Stinger Productions, Inc. For Immediate Release
Contact: Michele Sutter

Stinger Productions are extremely pleased to re-open Meryl Friedman’s delirious reinvention of Aristophanes’ satiric masterwork, The Wasps.

Opening on June 20th, 2009, The Wasps will run Fridays & Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 3pm thru July 26th at The Lost Studio Theatre, 130 South La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90036.

The Wasps was originally commissioned for the January 2006 reopening of The Getty Villa in Malibu and in March 2006 also inaugurated The Villa’s indoor auditorium. It was the first in the excellent Villa Theater Lab Series which The Getty press office describes as “a workshop program that invites directors and companies to The Getty Villa to create fresh takes on classical theater. The Getty provides each director or company with equal time and resources to rehearse and present four free performances to the public in the Villa’s auditorium.” There were only four performances! We, who would become Stinger Productions, Inc., were lucky enough to be at one of those four performances (all the tickets were claimed online in the first morning of availability) and agreed that four performances wasn’t enough.

Meryl Friedman’s “fresh take” puts the funny back in classic comedy in a way literal stagings never quite seem to. By connecting Aristophanes’ comic tradition to ours, her play peels away the cobwebs, bridging two thousand, five hundred years so that we can experience The Wasps as Aristophanes intended, “as one immense joke in action.”

Aristophanes has been called “The Father of Burlesque,” and that’s not a reference to scantily clad ladies “dancing.” It’s the comic through line that gives us Burns and Allen, The Marx Brothers, and Jerry Seinfeld. Meryl emphasizes these connections with a Vaudevillian frame, offering broad strokes augmented with the gentle subterfuge of the English Music Hall, camouflaging intent with melodic diversion, telling the story so a modern ear can hear it. Aristophanes’ satire is made new and we’re in on the joke.

David O, to the delight of Stinger Productions, is back for the re-opening in his capacity as musical director. Since the 2006 presentation at The Getty Villa, David has seen his commission from the LA Master Chorale, “A Map of Los Angeles,” premiere at Disney Hall in May 2008 to rave reviews. We feared that David would be far too highbrow to rejoin The Wasps, but apparently not, as the temptation to make noises on stage with kazoos and slide whistles has proved irresistable.

The much decorated seven member all male cast includes four actors from the Getty Villa production; John Apicella, Robert Alan Beuth, Hubert Hodgin, and Peter Van Norden; two actors, Albert Meijer and Steve Totland, from Meryl’s second Getty Villa commission, Tug of War, for which she received an Ovation Award nomination in 2008 (Tug of War was performed in the Villa Amphitheater [emphasis ours} and had more than four performances!) and Mark Doerr, a 2008 Ovation Award Nominee for Featured Actor in the play Lady. We’re trying to figure out how Mark got into the show.

SYNOPSIS: In ancient Greece the state would pay the pensioned off old men a little bit of money to sit on juries, fueling their self-importance and effectively buying their allegiance to the State. These men came to be called “wasps” for the stinging severity of their verdicts. One son of such a “wasp” wants his reluctant father, who loves his job and loves the state, to get out of the jury business and so establishes a court of law at home where the old man must adjudicate the case of his own dog who may be guilty of having stolen a piece of cheese – an unimaginable dilemma.

*The actors in this production are members of Actor’s Equity Association, the only union for professional actors and stage managers in the legitimate theater.

Special Note: This production contains material that may be unsuitable for children under the age of twleve.