10 Ridiculous or Ridiculously Amazing Facts

THE CIVILIANS HAS MADE IT THROUGH TEN YEARS -
HELP US MAKE IT TEN MORE!
 

We’re closing out our tenth anniversary season and we're trying to raise $5,000 to meet our goals for this year.

Any amount helps. How about $10 for 10 years?

Or $20: $10 for the first 10 and $10 for the next!

For a gift of $20 or more, you'll get a signed script from our upcoming Best Of Concert, which will include all of our favorite monologues!

PLUS, if we get 500 people to give us $10 (or more), we’ll make a brand new, original video for the website with some of your favorite moments from shows AND a few of our Associate Artists telling personal stories about memorable interviews!

 

And just for a little more fun, here are a few of the things that have happened in the last ten years that are either hilarious or amazing, and which have us very excited to get going on the next ten!

TEN RIDICULOUSLY AMAZING OR JUST RIDICULOUS 

THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED TO THE CIVILIANS 
IN THE PAST TEN YEARS

10. When The Civilians wins an Obie, Swoosie Kurtz presents the award and reads the lyrics to “The Civilians Theme Song”.

9. After In the Footprint, the following is overheard being said to Mayor Bloomberg at a meeting: “I saw a play about Atlantic Yards last night, and you were played by an empty suit!”
...followed by dead silence.   

8. We’ve made some ridiculously amazing friends. Check out videos HERE and HERE made by past interviewees with wonderfully kind words for our tenth anniversary!

7. When two Associate Artists stalk Anna Paquin in a stairwell in preparation for Canard, Canard, Goose?, she will not comment on the treatment of geese in Fly Away Home. She is portrayed in the show anyway, paving the way for Jay Z’s appearance in In the Footprint ten years later.

6. The Civilians outrages the super right wing by receiving support from the National Science Foundation. This one’s a twofer, since the support is ridiculously amazing, and the outrage was ridiculous.

5. We started an Education Program! Here’s a video of these ridiculously amazing high schoolers who made a short play from interviews!

Stay tuned for the final four in the top ten list... and click here to support our tenth anniversary season!

WHAT IS YOUR IDEA FOR A CIVILIANS SHOW?

If you have reached this page, it means that you just bought tickets to our benefit this year, BENEFIT X! Tickets will be held at the door for you under the name used to purchase the tickets. If you would like further confirmation, please email Rosalind at rosalind@thecivilians.org.

First and foremost, THANK YOU! Can't wait to see you on May 2!

Secondly, we are asking a question (as we do every year), and YOUR ANSWERS will be used to create an original Civilians' performance for the benefit! This year's question is:

WHAT IS YOUR IDEA FOR A CIVILIANS SHOW?

Tell us your answers in a comment at the end of this post!
(Or email them to liaison@thecivilians.org.)

And lastly, if you haven't seen all of The Civilians' shows since 2001 and are wondering what our ticket levels are all about, I'll just let the shows speak for themselves:

GUCCI PUMP - FROM GONE MISSING

TOM

So, do you know Laura? So she was meeting with some big TV people. And she had on this pair of black Gucci pumps and a nice skirt and everything, and after her meeting we were all going out. And somewhere along that night she lost her shoe.  One of her Gucci shoes, because she had changed at PS 122 because she felt overdressed. She thinks that she left the shoe in the bathroom. I think she actually lost the shoe later that night, because I think they went out drinking--

answering machine beep 

LAURA 

Hi, it’s Laura, um I was really hoping that you could have secured the shoe before you

left town but apparently you have not, so I’ve been working with Tom and Tom has gone back to PS 122 numerous times. And I’m leaving numerous messages for the house manager, the artistic director, the director of development to see if they have gotten their act together enough to find the shoe.  Um, I am sending a packet of flyers to you, to Tom, to Big Daddy, and to Elizabeth, and I’m sending maps of where I’d like you guys to post the flyers because I’m really hoping if someone sees some--you know-- one legged person wearing it–who wears a size six--that uh, it will become clear whose shoe that is and where they need to send it to in Los Angeles immediately. Um, I am working on the flyer, and I’ve also started an email address:  ilostmyshoe@earthlink.net.  So, um, I don’t know if you have gone back to PS 122 or not--no one there returns my calls and it’s really depressing-–but I’m really hoping the flyers will stir up some leads!

FRENCH GOOSE - FROM CANARD, CANARD, GOOSE?

CHARLIE

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special little treat for you tonight – no, no I’m sorry we can not give you a sad story about little lost frozen popsicle geese – there is no sad story about little sad chilly little imprinted-on-Anna-Paquin geese –No– tonight we give to you ladies and gentlemen the real geese of Long Lake.  They are from French.  France. And do not be tricked, ladies and gentlemen, although these geese star in a “documentary,” they are not amateurs.  No. They are professional performers.  And these geese live now in a comfortable tedious retirement with two French girls who wait ever so patiently for them to die.  So, please help me welcome these very very talented geese to our stage, they are very very happy to be here, as they have nothing else to do.

SCHRODINGER'S CAT - FROM (I AM) NOBODY'S LUNCH

MALE SOLO

I've been thinking how love is like Schrodinger's cat

Locked up tight out of sight in a box and how that

Means it's dead and alive at the same time and so—

When you think of the box it's like seeing a

Photo of a cloud or fog

It’s an outcome that remains uncertain

You can't see a thing in all that fog

You can't see a man behind the curtain.

FEMALE SOLO

What are you so afraid of?

We’re gonna find an answer, it’s just around the corner and I know…

What are you so afraid of?

We’re gonna find an answer, find an answer…

So leave your comments below! Thanks again!

 

Blast from the Past

Here's a picture from THE LADIES, which premiered in 2004. It explores the lives of Eva Perón, Madame Mao, Elena Ceausescu, Imelda Marcos — and those of project author Anne Washburn and director Anne Kauffman — told through gossip, tape recorders, torch songs, spectacle, and grim historical analysis.

And click HERE for more production photos!

The Ladies (February, 2004 at Dixon Place) From left: Quincy Tyler Bernstein, Nina Hellman, Colleen Werthmann, Allison Weller, Jennifer R. Morrus and Maria Dizzia. Anne Washburn scripted this examination of the wives of infamous dictators.

Photograph: David Gochfeld