CJ Hopkins
CONTACT Ronald Gwiazda Abrams Artists Agency or CJ Hopkins via email BOOKS The Extremists - Broadway Play Publishing screwmachine/eyecandy - Broadway Play Publishing Horse Country - Methuen Drama / A&C Black PLAYS Horse Country screwmachine/eyecandy The Extremists Short Plays & Other Works

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HORSE COUNTRY Awards Best of the Adelaide Fringe, 2004 Scotsman First of the Fringe Firsts, 2002 Scotsman Fringe First, 2002 Herald Angel (Director, John Clancy), 2002 The Stage Best Actor (David Calvitto), 2002 Productions & Touring Monkey Wrench Theater, New York, 1997 The Present Company, New York, 1999 Amaryllis Theatre Company, Philadelphia, 2001 Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 2002 Alchymia Theatre Company, Chicago, 2002 Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 2003 United Kingdom Tour, 2003 Brighton Festival, 2003 Riverside Studios, London, 2003 The Du Maurier World Stage Festival, Toronto, 2003 Adelaide Fringe Festival, 2004 Belvoir St. Theatre, Sydney, 2004 Noorderzon Festival, The Netherlands, 2004 Beyond the Proscenium Theatre, Sacramento, 2005 Needtheater, Los Angeles, 2006 Order Horse Country online from Metheun Drama/A&C Black Drama Bookshop Internet Theatre Bookstore Amazon.co.uk Amazon.com Barnes & Noble International Touring produced by Clancy Productions, Theatre Tours International and Arts Projects Australia in association with Riverside Studios, World Stage Festival, Traverse Theatre, HDV Productions	There aren't many people left who actually saw vaudeville live. The cultural memory of its frenetic cross-talk floats to the surface now and again, as the Marx Brothers pop up on TV or someone raises the cry of "Who's on first?", and occasionally you even see its comic techniques resurrected in contemporary theatre. There, they are rare enough their seeming anarchy can befuddle an audience: One couple leaving Horse Country last night after its opening at World Stage Wednesday seemed to think they had just witnessed something without meaning. They couldn't have been more wrong ... With this remarkable duologue, the U.S. playwright C.J. Hopkins mimics the looping and loopy language of classic vaudeville but uses the schtick for a deeper purpose than simple entertainment. In this ironic spectacle in which entertainers cannot entertain themselves, Hopkins mounts a brilliant (and hilarious) critique of the emptiness of American life and the meaninglessness of the popular culture that attempts to fill the void ... Toronto, a city that never suffers from a shortage of Broadway pap, needs to see more American theatre like this. Horse Country is also a very timely reminder that the United States is not always the single-minded monolith whose censorious jingoism has been plaguing us in recent weeks. Hopkins' ability to look honestly into the black heart of existence is a true expression of free speech; his artfulness in fashioning a critique of culture from the ashes of popular entertainment is a true marker of civilization. **** TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL It would be easy to label CJ Hopkins' Horse Country as cod-Beckett ... But it's much more than that, a feral ferris-wheel of comedy, confusion, contradiction, obfuscation and bent-out-of-shape straight talking that leaps out of the room at you and harnesses you to its mischievous mindset ... A modern day Vladimir and Estragon who aren't waiting for anyone - least of all the audience to keep up - their window on the world is one of possibility and quid pro quo impossibilities ... All of it is delivered with a quite magnificent high-octane comic brio by David Calvitto and Ben Schneider ... The direction of the piece, as opposed to the direction it takes us, is crisp and clear. But it is the verbal pyrotechnics of the text itself which makes Horse Country special. This is one philosophical nag that looks set to run and run. *** METRO At a time when world conflict is raising its ugly head again, Horse Country's exploration of the theme of conflict, whether personal, political, ethical, spiritual or actual seems sadly pertinent. Horse Country is a euphemism for the United States and the play opens with two seasoned comedy pros, Bob and Sam, propping up a bar in downtown America. American values, or rather global capitalism, is laid bare and exposed during the discussions between the two, which encompass golf, horses, fishing trips, talking seal acts and card games. A futile search for the nine of diamonds, which they have lost from their pack of cards, seems to sum up the need for a set of values to fill the hollow yearning at the heart of the nation. Calvitto and Schneider are very skilled performers and their clown-like precision-timing is brilliant and funny; they also bring, at the same time, a profound sense of isolation and alienation to the play. Bleak, Godot-like exchanges at the beginning gather pace with such velocity that by the end we appear to be witnessing Vladimir and Estragon on speed. CJ Hopkins is a great wordsmith and Horse Country is a robustly formed and fully fleshed play with the existential bare-boned spirit of Beckett's Waiting for Godot. This production, not surprisingly, won several prestigious prizes at the Edinburgh Festival last year. ONLINE REVIEW LONDON**	Sometimes, the best shows come swerving at you when you least expect them ... in seconds it becomes clear that we're in the presence of a really substantial piece of theatre here; sharp, brilliant, intense, fast-moving, made for the moment we live in. At heart, Horse Country is a new Waiting for Godot set in contemporary America; the two speakers in CJ Hopkins' text are off-duty 'regular guys', perhaps policemen, who have lost the nine of diamonds from their deck of cards, and therefore, for all their bluster, don't know what to do next ... [but] unlike Beckett's characters, Bob and Sam belong to a particular country and time. Their task is to take us on a tour not of the human condition in general, but of the human condition as filtered through the presumptions and values of mainstream America today ... And although their conversation ranges widely, from God, fishing and beggars to gambling and art, the rhetorical question is, "is this a great country, or isn't it?" re-echoes like a chorus ... And what emerges, over 70 minutes of rapid-fire dialogue, is a portrait of a culture caught in a strange and painful paradox between progressive and reactionary attitudes; of a deep nostalgia for a traditional world of "men with guns and women without clothes", matched with an unquenchable human yearning towards the unexpected, the creative, the new. *** THE SCOTSMAN CJ Hopkins's two-hander brings the spirit of Godot to America's bars and puts the bourbon in Beckett. It feels like a serious piece of theatre rather than fringe fluff ... brilliantly directed by John Clancy and acted with terrific flair and feel by Ben Scheider and David Calvitto. THE GUARDIAN Equipped as it is with the men in black machine gun exchange of Quentin Tarantino by way of Beckett, C J Hopkins's deceptively small but perfectly formed duologue is a near-perfect 21st-century pop cultural off-the-record exchange. Performed brilliantly ... John Clancy's production is the epitome of off-off Broadway skew-wiffly, and hilariously at odds with the mainstream, and much bigger and deeper than the sum of its apparent parts. THE HERALD Hopkins' text is stimulating and thought-provoking. Its rhythm creates a pace that runs on climaxes and come-downs, reminiscent in style and content of Edward Albee, and life. With John Clancy's precise direction, and David Calvitto and Ben Schneider's well-timed performances, this is a welcome addition to the canon of all things absurd and beautiful. THE LIST A session of philosophical furniture trashing ... CJ Hopkins' play is a timely re-examination of the wild, wild West - the 'horse country' - brimming with inverted commas and a post-apocalyptic sentiment that is also in line with the finest of American avant-garde theatre tradition. THE STAGE Arts Projects Australia has brought in a few excellent pieces from Clancy Productions in New York. CJ Hopkins’ Horse Country features Bob (Kurt Rhoads) and Sam (Ben Schneider), two jokers in a bar slugging back the bourbon and putting the world to rights. Freewheeling through a conversation with more revs than David Mamet they are killing time by waiting – for some poker playing Godot perhaps? The subjects on the agenda veer through the American Century, suggesting disconnection, historical guilt and calling up nostalgia for yet more frontier now that the West has turned into LA. The actors are sharp, very skilled and fun to watch; the play is as plain as a broken chair and sometimes as enigmatic as whatever happened to that nine of diamonds. ADELAIDE REVIEW**

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SCREWMACHINE/EYECANDY Awards Scotsman Fringe First, 2005 Productions Scamp Theatre, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 2005 Clancy Productions, 59E59 Theaters, New York, 2006 PushPush Theater, Atlanta, 2008 Order screwmachine/eyecandy online from Broadway Play Publishing Internet Theatre Bookstore	The spectacle of international capitalism rolls on, an obscene parade of consumerism and greed, the insistent beat of its drum disorienting its willing victims - you, me, everybody. But how do you metaphorise something which is so total that our organic selves are concealed beneath a mound of consumer goods by an entire world view that has replaced the natural with something totally alien to human nature? A game show, of course. CJ Hopkins' superb rendering of the monstrous alienation created by contemporary consumer society sees Big Bob (David Calvitto) shepherding a lower-middle class American couple Dan (Bill Colieus) and Maura (Nancy Walsh) on a bizarre retro 50s American set, through a succession of meaningless and increasingly sinister questions and activities. Meanwhile, the terrifying figure of Vera (Mike McShane), a gigantic and grotesque transvestite, awaits, punishing those who transgress the unstated, oft-changing rules of the game. This all gets increasingly gruesome, in John Clancy's assured production, as the two contestants are first showered with contempt by Bob, whose achievement ethic is his only sustaining myth, then beaten by Vera. The idea that those who the gods choose to destroy, they first make mad pulses through the piece, as reality itself is surrogated by the media spectacle of the game show. The early tittering of the audience is transformed into a grim silence, for there is a recognizable truth at the bottom of this agit prop drama, and its about truth, which is generated not by rational observation, but hysterical ideology in our society. The direct confrontation with both philosophical and really quite everyday realities of Hopkins' text is strong meat, and might not be to all tastes, but this is high quality, and genuinely thought provoking entertainment. **** THE LIST If screwmachine/eyecandy, playwright C.J. Hopkins's latest indictment of American crassness and overconsumption, serves as any indication, our country hasn't learned much. ... Hopkins's sharp-toothed satire takes place on the set of the television spectacular The Big Bob Show. Each week, middle-American married couples attempt trivia questions and undertake inane challenges posed by the show's oleaginous host, "America's ambassador of culture," Big Bob (David Calvitto, resplendent in razor-sharp widow's peak and double-breasted sports coat). In this week's episode, Dan and Maura Brown (Bill Coelius and Nancy Walsh), "just your average, normal, regular people," are playing to win stuff, lots of stuff, "a vast assortment of valuable consumer products." Though they have some difficulty deciphering the rules of the game, the Browns endeavor to answer all of Bob's questions, even as those questions increasingly confuse and degrade them. Indeed, Big Bob soon dispenses with any pretense of civility or competition. With the aid of his lovely assistant Vera (a statuesque James Cleveland), Big Bob attacks the Browns with their credulity, their greed, and finally, a very stout stick. Figuratively, Hopkins wields a stout stick as well. He doesn't trade much in subtlety or slant, preferring to bash away at his targets head-on. Hopkins presents a dystopia in which the desire for consumer goods and high ratings trumps all principles. "All you're really doing here is making fun of us as if we were idiots," Dan complains to Big Bob. Of course, Dan admits, "I could understand if it's for entertainment purposes." Then Vera wallops him again. Screwmachine/eyecandy, under John Clancy's hypomanic direction, certainly does entertain. All the performers — Calvitto especially— spit out their lines in Clancy's speedy, semiautomatic style. If Hopkins's script rarely surprises, it does satisfy as it takes the scenario to its inevitable and absurd conclusion, which features screams, tears, head wounds, several toasters, and Bob's sweaty, Solomonic utterance, delivered to the audience, that humankind has spent "thousands of years all struggling towards this one great goal — to this, to us. VILLAGE VOICE You'd have to go a long way to find a show with so much to say about society and the way we live ... A hyperreal, tragicomedy, laced with wicked wit and spiked with horror, it's rooted in the let 'em eat shit cruelty of Euripides' Bacchae. **** METRO screwmachine/eyecandy Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Big Bob (the full title) is one scary show. As directed by John Clancy and performed to perfection by David Calvitto as Bob, James Cleveland as his announcer, and Bill Coelius and Nancy Walsh as the victims—I mean, contestants—it's a breathtaking event: theatre not merely as cautionary fable or wakeup call, but as urgent attempt to drag its audience kicking and screaming out of their chairs and onto a stage—any stage—where they might regain their rights and dignity and engage in their world with passion and vigor ... Everything about Hopkins's extraordinarily controlled script feels uneasy and uncomfortable; this is as much NOT like a play as the game being played out inside it is NOT like a game show ... If you've seen some of Hopkins's other works—the seminal Horse Country, for example—then you'll probably have a clue or two about what's afoot in this very unsettling theatre experience ... This is a play that's defiantly and smugly not a play; instead, a happening that spirals in and out of itself, sucking us in to its faux world and then spitting us out again, trying to focus us on what's going on in this particular room expressly so that when we leave it we'll stay focused on what's going on in all the other rooms we go to afterward. It's not an easy ride; it doesn't want to be. But if you come prepared to listen, really listen to what's being said; to be wary of the cues and the angles that a slick host like Big Bob will drop and/or spew, then you can find yourself thoroughly shaken up when your hour in the theatre is finished. Clancy's staging of this intricate puzzle of a play feels pretty near flawless to me ... Calvitto is spellbinding as Bob, his concentration never wavering as he controls the entire universe of the show... Cleveland, offstage as announcer Chip Devlin and occasionally onstage as a scary gorilla-like version of Vanna White is terrific. Coelius is wrenchingly real as Dan, the hapless contestant, while Walsh makes a startling and moving journey from eager passivity to beaten-down self-awareness as Maura, the character who really is our surrogate, or at least our guide ... Theatre doesn't have to be this hard on an audience, but after the rigorous gut-punch of a show like this you realize that hard is good; affirming, even. The Dr. Strangelove and George Orwell allusions in the title are intended and entirely apt, see screwmachine/eyecandy; do not stop worrying. NYTHEATRE.COM	If the political-advertising principle of equal time were applied to entertainment programming, every game show would be followed by screwmachine/eyecandy. While the game show as a metaphor for the horrors of consumer culture is somewhat overdone, in the hands of C.J. Hopkins the conceit is nothing short of a blistering revelation. The premise is simple: A normal American couple (Bill Coelius, Nancy Walsh) is competing for cash and prizes. What feels like a fairly conventional skit rapidly devolves into a nightmare, as cynical host Bob (Dave Calvitto) - a Mephistopheles with a million-dollar smile - browbeats and humiliates the contestants. He finally dispatches his lovely assistant, Vera (James Cleveland), to club the irate husband with a truncheon. This game is for keeps. Hopkins’s body of work owes a huge debt to the absurdists and so manages to blast beyond the merely political or allegorical to the existential. Bits of Godot and No Exit seem present in all his plays. But the cheerful, shallow arrogance of this particular authority figure and the unfathomable impotence of anyone to do anything but play the game seem to speak particularly to our historical moment. The cast is exceptional, but Nancy Walsh, as the audience’s de facto representative, is a knockout: inarticulate, confused, frustrated. The way out of this horrific game is obvious - except, of course, when you’re in it. TIME OUT NEW YORK A 21st Century American nightmare ... As theatre, screwmachine/eyecandy is bleak and uncompromising to the point of becoming difficult to watch. It begins at high pitch of game-show frenzy combined with a nasty atmosphere of threat, and continues at or above that level throughout its whole length ... But as a metaphor for the unaccountable, bullying, shape-changing and fear-mongering face of power in our increasingly media-driven consumer democracies, it could hardly be more potent and the purple-and-yellow domestic nightmare of the slightly surreal studio set adds a twist of lurid visual spectacle to one of the angriest and most chilling pieces of political theatre on this year's Fringe. **** THE SCOTSMAN The use of the game show as metaphor for what is politely called the American condition is not a new concept ... The premise has been used in films such as The Truman Show and Magnolia. CJ Hopkins has made brazen use of this metaphor to create a vicious piece of agit prop. Over successive years the plays that John Clancy and his coterie of favoured performers have brought to Edinburgh have become progressively more direct in their demands for social and political action. Starting with the slick, Brian Parks penned Americana Absurdum, and followed by the surreal trip through the hinterland of the US in CJ Hopkins' Horse Country in 2002, Clancy has gradually turned up the volume ... Not only does [screwmachine/eyecandy] beat its audiences harder, but it contains fragmentary glimpses of America's vastness that leave you breathless. THE GUARDIAN screwmachine/eyecandy starts out as one of those eyes-and-teeth American TV game shows but rapidly descends into something much blacker and almost surreal as America's relationship with consumerism and the media is unerringly skewered. If it wasn't for the latter, of course, the former might not be the religion that it seems to be ... [An] impeccably judged production by veteran John Clancy, up to and including the appearance by Mike McShane in a gold sequinned frock and red high heels. [a] quite astonishing performance by David Calvitto as the host who starts at 90 miles an hour, has 90 per cent of the dialogue and never misses a beat. **** THE TIMES This show might offend but it is absolutely exhilarating. ... Above all screwmachine/eyecandy will be remembered for a long time for David Calvitto's remarkable performance as Big Bob. He won an award for Best Actor three years ago when he appeared in Horse Country by the same writer and this performance is even better. *** THE BRITISH THEATRE GUIDE PushPush Theater’s screwmachine/eyecandy depicts an ordinary middle class couple, Dan and Maura Brown (Randy Havens and Claire Christie), that finds its marital trust, its personal dignity and its faith in the American way of life tested under enormous pressure. The venue? A TV program called “The Big Bob Show” in Burbank, Calif. Subtitled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Big Bob,” CJ Hopkins’ darkly comedic play takes what would seem like an out-of-date, obvious target — “wacky” 1970s-style game shows — and pushes it into surprising territory that’s at first hilarious, then horrifying. It’s as if Nobel Prize-winner Harold Pinter had eschewed the theater of menace to work with Chuck Woolery or Monty Hall. Matt Stanton plays host Big Bob as a glib jokester whose questions and patter turn increasingly hostile. While beaming at the folks at home and extolling the show’s “consumer items,” he taunts Dan for his dreary-sounding job, hits on Maura, loses his temper, claims he was kidding and peppers the couple with unanswerable questions ... Stanton sustains a remarkable level of intensity for the 80-minute play, steering the tone from merely frivolous to sinister. The announcer describes the game as having “No rules!” and Havens and Christie both project the confusion and dawning resentment of ordinary, hardworking Americans who discover that the system is rigged. Havens effectively nurses Dan’s wounded pride, but Christie offers an energetic, ultimately devastating performance as Maura tries to process their predicament. An eager competitor — “It’s the winning itself that’s so exciting, even more than what you win” — Maura initially makes excuses for Big Bob’s behavior, until she finds the situation utterly nightmarish. Her role wouldn’t be half so affecting if Christie didn’t make Maura so credible. PushPush Theater frequently bills itself as a workshop theater and in the program notes director Tim Habeger describes screwmachine/eyecandy as the equivalent of a work in progress that may get an “actual run” in 2009. Frankly, the distinction is lost on me. screwmachine/eyecandy may be a little unpolished and has room for more elaborate props and audio/visual effects, but it packs more punch than many “real” plays I’ve seen in 2008. CREATIVE LOAFING ATLANTA**

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THE EXTREMISTS Productions English Theatre Berlin, 2009 7 Stages, Atlanta, 2009 Schauspielhaus Bochum, 2010 (staged reading, transl. Jasna Miletic) Order The Extremists online from Broadway Play Publishing The Drama Bookshop	The audience never tunes out while watching The Extremists at 7 Stages. At first we sit back and laugh at the doublespeak as CJ Hopkins' media satire takes potshots at some easy targets. By the end, we find ourselves squirming as if we're the ones in the hot seat, mentally justifying our own choices and behaviors. ... After a stealthy first half, the production confronts the viewers like it's a merciless Jon Stewart and we're a hapless Jim Cramer. ... The play doesn't just target conservatives, but implies that the entire political process is a corrupt means for national and global dominance. ... Near the play's end, one of the characters finds himself in the dark with the audience, wondering whether he's been brainwashed into accepting someone else's system of ideas. Few questions can be as potentially explosive as "Why aren't you doing exactly what you want?" If you ask yourself such things, you may be an extremist without even realizing it. The Extremists doesn't just turn the tables on the talk shows, but on everybody. To paraphrase "Pogo" cartoonist Walt Kelly, "We have met the extremists, and they is us." CREATIVE LOAFING ATLANTA The word "insane" is one of the most frequently heard words on the stage ... It describes the evening very well. ... The Extremists begins as harmless media satire, a conversation in which the host and the invited expert toss empty phrases back and forth ... Hopkins builds a construct of ideas out of their rhetoric until everything revolves around one thing: What is the truth for the good guys and what is it for the bad guys? ... What is the reality? ... Intellectual theater in the truest sense. DER TAGESSPIEGEL	It’s Samuel Beckett meets Larry King in this new play by CJ Hopkins. When an expert on terrorism appears on a TV talk show, the conversation becomes a perverse satirical rant on the increasing alienation of the individual in the modern world. A dark satire that playfully mocks the essential absurdity of the talking-head culture ... taking on big issues like the loss of individualism and the looming apocalypse ... smartly written and nicely acted. ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION Theater has undeniable advantages over film. For example, it can sometimes lay bare the mechanisms of the communication media, as in The Extremists, the new play by US playwright and Berlin resident CJ Hopkins ... It begins seemingly clearly: a talkshow host interviewing a guest who has written a book on Terrorism. They begin their exchange on the topic, and the levels of meaning go slowly haywire. The guest seems to become more and more implicated in the terror himself, and the host in the war against it. A gripping satire, which spills into sinister weirdness. DIE TAGESZEITUNG

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SHORT PLAYS AND OTHER WORKS CUNNILINGUISTICS HERE Arts Center, New York, 1997 ON THE CLOCK (The Installation How to Entertain the Rich psychohaiku) Panda.net The New York International Fringe Festival, 1999 A PLACE LIKE THIS The Present Company, New York, 2000 ABOUT FIVE (cunnilinguistics The Installation How to Go Red and Tea and Cake from TEXAS RADIO) Solen Productions Manhattan Theatre Source, New York, 2001 CUNNILINGUISTICS Lol Coxhill and Michael Kosmides Frakture Festival of Experimental Music Liverpool, 2001 DER AUFSTAND A site-specific play commissioned by the Freie Universität Berlin. Staged in German translation in the Freie Universität's Philological Library in connection with the “Germany – Land of Ideas” initiative and the Long Night of the Sciences, 2006. The Insurgency, the original English version of the play, appeared in the inaugural issue of Bordercrossing Berlin the city's first English language literary journal, published by Verlaghaus J. Frank/Berlin, 2006 NUR GEREDE, KEINE TATEN A site-specific (German language) video installation commissioned by the Technische Fachhochschule Wildau. Staged in the University's library for an invited audience in connection with the opening of the new library and the University's anniversary celebrations. Brandenburg, 2007	A Place Like This, the new play by C.J. Hopkins at The Present Company, begins with its ten cast members drifting slowly onto the barren Theatorium stage, one at a time, silently and solemnly. For the next hour or so, they will wander, sylphlike, around the space, often settling uneasily into chairs but never really in repose, never looking at each other and never quite looking at us: they're like restless specters from some theatrical netherworld, purposefully but mournfully consigned to teach us, like so many Marley's Ghosts, about ourselves. Frank Rich said that Stephen Sondheim's Follies, whose ghostly Ziegfeld showgirls are recalled here, was "the last musical"; in the same way, A Place Like This feels very much like the last play. The first--what?--movement of A Place Like This reminds us of the C.J. Hopkins we know from Horse Country and other works: a sardonic, funny harangue about who we are and where we are, ontological rumination disguised as playful shtick that makes us laugh but also, ever so subtly, disarms, maybe even dislodges us. The ten people on stage, whoever they are, keep talking about what they're going to do and what they're not going to do. They keep alluding to an unspecified moment when they're going to start doing and not doing, but it never comes. Fine: we've seen Godot; we've read our Artaud: we know where we are. And then, suddenly, we're somewhere else. Essentially, we're in a Place like That, the alternative to the Place like This (i.e., where we're actually sitting). That Place is the sanitized, sterile world of the Shopping Mall, beachhead of millennial American life, captured to perfection by Hopkins in all its gross, colorful colorlessness: Those little fountain areas. All that chrome. All those little colored lights reflecting off those walls of glass. And all that metal. And all those people. Walking around. In a happy daze. Almost sleepwalking. Like in a haze. And it was nice, really. Wasn't it? And then, swiftly and without warning, we're back to a Place like This: this very Place, in fact; which is to say a theatre, this theatre, where we and ten ghosts are witnesses to this, possibly last, play. The sorrowful valedictory of this final movement of A Place Like This is heartbreaking, conjuring thousands of general and specific memories and images of the vital essence of theatrical experience with brilliantly evocative and economical language. With breathtaking, startling, painful clarity, Hopkins reminds us of "what could be done here....and can still happen." If it at all sounds hopelessly abstract or precious, then that's my fault: A Place Like This is emphatically none of those things. It's a raw, emotional, powerhouse of theatre, the sort of experience that builds and builds until you think you're going to explode. It's densely packed, not only with the main thematic thread that I've followed here, but with savagely ripe reflections on subjects ranging from consumerism to popular culture to the fundamental nature of social organization. It's kept me up part of both nights since I've seen it, which is perhaps not the most remuneratory recommendation for a play but, for me, says everything about how essential and compelling A Place Like This turns out be. Hopkins serves as his own director on this piece, and his staging is taut and intelligent. His writing is, if anything, more specific and more vivid than it's ever been: pieces of A Place Like This sound like poetry--music, even: as clearly and resoundingly emotive as aria, sometimes. The ten actors who perform A Place Like This are Frederick Backus, Dan Berkey, Rachael Biernat, Nicole Higgins, Dan Hope, Frank Anthony Polito, Emmanuella Souffrant, Eva van Dok, Kate Ward, and Malachi Weir, and they are as cohesive and dedicated an ensemble as you're likely to see anywhere. (That said, I would be remiss not to make special mention of the incredible and incomparable Dan Berkey, whose every moment on stage reflects, with thundering intensity, the galvanizing themes of this play.) A Place Like This is, then, either a wake or a wake-up call for people who care about theatre. It confirms C.J. Hopkins's place in the pantheon on emerging new theatre writers. It's unlike anything you've ever seen; and it absolutely demands to be seen. NYTHEATRE.COM Five nameless women and five nameless men gather on stage, sit down in a half-circle, and start talking. And that's all that happens in this off-kilter but intriguing play — the lines are chopped up, scattered randomly among the performers, and tossed out into the semicircle. Lines overlap, each a twist on or repetition of or response to the one before it, perhaps more like the thoughts in your head than a real conversation. Is this going somewhere, you wonder to yourself — all the more after 20 or 30 minutes in which the actors repeatedly inform the audience what they don't intend to do in the course of the play. They don't plan to provoke or challenge the audience, just entertain a little with some standard sitcom or Broadway-type fare. "Any minute now we're going to start banging out the jokes," one assures us. "Yes, any minute now we are going to start just banging out the bits," another agrees. Of course, they never get around to just banging out the jokes. This group meditation turns into a personal intervention aimed at an old friend (actually an empty chair) named "George" (who could just as well be you, the viewer) who refuses to unquestioningly accept mainstream middle-class suburban values. At first, the use of 10 actors seems like just a gimmick to liven up what would otherwise be a long monologue. But as the confrontation between the 10 friends and "George" develops, they begin to look a little different, like a kind of collective unconscious, their words representing all the common beliefs that a person inherits from the surrounding society. This effect would never have been achieved by one actor in a monologue. Most of what we hear from the chorus of 10 is platitudinous, sensible-sounding and fundamentally misguided, always pressuring the individual to give up his individuality and conform to the group. And why turn your back on a life that offers you so much — a lovely house, a luxury automobile, your choice of goods at the mall? People have so many opportunities in life, like "plastic pieces moving across a paper board," one person says, and she means that as a good thing. "That's the freedom we have," another adds. After a while, the overlapping voices of "A Place Like This" begin to wash over the audience like waves onto the beach, one after another, and the hypnotic effect they create is itself part of the point of this unusual but interesting experience. OFF OFF OFF	C.J. Hopkins' A Place Like This is a fiercely committed, maddeningly static, inexplicably invigorating re-assertion of the unique powers of live theater. Joining the dialogue initiated by Pirandello and continued by Handke, Hopkins takes the deconstruction of the drama one step further as he denudes it, fucks it, and then finally remystifies it. Followers of the playwright's work know that his powers are acute. His Horse Country was an infuriatingly elliptical, biliously comic romp into post-Beckett absurdism. This time around, he's concocted something akin to a choral essay. A shared monologue performed by a cast of 10, A Place Like This eschews character and linear logic as Hopkins strives to manifest the collective unconscious. But his depiction of shared subjectivity - insidiously tainted by societal conditioning - has as much to do with Orwell's group-think as it does with Jung's purer conception of the mind. From the opening words - in which the cast recite, one by one, a litany of negated expectations and deceptively simple promises in regards to what's to come - Hopkins is out to give the illusion of a performance devoid of sham. ... The playwright, who makes his directorial debut here, keeps the physical action to a minimum ... Hopkins' unbearably cute asides, coy profanity and endless repetition may be exacerbated, but his text infiltrates the mind even as it irritates and alienates. Slowly, you find yourself riding his train of thought inside your own head. This uncanny ability to invade the thinking process permits Hopkins to guide your reflections. His critiques of the self, conformity, consumerism - often referencing an unseen everyman named George - become yours as well. But even when talking about the mallification of America or the nature of freedom, Hopkins remains true and devoted to his central metaphor: theater. His topical digressions prove merely tangential; they're a series of concentric circles. The essence of the theater is the core. While some of the performers can't quite shed the actorly impulse, those who do (Eva Van Dok, Kate Ward) usher us toward the sense of commune to which Hopkins slyly alluded at the start. Does that sound too esoteric for you? It might be. If you're a hardier theatergoer, you'll find his efforts are well worth yours. CITYSEARCH (NYC) La réflexion sociale imprègne égalment l'éctriture nerveuese et drôle du jeune auteur américain CJ Hopkins. Trois pièces courtes sont à peine croquées dans une mise en place de Joshua Goldberg tandis que Horse Country est présenté de maniere plus aboutie avec une mise en scène de John Clancy, l'un des cofondateurs du festival. Ces textes, dans les deux cas, sont servis par de três belles interprétations. On n'oubliera pas de sitôt la précision gogueunarde des ourvirs de L'installation dont on ne sait trop quel engin vicleux ils branchment, d'autant que ces mecs sont jourés avec une ironique ambiguité par deux femmes, Renée Buciarelli et Rebecca Wisocky. LE SOIR I had heard a lot of good things about the plays of C.J. Hopkins, but I had never gotten around to seeing any of them until On the Clock. This program of three stunning short one-acts by Mr. Hopkins is, I think, a splendid introduction to his work. Sharply written with intelligence and a blisteringly honest point of view, these pieces engage our intellect even as they assault our complacency. They call into question not only our values and our beliefs but also the very nature of the theatre experience itself. Masterfully manipulative and remarkably powerful, On the Clock does exactly what great theatre should: it shakes us up, makes us think, and reminds us that we're alive. On the Clock opens with the deceptively affable How to Entertain the Rich. Six people, presumably actors, line up across the stage and discuss, among themselves but obviously for the audience's edification and enjoyment, how to entertain the rich. You see the self-referential nature of this: they are entertaining the rich (i.e., us) by talking about how to entertain the rich; grab hold of this concept and you're well on your way to grasping Mr. Hopkins's meaning. The third play of the evening, titled The Installation, is similarly recursive: two actors portraying technicians of some sort--cable TV installers, perhaps?--tell the audience about what they do. What they do, they say, is provide their customers with the means to accomplish something, [some] apparatus that enables people to divine some sort of meaning out of the signals and noise that surround them. Maybe they are just talking about hooking up a cable box, but I think their message is deeper. They're talking about themselves, actors in a play, and they're talking about us, in the audience, who have a choice as to whether we allow ourselves to be engaged by--perhaps even changed by--what we witness here. Sandwiched in between these two very brief, utterly charming, entirely disarming pieces is the evening's main event, a disturbing contemporary horror story called Psychohaiku, or The Light at the End of the Tunnel. It's about two men waiting late one Sunday night for a subway train. When one of them--a well-dressed, seemingly respectable, apparently upper-class man--starts to behave in unusual ways, he gets the other's--and our--attention. Having won that, he proceeds to demolish much of what we understand about civilized behavior, in the process demonstrating that the kind of success that he and others like him achieve and respect comes precisely at the expense of so-called civility. Psychohaiku is clearly intended to be socio-political criticism. But it's scary not so much in its depiction of an amoral capitalist monster inhabiting Manhattan in 1999. No, its power comes from the shocked reaction of the other man, the innocent victim. Or rather, the lack of reaction, because he finds himself entirely unable to understand what is happening to him, and entirely incapable of defending himself. Tension compounds as we wonder whether he finally will do something. And if, in his place, we would. In Pyschohaiku, Mr. Hopkins commits not only assault on his audience but also battery: the cheerful passivity that we arrived at the theatre with has been bullied right out of our systems. ... Without indulging in any kind of audience participation tactics, these plays engage us: they remind us that we're experiencing something with these actors, and that together, maybe, we'll find something meaningful in that experience. I don't know about you, but that's precisely the reason I go to the theatre. ... [D]irector Joshua Goldberg has served Mr. Hopkins well. The actors are all fine, especially the two women who perform The Installation, Renee Bucciarelli and Rebecca Wisocky. ... Echoes of Brecht and Beckett and the avant-garde movements of the late '60s are apparent in these plays, but Mr. Hopkins's voice is uniquely his own. NYTHEATRE.COM