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Thespian tracker Liz Naiden sends Bwog this dispatch from the spring showing of LateNite Theater, playing tonight and tomorrow at 11 p.m.

As the LateNite crowd stumbled in they may or may not have had time to engage in thoughtful conversation with the giant computer screen projected onto the back wall of Lerner’s Black Box theater.

If they got through their programs at a near sober rate, they probably spent at least 10 minutes watching the “man behind the curtain” typing inside jokes for people in the audience, insulting his own taste in music, and displaying his private AIM conversations.

It only got more absurd from there. Read more…

Bwog reviews the latest offering from LateNite Theatre. Remaining performances include one TONIGHT at 11 p.m, and two tomorrow night at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.

Opportunities for Columbia students to direct, produce and perform in plays abound.  But opportunities for student playwrights, however, by and large are limited to the Varsity Show, XMAS! and LateNite.  Although opening night of the LateNite fall play anthology reflected the talent of many of Columbia’s playwrights, many of the plays admittedly lacked innovation.  The stronger plays drew off familiar stories and situations, while the weaker, if more innovative, ones came off as unstructured and in the end unsatisfying.  That said, the majority of the performances were highly entertaining and the two-hour run time passed quickly.

The strongest aspect of the opening play, Inside Voices, was its relatively novel premise.  Although playwright Samantha Kuperberg gave her play an often-used setting, a high school math class, she wrote a script in which the characters spoke the subtext of their lines instead of using conversational language.  The trope, however, did not lend itself to the development of a plot, let alone a purpose. The play was essentially a series of choppy cuts between the interior dialogue of the teacher and the different students.  Nonetheless her characterization of the students was endearing, if a bit conventional. Michael Snyder, aptly playing a teenage heartthrob, and Allie Paddock, as an equal apt boy-craze babe, brought an adorable appeal to their parts, which made their brief interaction the highlight of the play. Kuperberg did an admirable job directing her cast, but the basic set-up of the play seems better suited for an acting class than for a one-act play. Read more…

Bwog theater critic Michael Snyder sat through LateNite late last night, and has a few good things to say about it.

The Semesterly LateNite Anthology of student-written one-acts always feels like a handful of works in progress. When the anthology is good, they are refreshing and exciting; when the anthology is bad…let’s just say that can make for a long night. This semester’s LateNite is without a doubt of the former kind.

The opening and closing plays, though totally unrelated in content, act as clever little bookends for the evening. Flat out funny, they both are joyful, quirky, and undemanding, and if the main goal for each is to make the audience laugh, they both succeed admirably. The first of the two, written by Becky Abrams and Josh Breslow is a hysterical monologue about breasts, performed brilliantly by Colin Drummond. The closing play, also by Becky Abrams, seems to be about picking up girls in diners, and the relationship between grandfather and grandson, and tap dancing to Billy Joel. Whatever it’s about, it’s pretty damned funny. Read more…