Jason Sebacher Playwright

He is a member of the Playwrights' Center and the Dramatists Guild of America.

This May I will be playing Teddy in my fizzy new comedy TETRAZZINI'S LAST HURRAH, produced with Chicago's Mental Notion Society--venue in the works.

Play Description:  Fitz and Teddy--two estranged brothers--meet by chance while traveling to New York City to attend the last concert of a dying opera singer.  How will these squabbling siblings manage to cut their way through the brambles, traps, and fearsome beasts of the urban jungle?  How, indeed.

SHOWTIMES:

May 11, 18, 25 @ 7pm

The Underground, Chicago

952 W Newport Ave, Chicago, IL

FREE ADMISSION

(Arrive extra early for drinks and to get a good seat.)

This fall, Mental Notion society is set to shoot my first film, Bad Handjob.  Tentative description: Roommates Jonathan and Coyote, between recovering from PBR-hangovers in the hipsteriest part of Chicago, end up making bad debts with the wrong people, and decide the best course of action is to steal a painting from the Art Institute.  Meanwhile, at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Lenora, a hyper-educated paper-pusher, discovers a Picasso and falls in love with a brutish security guard.  The museum can't afford to keep the painting and plans to sell it to the AIC, but not if Lenora doesn't nab it first, the VERY SAME PAINTING JONATHAN AND COYOTE ARE AFTER.  Will these lowlives manage purloin high art?

(Hint: 4.C)

"We, along with all the American people, have also discovered that there is still a powerful need to present LGBT viewpoints to the culture at large." Click for article.

"Sebacher...uses the theatre to contribute to discussions in the queer community."

It was written by the lovely Davi Napoleon, who has long been an ally and friend of mine and TNTP.

Delicious Victoriana Review: "nearly perfect piece of absurdism" ... "Victoriana stopped my heart with the delicious sensation of 'I can't believe I'm watching this on a stage.'  In the talkback, a woman in the audience began 'I'm a trained sexologist...' and there wasn't anyone in the room who didn't want to hear how she was going to finish that sentence."

full-length play: 4 M, 1 W

"What is there to live for, if not for love?"

Mr. Robert Such is an impossibly-old Brit who's having some trouble coming to terms with the Modern age.  High up in that fated dirigible, he settles past loves, flirts with the nouveau riche, and discovers his own sexuality.

Ringwald Theatre

Gay Play Series

Ferndale, MI, June 2011

full-length musical: 3 M, 3 W

"All we've got is one another."

In 1848, a spike got blasted through Phineas Gage’s skull, turning most of his frontal lobe into jelly.  But that’s the least of his problems.  Now he’s got a second chance and doesn’t know quite what to do with himself.  The American Crowbar Case is a whirlwind new indie-folk musical that follows Gage, his fiancé, his mistress, and two contemporary scholars across time and space as they all cope with the burden of new beginnings.  Nobody knows exactly what happened to Gage, including himself.  Though, after all, the truths of the human heart and mind—even historical fact—are ultimately unknowable in the world of The American Crowbar Case.

full-length play: 4 M

"I'm nothing without him.  What am I king of?"

A pared-down, emotionally raw (and super sexy) adaptation of Marlowe's explosive love story about a young man who's had the weight of the world thrust on his unready shoulders, those closest to him who covet his burden, and the self-consuming fire of young love.

The Mix Studio Theatre

The New Theatre Project

Ann Arbor MI, March 2013

full-length play: 2 M, 3 W

Unit 5 Studio Theatre

The New Theatre Project

Ann Arbor MI, May 2011

"a moving and thought-provoking production" (4 / 5 stars)

full-length play with music: 2 M, 1 W

Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsburgh PA, November 2011

Pub Theater (Staged-Read)

The Falser Heart by Jason Sebacher

a once-famous detective straining against the pull of opium,

his overly-earnest minder,

full-length play: 1 M, 3 W

"I dislike the abnormal; it is so obvious.  The normal is so much more simply complicated and interesting."

A graduate student at the Sorbonne reads an elderly Alice Toklas her love letters from Gertrude Stein.  Structured like the Cubist paintings Toklas and Stein collected and Stein emulated in her own writing, The Mademoiselles is a play about falling in love: with art, with Paris, with Gertrude, and with a new part of herself.  More than that, though, it is a play about remembering falling in love, after everything is lost.

The piece is best performed in a large museum space.  If you are interested in learning more, please contact me.

Description

Performance art piece, 1 M (me)

Duration: 6-10 hrs.

Right Honourable & Good Sir, Mr. Shandy, Gent: never had a poor Wight so less hopes and so great ambition as I, humbly, have, whether bye & bye in far yon kingdom or under a retired thatched roof, in constant endeavour to fence against the infirmities of ill-health with mirth & so add something to this Fragment of Life, with the fragments of your entwined & embrambled life & opinions, in other words, your Memoirs.  My only hope is, under your Protection, that this large, industrial fan, which by some divine force or other has made its way near my painstaking reconstruction of your book, does not

Productions

The Society for the Advancement of Miniature Curiosa

Pittsburgh PA, April 2012

Carnegie Mellon Unviersity; February 2012

Pittsburgh PA, February 2012

full-length play with music: 4 M, 2 W

"And that's my story."

The best play about young people ever written is adapted using a unique, innovative, and unprecedented rehearsal method in which the story and dialogue comes from the cast's lives, journals, and talents.

The story follows six  friends who together attempt to understand their nascent sexuality.  This is no morality tale; it is deeply personal.  The piece frankly explores the vicissitudes of life, though with an intense and satisfying catharsis.

Ann Arbor MI, July 2010

Most Pit New Works Season

Ann Arbor MI, June 2010

This play is undeveloped and homeless.  Will you adopt it?

full-length play: 3 M

Fitz and Teddy--two estranged brothers--meet by chance while traveling to New York City to attend the last concert of a dying opera singer.  How will these squabbling siblings manage to cut their way through the brambles, traps, and fearsome beasts of the urban jungle?  How, indeed.

ten-minute play: 2 M

"You’re the one who likes to work out on Friday night."

While engaging in a push-up contest, Adam tweaks his back, paralyzing him.  And an offered massage by his best bro Luka threatens to push their friendship to a breaking point.

None--developed at Carnegie Mellon University.

ten-minute play: 2 W

Your Love Is My Drug
Feature-Length film

Shortlisted for $20,000 prize through the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

After learning that their relationship problems might have neurochemical causes, Brian--a CPA--and Taylor--an “undiscovered” drag queen--break up and catapult into a colorful and unpredictable journey of self-discovery as Taylor tries to win Brian back.  And, after meeting an optogeneticist in the unlikeliest of places, Taylor discovers that what drove him and Brian apart might just be the thing to bring them back together--that is, if it’s not too late.

The Trail

Television Pilot

The Trail is a political thriller in which Sarah Taylor (based on Chelsea Clinton) must travel around the globe to rescue her kidnapped parents and husband.

Comedy Sketch

Victorian-era customers at a produce stand ask a young man his advice for how to use vegetables for unconventional purposes.

Feature-Length Film

An obsessive-compulsive neuroscientist must decide whether or not to accept his boyfriend's proposal.

Short Film

Christopher is not having any fun at the Renaissance Faire; all he wants is a turkey leg, and all the mud is ruining his Versace slippers.  That is, until he unwittingly becomes a part of the world and learns the true meaning of magic.

Short Film

Denver's poor driving and unfamiliarity with the idiosyncrasies of the Pittsburgh streets causes him to meet Jonathan, who gives him an intimate introduction to the city.

(Below are some highlights.  Click above for all articles.)

The following plays are undernourished and homeless.  If you're looking for something to develop and collaborate on, I suggest:

TETRAZZINI'S LAST HURRAH

ALL ALONE WITH YOU

THE MADEMOISELLES

If you're looking for something more polished, something more-or-less finished, then:

POSING

THE FALSER HEART

THE SPRING AWAKENING PROJECT

ALL ABOARD THE HINDENBURG!