The world premiere reading of Reina Hardy’s The Puppet Show is coming to the Bonfire Series on July 24, 7:30PM. In advance of the reading, we learned a little more from Reina about this latest play (which is inspired by a political theater class and Sesame Street) as well as her other upcoming projects (including a sex-positive queer-positive re-interpretation of Barbarella).
Learn more below, and reserve seats ($10 suggested Donation) for her The Puppet Show, July 24, 7:30PM, South Oxford Space (138 S. Oxford St., Brooklyn).
Pipeline Theatre Company: What do you want us to know about your play?
Reina Hardy: This is a play about trying to change the world by putting on a show, something which I think is both necessary and probably not possible, and very likely dangerous.
PTC: When and where did you decide to start writing this play?
RH: Hoo boy. A really, really, really long time ago. I was taking a class in political theater during my first, non-successful run at grad school. The central question of the class was “what is political theatre?” And then I remember I was thinking about that question, and thinking about the Muppets, and then very suddenly thought of Sesame Street and shouted “of course!”
PTC: What excites you most about this project?
RH: The fact that I am completely out on a limb here, and have no idea if anything that I’m doing is going to work. That is thrilling. I also am in love with the death cult I invented for the purposes of the plot.
PTC: In one sentence, tell us something strange that happens in your play.
RH: A puppeteer has a depressed, neurotic roommate who is a failed writer and also a puppet.
PTC: Are you working on anything else?
RH: Yes! My devised circus show Agent Andromeda and the Orion Crusade is going up in Austin in September with Sky Candy, directed by Rudy Ramirez. “Devised” sounds so artsy, but it’s a take on Barbarella. It’s going to be a sex-positive, queer positive, ridiculous romp. I just finished the first draft, and post Bonfire I’m going to be all about Agent Andromeda rewrites.
PTC: Two truths and a lie, go:
RH: I sassed Oprah when I was 12.
I have appeared, under a pseudonym and presented in a sexualized fashion, in two memoirs: one reasonably successful, the other thankfully still unpublished.
I once wrote a play about a weird internet penpal of mine who still doesn’t even know my name.
PTC: What’s next for you?
RH: Teaching playwriting at Interlochen Arts Camp, followed by Agent Andromeda in Austin, followed by Fanatical (my musical with composer Matt Board) in England in March.
About The Puppet Show
by Reina Hardy | directed by Anais Koivisto
Sunday, July 24, 7:30PM
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Sam is a puppeteer from a rough background. Imogen is an international humanitarian/producer with a secret. Together, they’re going to save the world through children’s television- or are they?
