Well, it’s opening night, and upon reflection, the Venti coffee this morning was probably not a great idea!

There were two preview articles about the show today, in the Winnipeg Free Press and The Uptown.  You can find the full articles on their site, but here are some highlights:

From the Free Press:

“This play I think explores our best and our worst when we are together,” says Sobler, who will no doubt add some authenticity to the role of Rebecca by playing her in the WJT season-ender.

“I obviously relate to this character. It’s not a massive stretch for me. It was a chance to be on stage saying a bunch of things I want to say.”

WJT artistic producer Michael Nathanson, who commissioned Some Things You Keep, is a fan of writing where a real-life incident spurs a dramatic exploration.

“Alix’s writing is very much like Alix is as a person,” Nathanson says. “It’s very charming, it’s funny and it’s smart. It’s got attitude in a good way.”

From the Uptown:

Sobler’s latest play, commissioned by WJT and making its world premiere there this week, is Some Things You Keep. It tells the story of Rebecca, a New Yorker transplanted to Winnipeg, and her father, who makes his first visit to see Rebecca, five years after the death of her mother. Sobler has more than a passing resemblance to Rebecca — and not just because she plays her in the two-person show. Some Things You Keep is definitely in keeping with her recent style of work.

“This play, I would say, although I have had plays where I actually get on stage and I play, literally, myself… this play is not directly me, but it’s probably my most personal piece,” she says. “There are liberties taken, poetic license, but the relationship is drawn directly from a relationship in my life, and that’s my relationship with my father.”

You can get tickets at the WJT site.

I am very excited about my upcoming project, and my biggest to date. This play was commissioned by Winnipeg Jewish Theatre in 2008, and I have the honour of also being in this production.  You can visit the WJT site to find out about how to get tickets.

A daughter in Winnipeg. The father from New York. The comic misunderstandings that come with distance and time and family.

TEN SHOWS ONLY!

Thursday, April 29 @ 8 PM
Friday, April 30 @ 8 PM
Saturday, May 1 @ 8 PM
Sunday, May 2 @ 2 PM
Sunday, May 2 @ 8 PM
Wednesday, May 5 @ 8 PM
Thursday, May 6 @ 8 PM
Friday, May 7 @ 8 PM
Saturday, May 8 @ 8 PM
Sunday, May 9 @ 8 PM

Featuring Daniel Kash and Alix Sobler
Directed by Chris Sigurdson Stage Managers: Amanda Smart and Sheena Sanderson. Set and costume design: Janelle Regalbuto. Lighting design: Hugh Conacher.

Tickets: $28 adults (31-64); $25 seniors (65+); $12 student/young adult (12-30) & Equity, ACTRA, MAP members.

CALL 477-7478 for tickets.

I am very excited to be included in Aqua Books’ upcoming Storytellers Night of Jewish Humour. I will be reading from my novel (say what?!) and a couple of other things.

Thursday, March 18/10 7pm

Aqua Books

274 Garry Street

I am extremely excited to be taking my solo show Jason Neufeld is Impotent to the Minneapolis Jewish Humor Festival this weekend! It is being hosted by Theatre Or and I am really looking forward to hitting Minneapolis… for the first time! How is that possible?

In anticipation of my appearance, TCJewfolk, a hipster-Jewish blog about goings on around the city posted an interview with me. Check it out here.

Please not the most awesome Last Supper Picture behind me on the wall in one of the pictures. Courtesy of Mr. Jason Neufeld, my muse in all things.

My shows, and the full schedule of the humor festival can be found here.

The show may be closed, but good reviews still coming in.  Check out what Jared Storey had to say about the show in his grade “A” review”

“While a fairy is the focus of Caryl Churchill’s 1994 play The Skriker, it’s no children’s fable. Much more threatening than Tinker Bell, The Skriker is an ancient spirit and shape shifter who preys on people by granting them wishes, seducing them with magic, trapping them and eventually driving them mad. In this tale, its victims are two vulnerable young London women: Josie (Charlene Van Beukenhout), who has killed her baby before story’s start and thus is doing some time in the cracker factory, and her friend Lily (Daina Leitold), a pregnant runaway.

Played by six actors, The Skriker morphs from an old beggar (Matthew Tenbruggencate) to an American woman in a bar (Karl Thordarson) to a needy boyfriend (Kevin Klassen), tempting and manipulating the two girls along the way. While speaking English in its human personifications, in its own weird world The Skriker speaks a rapid, rambling, nursery rhyme-inspired language which all actors pull off magnificently.

Despite its strangeness, under Alix Sobler’s direction The Skriker is never that hard to follow, with video and clever lighting keeping things on track. The meaning or message of the play however, is a different story. Themes of temptation, possession and, with Josie, postpartum psychosis do come up, but it is never exactly clear to me what Churchill is trying to say. I wish I knew.”
— Jared Story

The review from the Winnipeg Free Press came out this morning, and nary a moment too soon! With only two shows left, both of them today (3:00pm and 7:30 pm) I am totally thrilled she liked it, that she got it, and that she is a good writer and reviewer, but couldn’t she have come to see it EARLIER IN THE WEEK?!

No, no, I am am grateful to Alison Mayes at the Free Press and the theatre gods in general. Read the whole review here. Below is an excerpt.

“Fairies — at least in British folklore — hunger for human babies to snatch and take to their underworld. That’s one of the reasons the magnificent ChurchillFest production of The Skriker provoked gasps of primal horror from a riveted audience…”

“There’s wonderful humour and social commentary in Churchill’s characterization of the vampire-like fairy. It’s no accident that it disguises itself as types that women find hard to resist, such as a needy little neighbour girl or a controlling, stalker-like boyfriend (Kevin Klassen in one of the show’s funniest, most sinister portrayals).

Enormous credit is due to fringe-fest veteran Alix Sobler, who directs the excellent cast with uncompromising vision and faith that the audience will “get it.”

“Brand tub new? Lucky Dipstick?”

Great news! I am directing a show for this years Master Playwrights Festival. It is Caryl Churchill’s epic fairy tale, The Skriker, and I have an amazing cast of talented Winnipeg actors ready to wipe the floor with you! (You know, in a good way.) Info below.

Echo (Beach) Theatre Presents
Caryl Churchill’s
The Skriker
February 2nd -6th, 7:30pm Nightly Including a Matinee Feb. 6th at 3pm Tickets: $15
The Park Theatre    698 Osborne St. S
Featuring cabaret style seating with food and beverage available to be enjoyed inside the theatre during the show!

FOR TICKETS: Contact: echo_theatre@shaw.ca Or Charlene @ 995-6876

The Skriker
The people who brought you Miller’s Playing For Time, Mamet’s The Poet and The Rent and Stoppard’s Jumpers now offer you the chance to travel to the fairy underworld of Contemporary London, England. Josie has murdered her newborn and a pregnant Lily has run away from home; but their troubles have only just begun when they meet The Skriker: an ancient fairy and shape-shifter who grants wishes (for a price!) This multi-disciplinary performance includes animation, dance, music, light and shadow to blend the naturalism, horror and magic realism in The Skriker. Churchill weaves a distressing and relevant tale that is sure to be an opulent theatre experience!

Directed by
Alix Sobler
Featuring
Toby Hughes, Kevin Klassen Daina Leitold, Mel Marginet, Laura Olafson, Matthew Tenbruggencate, Karl Thordarson, Charlene Van Buekenhout, and making her dancing debut as “Passerby”: Trish Cooper
Contact: echo_theatre@shaw.ca Or Charlene @ 995-6876

You can’t really say optimism with out an exclamation point, you know? You have to say, “optimism!” You can say “optimism.” The whole think is a lot more depressing that way. Speaking of…this weekend on DNTO I talk about the winter my optimism slowly turned into a bitter depression. Hilarious! Check it out.  2pm CBC Radio One 89.3 FM, 990 AM

I have let things slip away from me…but only because things have gotten CRAZY BUSY around here, and not in the normal way. Well, OK, normal for most people. But not for me.

First, the big news: I have a new job. Someone actually hired me! For the next 18 months I will be handling marketing and communications for the Winnipeg Cultural Capital of Canada 2010 campaign through the Winnipeg Arts Council.

Second, I am preparing to direct The Skriker for Churchill Fest.

Third, I am preparing to remount “Jason Neufeld is Impotent” at the Minneapolis Jewish Humor Festival at the end of February.

And of course I am still writing my new play, “Some Things You  Keep” for Winnipeg Jewish Theatre which I will also be performing in this April.

I will try to keep this blog updated more frequently now that life is settling back into a normal routine.

Since my DNTO piece about being a reformed babe on the “Quitting show”, (you can hear the podcast here) there has been much debate as to whether I am in fact, still a babe, was ever a babe, or was ever not a babe. So I submit these before and after pictures. You will see what I mean when I say I may be nice looking, but its not the “lifestyle” it used to be.

PRE -BABE

Notice that high school, pre-babe Alix wears shapeless baggy clothes, converse sneakers, and only took off her hat for this picture.

BABE

Hello? Babe much? Even the look in my eye is different. I have no idea how I dealt with all of that hair. And BTW, I am wearing a tube top…’nuff said.

POST – BABE

No longer afraid to smile and risk laugh lines.