Press Release: View HTML, Download PDF or DOC PRESS & REVIEWSAbove the Line "If you ever wanted to get a birdseye view of the making of a Hollywood movie check out Above the Line. It is funny, witty and hilarious”. The ensemble cast Brings it with a capital B. I along with the rest of the audience laughed out loud at this well executed production. The acting and directing are outstanding. I plan to see it again next weekend.
Ever wonder what happens in the high-rise Hollywood offices and private Beverly Hills bedrooms where movie deals are made? Well, wonder no more because playwright Susan Rubin takes you there in her hilariously biting new satire Above The Line, now getting a spiffy world premiere production at the Bootleg Theatre. Meet the "above (and below)-the-line" cast of characters: Angela King (Denise Dowse)—high-powered Vice President of Development at Supreme Studios Jeremy Fisher (Jason Stuart)—movie producer, whose mother is the greatest female movie star alive today Lucy Adams (Heather Marie Marsden)—beautiful young blonde descendent of the Adams family of America's Founding Fathers fame John Randazzo (Nick Mennell)—hot young screenwriter, who achieved fame with his indie hit Complexities ("My finest film, before I sold my soul.") Christian Tobias (Stewart W. Calhoun)—aspiring young movie songwriter with a taste for older men As the lights go up, Lucy has approached Jeremy with a property, the journal of her great-great-great-great-great-great-great uncle, one of the Boston Adamses (and kinfolk of John and Samuel Adams). Jeremy: "Samuel Adams?? Oh, like the beer!!" Isaac's journal turns out to be an honest-to-goodness first-hand account of the Boston Tea Party. Jeremy: "Indians? I had no idea that Indians did this!" When Lucy explains that it was in fact the white colonists who dressed up like Indians, Jeremy sees a hit. Three A-list actors stripped down to their loincloths! What could be better? "I can't believe all this shit went down and no one knows about it! You gotta tell me this whole crazy story about the Tea Party!" Meanwhile, over at Supreme Studios, where Angela and Christian are awaiting Jeremy and Lucy's arrival, the exec warns the songwriter not to mention the word "musical" right away. After all, it doesn't really matter what Lucy thinks she wants. What she'll end up getting will be what they want. Like Jeremy, Angela knew nothing about the Boston Tea Party until Googling it last night. "I'm not a history person. I'm a now person." As for reading the journal, she has no plans to do so in the foreseeable future. "I'm an intuitive." Once screenwriter John has arrived, Lucy goes into her rundown of the film's plot, using illustrated flash cards and a first-grader's vocabulary to astound them all with her Tea Party tale. Heads pop up when Lucy reveals a pair of American History tidbits: Isaac Adams died of syphilis and John Hancock had a slave woman as a lover. John: "A white-black thing!!" Angela: "But I'm not seeing a story yet." Fortunately, Lucy's brought along copies for everyone. Angela: "It's very long." In no time at all, plans for Tea (that's what they're calling the movie) are underway and so are a pair of romances. Hot young thing Christian makes a coffee date with Jeremy. Jeremy: "Buzz me when you get there." Christian: "All right, I'll buzz you." Meanwhile, at John's Silverlake apartment over on the bad side of La Brea, Lucy apologizes to John for her great-great-great-great-great-great-great uncle—with a kiss, and before you can say "American Revolution," clothes are being ripped off. Jeremy and Christian move at a somewhat slower but no less deliberate pace. Christian: "I feel like a boy. You feel like a man. You're not just any powerful man. You're special. You have some pizza on your face." Soon enough, Hungry Boy starts kissing pizza off of Powerful Man's face. By the time the first act of Above The Line comes to a close, everybody is after control of the movie, back-room deals are being made left and right, and the future of Tea The Movie Musical is anyone's guess. Rubin's tasty script has an insider's feel and a devilish sense of humor. When songwriter Christian debuts his rewrite of "White Man Red," Angela blows a gasket. She wanted Adam Lambert and Christian is giving her Susan Boyle! "The song is for gummers! They eat their food slowly. And they don't go to movies!" When Jeremy learns that an African American character in the story dies, he's ecstatic. "A black ghost! We could get a rapper!" Lucy's disdain for John's first draft is intense. "This is a Mel Gibson movie!" Mark Bringelson directs Above The Line with the same flair he showed in his crackerjack work on Rubin's previous comedy Bitch, as well as a pair of superb Road Theatre productions, Bunbury and The Friendly Hour. He keeps the action moving fast and furious, Victoria Profitt's snazzy multi-location set allowing lickety-split movie-like dissolves and jump cuts from scene to scene. Performances are spot-on. Dowse is a delectably dry and deliciously imperious studio exec. Stuart does terrific work as a man attempting to balance a movie deal and a March-August romance all the while attempting to emerge from under his mother's shadow. Marsden is girl-next-door perfection as a naïve young thing who may not be quite as innocent as she appears. Calhoun radiates charisma and shows off first-rate physical comedy chops, whether finding new ways to slouch sideways on an office chair or rolling up in a ball on the floor (following the Susan Boyle comment). 6'5" Mannell once again proves himself a star in the making with his dynamic work as a screenwriter who's gone over to the Hollywood dark side. Profitt's ingenious set fits all of Above The Line's many scene locales into the Bootleg's fortunately wide, deep stage area, all the while looking like a million bucks. Jeremy Pivnick's lighting is his usual brilliant best, translating those movie dissolves and jump-cuts into stage terms. Robert Prior's costumes could not be better chosen to fit each character's personality and style. John Zalewski's sound design, too, couldn't be better, with a particularly fine (and often dryly ironic) choice of background tunes. Michael J. Beahm serves as production stage manager. A standout design/concept element is Adam Soch's cinematography. Yes, cinematography! The play opens with spy cams (projected on a large screen above the set) showing Lucy's arrival at Supreme Studios, moving from foyer to hallway to office before entering live on stage in the same outfit. Act Two opens with a scene between Jeremy and Christian (and Jeremy's mother's back) which takes place entirely on pre-shot high-def video, an inspired choice for a play about the movies. A recent column by Steven Leigh Morris in the LA Weekly bemoaned the conspicuous lack of plays about Hollywood in Hollywood. Rubin's Above The Line certainly helps to fill this gap. I loved every fly-on-the-Hollywood-wall moment of it.
ABOVE THE LINE Hollywood stereotypes are so La-Z-Boy lived-in, a newcomer to L.A. can giggle at them right along with industry insiders. In this world premiere, playwright Susan Rubin has gotten the whole gang together again for our theater-armchair gawking. There’s the screen-star-mama’s boy producer, Jeremy (Jason Stuart) the seemingly Zen earth mother executive with silver-ring brass knuckles (Denise Dowse) , the ladder-climbing Silverlake punk composer, Christian (Stewart W. Calhoun), the triple threat writer/bourbon drinker/asshole lady-killer, John (Nick Mennel), and his triple threat feminist lit professor/New Yorker/desperate prey, Lucy (Heather Marie Marsden). Now watch them try to make Tea, a movie-musical based on a family-heirloom journal kept circa the Boston Tea Party. Rubin knows all their soft spots, and pokes judiciously…. Director Mark Bringelson and cinematographer Adam Soch created a neat device merging film and theater. Hmmm…art imitates Hollywood.
Surprising, in a way, how few plays we're producing about making movies. The last big hit on that theme, Douglas Carter Beane's The Little Dog Laughed, came from New York. Susan Rubin's Above the Line, currently in previews and opening next week at Bootleg , in a co-production by Indecent Exposure Theatre Company, is all about what may be the qualities that emerge from our marketing-centric city, and the film biz it engendered - namely, duplicity and betrayal. Some characters in Rubin's play undertake an (ig)noble quest to rise above.
"The world is a bright and shiny apple that's mine, all MINE." Playwright Susan Rubin continues her trilogy (that started with BITCH a couple of years ago,) with ABOVE THE LINE (Below the Belt: A Comic Play About the Making of a Hollywood Movie) presented by Indecent Exposure at Bootleg. Ms. Rubin has once again partnered with director Mark Bringelson to bring us a Hollywood tale dealing mostly with the pre-production of a movie musical, "TEA!" yet sharply focused on the sexual lives and gamesmanship of the players behind the scenes. For anyone "making it" in Hollywood, or struggling while trying (or struggling whilst making it, even making it while struggling,) it is always a wonderful schadenfreude-istic experience to see your worst fears/ firsthand knowledge of the duplicity and dunce-ocracy that is the sausage grinder of the "real work" of the producers who get pictures green lit and thrown up on the screen- with their names attached, of course. It is easy to feel contempt for Jeremy, the mama's boy producer who epitomizes the worst of a never-ending nepotistic line of Hollywood royalty, and Angela, the studio exec frantically swimming up river to keep her job and social station while barely able to juggle her once a month custodial weekend with the only remnant of a failed marriage. Neither are familiar with the events of, or leading to, the Boston Tea Party. Each exude ignorance by equating all of Silverlake to a Homeless Shelter, and mistaking the underlying tenets of Judo for Kung Fu. The inside baseball Hollywood dramedy is nothing new. Perhaps best brought to life on film by Altman's The Player, sometimes these stories don't have much resonance outside of our LA bubble, or even East of La Brea. Does anyone remember what became of Action, on Fox? Fortunately for the team behind and in ABOVE THE LINE, they are playing to a crowd who enjoys seeing their own foibles laid bare on stage (or at least those of their bosses.) What truly lies at the core of ABOVE THE LINE, however, are sexual politics and power plays. Even though they may seem to be powerful players in the business, and acclaimed successes in their chosen professions, the uber producers and A-list screenwriter are not satisfied to merely be in charge. They have to dominate, emasculate, and completely eviscerate the intellect and challenging natures of anyone before they jump in to bed with them (literally or figuratively.) And in this town, it is this ability to lord over others, to fulfill wishes and crush dreams, that creates the opiate like lull of invincibility that drives each of Rubin's characters to their ultimate comeuppance. Like an episode of Law & Order, the plot moves, the performances are steady and worthwhile, and the audience is afforded it's fair share of red herrings. ABOVE THE LINE, as whole, does not disappoint. that is if it is your cup of tea.
Jason is a very prolific character actor whose film credits include Coffee Date, 10 Attitudes, Twisted Faith, The Chronicles of Holly-Weird and The Pit and the Pendulum. He's also made dozens of guest spots on television shows with the most recent being roles on episodes of The Closer, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Everybody Loves Chris. "I've never played a lead in a play in my life," Jason told me, adding: "I'm so tired. I don't even know why I'm here. I should be lying down!" "We do a scene and I keep thinking, 'Oh, I was good in that. Let's tape it!" "I play a producer named Jeremy Fisher and my mother is a very big star a la Elizabeth Taylor. I'm trying to get a movie going about the Boston Tea Party and yet I know nothing about history – all I know is about show business." Here is a synopsis of the play from the Bootleg Theatre Website: ABOVE THE LINE plays with sex, lies and videotape in this hilarious and sexy farce about the making of a Hollywood movie. This is not your mother's comedy! ABOVE THE LINE hits below the belt; a sexual fandango with a December/June relationship between Jeremy (JASON STUART) and Christian (STEWART W. CALHOUN), and a fiery fling between Lucy (HEATHER MARIE MARSDEN) and John (NICK MENNELL). The comedy gives us a peek at the lying, cheating and stealing that's goes on during the production of a Hollywood movie, about the Boston Tea Party with Studio executive Angela King (DENISE DOWSE). Never seen but always present via phone and video, "Mother" (an ELIZABETH TAYLOR clone), movie star from yesteryear, complicates the plot in the most intriguing way through the use of multi-media on stage. The play includes spy cams, betrayals and the creation of an accidentally brilliant, Oscar winning musical film! Get Tickets Jason is busy with other projects as well. Namely an April 5 benefit at the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood. Proceeds benefit the LA Gay & Lesbian Center's LifeWorks mentoring program. I'll have more about this upcoming event next week! Above the Line with Jason Stuart March 2010 By Charles Karel Bouley, Gay Blade
Stuart works hard, harder than many of his contemporaries. Being out and proud means he has to work harder. So, what's he getting himself into now? Stage: legitimate, honest-to-goodness get-me-an-understudy, break-a-leg stage shows. While Stuart has been in a play before, he has never been one of the lead characters. "There's a big difference between doing a show with actors who are also waiters and waitresses to doing a show with people who are real ‘theatre' people, with an ‘re' at the end," he said. "Above the Line" opens March 19 is billed as a "below-the-belt, comic play about the making of a movie" and is being presented by the Indecent Exposure Theatre Company at the Bootleg Theatre in Los Angeles. "I get up and go to work every day now, it's like I've been drafted, but it's remarkable," Stuart said. "[Theater] is a full-time job on top of the full-time job of living." In February, Stuart headlined the HRC Comedy Night in Phoenix — one of many benefits and charities he performs each year. He's also scheduled to appear at the annual Lifeworks Benefit for LGBT youth at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood. "I feel strongly about doing these types of events," he said. "I know life is all about money these days and most of these places can't pay that much, but it really is about empowering each other." With a play launching in March, a major benefit appearance in April, and TV and film priorities keeping him busy, Stuart has plenty of things to keep Blade readers' appetites whetted and ready for more. *Be sure to pick up the Blade's April issue for an exclusive interview with Jason Stuart.
Copyright © 2010 Indecent Exposure Theater Company, Los Angeles, CA, USA |
a•bove-the-line: (ə-bŭv'-THə-līn')
adj. the part of a film's budget that covers the costs associated with
major creative talent: the stars, the director, the producer(s) and the
writer(s) 
Chatted with the funny and talented
Jason Stuart at Outfest Fusion last weekend and he is very excited
about Above the Line, a play he co-stars in that opens tonight at the
Bootleg Theatre. 
Jason Stuart one of the
funniest LGBT comedians in America, he has torn up comedy clubs from New
York to Los Angeles, and every place in between. Stuart's also appeared
in independent films, major motion pictures, on television and even at
corporate speaking events along the way.