THE GAZETTE
Continued from Page B-1 of money. The kind of money that usually belongs to nefarious people. The kind of nefarious people who come looking for guys who stole their money, accidentally or not. 2nd Star Productions will bring those hilarious hijinks to life in Ray Cooney’s farce “Funny Money.” The show, filled with mistaken identities and crazy misadventures, opens Friday at the Bowie Playhouse. “Ray Cooney is sort of Great Britain’s answer to Woody Allen,” director Fred Nelson said. “… [Henry] has to rush to convince first his wife then his friends … that he has got to get out of the country with this money. … It’s a very over-thetop British bawdy comedy.” During the course of the evening, Henry has to employ various tricks in order to get people to believe him while characters
in the show pretend to be other people in an attempt to keep the money secret, Nelson said. “The plot gets more and more convoluted until, in the end, all these people are rushing around playing all these different people trying to safely escape Great Britain with this money and their lives,” Nelson said. Nelson has been a fan of “Funny Money,” for a long time. He was in a production of the show 20 years ago in Guam, where he did other Cooney shows. “They were the time of my life,” Nelson said. “Last year … at 2nd Star, I was in a Ray Cooney comedy with Eugene Valendo and I knew that if I ever got the opportunity to direct the other Ray Cooney comedy, which is ‘Funny Money,’ that [Valendo] would be perfect to play the nebbish character, which in this play is Henry Perkins.” Things are also looking up for 2nd Star Productions. Nelson said the company recently found
STARS
Continued from Page B-1 interested in the relationship between intimacy and technology, in particular with younger people,” Roussève said. “We always battle with technology in the classroom … Rather than being so hardnosed about it, I thought, ‘I’m going to kind of explore why all of us are mediating our human contact through technology.’ That was really the jumping off point.” After cultivating ideas with his students, Roussève used his summer, winter and spring breaks from school to work with his company to “deepen and expand” those concepts. He also brought in dramaturg Lucy Burns to develop the storyline. “The text is so little so I have to pay attention to the economy of the words and pay attention to the character coming through and a story being told,” said Burns, who is also an associate professor in Asian American Studies at UCLA. “That’s primarily what I was asked to pay attention to …”
SIDESHOW
Continued from Page B-1 This year’s show will be more like a series of acts performed by characters, he said. “It’s more of a carnival-style sideshow,” said Walker. Walker performs as a char-
FUNNY MONEY n When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays, Jan. 31 to Feb. 16 n Where: Bowie Playhouse, 16500 White Marsh Park Dr., Bowie n Tickets: $22 n For information: 410-7575700, 301-832-4819, 2ndstarproductions.com
out they had been nominated for several Washington Area Theatre Community Honors awards for last year’s production of “It Runs in the Family,” which is also a Cooney play. “[Valdeno] and I have been nominated for WATCH best acting awards,” Nelson said. “2013 was 2nd Star’s first year as a WATCH-eligible theater … and they came out of the gate as the underdog and garnered just a whole bunch of nominations
Burns said she has seen Roussève’s work over the years and has even given him feedback on some of his pieces, but this marks the first official partnership between the two. Through its main character, “Stardust’s” narrative deals with “issues of homosexuality and acceptance, bullying, the power of art and technology’s influence in our society.” “[I thought], who would be the most marginalized person possible?” Roussève said. “Someone who really needed technology as his only … form of communication … He’s ostracized from the broader world but his own AfricanAmerican urban community is [also] ostracizing him for being gay.” Dancer Kevin Williamson said part of the thrill of being in “Stardust” is the opportunity to bring his own experiences and background to the stage. “I think I bring a really, really intense interest in the work,” Williamson said. “I get to weave my own experiences with gender and [what that means, and] my own experience as a gay man.” Williamson is a graduate student at
acter he created called Swami YoMahmi who plays host to various performers who eat fire, walk on glass, wiggle out of straightjackets and hammer spikes into their noses. Walker also takes on the role of the “outside talker” (often referred to as a barker) who draws people into the side show. He also
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and won several of them. I, myself, won best actor in a musical for playing Tevye in ‘Fiddler on the Roof.’ “2nd Star in Bowie is really making a big splash in the tristate area. I think it’s a justification of the hard work we’ve been doing.” Nelson said he hopes people in the area realize now they don’t have to drive all the way to the big city and pay a lot of money to see quality productions. “There is quality, awardwinning theater happening right here,” Nelson said. “I’ve done nearly 200 plays all over the world, from small theaters to big ones. I’ve done it all. The work that 2nd Star Productions has been putting out over the past couple of years is really world-class stuff. I’m hoping people will wake up to the fact that [this] kind of entertainment is easily available to them.” wfranklin@gazette.net
FRED NELSON
Eugene Valendo and Michael Dunlop rehearse a scene from 2nd Star’s upcoming production of “Funny Money.”
VALERIE OLIVEIRO
Text will be projected onto large screens during “Stardust,” opening Friday at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. UCLA and called Roussève a mentor. The two met while Williamson was an undergraduate student at the university. “His show inspired me so much
performs in some of the acts. Sideshow performers tend to be people who are a little out of the mainstream, Walker said. He described himself as a nerd and a little bit of an outsider growing up. “I wasn’t an athlete, and I loved to read,” he said. “[I was into] science fiction, comic
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and gave me freedom to move with my own choreographed show,” Williamson said. The pair reconnected at an awards show in 2008 and Roussève invited Wil-
books and computers.” Later Walker earned a bachelor of arts in theater from Penn State University and has since performed with Comedy Sportz and Last Ham Standing improv groups. Walker co-founded the Picked Punks with like-minded performer Steve Wannall of
liamson onto the “Stardust” project in 2010. In commissioning the piece, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center has not only signed on to present the show, but the venue has also worked closely with Roussève to engage the local community in a dialogue about some of the issues “Stardust” deals with. “[The Clarice Smith Center] has done some amazing innovative thinking about connection with the community,” Roussève said. “ … You get very much used to the same set of ideas; we’ll do a master class or a Q&A session ... I mentioned to [the center] about the strong spiritual message in the piece. What if we could contact a conversation with the African-American spiritual community?” In November, Roussève came to Washington, D.C., and visited several African-American churches to talk about marriage equality. “ … We had a great conversation around the African-American church and ‘Stardust’ and marriage equality,” Roussève said. “I thought that was so thrilling.”
Baltimore. He and Wannall also perform with Shakespeare’s Skum, a troupe that presents comedic versions of Shakespeare tragedies, at the annual Maryland Renaissance Fair in Crownsville. Always interested in expanding his range, Walker had heard about the Jim Rose Circus popular during the 1980s, but the style of the show didn’t appeal to him. “It was more like an arena rock concert with loud, fastpaced acts with music,” Walker said. In the late 1990s, he happened to see Todd Robbins on “Penn & Teller’s Sin City Spectacular,” a weekly variety show on the FX network featuring sideshow acts. A magician, carnival performer and author, Robbins had once worked on Coney Is-
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land and was known for swallowing thousands of light bulbs throughout his career. “I thought he was gentlemanly and erudite,” Walker said about Robbins’ performing style, which he thought he could eventually pursue himself. “He’s one of the people who inspired me,” Walker said. Married with children, Walker knew he didn’t want to join a traveling sideshow. With none existing in the Washington area, he decided to start his own. “It was an opportunity to use my acting background to do a different style of performance,” said Walker, who ran ads and recruited local performers. “Our intent is less to be shocking and more to be entertaining, and to work in a lot of comedy,” he said in comparing his troupe to the Rose show. Walker also settled on the name Cheeky Monkey, a British expression for someone who’s flip or irreverent but in a funny way. “I thought it spoke to what we were doing,” he said. Historically some sideshow acts have been “freaks,” like P.T. Barnum’s Bearded Lady, the Siamese twins and General Tom Thumb in the 1800s. “Freaks were the royalty of the show — they’re what sold tickets, they were what people wanted to see,” Walker said. But sideshows were one of the few places where people with deformities could find work and earn a decent living, Walker said. “These were people who never asked for help,” he said. “A lot of them did very well, making money and working in a world where couldn’t get other jobs.” Over time the general public began to feel uneasy about freak shows. “It also began to cost too much for a circus or carnival to also travel with a troupe of sideshow performers,” Walker said. But the sideshow stunts are still going strong in Coney Island, with one act succeeding another. “It’s called a ‘grind,’” Walker said. “It goes all day long.” And there are still people coming up with new acts to entertain the crowds. “It’s definitely changed,” said Walker about the sideshow tradition. “We’re not on a mud lot or under a tent – we’re in theaters and clubs.” “It’s evolved. … We’re happy to keep it going,” he said. vterhune@gazette.net