Apprentice Players want to provoke you

Short consecutive performances explore unreal worlds MIDDLETOWN — The SUNY Orange Apprentice Players will deliver three short productions that fit their self-titled theme of “Funny, Strange, Provocative." The shorts are titled “The Actors’ Nightmare,” “Crumble (Lay Me Down Justin Timberlake),” and “Fissures (Lost and Found).” In “The Actors’ Nightmare,” written by Christoper Durang, the main character, George, wanders onstage and is informed that one of the actors, Eddie, has been in an auto accident, and that he must replace him immediately. Apparently no one is sure of what play is being performed, but George,costumed as Hamlet, seems to find himself in the middle of a scene from “Private Lives,” surrounded by such luminaries as Sarah Siddons, Dame Ellen Terry, and Henry Irving. As he fumbles through one missed cue after another, George has lost all sense of contact with his fellow performers. The cast includes Brittany Pierce, Dominic Pascullo, Sean O'Brien, Joseph Polichetti, Dame Ruud and Sarah Fields. “Crumble,” written by Sheila Callaghan, is set at Christmastime. It has been a year since the untimely death of Janice’s father. Struggling to cope, she is holding spiteful conversations with her dolls, and mother is suffering from panic attacks, with only her baking skills to keep her busy. In their deteriorating apartment that incessantly begs for repairs (the apartment speaks), their only comforts are visitations from their respective celebrity crushes — Justin Timberlake and Harrison Ford. With the support of Justin’s affection, Janice begins to craft a plan that will mend the chasm in their lives. Meanwhile, the Apartment is developing murderous plans of its own. The cast of Patrick Pierpoint, Michael Alvarado, Valerie Turco, Nicole Ryan and Arrielle Williams will be under the direction of Cabot Parsons. In the evening’s final segment, “Fissures (Lost and Found)," a young man searches the audience for the owner of a pair of lost keys, but discovers that the keys are his own. Soon another man arrives looking for a different set of keys, but ends up following a woman he thinks is his dead wife into an empty house that maybe he once lived in. The audience falls down comic, haunting rabbit holes of memory and forgetting as the characters try to recall moments, people and places of their past. The short was written by Steve Epp, Cory Hinkle, Dominic Orlando, Dominique Serrand, Deborah Stein and Victoria Stewart. David Cohen directs actors Amanda Perez, Shelly Kornher, Zarif Ahmed, Christian Romero and Luis Espana.