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Tear it Off. Get to it. See it. Experience it. Mike Geither hit a homerun with this play about two lonely sisters who pass their time recording their enactments of romance novels that they’re writing. Like the playful games and skits children enact, the two sisters, Beth (Lucy Bredeson-Smith) and Bridget (Lauren B. Smith), create the stories in three dimensional space: sneaking, exploring, eating, paddling canoes, and scaling the terrain of their imaginations. It’s like watching a devised theater piece being created, except the lonely sisters actually know how to tell a story.

It’s conceivable that the two sisters could have gone on like this forever, but for the visitation of Charles, the handyman/plumber (Terrence Cranendonk) who becomes the object of obsession for both sisters, who don’t miss a beat in including him in their story. Tensions rise. Shirts are torn off. Sex is in the air.

Charles has a brother, Tim (Beau Reinker), who quickly comes to the aid of this bodice-ripping plot by filling the role of the sinister brother. A petty crook all his life, Tim quickly complicates things for Charles and the sisters.

I’m not going to spoil the story for those of you reading this by revealing the turns of Geither’s tale, but it is sufficiently entertaining for you to go and watch it yourselves. Geither creates a magnificent landscape of the mind while using a sparse set. Limited props are used effectively: glasses, pitcher, water, tape recorder, a coin, a shirt, a book, a phone. But perhaps most effective is the braids of two stories: one imagined and one real, that entwine to tangle the lives of the people in Geither’s play.

Directed by Karin Randoja (who directed Mike’s hilarious play Living Tall) many years back, and who does a fantastic job keeping this story moving along while letting the fantastic actors make their choices in dynamic splendor.

Well worth the time and money. Get to convergence and Tear it Off. Runs through September 5.

So, here it is! 20 years in the making. I’m going off script today to not talk about playwrights or plays or theater but instead to announce the release (Kindle format) of my book.

I started writing this book, or a version of it, when I was an undergraduate in college and it was fully underway by 1995. The book has been professionally edited on two occasions, substantially re-written at least three times, professionally reviewed by Kirkus_online_020115, and the cover art done by the talented Amanda Almon. My photo for the book jacket was done by Steve Mastroianni, another talented friend, and my good friend Jared Bendis has assisted in too many ways to enumerate. I’d also like to thank Atbosh Media for publishing the work and taking the leg work out of all the formats, isbns, lc numbers, etc. And last but certainly not least, my wife Kirsten, who read the book more times than she probably liked and who contributed significantly to my consideration of layout and design elements.

The print version of the book will be available from both Ingram and [amazon_link id=”B00TCI8ZVC” target=”_blank” ]Amazon[/amazon_link] in the next several weeks, and then I will begin attempts at consignment distribution to local stores and I’ll start pushing for it in local libraries.

Huzzah!!