Let Me Ascertain You: The Civilians Podcast

People who encounter death as part of their daily lives are featured in this week's episode, which was recorded live during our cabaret at Joe's Pub. Emily Rossell performs an interview with an ER doctor from the Bronx, Nina Hellman performs an ER nurse from the Midwest, and Dan Domingues plays Andrew Anastasio, who owns a funeral home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Lastly, Emily Rossell and James Rickman sing a murder ballad written by Michael Friedman. Many thanks to our interviewers for this episode: Ian Daniel and Jay Stull.

Our Judson Church performance from earlier this year featured monologues about the Occupy movement. The interviews were conducted as part of our open-sourced investigative call to action, Occupy Your Mind. Mark Stetson from Arts Diaspora performs an Occupy Activist who participated in Occupy in New York, D.C., and Oakland, and who was around when things got very tough in Oakland. Aidan O'Shea, a member of Judson Church, performs the Pastor of Judson, Michael. Indika Senanayake performs Manissa, a member of the POC caucus, and an activist who interviewed Eliot Spitzer. She tells her now legendary story of blocking consensus at Zuccotti Park. Many thanks to those who conducted these interviews: Mark Stetson, Aidan O'Shea, and Jackie Sibblies Drury!

The Body Farm in Knoxville, TN is the world's first research facility dedicated to the study of human decomposition. The two monologues in this episode are from interviews conducted there by Civilians Associate Artist Alix Lambert as part of ongoing projects of her own. We're very grateful that she has shared this fascinating material with us. Greg McFadden plays Bill Bass, the founder of the Body Farm, then Emily Ackerman plays a forensic artist. Lastly, Meghan McGreary sings a song by Shaina Taub called "Sleep and Death" accompanied by Kris Kukel. This episode was recorded during our Let Me Ascertain You: Death cabaret at Joe's Pub.

A talk-back with the cast of You Better Sit Down: Tales from My Parents' Divorce kicks off this week's episode. The show, which recently completed its New York premiere at the Flea Theater, featured actors Matt Maher, Caitlin Miller, Jennifer R. Morris, and Robbie Collier Sublett, who all interviewed their parents, and each plays his or her own parent (or parents). In the talk-back, they discuss the process of creating the show, talking about these topics with their parents, and their parents' reactions to the show. Then, The Flea Theater's resident acting company, The Bats, presents a short piece created from online and live audience responses that they put together during You Better Sit Down and performed after the play on the same night. Next is a monologue crafted from responses by our R&D Group artist Mia Rovegno and performed by Associate Artist Dan Domingues. The episode closes out with a song written and performed by Matt Berger.

Occupy Your Mind is an open-sourced living history of Occupy. Anyone, anywhere can participate by conducting an interview, performing it, and posting it to the Occupy Your Mind Tumblr, occupythecivilians.tumblr.com. This past April, The Civilians and others came together to give a performance of Occupy Your Mind material. Molly Camp performs Mary, who worked with the Yesmen on a public demonstration that caught Boomberg's eye. Hadi Tabbal plays noted Occupy activist Amin, who tells his talks about the future of the movement and about how Occupy relates to past moments of global activism. Then Erica Rose plays Occupier, Sandy, an activist involved with Occupy since the early days at Zuccotti Park who talks about being followed by the police.

The elevated public park, the High Line, is built on historic freight rails elevated above the New York City streets. This week's episode features a show about Robert Hammond, a co-founder of the High Line, and the process behind getting the park built. Interviewees featured in the show include Robert, Robert's mom and dad, staff at Friends of the High Line, Bronson Van Wyck, 2005 NYC Democratic mayoral candidate Gifford Miller, Director of the Department of City Planning Amanda Burden, and Florent Morellet. The show was created for our Annual Spring Benefit at The Highline Ballroom in the spring of 2012. It was written by Steve Cosson with songs by Michael Friedman, and performed by Associate Artists Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Matt Dellapina, Dan Domingues, Daoud Heidami, Nina Hellman, Daniel Jenkins, Kelly McCreary, Greg McFadden, Maria Elena Ramirez, Robbie Collier Sublett, and Sam Breslin Wright.

You Better Sit Down: Tales from My Parents' Divorce recently had its world premiere at The Flea Theater in New York. The play consisted of four actors playing their parents in verbatim conversations each actor had with his or her parent or parents about the parents' divorces. Following the performances, the company presented a series of Salon Nights, in which artists created new monologues or songs from audience responses, online comments, and interviews. This episode features some of that material. First up, is a new monologue by New Yorker scribe Michael Schulman, performed by Michael and his sister Alyssa Schulman, for which he interviewed their grandmother about a divorce that they didn't know that she had. Then Kamara Thomas sings a song called "Onions" that she wrote about a break-up. Lastly, Jason Grote (one of our R&D Group writers and a staff writer on Smash) and his writing partner Marisa Michelson present an original song crafted from online responses performed by Marisa.

Anne Wasburn's new play is currently receiving its world premiere at Woolly Mammoth Theater Company in Washington, DC. In the show, Armageddon has struck and the electric grid has gone down permanently. For one group of tenacious survivors, sitting around a fire and reminiscing about The Simpsons proves to be the greatest escape from despair. Almost all of the episode recollection that the characters do in the first act is from a Civilians workshop in 2008, in which a group of Associate Artists led by Anne Washburn and Steve Cosson attempted to recreate the Cape Feare episode of The Simpsons from memory. This episode features some of the hilarious audio taken during that workshop. This episode also has an interview with playwright Anne Washburn, who discusses the role of the workshop in her creative process and her interest in this subject matter. Matt Maher, an actor in the original workshop and a Simpsons savant, then speaks about the exercises in the workshop and even tells us about his personal favorite Simpsons moments. Composer Michael Friedman talks about the music in the play and shares an excerpt of his post-Apocalyptic score of jumbled pop hits, as well as some of the music from the third act in which The Simpsons have spawned a whole new mythology and entertainment.

http://blogforthecivilians.blogspot.com/2012/06/mr-burns-podcast.html

How do we deal with the pressures of modern society? This week's episode looks at interviews focused on the ways we try to escape, including running away, drugs, suicide, and hot nude yoga. Billy Eugene Jones plays a former mole person who lived in the New York subway tunnels in the 1980's; Dan Domingues performs an interview with the founder of hot nude yoga; Daoud Heidami plays a New Jersey State Trooper; and Michael Esper sings "Lost Horizon" by Michael Friedman from our play Gone Missing.

Colorado Springs is home to many national Evangelical Organizations, including Focus on the Family and New Life Church. Our artists spent time there investigating the shifting lines between church and state, viewing the city as a microcosm for many issues still present in America. The verbatim interviews were used in our play, This Beautiful City. You are about to hear some of our favorite interviews that didn't make it into the play: Emily Ackerman playing an elderly pro-life protester, Colleen Werthmann playing an Anabaptist/thespian/activist, and Matt Dellapina as a Evangelical cadet. This episode also features a song from the show by Michael Friedman "End Times" with lyrics crafted from interviews, performed by Alison Weller.