Mondays are Dark

Mondays are actually not dark this summer; South Florida Theatre League member companies are hosting free readings of plays by playwrights who are also League members. Tonight,  the last reading of the series is David Sirois' Off Center of Nowhere at the Theatre at Arts Garage.

As you must know by now if you read The Scene, The South Florida Theatre League has built an entry for The Great Coconut Grove Bed Race; your final chance to see the bed this summer is this Thursday, August 29 at City Theatre and Island City Stage's Shorts Gone Wild at Empire Stage.

And with this, Summer is over, as far as theater is concerned.  Shows will continue, but the next openings will be the part of each theater's regular season.  Although to be fair, we've noticed that some of the small theatre companies don't follow the seasonal subscription, deferring to calender year subscriptions.  Weird, right?
Anyway, here's your Monday reading list:

Mad Cat Achieves Global Reach

Mad Cat Theater Company's Blow Me, an original biographical play about Isabelle Blow, has been playing to sold-out houses.  While the reviews have been generally positive if not glowing, the production has been getting a lot of attention from the fashion world.  And we do mean "world."

New York City's Fashionista is the hometown fashion source, and it's no surprise that the British fashion editor got the attention of The Telegraph or the UK edition of Vogue, but the story has also been picked up by Istanbul's 74Gazette, and Dubai's Style.com/Arabia. We can't remember the last time any local production recieved this much international notice.  Congrats to all involved!  And if you want to check out the play, call and get your tickets now - they've been selling out through a huge walk-up turnout.

Speaking of "Global"

The Wall Street Journal reminds us that many of our classic plays didn't originate in English speaking countries; which means that translators are more important to theatre than you may have realized.

Rumblings in The Grove
The Coconut Grove Playhouse remains high in the news; you can read about it in The Miami Herald, or Local10 has video including b-roll, and Florida Theater On Stage gives us its usual in-depth coverage.

The last lists all the liens against the property that must be dealt with:

Aries (GH Mortgage) is a developer who invested money with the Coconut Grove Playhouse Board years ago to erase some of the Playhouse’s debts in return for involvement in any attempt to build residential or commercial development on the property. It has described its interest in the past as being about $1.5 million. The company informed the county in May that it had referred the situation to its attorneys.

A blog called Not Now Silly has been looking into one of the principals of Aries, Gino Falsetto.

Aries Development is the name of the company and and Gino Falsetto is the name of the man who runs it. Falsetto is Canadian, not that I hold that against him because so am I. However, Falsetto left a string of bankrupt restaurants behind in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on which the Canadian taxpayers lost an estimated $1,000,000. And, of course, all the employees and vendors lost money. However, shortly afterwards Falsetto landed on his feet as one of Miami Real Estate's big wheelers and dealers.

Another website called Grandlifestyle.com lists saving the Playhouse on its agenda:

Save the Coconut Grove Playhouse- in Miami's Coconut Grove, once a highly acclaimed cultural institution now at the brink of collapse, which needs us citizens to step into the fray to save the Playhouse from real estate developers whose track record raises a red flag. Careful scrutiny of Gino Falsetto's dealings with the nonprofit's volunteer members of the board of directors is a must.

While the City of Miami has built up a sizable claim against the Playhouse (mostly fines for its poor appearance), Aries Development is the largest lien-holder against the property.