THE WELL OF HAPPINESS by Stuart Ostfeld

September 1995 - ACME Theatricks Production, Brown Bag Theatre

ACME premieres THE WELL OF HAPPINESS, a play which has attracted attention world-wide. Early drafts of the play were featured in showcase productions and staged readings in Southern California. Following the ACME Theatricks premiere, Mr. Ostfeld and the play will traveled to London for a one-week residency at the Royal Court Theatre.

In this timely two-act drama, fast-track advertising artist Melanie vies for an agency partnership by marketing a new handgun for women. Initially ambivalent about the use of firearms, Mel becomes obsessed with her ad campaign after an encounter with a rape victim, and gradually begins to view gun ownership as the only rational response to the growing threat of urban violence. Unfortunately, Mel fails to notice until too late that her own teenage son, Collin, is rapidly developing his own violent fascination with the use of deadly force, leading to a chilling outcome for them both.

THE WELL OF HAPPINESS was accepted into the 1995 Sundance Playwrights Laboratory, with ACME as the sponsoring non-profit theatre. Playwrights spent three weeks in Utah refining their scripts, in collaboration with subject matter experts and theatre professionals. Participants in 1995 included Robert Schenkkan and Steven Spoonamore.

ACME gratefully acknowledges Adobe Systems Inc. for their generous corporate sponsorship of this production.

I OWN THE AMAZON ANGEL by Madge Montgomery, Stuart Ostfeld, Nora Douglass, Mary Rheaume, David Golden, and the ACME Ensemble

March 1995 - 5^th Annual Seattle Fringe Theater Festival, Northwest Actor's Studio

A black comedy about life in a carnival freak show composed of 5 short plays. In the collaborative tradition of past ACME Fringe Festival shows, 5 writers were commissioned to participate in this project. Inspired by a deck of "freak" trading cards, ACME and the playwrights created a family of carnival freaks and showmen.

HUR-RY HUR-RY HUR-RY, step right up! Insiders and outsiders alike may question the veracity of Buck and Ray, the seedy sideshow proprietors, yet ultimately succumb to the lure of the Amazon Angel or worse-the bone of death. The centerpiece of the sideshow, the Amazon Angel, is a puzzling beast who speaks in poems and riddles to a select few. Lightening Rod Lily can't touch most fellow creatures for fear of electrocuting them, and the elegant Bearded Francesca must choose between life as a "norm" and life as a "freak". We may giggle and gag at their freakish exteriors, but beauty's only skin deep-right?

PICKLED PUNK VIGNETTES by Madge Montgomery
TWO SCENES FOR THE ACME FREAK SHOW by Stuart Ostfeld
MAN ENOUGH by Nora Douglass
CAN FREAKS TALK? by Mary Rheaume
THE BONE OF DEATH by David Golden