Mo Gaffney, Paul Provenza Set To Star In Dylan Brody's AND...AGAIN

On January 28th, humorist and former Tonight Show writer Dylan Brody's play, And...Again makes it's workshop debut at The Main in Newhall, CA.

The play stars Paul Provenza (The Green Room with Paul Provenza, The Aristocrats) Mo Gaffney (Mad About You, Absolutely Fabulous), Erich Lane (Dear White People) and Robyn Heller (Singing in the Wrong Direction)

This full-length one-act by Brody and directed by Mark Kaplan is a powerful polemic disguised as a kitchen-table dramedy. In seventy lean minutes of laughter and suspense, this play shines a bright light on a shared blind spot that threatens a nation's, and a family's united continuity.

In times of political polarization and ethnic tension, plays that give distance, and open conversation with humor and insight rather than accusation or threat become more necessary than ever. Like Arthur Miller's the Crucible, Brecht's The Informer, or Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, Brody's play finds laughter and humanity in a familial reduction of big-picture frictions that seem too intractable to explore.

Dylan applies his incisive wit to reveal the troubling parallels between the cultural blinders that let average prewar Germans and let average modern Americans become casual conspirators.

When cast and crew members raised concerns about the possibility of right-wing backlash against the work, of black objections to depictions of a black character written by a white Jewish playwright, and of Jewish offense if the piece is perceived to trivialize the holocaust, Active Voice Productions brought in diversity facilitator and advocate Dr. Christal Morris to explore these questions and concerns. Upon hearing the suggestion that the cast and creative team showed an interest in touring the Museum of Tolerance as a group, the production sprung for the trip at once. Mr. Brody, playwright and producer of the project said, "It didn't occur to me that the questions I wanted to raise in the play would need to be fully explored in the creative production process for the actors, the director, the designer, but now that it begins it makes perfect sense. The magical thing about all of it though, is that every concern anyone raised came as protection of someone else. They've all-all of them climbed-on board this project and begun caring about one another's sensitivities and sensibilities."

Tickets available here.

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