PHOTOS: Recession on off-off-Broadway
Actors Robert Grant and Sarah Stephens take a rehearsal break outside the Flea Theater, a stalwart of off-off-Broadway that makes it its mission to keep asking questions about charged contemporary issues. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
The theater is presenting a series of six short plays that the Bats will perform. From left, Emily Simoness, Jonathan Marballi, Sarah Stephens, Jamie Effros, Nick Maccarone and Greg Coughlin during rehearsal. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Sarah Stephens moved from Cincinatti to New York to pursue her dream of an acting career. She’s performing a play about the recession, but it’s something she knows about in her real life too.
“I was living check to check doing regional theater in Ohio,” she said, “so I figured I could live just as easily check to check in New York and get my chance.” (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Sarah Stephens and Robert Grant rehearse a scene in “Classic Kitchen Timer,” a 12-minute play. The stories are geared toward twentysomethings barely out of college and foundering in a job market nobody prepared them for. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
At first, playwright Adam Rapp, right, was reluctant to attempt such a grand topic for so brief a time frame. “When I heard 10 minutes, I thought, ‘Oh, can it be 20?’ ”
But he came up with a play and was paid $800. “Yes, commissions aren’t that much money, but at this point I’ll take anything,” he said. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Sarah Stephens and Robert Grant in “Classic Kitchen Timer” by Adam Rapp. It’s about an America so economically desperate that people will kill a baby for $25,000. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Jim Simpson, the Flea’s artistic director, was eager to get a youthful outlook on this economic moment. The theater recruited actors to perform “The Great Recession” -- unpaid. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
