05/29/2015
Black Box Asbury Park presents Toms River Anthology, a world-premiere play by Alexis Kozak, on Friday, June 12th, Saturday, June 13th, and Sunday, June 14th, at 8:00pm, at Count Basie Theatre’s new Performing Arts Academy building, at 111 Monmouth Street, Red Bank, NJ, 07701. Consisting of five scenes, each set in a Toms River cemetery and centered around a different pair of characters (newlyweds, cancer cluster-affected ex-friends, a gay couple, a brother and sister, and a divorcing husband and wife), the play creates an interwoven patchwork that is a meditation on death in New Jersey and toys with the question of why we pass through Toms River, but why Toms River won’t just goddamn die?!
The play takes its title from the iconic American classic Spoon River Anthology, a book of interrelated poems by Edgar Lee Masters. “I spent a lot of time in Toms River as a kid at my aunt’s house, which I loved. At the same time, I heard people around me trashing the town. So, I grew up with, literally, a love-hate relationship with the place,” says playwright Kozak. “I’m trying to do it justice—show both sides—and play with some existential dilemmas as well.”
“Our measure of success is the recognition that the stories, lives, and voices of our state and region are worthy of giving our attention to onstage, are as important as the Greek tragedies or Shakespeare’s kings and queens. Maybe more so, because they are ours. They are us,” says fellow playwright and Black Box board member Mary Kelly.
Kozak, who holds an MFA in Playwriting from Boston University, says that the longer he writes, the more “place” becomes more important in shaping his characters and story. “The more I write, the more I tend to be drawn to stories about New Jersey. I have a one-act play set in the space between Staten Island and Perth Amboy. I’m also working on a “dream play” that is a fractured history of Asbury Park. I sort of have this whole play cycle in my mind about New Jersey that I want to call ‘The Land of Blue Eye Shadow.’”
With the goal of honoring local stories, Black Box intends to make the play accessible to everyone by presenting the play free of charge. “The most important thing to us is sharing the communal experience of knowing New Jersey lives are worthy of putting onstage,” Kozak says.
Black Box—a multi-cultural arts incubator whose mission is to help local artists gain greater exposure for their work and that has produced primarily in Asbury Park—has found a partner in Count Basie Theatre’s Performing Arts Academy, located adjacent to the historic theatre, in the recently purchased Wawa building, the former location of Phoenix Productions, on the corner of Monmouth Street and Pearl Street. “Yvonne Scudiery, who is the driving force behind the Performing Arts Academy, asked if I might have ideas for programming for the space. I asked her if she would be interested in presenting new plays, she said yes, and we were off to the races,” says Kozak. This is an opportunity for Black Box to branch out into more communities and take advantage of its tri-city location. “We would love to have a presence in Asbury Park, Red Bank, and in Long Branch,” says Mary Kelly.
Kozak, who teaches performance and technical theatre at Middletown High School South, recently won a Basie Award for his adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.” “I am excited to be able to use some of my graduates and current and ex-colleagues,” he says. The play features Anthony Forte, Kelly Lozo, Scott Visco, JMe Marcinczyk, Steven Koumoulis, Paul Caliendo, Greg Plakoudas, Allie Brand, Renee Panagos-Felice, and Evan Krachman.
Toms River Anthology will be presented on Friday, June 12th, Saturday, June 13th, and Sunday, June 14th, at 8:00pm, at Count Basie Theatre’s Performing Arts Academy building, at 111 Monmouth Street, Red Bank, NJ, 07701. Tickets are free, but reservations are strongly recommended. For more information or to reserve tickets, log onto www.blackboxnj.org, call (732) 207-5573, or e-mail [email protected].
