Iris Holcombe, Wedding Consultant

The initial Philadelphia run of THE WEDDING CONSULTANT, written and performed by Eric Singel (hey, that's ME!) and directed by Gerre Garrett has come to an end, and we are now in the process of making the produciton available to tour (yes, that's right, kids...Iris Holcombe her very own self could be coming to A Theater Near YOU!)Here is just some of what the critics had to say about the show (follow the links for full reviews):...........“…the most engaging entertainment [in the Philadelphia New Play festival] came from THE WEDDING CONSULTANT…far more satisfying than other ventures with major production resources behind them...”---Critic’s Notebook, VARIETY ................“Big-hearted good fun…Eric Singel’s interconnected monologues make their point indirectly and with much humor…”---Mark Cofta, PHILADELPHIA CITY PAPER ....................“Unexpected is truly the understatement of the evening…Singel has put his heart and soul into this production. Go see it yourself!”---Spencer Williams, PHILLYIST .......................“A 90-minute drama packed with plot…There’s even a moral to this funny, way-gay play…”---Toby Zinman, THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER ...................“Masterfully put together…shortly into it, I started laughing, and never stopped till the end…”---Jenna Catherine, author of CONVERSING WITH THE FUTURE ************************************************************ A Brief History of THE WEDDING CONSULTANT:I had been toying for some time with the notion of a play centered around a gay wedding, dedicated to the principle that, while marriage is important, weddings are stupid, and that a gay wedding would elevate the level of that stupidity to dizzying heights. I quickly abandoned the concept of a traditional play, because of the number of characters required to populate even a rudimentary wedding party would ensure that, for financial reasons alone, my play would remain unproduced. Also, because I feared somebody at Samuel French ending the synopsis with “…hijinks ensue.”Having had some previous positive experience with the monolog form (JOAN CRAWFORD IN HER OWN WORDS, THE ONLY THING WORSE YOU COULD HAVE TOLD ME…) and realizing that one could talk about things in that format that one could never show in a traditional play, I set about searching for the voice to bring this particular wedding to life. The most important criteria from a dramatic standpoint were that the character be an outsider to the entire wedding party (thereby requiring unseen characters to make themselves known to him/her) and that the character, while not necessarily anti-gay, be an outsider to the gay scene and not at all pro-gay-wedding. Obviously, not many people involved in a wedding fit these criteria, so it was about one nano-step to the idea of a wedding consultant.I tend to write things in my head before sitting down at a computer, so the entire Iris monolog was pretty fully formed before I sat down to type it out in February, 2004. And amazingly, other than some trimming and revision for clarity, the version I wrote then is the version that is still included in the full-length piece. (This is certainly NOT true of the first drafts of any of the characters who came later.)The initial reading of the piece was done by Ariel Coleman-Turner, who is now a member of Second City in Chicago. Shortly thereafter, Madhouse Theater Company accepted the play for their Saturday Night Special series. It took a while for the actor and the director they wanted to have compatible availability, but on January 29, 2005, THE WEDDING CONSULTANT (the Iris monolog) debuted at the Playground at the Adrienne, directed by Karen DiLossi, with Sarah Doherty as Iris. The piece subsequently won a Madhouse “Best of Season” award, and was reprised in April of that year.At around the same time, I submitted the piece to Independent Submarine Productions in Boston for their 1X1 Solo Works Festival of writers performing their own monologs. This was truly the first time I had considered performing the piece myself. The piece was chosen out of hundreds of submissions, and was performed at the Zeitgeist Gallery in Cambridge on May 14, 2005, directed by Gerre Garrett, who also directed THE ONLY THING WORSE YOU COULD HAVE TOLD ME…and starring ME as Iris Holcombe.It should be noted that May 2005 was the one-year-anniversary of the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling in favor of gay marriage.Prior to the Boston performance, we “rehearsed” the piece twice here in Philadelphia with performances at Plays and Players and Allens Lane Theater. It was after these performances that audience members started bringing up the idea of hearing from some of the other characters. After the success of the show in Boston, I agreed, and started to try to sort out which of these other characters had “something to say”.It quickly became clear that the wedding itself, i.e. the Iris piece, had to come last. I also set myself the constraint that I wasn’t going to CHANGE the Iris piece to suit other characters, so the backstories all had to dovetail with whatever Iris said about people. The remainder of 2005 was spent writing the first draft of the full-length piece.In 2006, Vagabond Acting Troupe agreed to produce the piece, and the Iris monolog appeared again at Vagabond’s New Play Festival and at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. After an extensive rewriting process, including a public reading of the full work-in-progress in August, 2006, the full-length piece THE WEDDING CONSULTANT (including “There Goes The Groom”, “The Best Man”, “The Beauty of Bobbi Sue”, “MAMMY (Mom’s Anger Management Meeting at the Y)”, and “Iris Holcombe, Wedding Consultant”) debuted in February, 2007 as part of the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia’s inaugural New Play Festival. It was directed by Gerre Garrett, with costume and lighting design by Bill Pollack, sound design by Chris Reimels, and original music by Terry Jackson.