Dialogue With Three Chords Hosts Benefit For Veterans and Military Families

Dialogue with Three Chords will host a benefit night for On Behalf of a Grateful Nation, an organization that raises funds for wounded veterans and military families. HELLO CENTRAL Deleted Scenes from NEXT is written by Stephen Gracia and directed by Michael LoPorto. It is an expansion of NEXT, produced by Abraxas Theatre Company at HERE Arts Center, which follows a group of WWII soldiers as they wait for their turn at a military-sponsored whorehouse. It includes a burlesque performance and starts at 8PM on October 27, Downstairs at Mr. Dennehy's pub on 63 Carmine Street in Greenwich Village. Admission is $10.

HELLO CENTRAL reunites many of the principal cast members from Gracia's NEXT and gives the audience a deeper look at those characters. The show was conceived as a benefit for On Behalf of a Grateful Nation, who also partnered with the production of NEXT to raise funds. "It's is less a hodge-podge of scenes and more of an entire second play-taking place before, during, and well after the war," says Gracia. "NEXT was less of a straight narrative, more of a collection of moments that hang within a structure; that made it easier to write a re-visitation with those characters. It was a matter of finding moments between the ones you saw in the original production."

HELLO CENTRAL begins at a USO dance before two of the characters from NEXT ship out. One is taken to a Coney Island burlesque show and joins the audience for the performance from New York-based artist Kitty Cavalier. The setting shifts to the same WWII encampment from NEXT where we revisit other characters who struggle to reconcile the treatment of an Asian prostitute by their superior officers. Gracia cites the line "our history is an aggregate of last moments" from Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow as an influence. He explains that "NEXT and Hello Central are just that, aggregates of last moments, which is the nature of writing fiction about war."

Featuring: Judy W. Chen as Funayurei, Charles Everett as John, John Gazzale as The Lieutenant, Matthew Ferretti as Bobby, Kendra Leigh Landon as Madeline, Sean Meehan as Stan, Edie Nugent as Helen, John Weisenburger as Danny and Erica White as Joyce.

Dialogue with Three Chords was founded by Stephen Gracia and Michael LoPorto and applies do-it-yourself philosophy of punk to the stage and features short plays on the 4th Thursday of the month at Mr. Dennehy's. Their work has also been produced at Sargent Theatre, Makor Theater, DUMBO Theatre Exchange, Levenson Hall at Brooklyn College, and the Theaters at 45 Bleecker.