The Late Night Theatre series at Psychic Readings (Baltimore) begins this week with a double bill

Strange Fire
written & directed by Ric Royer, sound by G Lucas Crane
lights by David Crandall, projections by Meredith Moore
safety disclaimer by Cricket Arrison

The Smallest Something Not Quite Nothing
written by Thalia Field, directed by Bonnie Jones
lights by David Crandall

At PSYCHIC READINGS, 219 Park Ave, Baltimore
Wed & Thu, Jan 6 & 7 @ 9pm (doors at 8:15)
$10 (or $8 if you drink a prepared elixer at box office)

ABOUT THE PLAYS:

Strange Fire is a re-enactment of the infamous West Virginia Blessing sermon delivered by charismatic Christian preacher, Rodney Howard-Browne. In 1993, Brown whipped thousands of people who were in attendance into a frenzy through a sermon that consisted mostly of laughter and glossolalia. In Strange Fire, Royer extracts the large sections of the sermon that were delivered in tongues and re-contextualizes the “sacred text” in a hypnotizing, multi-sensory environment where the specific religious apparatus is removed, but the performative aspects of ritual and ecstatic trance are maintained.

The Smallest Something Not Quite Nothing was written by poet, playwright Thalia Field. First published in “PLAY A Journal of Plays” in 2009, this will be the world premier staging of the piece. The play is about how amazingly sad, sexy, and creepy it is to be watched and watching each other all the time in a highly surveilled human society (condition). People watching each other, objects watching each other, all of us and all of our objects trying to touch each other – check each other out, define each other’s shapes.
Two characters, Superstar and Radar, encounter each other and this world amidst war, pop music, celebrity culture and constant bombardment by waves and waves of invisible frequencies.