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Reported in the Princeton Packet, Princeton,  May 1, 2009

Do It Yourself Theater: PCM Theatre Company Opens 'Throwing Muses' at Arts YOUniversity

by ANTHONY STOEKERT

Playwright K.C. (Damian Gaeta) listens to advice from his Muse (Jill Palmieri) in PCM Theatre’s Throwing Muses.

NOTHING is more frustrating for a writer than writer's block. Struggling with words and thinking up bad idea after bad idea can tempt an author into throwing the laptop out the window and burning The Elements of Style in effigy.

It's surprising, then, that Ken Britschge and Constance Wilder-Wokoun find writer's block to be so funny. With their new play, Throwing Muses, to be staged at Arts YOUniversity in Hamilton  May 15 through 17, the duo is aiming for laughs via a writer's desperate attempts to create something worthwhile.

The play follows K.C, a playwright who penned a Broadway hit years ago. "He's turned out nothing but crap since," says Mr. Britschge. "He's got big-time writer's block and he's not really sure how to get out of it."

K.C.'s agent, a woman named Dee, gets him a job writing a TV show about women, an assignment he's not happy with.

"Because deep down he knows that he doesn't really understand women," Mr. Britschge says. "And he's gone through a breakup with a longtime girlfriend recently. So it's kind of a collision of both of his worlds. He has to work through his writer's block but he also has to work through his relationship issues at the same time." As K.C. writes, his characters enter his apartment and act out the scenes he's creating. "They're really bad and really funny," Mr. Britschge says. Let's make something clear, Mr. Britschge isn't saying Throwing Muses is bad, but what K.C. writes is so bad and cliched that it's funny. Not only that, but most of K.C.'s characters are women, making it obvious that his ex-girlfriend is prevalent in his thoughts. His success hinges on him being able to reconcile his feelings toward his ex-girlfriend and writing something worthwhile. "Which may or may not happen by the end of the show," Mr. Britshcge says.

Throwing Muses is the fourth show by PCM Theatre Company (formally Comma Mom Productions), which Mr. Britschge and Ms. Wilder-Woukon formed in 2006 in order to produce their first work, Project Mom. They had met when they were both teachers in Hamilton, where she directed student productions and he worked on lighting.

They began working on a book about mothers, then turned it into Project Mom (a book version was eventually published). "We took that script and we pitched it to several different places and they all either wanted a lot of money up front or they wanted to do it themselves and change it," Mr. Britschge says. The writers were protective of their work, so they decided to produce it themselves. "We had no designs on it being an annual thing or anything bigger than that, we just wanted to do this one show," he says.

Project Mom was performed at Riverview Studios in Bordentown, whose owner offered a space free of charge. Mr. Britshcge and Ms. Wilder-Wokoun enjoyed putting on a show so much that they joined forces for a second show, The Faculty Room in 2007. They reworked their first show into Project Mom 2.0 last year, and while they loved their Bordentown home, the writers realized they needed a bigger stage.

Enter Susanne McClure, an artistic director at Arts YOUniversity, who did some choreography work on Project Mom 2.0. "When I said to her last summer that we were kind of experiencing some growing pains, she said, 'Well you know, we're building a new 200-seat theater in our complex. Maybe we should think about collaborating,'" Mr. Britschge recalls.

Leaving their original venue is a tad bittersweet, Mr. Britschge says, "but we're going from 50 chairs that we borrowed from the yacht club in Bordentown to 200 stadium seats. It's a real theater space, so it's a big step up for us. I'm very excited."

Throwing Muses stars Damian Gaeta as K.C., Jennifer Surdykowski as Dee, the agent,  Jill Palmieri as K.C.'s muse and Sarah Delpizzo as his ex-girlfriend, Janet. The cast includes actors from Princeton, Hamilton, Bordentown, and from as far away as Brooklyn. Ms Wilder-Woukon is the director and Mr. Britschge produces.

Mr. Britschge says no one's getting rich from PCM's productions, but creating their own plays and producing them on their own terms has been satisfying. He and Ms. Wilder-Wokoun are already at work on their next play, about a family during Thanksgiving. They even hope to create a musical down the road.

"I've been writing since I was a kid but I never knew what I wanted to do with it," he says. "I didn't even know that I wanted to do it 'for real' until long after I was in college. I didn't study theater or anything like that. To have people come and see it and react to it and see these people come from out of town or even locally and put a lot of hard work into making it come to life is extremely rewarding." Throwing Muses will be performed at The Theatre District at Arts YOUniversity, 4 Tennis Court, Hamilton, May 15 - 17. Performances: Fri. - Sat., 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. Tickets cost $15, 609-890-1738. www.pcmtheatre.com.

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