Last Saturday, I had the extreme pleasure of doing a staged reading of
Day Trader, a new play by the very talented Eric Rudnick. Eric did a bang-up job putting together a wonderful cast of actors to perform his terrific play about power, greed and making it in Hollywood.
I'd followed
Bruce Greenwood's work since he blew me away in Atom Egoyan's haunting
The Sweet Hereafter;
Gregg Henry and I have kicked around in the same circles for awhile, and I've loved watching him play really good baddies like the one he played on
The Riches; Amanda Kaschak and
Mackenzie Astin kick ass onstage with me in
Caught every weekend; Jennifer Carroll was new to me and perfect in her part.The six of us had the great pleasure of bringing this as-yet-unproduced-but-not-for-long play to life in front of an audience that clearly digs new work. How fun it was to bite into Rudnick's smart and stinging dialogue, which has it's own very specific sizzle and snap.
The purpose of a reading is usually at least two-fold: to let the writer hear how the story and its characters land with an audience, and to introduce the play to more people, ideally some who will be interested in seeing it move forward and have the power to help it do just that. I'm sure that Saturday's reading did both. It certainly generated a long and animated discussion between writer, cast and audience alike over beers at The Village Idiot down the street.
Producers and directors interested in learning more about Eric's work can ping him directly at
his email.
This is one I expect to see a full production of in the future, and when that happens, I hope I'm lucky enough to be part of it again.
"This is not an age of doing, or even thinking.
This is an age of hanging on - for which one needs claws."
--Day Trader
