production manager, Christopher Boll; production stage manager, William H. Lang. Presented by Playwrights Horizons, Tim Sanford, artistic director; Leslie Marcus, managing director; Carol Fishman, general manager. At the Playwrights Horizons Mainstage Theater, 416 West 42nd Street, Clinton; (212) 279-4200; ticketcentral.com. Through Dec. 23. Running time: 2 hours.

WITH: Trent Dawson (Dean), Marin Ireland (Katha), Peter Kim (Ryu), Pedro Pascal (Roger/Omar) and Jeanine Serralles (Ellen/Jenna).

Portraits 

Peter Sumner Walton Bellamy©2014

Photograph taken with Hasselblad film camera.
Film hand-developed by photographer

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Portrait of Playwright Katori Hall, at Signature Theatre, 2011

Playwright Katori Hall, at Signature Theatre, 2011

Hurt Village

By Katori Hall; directed by Patricia McGregor; sets and projections by David Gallo; costumes by Clint Ramos; lighting by Sarah Sidman; sound by Robert Kaplowitz; hair, wig and makeup design by Cookie Jordan; music by Luqman Brown; fight director, Rick Sordelet; dialect coach, Kate Wilson; production stage manager, Jane Pole; associate artistic director, Beth Whitaker; general manager, Adam Bernstein; director of production, Paul Ziemer. Presented by Signature Theater, James Houghton, founding artistic director; Erika Mallin, executive director. At the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theater at the Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street, Clinton; (212) 244-7529, signaturetheatre.org. Through March 18. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes.

WITH: Marsha Stephanie Blake (Crank), Nicholas Christopher (Cornbread), Corey Hawkins (Buggy), Charlie Hudson III (Ebony), Ron Cephas Jones (Tony C), Joaquina Kalukango (Cookie), Tonya Pinkins (Big Mama), Saycon Sengbloh (Toyia) and Lloyd Watts (Skillet).

Portraits 

Peter Sumner Walton Bellamy©2014

Photograph taken with Hasselblad film camera.
Film hand-developed by photographer

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