#i present: Party Mitch and Party Carlos

[formulatrash]

[x]

[innytoes]

Come on, you did not put in “You got me a stocking?” - “Of course, you’re family.” and NOT expect me to prompt it with Reggie & the Molinas right?

Four people sent me some version of this prompt and I think I made the Reggie Molina bait a liiiiittle too strong. #noregrets Set in the same universe as this fic

Christmas hadn’t been the same since they came to LA. Not that his parents had been great at Christmas before that, but his Meemaw and Pops usually picked up the slack. They made sure Reggie got presents he actually liked, and clothes that actually fit. They took him to the mall to see Santa when he was little, even though the nearest mall was over an hour away. And whenever his parents inevitably started to argue (not fight, not yet, they had only turned into full blown fights after the move), Pops would take him out to give the horses their Special Christmas Treat. Usually some apple peels or carrots.

Pops had also been the one to sit him down and tell him about the Magic of Christmas and the truth about Santa. Thankfully, because his first winter in LA, there were no presents from Santa under the tree. There’d barely been any presents at all, but he’d heard enough fights about money, late at night huddled in his bed, to know not to complain.

Christmas after they came to LA just got worse over time. The arguments turned into full blown fights. They stopped getting a real tree, then stopped setting up the fake tree, and finally, his mom just stopped helping Reggie decorate at all. (At least they still let him decorate.)

There was the year both his parents forgot to get him a present, after spending a lot on each other, which crashed them straight out of the honeymoon phase and back into another fight. He‘d gotten his bass guitar around New Year to make up for it, though.

These days, Reggie tried not to be home a lot around the holidays. They still did Christmas morning, kind of, Reggie making Meemaw’s apple pancakes and exchanging only-sometimes-heartfelt gifts. He did his best to get his parents something he’d thought they would like, and he kept a smile on his face, even when he unwrapped the Star Trek shirt. It was the thought that counted, right? At least the shirt fit.

Most years, he just wandered around town, pretending he was on his way to some awesome party, smiling and nodding at families in the street. Or he stole they key from under the flower pot at Luke’s house, crashing in his room even though Luke and his parents always visited his grandparents for Christmas. The Pattersons always had a pretty tree, and he liked to stare at it, even if he didn’t dare turn on the lights lest the neighbours call Mitch or Emily.

This year though, he had a place to go. Because Julie had invited him to Family Christmas Dinner. And then dragged him inside and made Ray invite him too, when he started talking about how that was like, family time and he didn’t want to intrude.

When he got to the Molina house and knocked, Carlos opened the door, shouting happily. “It’s Reggie!” He pulled Reggie inside, talking a mile a minute about the new videogame he’d gotten for Christmas and how they’d finally have enough people for multi-player mode with him and Julie.

God he loved the Molinas.

He gave Julie a hug, and passed Tía the tin of cookies. “I know you said I didn’t have to bring anything, but I made cookies,” he explained. And honestly he hadn’t felt like sharing them with his parents. He’d left them a few, but he’d made them for the people he really wanted to spend the holidays with. “It’s my Meemaw’s recipe.”

“Thank you, mijo, that’s very kind of you,” Ray said, catching him in a hug. Ray hugs were still kind of new, after Father’s Day, but they were also kind of the best.

Dinner was amazing, and he basked in the feel of sitting at a family dinner and not being worried about when the shouting would start. The food was delicious, the pre-video-game trash talk was g-rated but thus extra hilarious, and it was just everything Reggie had been missing at home for the past couple of years.

After dinner, while they waited for the ice cream to thaw enough to eat and munched on Reggie’s cookies (and man, did he glow under the praise from Victoria and Ray), Carlos jumped up. “Can we, dad? You said after dinner, it’s after dinner!”

“Fine,” Ray said, chuckling as Carlos raced out of the room. Reggie blinked, wondering if it was video game time, but then Carlos came back, carrying three brightly coloured stockings. He handed one to Julie, put one on his chair, and Reggie leaned back so he could give the last one to Ray, but it ended up in his lap instead.

He was about to pass it over, when he saw the name embroidered on the hem. “You got me a stocking?” he asked, shocked. He hadn’t gotten anyone presents. Julie had told him not to. They were already doing the Band Secret Santa when Luke came back, and she knew his pocket money was non-existent.

“Of course,” Ray said, like it was nothing. “You’re family.”

He did eventually get to his stocking, but not before hugging the daylights out of Ray, and then Julie, and Carlos, and Tía.

[vileart]

Our Christian Dramaturgy: Joe Janes @ edfringe 2017

Our Christian Nation Finds Paradise at Edinburgh Fringe 35 Characters Played by 11 Actors in Joe Janes' Cultural Satire About America Erasing the Line Separating Church and State CHICAGO (July 20, 2017)— What would the USA look like if the extreme Christian right got everything they wanted?  In this slightly alternate present just before the rapture, Reverend President Robert (Jamie Buell) has eliminated the “fake news” and homosexuality is outlawed.  A young family is torn apart when Mitch (Adam Ston), the breadwinner, loses his job and is arrested for not being able to pay his bills, while his pregnant wife, Louise (Lauren Fisher) is thrown into a hospital/jail as the state takes ownership of her “fetus.”

Meanwhile, the couple’s daughter, Nipper (Bethany Schmieder) is indoctrinated in various “Biblical” texts by a couple that run a gay conversion therapy camp.

What was the inspiration for this performance? Anger. I was angry about how Republicans and the Tea Party were treating the Obama administration and I was angry at the constant attempts to erase the separation of church and state, especially when it comes to women rights and gay rights. I’m a comedy writer. Comedy is my weapon.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?  Absolutely! Especially, now. We have a president who is an egomaniac with a thin skin. Satire gets to him. When we did a run of our show earlier this year, I invited some local conservative on-line magazines to review us. They declined and in our e-mail exchanges admitted “We don’t do humor well.” How did you become interested in making performance? When I was a kid, my uncle would play comedy

albums for me. Notably, Stan Freberg’s The United States of America, Vol 1: The Early Years, which had a definite influence on this show. Our play is full of revised history lessons. I was hooked and started putting on shows for my classmates starting in the fourth grade.  Is there any particular approach to the making of the show? I wrote the the first draft very quickly. I pitched the idea of the play to 3 Brothers Theatre north of Chicago. They loved it and wanted to feature it in a staged reading during their summer festival in 2015. They told me this at the end of March when I had yet to write a single word of the play!  They loved it so much, they produced it the following summer and my director and I put it up in Chicago earlier this year. The play has a lot to do with current events, which can be scary for a writer. There’s a concern that things can become dated. Fortunately for the production and unfortunately for the world, it has not. 

We check the news everyday and, quite often, we’re able to reference the latest dumb thing Trump or someone in his administration has said.  Does the show fit with your usual productions? Many of my plays are epic with large casts and people playing multiple roles, so, yes. My plays tend to be like sketch comedy revues spinning out of control.  What do you hope that the audience will experience? Laughter! Where there’s laughter, there's hope. I hope it gives them a thing or two to think about regarding politics and religion.  One thing I also appreciate about satire is that it

often makes me feel like I’m not alone. There’s relief in discovering there are other people who are reasonably sane who also think this thing or that thing is bonkers.  What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience? I tried to be very clear that it wasn’t an attack on Christianity or anyone’s particular religion. It’s an attack on people who take it to the extreme and impose their beliefs on others and also the hypocrisy that inevitably gets intwined. 

Welcome to Our Christian Nation, an epic satirical one-act play written by Emmy award-winning writer and Second City instructor Joe Janes and directed by Andrea J. Dymond. 

Our Christian Nation is partially funded by a Part-Time Faculty Development Grant from Columbia College Chicago. Janes originally wrote the full-length version of the play for the Three Brothers Waukegan Theatre Festival in Illinois, where it received a staged reading in 2015. Three Brothers Theatre produced the show for their festival in 2016.

Earlier this year, the play received a full six-week run at Chicago’s veteran comedy institution The Cornservatory.

There are 35 characters performed by 11 actors in Our Christian Nation covering a wide range of Christian revised story lessons that include: God creating the world (but he rushed and is sorry about that cancer thing), the founding fathers signing the Declaration of Independence along with founding father Moses and help from a dinosaur, the Civil War occurring because God was mad at Lincoln, Goldilocks being an abortion-loving intruder, and a worldview that has the US as #1 and Australia being as if England and Mississippi had a baby and left it in a dumpster.

Entertaining as well as educational, Our Christian Nation takes place in a world Janes envisions as a kind of nightmare quickly becoming a daymare, i.e. in which the ultra-Christian right wing get everything their hearts desire.

“I wrote the play because I was angry about the Republican and Tea Party response to the Obama administration. I’m sad to report it is still pertinent today. Even more so given our current Whitehouse interloper,” said Janes.

“Our Christian Nation is a world where children only get church-approved homeschool lessons, privatization is rampant, being poor is a crime, insurance is only for those who can afford it, women have very few rights, and conversion therapy camps are as normal as the boy scouts. The Bible has become a textbook in history and science classes.”

“Satire is the best weapon I know of to shed light on absurdities. There’s a lot of work to be done in the states, right now. We’re bringing the show to Edinburgh to show the rest of the world that we’re not all crazy here and we’re doing our best to reverse the tide,” said Janes.

Joe Janes Joe Janes is an Emmy award-winning writer who teaches comedy writing and improvisation at The Second City and in Columbia College's new Comedy Writing and Performance major.  He has written for Jellyvision's video game series You Don't Know Jack and Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update. He has published three books, including 365 Sketches, 50 Plays and Seven Deadly Plays.  Other full-length plays include Metaluna and the Science of the Mind Revue, A Hard Day's Journey into Night, OtherSchool and Always Never.  His fake Twitter account is @futurepreztrump that he started over a year ago. He tried to warn you. Andrea J. Dymond A Chicago-based freelance director specializing in new work, Andrea J. Dymond has been a resident director at Victory Gardens Theater, where she directed 11 productions, including 7 world premieres.  Selected Chicago credits include: Tree, Year Zero, Blue Door, Free Man of Color, Shoes, and I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document, Helen, and Keep a Song in Your Soul, which she directed and developed with the Grammy award-winning band Carolina Chocolate Drops.  Most recently, Andrea directed A Lesson Before Dying by Clarence Brown, Shepsu Aahku’s Softly Blue and Lynn Nottage’s Mud River Stone. Andrea’s experience includes research and production dramaturgy, directing at new works festivals nationally; serving as thesis play advisor for MFA playwrights at Carnegie Mellon; and directing at NNPN’s MFA Playwrights Workshops at the Kennedy Center.  Andrea teaches directing, collaboration, text analysis, acting and new play development at Columbia College Chicago, where she recently directed Blues for an Alabama Sky by Pearl Cleage and Euripides’s Hecuba. Cast Lauren Fisher (Louise, Abigail) Adam Ston (Mitch, various) Bethany Schmieder (Nipper) Jamie Buell (Rev. President Robert) Robin Mina (Shrug, Evelyn, various) Adrian Garcia (Pastor Mooney, Carlos, various) Garrett Hanson (Mr. Looney, Michael, various) Nicholas Polk (Tim Harfington, Brian, various) Aidan O'Connor (Mrs. Kennedy, Dr. Harley, various) Joe Janes (Cal, Sam, various) Andrea J. Dymond (God)

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