Just Wrought

Saturday Morning Cartoons LIVE!

Death of an Institution

You may not have noticed, but just a few weeks ago a beloved American institution died the death of a ragdoll; and no less of an American institution itself than The Washington Post announced the passing in its recent article “Saturday Morning Cartoons are No More.” The Post lamented the last holdout:

This past Saturday, the CW became the last broadcast television network to cut Saturday morning cartoons. The CW is replacing its Saturday cartoon programming, called “The Vortexx,” with “One Magnificent Morning,” a five-hour bloc of non-animated TV geared towards teens and their families.

Those of us who remember the age of three and only three networks, also recall fondly that, once upon a time the only way you could watch animated cartoons was to wake up on Saturday morning and catch what ABC, NBC or CBS had on offer. Here is what a typical Saturday line up looked like when I was my son Keelans’ age. It includes classics like Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker mixed in with more circa 70’s fair, like The Scooby Doo/Dynamutt Hour, and a personal favorite, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, which came on so late, 12 noon, that my mom was usually hectoring me by that time to get outside because I had already wasted too much of “perfectly nice day” watching that “idiot box.”

“But Mom! It’s Fat Albert!”

Birth of an Institution

Happily, theatre—as specifically embodied by director/producer Jim Jewell— did not let the tradition of Saturday morning cartoons go gently into the good night.  Instead, Jewell saw the demise coming, and made a plan to fill the gap with short plays written by teams of local Northwest playwrights and their kids. “Saturday mornings used to belong to kids,” says Jewell. “I remember waiting all week for that one day I could binge on cartoons for hours. So, we wanted to try and create that same feeling with some fun live theater, and what better way to understand what kind of art kids want to see than engaging them in the creation of it?”

The results of Jewell’s brainstorm will be making their world premiere over three Saturdays this November, at the Pocket Theatre [http://thepocket.org/] on Phinney Ridge in Seattle.

My sons, Declan and Keelan, and I teamed up to write “Magical Man and the Space Needle of Hideousness”, just one episode in the continuing adventures of Magical Man and his million-plus year sojourn in our paltry four palpable dimensions.

MAGICAL MAN: I call myself Magical Man. Yeah, I know it sounds stupid, but I can’t say my actual name in your universe. There aren’t enough dimensions.

I’ve been in your world for one million very, VERY boring years.

Today I will do what I have waited all those years to accomplish. Confront Roger Wickersham, bring him to justice for his transgressions. . . .

It certainly doesn't hurt that Cody Smith and Samuel Hagen will be staring as Magical Man and Roger Wickersham, Evil PhD, respectively.

Other playwright/kid combinations include:

• “Don’t Touch That Dial!” by Penelope Venturini and Marcy Rodenborn
• “Roderick Saves the World (or at least the Day)” by Finn Judd and Maria Glanz
• “Feline Fitness” by Olivia and Jim Jewell
• “The Family Jynx” by Jack and Joe Zavadil
  

 

The plays will be brought to life by a talented ensemble, including Val Brunetto, Sam Hagen, D’Arcy Harrison, Cole Hornaday, Kacey Shiflet, and Cody Smith, with a special guest appearance by Paul Shipp. Co-directed by Shawn Belyea and Jim Jewell.

 

Here are the details broken out real simple like:

 

What?     Saturday Morning Cartoons – Live!

Who?     B-Sides & Rarities, a Partner Project of The 14/48 Projects, in association with Pocket Theater

Where?    The Pocket Theater, 8312 Greenwood Ave N

When?     November 8, 15, 22 @ 10:30am 

How?     Tickets for Saturday Morning Cartoons are available at The Pocket Theater website (http://thepocket.org/see/) and are $10 adults/$5 kids online (or $14/$7 at the door). Seating is general admission and all children MUST be accompanied by an adult

 

 

Parents, I promise you a good time will be had by all!

 

Related articles

No Saturday Cartoons On US Network TV For First Time In 50-Plus Years

Saturday Morning Cartoons Cease To Exist; Childhood Lost

Saturday morning cartoons are no more

Local TV Gives Local Theatre a Glance

I have not been on television since my brief, ill-fated appearance  on Romper Room in Baltimore, circa 1972. Miss Sally was asking the circle of kids what their favorite drink was and when she got to me, I said, “Whiskey”. Even Mr. Do-Bee looked shocked. (In my defense, my dad had once given me a sip and I wasn’t as horrified by the taste as everyone expected me to be.) When the broadcast was done, my mom yanked me out of WBAL’s studio so fast I thought she was going to dislocate my shoulder. Oddly, I was not asked back.

 

 

Happily, last week I made my triumphant return, along with Amy Love, to talk about Sandbox One-Act Play Festival (or SOAPFest, as the kids are calling it.) The festival opens tomorrow night and runs for only this weekend.  It features brand new plays by  Scot Augustson, Emily Conberre, Elizabeth Heffron and myself , presented by some of Seattle’s very best directors, designers, technicians and actors.

Now that Amy and I are tv stars, tickets to the three night run are unlikely to last long.  I recommend getting some while the getting is good. (Order tickets here.)

And if you’re wracking your brain for a gift to bring to celebrate these world premieres, just remember: whiskey’s still my favorite drink

Related articles

The SOAP Poster!

KING 5 Hearts Sandbox Radio

 

Taking a break from talking about the problem of horror in theatre to let you know that Nancy Guppy gave us crazy good love today on KING 5’s New Day Northwest’s “Weekend Zone”, kicking off the segment with a huge plug for Sandbox Radio, calling us Seattle’s Prairie Home Companion, only Leslie Law is “a lot better looking than Garrison Keillor”.  Well, duh, Nancy!  (Oh, and funny story, Margaret Larson has volunteered to be our foley artist.  Gee, thanks Margaret, but uh… we’ll call you, okay?)

I am pretty sure we are all sold out on Brown Paper Tickets, but if you really want to come see the live recording, message me and I will see what strings I have left to pull.

And of course, if you haven’t already done so, check out the podcast of Episode One.

 

14/48 Goes on King 5 TV

One of my favorite perennial offerings in my number one favorite dying medium finally gets the attention it deserves from my second favorite dying medium.  And my elevated sources on the 14/48 Steering committee swear to me that they didn’t even pay to play!  (The folks at the Fifth Avenue and the Rep must feel a little cheated.)

 

Chicago Blog Examines 5th/Rep Payola Mess, Slaps Playwrights Pointlessly

http://www.adaptistration.com/2010/05/04/desperate-playwrights/

Drew McManus, in his blog on orchestra administration, makes an excellent examination of the Fifth Avenue Theatre’s pay-to-play scandal, including pointing out that by “sub-leasing” the time it bought on KING 5’S New Day Northwest,  Seattle’s 500-pound gorilla of a Big House effectively gate-keeps what kinds of arts organizations will get this television coverage.  However, his title “Desperate Playwrights”, casts over an otherwise thoughtful essay a pall of outrageous ignorance about modern American theatre.  I guess he’s going for some sort of pun-ished quarter-rhyme with “Desperate Housewives”, but really, given how lamely that joke lands, I find myself wondering if Mr. McManus gave his internal editor the day off.  One hopes, in vain I suppose, that a self-described arts consultant would be a little less tone deaf to insult people who, among other things, write insults for people for a living.  (Well, okay, it ain’t much of a living.)  Talk about blaming the innocently by-standing victims.  Associating playwrights with the 5th Avenue Theatre’s silly slimy behavior, and those that joined them, is like blaming Bram Stoker for Count Chocula.

As Predicted, the Spin Begins . . .

. . . and I could've predicted the source of this first spin too, had I really cared to.

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/04/29/pay-for-play-the-response

The Seattle Rep and the Fifth Avenue Take a Walk on the Sleazy Side

I will be honest: although I always hope for the best, I never really expected the Big Houses here in Seattle to have some sort of Road-to-Damascus conversion and start doing the right thing. I always assumed they would continue to offer safe and staid programming and promote it with safe and staid marketing techniques.  So when I read in this week’s Stranger that the Fifth Avenue was paying for coverage on KING 5 TV’S New Day Northwest without making it plain that the coverage was sponsored, I was actually genuinely shocked.  And I have to confess, it gave me a bit of pleasure, because I honestly did not think that, given their tepid programming, the Big Houses could ever possibly shock me again.

Folks, this story will get spun by the culpable spinners.  Those of us who are appalled by this supremely less than ethical behavior will be branded as naïve and bitter; but this is exactly the sort of thing the Bush Administration tried to pull. 

…the White House, … spent taxpayer money to produce local TV-news segments advocating policies of the Bush administration. The Government Accountability Office condemned these paid-for "news" segments as "covert propaganda," but the White House instructed agencies to ignore the GAO findings.

"As a former journalist, I'm horrified to be compared with the Bush administration," Larson said. "This isn't a news program—it's an entertainment program."

If the Rep and the Fifth cannot see what they did was wrong, then they have no business offering us art that purports to be honest, edgy, and untainted by corporate equivocation.

***

PS:  Brendan Kiley suggests here that all the Big Houses, plus the little ones like WET, too,  owe him back pay for covering them, but I would further suggest that NewsWrights United covered the Seattle theatre press in last fall’s It’s Not in the P-I: A Living Newspaper about a Dying Newspaper, so perhaps they in turn owe us a little som’n-som’n.  Granted, I wrote about Misha Berson and Joe Adcock. (You can watch the video here. ) and left out  Kiley, because, let’s face it, he’s just too boring.  But Brendan?  If you’re willing to make me an offer I’ll happily write a play about how you wrote an article about how the Fifth bought buzz and convinced the Rep to join their ethically dubious enterprise, for what I can only imagine was what they saw as the high-ground cover the Rep could offer them if the shit hit (which it did).  Forget cover, Big Houses.  Your cover is blown.  Get started living right, or get started dying.  There are no longer any in-betweens.

PPS:  A year and a half a go The Stranger gave me a hunk of change for being a “Genius”.  Obviously, this is a bogus award, the sole purpose of which was to get me to push traffic over to their website.  So go, damn you, go!  I don’t want them asking for their money back!

PPPS:  I hate loving The Stranger, but given the connect-the-dots drawing of Mohammad they ran on the front of this issue, how can I help my damned self.