KML, in co-production with Theatre Rhinoceros, presents a moving staged reading of Pure Shock Value, a dark comedy by Los Angeles-based playwright Matt Pelfrey.  Come get a sneak peak at our second full length play production (coming fully formed later this year--more details TBD) and provide the playwright with your feedback during a post-reading talk-back. It all goes down Tuesday, March 18 at 7:30 at Theatre Rhinoceros  (2926 16th Street at Mission). Admission--a very reasonable $5.

KML's first play, Hunter Gatherers, by KML alumnus Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, was extended five times in its 4 month run at SF's Thick House. The play went on to win Theatre Bay Area's Will Glickman Award for best new Bay Area play of 2006, and the Steinberg Award for best play produced outside of New York in 2006.

About Pure Shock Value: Three industry bottom-feeders, on the brink of abandoning their Hollywood ambitions, find an incoherent, partially-clad homeless man having an apparent nervous breakdown in their backyard doghouse.  When they realize that he is actually a leading Hollywood film director, they decide to pitch their movie project to him before taking him to the hospital.  What follows is a surreal comic journey that will take the characters into the underbelly ofHollywood, far from Beverly Hills three-picture deals, and anything else they could have ever expected.

The playwright: Matt Pelfrey is the Resident Playwright at the award-winning Furious Theatre Company in Pasadena.  His plays include An Impending Rupture of the Belly, Cockroach Nation, Terminus Americana, Honkies with Attitude, Gore Hounds, Drive Angry, FrEAk StORm, Jerry Springer is God, Monkey and A Feast of Famine.  His work has been produced in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and South Africa by such companies as the Actors Theater of Louisville (Humana Festival, 1999), Furious Theatre Company, Roadworks, American Theater of Actors, (Mostly) Harmless Theater Company, Moving Arts, Hexagon Theatre, and the Lodestone Theatre Ensemble.  He is the recipient of the Heideman Award (National Ten-Minute Play Award), and has been nominated for an American Critics New Play Award and for a Los Angeles Ovation Award.  His plays have been published by Samuel French, Smith & Kraus, Original Works Publishing, and Broadway Play Publishing.  Matt received his BA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State and his MFA from UCLA where he currently teaches undergraduate playwriting.
 
The director: John Dixon is familiar to Rhino audiences for his direction of Nicky Silver's Beautiful Child (West Coast Premiere) and Past Perfect (World Premiere). He also directed KML Takes a Cruise for Killing My Lobster.
 
The cast: KML veterans Emily Morrison and Nick Olivero,  plus David Breaux and Carlos Barrera

The deets:

March 18, 7:30pm Theatre Rhinoceros main stage
$5 suggested donation at the door
Talk back session with the playwright following the reading