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- 21/One: Twenty-One Shows in One Hour
3 Plays About Your Mom
Antarctica
ARE YA WORKING?
Being Something: Living "Young" and Growing "Old" in Oakland
Bound and Gagged
Brilliant Disguise
Brother #1
Cervix With A Smile
Chinese Clown Cabaret
CornTato
Divided We Fall
Do The Clam
El Camino Loco- Fear of a Brown Planet
Fresh Meat
Go Kibbitz
go!
Got Lucky
Green Bamboo Hermitage
Here to There
LOUNGE-ZILLA!
Love Scenes- Magnificence of the Disaster
MEDIAVOID
Name You Can Trust, A
nEO-sURREALISTS
Paper Dolls
Playing in the Dark- Politics on the Edge
Revolving Madness
SHIFTINGS
Show me where it hurts- Slow Moves, Rich Tales
Sperm Warfare
Thersites
Waiting for the Relevance
WALKING BACK TO BROOKLYN
Werewolf, The
When You Stand Alone
Yellow Tunic, The
You May Now Kiss.... My Sass
Play: Sperm Warfare
Reviewer: Alan Scofield
5 Stars
REVIEW by Alan Scofield
ROUDA GIVES BIRTH TO HIMSELF (New baby play and career doing well)
It is easy to see that after weeks of labor and heavy breathing in preparing
for the debut of 2005's Fringe entry, Sperm Warfare, that its creator, David
Rouda, has given birth to a bouncing baby play. A little underweight, but
it will soon receive 20 new minutes of dialogue to fatten up what looks
to be a gem of a one-act. Father (Rouda) is doing well but this writer suspects
that this fledgling author has also given birth to a new career, if the
response of audience and critics bear any meaningful testimony.
It is immediately clear that David Rouda is a scissor sharp observer of
the human condition as it gets all too human with a married couple. The
playlet goes to substantial lengths in its outrageous but uncompromising
way to undress (literally!)
the pretentions and cliches of a couple's eleventh hour of fertility, revealing
the groans and grief of the human comedy in a distraught couple's countdown
to conceive. Hidden at the core of the laughter, of course, in the requisite
pain and truth of a young couple straining to hold on to the kite of their
dream as the let out an insane amount of string. Will their future fly?
Will little feet pad down the hallway one morning? One cannot say, but it
seems very possible that many kinds of feet will be lining up to buy tickets
to Rouda's future creations, if he should so care to pen them.
A last meditation...one can only hope that Mr. Rouda might train his laser
intense powers of observation upon a related and even more fertile field
of human comedy, to wit, the land of newborns as they carjack the lives
of their un-ready parents. There Mr. Rouda will find the proverbial Taj
Majal of laughter as human beings are returned to the infantile state of
listening to friends and family offering prolific advice as the sweet bird
of youth sits on their forhead and lays an egg. Mr. Rouda, continue your
writing, for we need to laugh...A.S.
Play: Sperm Warfare
Reviewer: Chloe Veltman, SF Weekly September 14, 2005
In the Old Testament, Sarah allegedly gave birth to her son Isaac when she
was 90. In more recent times, the likes of Madonna, Annette Bening, and
Cherie Blair have turned pregnancy into a fashionable pursuit for women
over 40. But as writer and co-director David Rouda so palpably illustrates
in his comedy Sperm Warfare, becoming a parent when your ovaries are past
their prime is not child's play: If the hormone drugs don't make you loopy,
the hefty financial burden associated with undergoing in vitro fertilization
will. Topping the pop charts, being nominated for an Oscar, or becoming
first lady might very well be more attainable goals for an ambitious woman.
It'll be quite some time before modern science manages to catch up with
the Bible.
Ignorant of the odds of conceiving so late in the game, or (more likely) in denial about them, Deborah, a successful Sotheby's associate and passionate amateur artist, is pushing 40 and determined to get pregnant -- even if the process involves persuading her husband, Blake, to dispense his sperm into a small plastic cup. The start of Rouda's play sees Blake (Deborah's junior by five years) being shown into a room at a fertility clinic by an attractive young nurse. Gingerly, Blake paces around, unsure of what to do. He is resigned to his fate, a quasi-willing participant in his wife's grand scheme. "I feel like a science project," he laments with his pants down by his ankles amidst the chaos of sticky porno magazines and paper strewn haphazardly about the furniture and floor.
On one level, Sperm Warfare tells the story of a couple's struggle to produce a biological child. On another, the play is about the battle between science and nature, where science, from the very outset, is the loser. This message is most eloquently expressed through the contrast between the brute physicality of the performances versus the flimsy inadequacy of the clinical surroundings. Blake (Jon Gale) and Deborah (Anna Kristina) throw themselves about the set and on each other like a couple of cats in heat. Magazines, belt buckles, and tempers fly. The only thing that doesn't -- unfortunately for the couple -- is that all-important semen.
While the Band-Aids on Blake's knee are testimony to the forces of nature in this production, the set reveals something altogether less awe-inspiring about modern science. The very walls of the sterile, windowless clinic, with its ugly furniture and feeble fixtures, look like they're on the verge of collapse.
Blake and Deborah's timing might be off, but Sperm Warfare's is perfect. The temperature in that small, clinical space rises to the boiling point without once overboiling. The comedy is strictly Benny Hill and the characters larger than life. But Gale, Kristina, and Alexis Boozer (as the nurse) manage to keep things intimate, reaching below the slapstick surface of Rouda's slick dialogue to reveal the heartache and confusion beneath.
Sperm Warfare is so beguiling that it's easy to gloss over the play's one potential anomaly: Rouda doesn't discount the possibility that Blake's weak sperm count might be partially responsible for the couple's childlessness, yet the constant references to Deborah's grand old age of 40 serve to perpetuate the idea that the infertility problem lies almost exclusively with the ripening female. Mother Nature may not nurture the concept of motherhood past 35, but Rouda, if for no other reason than the sake of "scientific" accountability, might hold his male protagonist equally responsible for the couple's problem without deadening the essential message of his play. After all, the Guinness Book of World Records maintains a category for "World's Oldest Mother," but none, as yet, for "World's Oldest Father" -- despite the fact that it would be a widely contested competition. Perhaps it's time to address this inequality.
Play: Sperm warfare
Reviewer: Tony David
5 Stars
any man or woman who has been through the process of attempting through
science to spawn will recognize the play's truth in what can be a monumentally
stressful time in one's life. Sperm Warfare lighens the load, and is hysterical!
Play: SPERM WARFARE
Reviewer: Themistocles (Thomas Karopoulos)
5 Stars
CUM PREPARED TO BE IMMURSED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HILARIOUS EXPLOSION OF
“SPERM WARFARE”!!WHICHEVER SIDE OF THE BATTLE FRONT YOU’RE
ON, YOU’LL LAUGH AND LOVE THIS BRIGHTLY WRITTEN FARCE. INNOSCENT NURSE
ALEXIS BOOSER UNINTENTIONALLY PROVOKES A CONFLICT LEADING TO AN AMBUSH BETWEEN
SPOUSES. SHE’S BEAUTIFUL AND VERY TRUE TO HER CHARACTER. WIFE DEBORAH
’S PLAN TO CAPTURE THE SPOILS OF WAR GETS SHOT DOWN BY SOME “FRIENDLY
FIRE”. ANNA CHRISTINA’S PERFORMANCE WOULD MAKE EVEN “LUCILLE
BALLE” LAUGH. THE MACHINE-GUN DELIVERED LINES ARE BELIEVABLY HONEST
AND HEARTFELT. HUSBAND JON GALE’S SLAP-STICK ANTICS AND MIRIAD OF GOONY
FACIAL EXPRESSIONS “CAPTURE” YOUR ATTENTION, “HOLD YOU PRISONER”,
AND “FORCE” YOU TO LAUGH OUT LOUD, WHILE SENSITIVELY REINFORCING
OUR BELIEF THAT, “LOVE CONQUERS ALL.” -THEMISTOCLES 09.08.05