miranda warning, peace

dusted.

Hella Fresh Theater Presents The Gambling Room

Enjoy the barbeque this May and June in Kensington, USA.

Hella Fresh Theater presents

The Gambling Room

(Phòng Giải Trí/ Salle de Jeux)

Reeling from the death of their father, two young Americans attempt a coup d’état from a rooftop in Saigon.  John and Jack, rising stars in the US diplomatic corps carry out their father’s final command- meet the embattled President of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem and furnish him with a list of American journalists to be silenced.  Risking their lives and charges of treason, the brothers vie for glory, prestige and their father’s immortality. Set in the fall of 1963, the tumultuous days leading to the falls of Presidents, The Gambling Room witnesses the end of a diplomat’s family and the birth of a new era in Vietnam.

Starring Dan Tobin, Calvin Atkinson and Sebastian Cummings. Written and directed by John Rosenberg.

John Rosenberg has written and directed Alp’D Huez, Automatic Fault Isolation, Queen of All Weapons, Californian Redemption Value, Jericho Road Improvement Association and Use Both Hands.  

“An impetuous playwright who takes a radical approach to independent Philly theater.” City Paper.

The Gambling Room runs May 18^th through June 9^th at the Papermill Theater in Kensington, USA.

All shows are Saturday and Sunday at 2pm.

Press comps available for May 18^th and 19^th shows.

The Papermill Theater, at 2825 Ormes Street is located a few blocks from Kensington and Lehigh Avenues in the Papermill Arts Collective. The Papermill Arts Collective is a five-story warehouse featuring artist workspace, an art gallery, a community library and a fifty-seat theater.There is free street parking. For public transportation, take the Market Frankford line to the Huntington Stop.

For more information and tickets, visit www.hellafreshtheater.com or call 510-292-6403.

When You Are Here, You Are Family

Rehearsal for Stratagems For Common People...

if you can't make it to the show this weekend, take a listen.

Sarah Rosenberg and Sebastian Cummings as waiters from Olive Garden waiting for dinner at Cheesecake Factory in Cherry Hill, NJ.

For your listening pleasure while doing your chores

This past week our friend Amanda Bruton and her wife Kristen were in town. Amanda is playing Grandma in the international tour ofTthe Addams Family Musical, which made a stop in Philadelphia.

She performed eight shows while in Philadelphia over six days.

I guess anyone who has done a national tour or a real grown-up Broadway show knows what hard work and a grind is being an actor.

Anyways, i thought it would be very neat to sit down with Amanda and hear about her experiences on the tour, her approach to acting and other topics that popped up.

She agreed and we talked for a while over a dinner of spaghetti bolognese.



For more info about Amanda's career or to catch her in action, check out www.amandabruton.com

uberorgan

i guess this is few days from now, but I like the day of the week anniversary's not the date date anniversary.

i wrote this a few years ago and I pretty much feel the same way.

uberorgan


i mentioned the last monday of february a while ago and what it means to me, me and yael's anniversary.

i got another one to mention, albeit different.

today i was rummaging through this cardboard suitcase that i found on a street in new york a few summers ago. me and billy busse sat in central park trying to figure out the combination to the lock, starting at 001. we went all the way to 999 until realizing it was 000.

i keep old stuff in there. it smells old and nice in there. Today i was rummaging through it looking furtively for something i knew was not in there. While looking through stuff i found a copy of the arts section of new york times from Thursday march 25, 2005. in it is a review of my mom's version of a midsummer's nights dream.

point of the story.

the day before march 25, 2005, i woke up hungover in my mom's apt in new york. hooray! me and scott peterson had gone to see another production of hamlet 2 my mom was putting on. the lead never showed up and my mom had a stagehand read all her parts on stage. it was great.

me and scott got trashed at 7b afterwards. hooray, whatever. he went to boston next morning to visit mfa programs. i went to mcdonalds near my moms apt off 137th and broadway. i had chicken selects. I decided to walk down to central park, then around it and up to whitney museum. it was very cold but i was hungover and i did not mind at all. it was lovely.

at the whitney, my first time there, was an exhibition of an artist i always refer to as tim hawkinson but that isn't his name and his shit is absolutely incredible (editing this later i realize that is his name and don't recall what i thought his name was). i remember looking out a window of the whitney on an upper floor and watching snow slowly fall. there was an installation of another piece of his work down madison avenue at the ibm building called the uberorgan. i rushed down madison avenue through lightly falling snow to the ibm building to see it.

i went to my moms show that night charged off the whitney museum and the beautiful afternoon i hadnt planned and stumbled upon. i know i ran my mouth off about how beautiful new york was in march and whatever. everyone had to go to whitney i am sure i commanded.

before my mom's show started, my sister called me on the other verge of breaking down, telling me our dad had leukemia and was being hospitalized.

i flew out before dawn on my mom's money to long beach to see my dad. At the airport I picked up a copy of the new york times featuring the great review of my mom's play.

it is a very arresting day that i do not want to forget, so i type it here in case i forget to write down somewhere else. if i was as talented as marcel proust, i could write out for you the whole 24 hours, but hooray! i am not and i will just say i remember it all and just type it was a most beautiful 24 hours of my life, morning of march 23rd to march 24th.

click here on uberorgan to also fall in love.

The Gap Band has bad taste in women.

California Love and Respect

text from a prince of los angeles 

sunday morning at 1:29am

the reason why i love you more than everyone else is cause you're the type of dude who if i died you'd come visit my grave or the house i used to live in that i pissed on and pay your respects on a semi regular basis

i just fucked a hot Asian girl and i'm bored

love you

Poster For The Gambling Room

Stratagems For Common People

It is nearly Spring, time to stretch and get back into it and get ready for a season of new plays at the Papermill.

We are reporting to Mt. Airy the first weekend of April to present new works with frequent collaborator and friend Josh McIlvain of Smokey Scout productions.

For more info until we post more, go to smokeyscout.com.

I saw Argo and thought it was okie doke. I wanted to like it more but was not really captured in the time and space of the movie, other than the awesome use of the warner brothers caption thing at the start from the era.

There are tons of valid detractors and criticisms of the film, see professionals such as Dr. juan Cole and Glenn Greenwald for cogent critiques.

As a film it was whatever, but what it offers is a story that champions a non-violent solution to a problem of our own making.

Given the whatever the fuck we are now, that is almost revolutionary. 

Today

Is the last Monday in February. The last Monday in February is Yael and I's anniversary. This is will be the tenth consecutive last Monday in February we have spent together.

Happy 10th anniversary, my sweet Yael. I love you. 

watch the fuck out

My mom aka Rosie aka Mrs. Big Stuff aka Grand Champion Winner of Everything has agreed to be in a short play I am writing for Stratagems of Common People in April.

You have been motherfucking warned. 

Antonio Raimundo Montana on John Rosenberg

That guy is soft. 

I forgot...

This is a Richmond Bound Train. 

Tonight if you are free...

Josh McIlvain of SmokeyScout is hosting a free reading of a new play in development.

Tonight!

it stars these guys below. 

Brother House is about an architect who is lives in the shell of a house made of wood paneling that only rises three feet off the ground. When the architect’s old college friend visits the structure after if has won an architecture prize for best conceptual dwelling, buried tensions come to the fore, including who had the idea for this house first. This seriocomic examination of the absurd meeting the mundane digs into the myth of normalcy, the desire to appropriate others’ living spaces, and the diverging paths of old friends. Script-in-hand performance will include set pieces.

Written and directed by Josh McIlvain, Brother House is being developed with the creative contributions of Ed Miller and Christopher McGovern in an intensive five-week rehearsal and workshopping process that will culminate in the reading.

Talkback with author and cast after the show. Bar in the adjacent room!

FEBRUARY 13 at 7PM (doors open), 7.30PM (show starts)

Underground Arts, 1200 Callowhill Street, Philadelphia

FREE – RSVP HERE (brotherhouse.brownpapertickets.com)

Paging Tarak

From time to time, I have electronic conversations with my friend Tarak. I know him from Berkeley. He is a very smart person but above all very kind and decent. What one would like in a friend.

From time to time we have conversations and he says very interesting and fascinating things that most of the time leave me at a loss for words.

                    Tarak: also, stupidish question that we've kind of discussed before

  but how does irony actually work, in literature? in books, plays, etc?

4:47 PM http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/01/i-can-feel-the-changes/266933/

4:49 PM me: what ya mean?

4:50 PM Tarak: i remember learning the term "irony" in school whatever grade, but i don't know if i really thought to ask or understand if

  accepting the existence of irony as a literary technique

  involves presuming that the reader knows things about the real life author

  or is it more about knowing about the narrator, or "knowing" about the rest of hte audience

4:51 PM me: hmmmmmm

  i dunno

  like with the song by alanis morisette

 Tarak: like,

 me: is that irony?

 Tarak: hahahahahahaha

 me: i think she is using wrong word

 Tarak: do i have to know who shakespear was and know his thoughts on teh subject to form an opinion on shylock in merchant of venice?

4:52 PM me: is that irony?

 Tarak: i don't even know if that would be a correct use of "irony," but it's kind of a similar thing. like are we laughing with or laughing at?

  or not even that

  if i was into that play

  is it a kind of knowing laugh at the shylock character, thinking he's a critique of antisemitism?

 me: i think to know what dorve someone to do saomething is to try to co-op their ability and not have it be this ethereal thing

 Tarak: or am i just laughing at jews?

4:53 PM me: it is both!

 Tarak: right, i kind of thought that too, what you said

  so, as i remember it, irony was like "when the reader and the author know something that a character does not"

  but what the hell do i know about what the author knows?

  for all i know he doesn't know what happened on page 29

4:54 PM me: why can't shakespeare be commenting on the insanity of antisemitism but be able to write it so well because he is antisemetic as well?

 Tarak: that's what i think

  i mean, i think he shoudl be able to do that

  i think he did do that, to some extent

  but then it's not really an ironic anti-semitism right?

  and what i'm wondering is,

  how can there be an example of an ironic anything in lit?

4:55 PM me: whoa

  you are fucking with the 4th dimension

 Tarak: hahahahahahaha

 me: casi, jr and shit

 Tarak: hahahahahahahahaha

4:56 PM me: you just blew my mind

4:57 PM Tarak: hooray!

 me: i don't like irony

  or what people call it

Man is incredibly smart and sensitive, a beautiful combination. 
i bring this up because a local big theater comapny, Philadelphia Theatre Company is putting on a production of a play called the Mountaintop. It is concerned with the night before Martin King was murdered. In the play, he is in a hotel room and a maid comes to the room to clean and over the process of the play, it is made clear the maid knows things about Dr. King and is in fact an abgel sent to tell him of his soon demise. 
I am sure it is a beautiful play and will be executed with precision and emotion and focus. 
It personally makes me feel weird because an angel did not visit him the night before he was murdered. I would write a different type of play but i havent so who gives a shit. 
Dr. King was in Atlanta for a Sanitation Workers strike.
The union stagehands of the Philadelphia Theatre Company (producing the Mountaintop) has announced they are going on strike right before the production of a play about the night before King was fighting for the rights of union workers. 
I don't know what that is, but it seems not to be mentioned in press coverage. It seems it should be mentioned.
 http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2013/01/23/philadelphia-theatre-company-open-stagehands-strike-mountaintop/
Tarak, what the fuck do you call this?

FBI cointelpro letter to Martin King

Omar Khayyam is the shit

They tell you that heaven with houris is delightful;
I tell you that the juice of the grape is delightful.
Take the cash in hand and decline the loan: 
Drumming’s more pleasant when heard from afar.

(Translation by Juan Cole) 

qunetin tarantino

All praise for the style, the language, the phrasing, references, race bait people take

but really

fucking kaboom the heart to attack and shape cinematic historical reality.

i feel bad for anyone who scoffs at inglorious basterds or django.

i learned how to be a stronger, fearless playwright from his last two movies. or shittier.

bloodletting/ drunk/ no dinner

this was from listening to nia by blackalicious.

3rd of

my sister called dad had collapsed because of a blood thing 6 or seven years ago.

my dad had a blood disorder, pre-leukemia. sister called me at work to tell me he collapsed. 

i jumped in truckasaurus and drove berkeley to la, scared for my father's welfare.

the 5 down, i listened to the radio broadcast of a giants game. It was a long, slow game. Somehow, the radio broadcast carried almost to the graqpevine.

At some point they had a guest announcer who won a contest.

i get baseball is boring, but jon miller, the voice of the sf giants is the shit when you are terrified for your dad's life and you have to drive 6 hours.

thank you, jon miller for keeping me between the lines or whatever on the 5 a long time a few years ago.

i have wanted to thank you a long time for doing something real.

2nd of

Dear, Blackalicious-

sound memory of the lost decade for me.

The world keeps turning around is my dad with leukemia, me and jj, jesse and andy at the dodger game.

 life was so much simpler then.

1st of a few

Dear, Blackalicious-

Nia,

 Sansom Street Philadelphia,

White guy, 6 foot 2,

 handsome,

grey suit,

lacoste shirt

duck boots,

headhones

 

Coming Soon

Phòng Giải Trí

Salle De Jeux

The Gambling Room

Starring Calvin Atkinson and Dan Tobin. 

Coming this May to the Papermill Theater. 

why, i asked my sister

 jessica:  john travolta is the problem

i can't take him seriously

 me:  why is he so strange to watch now?

 jessica:  he is made of play dough

with spray paint hair

 me:  hahahahahahahahahaha

battered by the test of time

Get Shorty. 

I have never seen anyone lose their shit in a public place. Really really really really freak out.

I once saw a guy on Hayes Street in SF driving his car very slowly. He was laughing and the the windshield wipers were going and a line of cars behind him were honking. I remember thinking that motherfucker is crazy.

Off of 9th and I forgot the other street in SF I saw a guy run around the corner carrying what looked like a sword. I remember thinking that motherfucker is crazy.

At the risk of sounding like someone who uses the term ghetto, of course there were all the Berkeley crazy celebrities everyone who has spent time there has a story about. Rick Starr, the black guy with the pa system, the dude with the beard on the pay phones asking for the cia.

They weren't always that way and wonder what got them there.

I bring this up because i was driving to lunch earlier and remembered i had a roommate who was a grad student in engineering and ended up living on the street and was clearly suffering from psychological problems. I am sure he is still there.

I knew some dudes and was a dude with some problems and am glad we made it out of berkeley.  

oh yeah

me and yael are getting married on june 22nd in her mom's back yard in philadelphia.

Let em know if you would like to come. 

Since I seen you

My sister bought me a deep fryer.

I saw Bill Cosby at the Philadelphia Airport at 5:30am.

My flight to Phoenix was delayed two days.

There is a Rick Bayless restaurant in Chicago O'Hare.

A woman took the last fork and laughed at me when she saw I couldn't find one.

My sister thought a guy was going to shoot up the movie theater so we left. He was super freaky and was wearing sunglasses in Les Miserables.

We did not pay to see Les Miserables, we snuck in after seeing Parental guidance.

I made a rib roast with sage butter but cut off the twine before cooking because i didn't see it in the recipe.

I saw Django and am still in awe.

 I felt very miserable and gross not working on a play.

I got back to work on a new play.

I finished Charlie Mcleod's National Treasures. Shit is just simply beautiful.

Doing research for the new play I read half of Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A history and started on the Pentagon Papers Volume 2 Chapter 4 and started on A Bright and Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan last night.

First of the new one

The Gambling Room

October 1963. A young man, John sits on a couch in the Gambling Room of the Presidential Palace of South Vietnam. He is on the phone with Jack, his twin brother. John and Jack on the phone. You hear Jack's voice through a speaker. 

A man enters after a bit and stands in the corner. 

John- what?

Jack- What you hear is not what I am saying.

John- what?

Jack- What I am saying is a credit to Shriver more than anything. So don't hear what I am saying. Because it is not me.

John- what?

Jack- You haven’t read it so...

John- what?

Jack- So you can't be sanctimonious. You can't be sanctimonious period.

John- what?

Jack- I’m not saying you need to read it. I have never said you should read anything but you should read it.

John- what?

Jack- I am describing it just happened for no more than thirty second, maybe a minute. 

John- what?

Jack- Rather you didn't read it. Don't read it.  

John- what?

Jack- You are being churlish.

John- what?

Jack- You are.

John- what?

Jack- And now I have to wait for you to read it and you will give me daily updates and you will most likely get my hopes up just to spite me.

John- why would I spite you?

Jack- because-

John- No, sorry. I couldn't hear you. Must have been the shortwave.

Jack- You couldn’t?

John- no.

Jack- Thank god. Oh, sorry. I thought you were being churlish.

John- churlish or girlish?

Jack- you kept saying what. Churlish.

John- I couldn’t hear you.

Jack- I thought you were judging me.

John- that would be churlish?

Jack- that'd girlish.

John- Judging does not make one churlish.

Jack- I never have thought you to be churlish. Hence my concern. From when?

John- what?

Jack- at what point couldn’t you hear me?

John- at what point did I start sounding churlish?

Jack- when was that?

John- now who wasn't listening? all from the word what.

Jack- a powerful word. Well, any word repeated is quite powerful.

John- Indeed.

Jack- indeed.

John- indeed.

Jack- indeed.

John- Already powerful.

Jack- so from where?

John- You were talking to Ky.

Jack- all the way back there?

John- that is churlish.

Jack- I thin we are using the wrong word. Ky was the one who first brought it to my attention.

John- which one is he?

Jack- the Vietnamese one.

John- The Vietnamese one.

Jack- He is one of the ones, yeah?

John one of the what?

Jack- Vietnamese ones. Have you met him?

John -short, slanty eyed?

Jack- chain smokes.

John- oh, that one.

Jack- so there are a bunch of penguins...

John- nazis had penguins?

Jack- did they?

John – I am asking you.

Jack- you are there.

John- you are talking to ky.

Jack- so, there are a bunch of penguins...

John- wait, what?

Jack- and one of them...two penguins are on an iceberg.

John- thank you, set up the story, please

Jack- two penguins on an iceberg.

John- two penguins on an iceberg. I have never heard this.

Jack- I know. you and me are on an iceberg.

John -two penguins you and me are on an iceberg

Jack- and one penguin

John- which one-

Jack- two penguins are on an iceberg and one turns to the other and says

John- two penguins on an iceberg and one turns to the other and says

jack- People have been saying you are wearing a tuxedo.

John- people? what people? You and me?

Jack- So what if I am?

John- what?

Jack- no, the other penguin says so what if I am.

John- You and me?

Jack- the other penguins.

John- how would penguins know what people are saying?

Jack- make the logical progression penguins refer to other penguins as people.

John- what is a logical progression?

Jack- I meant penguins when I said people.

John- tell me what exactly is logical progression.

Jack- wait. no. if I said other penguins have been talking and said you were. It's funny no matter what.

John- I heard you the first time.

Jack- You haven’t read it.

John- I haven’t.

Jack- I am not saying you need to read it. That is demeaning.I am describing the personal journey I took with the book.

 John- sure.

Jack- I am saying this as a man who has fucked a jewish girl who was very nice and pretty.

John- What girl was jewish?

Jack- I felt bad for hitler at the end.  

John- No, stop, I heard you the whole time. Someone else is in the room and you are saying you love Hitler. 

fuck these other vatos, ese

It is neat to go ex to the next with the stuff...I haven't really thought about Alp D' Huez since we closed.

Up until last week I had been working on a grant proposal for the pew center for a project in 2014. I had to write a artist statement (heehaw) and the project description (heehawish). The Pew center had sent 3 site visitors to see the play, one of which thought highly of the show and two who thought it was amateur hour and full of exposition and obvious obfuscation. In part, the proposal I had to write had to refute or prove that i was to be trusted or wasn't a complete idiot. And it is a weird thing and i know for the future for the grant shit to hire someone who enjoys grant writing instead of trying to make myself do it and acting crazy to those i love.

All of this bad juju i complain about because I forgot Brian Siano, a friend of Jennifer Summerfield shot the show the final weekend and is working on the video. He talks about the shoot here. http://briansiano.com/?p=288   it is nice to remember how great the play was and fuck these other vatos, ese. 

for my pops

Did the Japanese sit down and have dinner with pearl harbor before them bombed them?

Sports thing.

Artist statement for Letter of Interest for Pew Center (has to 750 words)

My mom is a larger-than-life drama teacher. What I am now was forged in a house filled with Shakespeare, students as roommates and the sounds of my mom  typing scripts.  My house was a wild hotel. Comedy and tragedy reigned supreme. Growing up in a house of theater is a bit dramatic.

 I went to college at Berkeley and left it all behind. I studied drugs very hard for seven years.

I fell in love with a woman named Yael and thought a way to prove my worth to her was being in a play. I always figured I would do something in theater again and thought this might be a fun thing to do. I got cast in a bootleg production of Hamlet in Berkeley. The show was horrible.

But I met like minded individuals in the cast confident in what was good theater. New stories, give the audience cheap beer.

We decided to produce new work- I said I had a story about a relationship ending. They said I should write it. I had never written before.  This was my re/start- a guy drunkenly telling me to write about breaking through a condom.

We created an independent theater company dedicated to producing new works by new authors, named Sleepwalkers Theater .

In 2007, Sleepwalkers produced  my first full-length play, Use Both Hands, a story of two people gambling for self-worth in a casino in Reno, Nevada.  It was based on a co-workers brutal earlier marriage. The SF Weekly took notice and said in spite all the cursing, “our shit was good.’

Sleepwalkers continues fostering new writers. I went out on my own, determined to write and direct plays.  I got a most magnificent start with Sleepwalkers, the heart to believe in my work, the desire to do it on my terms with the pedigree of a childhood under the teachings of my mom as a foundation  

In 2009 I wrote and directed Jericho Road Improvement Association. It was about my relationship with my father and the men I grew up around. I placed  the story against the backdrop of the violence between the Black Panthers and Oakland police department. I produced it with help from my family and  my lady friend Yael. The East Bay Express noted the play for being a “searing, intense tale.”

A few months later, I moved with Yael to Philadelphia. Her father offered me the chance to build a theater space in a warehouse in Kensington  to produce work. I bought two full rigs of lights,  he built some risers and I started writing plays in Philadelphia.

California Redemption Value, my first full-length in Philadelphia was portrait of me growing up in a house of comedy and tragedy.  “Enjoyable,” offered  The Philly Inquirer.

 I met a German actress and became interested in the Baader Meinhoff Group of Germany. I remembered old friends I was a degenerate with and this combination spawned  Queen of All Weapons “intense…striking insight” reported  The Philly Inquirer. Queen of All Weapons was  a tale of German revolutionary coming to San Francisco in the mid 1970s to reignite the world revolution. During the run of Queen of All Weapons, City Paper did an article on my work and described me as an “impetuous playwright who takes a radical approach to independent theater.”  

Earlier this year  I wrote Automatic Fault Isolation, a  play about my girlfriend’s sister set in segregated Huntsville Alabama in 1965, City Paper called it a “claustrophobic, discomforting, tension-filled tale.”  

I know a woman whose husband abandoned her on vacation  in Europe. This summer I wrote and produced Alp D’Huez, a play about the hour and a half it takes  a husband to announce he is leaving his wife during a vacation to cheer on Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France.

My process is still evolving but the plays I write are about people I know and  love. I want to best respect the people I interpret, so  it is my responsibility to produce it on-stage. Sending out work and hoping it would one day be produced doesn’t make sense to me. I find actors and build shows around them. Take a play from the weak idea to the closing show of it’s first full run, then I feel the play is true, full and formed.

My future and challenge is creating better plays and producing them  the best I can to honor the people I love.  

Thrice

   Project Description

                                                   The Final Day/ Ngày Cuối Cùng

My name is John Rosenberg. I would like XXXXX to resurrect the Presidential Palace of South Vietnam. I will reconstruct rooms of the palace inside the Papermill Theater and adjoining art gallery, creating two stages within the palace.  In this resurrected palace I will stage interlocking plays depicting April 30^th, 1975, the day the Palace of South Vietnam was overrun. This piece will be an examination of a place of comfort and the powerful people who used it to direct violence. I will produce these plays at the Papermill Theater in the summer of 2014.

                                                            Content and Significance

I visited Vietnam for a month in October of 2009 with my lady friend. We were looking forward to visiting her sister, who lives in Ho Chi Minh City. I was excited to see a place I had long thought about and dreamed of, made assumptions of, and thought I knew. 

My second day in Ho Chi Minh City, I visited the Presidential Palace. The Palace has been kept intact from April 30^th, 1975, when South Vietnam fell.  The three-story building is a stunning ode to American imperialism and design, a glass box enclosed in a lacy masonry screen. Inside the glass box are diplomatic sitting rooms, conference halls, a movie room bathed in red velvet, spartan Presidential sleeping quarters.

On the third floor I found the Gambling Room. The Gambling Room is the one room you cannot enter. It is on the top floor, next to the helicopter pad. It has thick white carpeting, a drink cart and a huge sectional sofa. My imagination and heart were captured by the Gambling Room. In my mind I imagined all who sat there, the power brokers who made a run at fortune and control. Kennedy, Diem, McNamara, Lodge, Ky, Thieu—American and Vietnamese men gambling with the lives of others for power and security from this lovely, comfortable perch. The room was so beautiful, a room fit for kings. And standing there I marveled at the symbol of power, now a trophy of American defeat. The fragility of power . . . lunacy of war . . . I wanted to breathe life into the room. 

I visited the Independence Palace a number of times. I would stand and peer into the Gambling Room, never able to enter, too scared to slip under the velvet ropes and be ensconced. Infatuated by the space, I wrote a short play while staying in Vietnam, The Gambling Room. It takes place on Halloween in 1963, the night of the assassination President Diem, the first President of South Vietnam. The Gambling Room examined the relationship of two Americans dealing with the inherent righteousness of American dreams of tomorrow colliding with the violent reality of that day.

I performed The Gambling Room as a part of a series of short plays titled Cheap Guy Hall Of Fame. I wrote and produced  the show in Philadelphia in 2010. However, in comparison the room’s effect on me, the play was short, truncated and not enough.

I have thought of different ways to get in the Gambling Room since. A full length version of the Gambling Room set in 1963 did not ignite my imagination as a playwright, in part because it does not capture and respect the enormity and historical majesty of the palace. There are two stories to tell, the American dream of Vietnam and the South Vietnamese dream of their own country and April 30^th, 1975, was the end for both. 

Within the palace will be two plays interpreting the different acceptances of defeat. In a small spartan Presidential sleeping quarter will be an interpretation of the final day of President Thieu not accepting the end is coming while in the Gambling Room a play about the American ambassador's refusal to accept the end of American power in the country.  

                                                                        The Challenges

I don't know fully what happened the final day in the Palace, outside primary source materials depicting the diplomatic correspondences and recollections of those involved. There is a huge challenge of depicting the final day of the President of South Vietnam, given I do not speak Vietnamese nor am a student of Vietnamese culture or history. Still, I want to create a play that must capture the life, mind and thoughts of the Vietnamese president.

As a production, there is a challenge producing two plays simultaneously. And there is reconstructing the palace. Up to this point in my theater career, I have been able to design plays that work around the need of a set, however, the site specific nature of the production and spectacle of the set pieces requires partnering with a professional designer who understands theater and the recreation of historical spaces. 

                                                                       

Feasibility

I have a space to match the grandeur of my idea. A large theater space at the Papermill Theater in Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. The Papermill Theater is in the Papermill Arts Collective, a five story warehouse. I rent the theater space year round and produce the plays I write.  The ability to physically house the rooms of Palace is afforded by the Papermill. The task of creating the rooms of the palace and the day in question will be met by the collaborators I have assembled.

                                                                        Collaborators

Physically creating the rooms requires the expertise of a professional set designer. Robert Holtzman is a local set designer who has worked on such professional film productions 12 Monkeys, Philadelphia and The Sixth Sense. Holtzman, a champion of local independent theater is excited by the possibility of creating the Presidential Palace of South Vietnam in Kensington. 

To further help me develop the plays, I will collaborate with Scott Sitman, a New York based actor, writer and director. I have worked with Scott on every play I have developed and produced in Philadelphia, relying on him for his thoughts, ideas and criticism.

Lauren Cucarola, who has worked for Arena Stage in Washington. D.C., will be working as a lighting and costume designer.

For historical research I will work with Dan Shapiro, a former Naval intelligence Officer who served in Vietnam.

For interpretation of Vietnamese culture and language, I will collaborate with a personal friend, Phi  Mai, a first generation American whose family emigrated from the United States at the end of the war.  

                                                            Target Audience & Audience Impact

A play depicting the final day of America in South Vietnam in a reconstructed presidential palace in Kensington will appeal and hopefully impact an interesting cross section of Philadelphia. This piece will be depicting a cultural touchstone for many, the end of America in Vietnam and the end of Vietnam for many Vietnamese. We are very interested in engaging Philadelphia’s expatriate Vietnamese community. The spectacle of the piece and location of the space will be targeting Kensington, Fishtown and North Liberties residents who might not be used to large scale theater pieces in their immediate vicinity. 

second stab for Pew center thing

                                                            Proposal

My name is John Rosenberg. I would like to reconstruct the Presidential Palace of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975 produce three plays examining powerful places of comfort used to direct violence coming to an end.

                                                            Source of idea

I visited Vietnam in October of 2009 with my lady friend- we were moving from San Francisco to Philadelphia with a month long vacation to Vietnam. We were lookingforward to visiting my ladyfriend's sister, who lives in Ho Chi Minh City.  I was excited also having a deep fascination with American imperialism in Vietnam. 

My second day in Ho Chi Minh City, I visited the Presidential Palace. The three story building is a stunning ode to power and design. Ornate diplomatic sitting rooms, conference halls, a movie room bathed in red velvet, spartan Presidential sleeping quarters, Independence Palace has been kept intact from April of 1975, when the South Vietnamese government dissolved. A tomb in a sense, capturing the spirit of American power and

On the third floor I found the Gambling Room of the Independence Palace.

The Gambling Room is the one open space you cannot enter. It is on the top floor, next to a helicopter pad. Huge circular vinyl sofa. Drink cart.

My imagination, thought and heart were captured by the Gambling Room.

In my mind I imagined all who sat there, the power brokers who made a run at fortune and control.

I visited the Independence Palace a number of times, headed up the stairs to the Gambling Room. I would stand and peek in, never being able to enter, too scared to slip under the velvet ropes and be ensconced. Infatuated by the space, I wrote a short play in my wife's small apartment. The Gambling Room. It takes place on Halloween in 1963, the night of the assassination Diem, the first President of South Vietnam. The Gambling Room examines the relationship of two Americans dealing with the inherent righteousness of American dreams of tomorrow colliding with the violent reality of that day.

My final day in Vietnam I rushed to the palace and to the Gambling Room, took more bad photos and tried to jot down ideas...it broke my heart to leave never stepping inside. The play, like my stay in Vietnam was short, truncated and not enough.

It is my favorite place in the world.

                                                                        Why This proposal

A full length version of the short play the Gambling Room has sat on a shelf in my mind since 2009. I have thought of different ways to get in the Gambling Room. However, a full length version of the Gambling Room did not seem to ignite my imagination as a playwright, in part because it does capture and respect the enormity of the place.

I wanted to set in 1963, witnessing the American abandonment of a  However, the place to set this tale, to truly capture the essence of the place is at it's fall, in April of 1975. There is room in April of 1975 in Saigon was a place of chaos.

This grant will allow me to create something I have never thought possible.

Create the place on the eve of it's destruction.

Idea of place of comfort from where violence is directed coming under duress.

Importance of doing more than one play.

It is the palace of vietnam but at the same time the bastion of American power. The inherent contradiction. There are two stories to tell. Or three. Vietnamese, American and the collison of thise two cultures. What is compelling is within the space the different vies for power.

A play about a Vietnamese President not accepting the end is coming. So important to tell that story above all. The language of diplomacy. Capturing the last day of a president in his own country before he has to leave. A tale of Lear.

A play about the violent reaction of the end of American power in the space. The Gambling Room. 

Why the conceit of two plays at the same time? Duality of the space. 

                                                                        How to

I have a large theater space at the Papermill Theater in Kensington. I rent the space year round and produce the plays I write. The stage space is 25 feet across, 75 feet deep. The Papermill Theater is located in the Papermill Arts Collective, a five story warehouse that houses emerging artists.

Physically creating the room requires the expertise of a professional set designer. I have worked with a local professional set designer, known colloquially as Rat Face.

Research from primary sources to develop the final day of the President of South vietnam.

Dan Shapiro, a former Naval intelligence Officer, help shape the story.

Challenge of  Vietnamese actors in the area. ***** So important to create a play outside our cultural experience.

                                                                        Audience Experience

In the middle of an area known and feared as a dangerous place I want to reconstruct a zone of comfort used to promulgate violence.

An audience would be be traveling to Kensington, a section of Philadelphia associated more with violence than art. The audience would be traveling through an unknown territory to enter a safe space, the Independence Palace, the Papermill Arts Collective. Audiences would be invited to receive complimentary transportation to and from the theater, highlighting preconceived notions of traveling to Kensington, the same notions I had traveling to Vietnam.