Project Title: Citizen Josh
Recipient Organization: Z Space Studio
Lead Artist: Josh Kornbluth
Genre and Date Awarded: Performing Arts, 2005
To Be Presented: 2007

Monologist Josh Kornbluth is collaborating with Z Space Studio and campus-based Democracy Matters, a non-partisan, nonprofit organization working for campaign finance reform, to develop an evening-length theatrical monologue—the third work in Kornbluth’s “Citizen Josh” series.

In Josh Kornbluth’s popular monologue, Ben Franklin: Unplugged, he finds himself pulled into the story of Franklin and his son and its surprising resonance to his relationship to his own iconoclastic Communist father. In his next piece, Love & Taxes, he tells the story of falling in love while dragging his audience with him into the story of a nightmarish tax problem. As the piece ends, he walks to the mailbox to pay his debts—shaking off his father’s warnings about giving money to “The Man” and embracing a civic responsibility:

On the way, I passed Washington Elementary School. On the other side of the street, Berkeley High. I passed the downtown branch of the Berkeley Public Library—retrofitted for earthquake protection and very beautiful. I passed a bus stop. I passed a BART station. Everything I saw on this walk had been paid for by tax dollars.

In The Democracy Piece (working title), Josh will be combining personal and collective autobiography to try to rescue “democracy” from the sloganeers and make it feel immediate and visceral again.

As with all of his pieces, Kornbluth will develop the monologue through improvisation. If previous works are any guide, it will emerge over the course of more than 100 completely improvised evenings. Working with collaborator David Dower of the Z Space Studio, at these events he will create a general outline for what will transpire once the house lights go down. After each performance, Kornbluth and Dower will work to identify themes, stories, and narrative structures that emerge, eventually arriving at a complete structure and a text for the first official rehearsals for the monologue’s premiere. Honed through rehearsals, previews, and early performances, the text is eventually word-perfect and at that point the script will be written down.

While Kornbluth’s previous monologues have been developed through improvisations in theatrical settings, with this piece, he is taking a more direct approach to its themes by developing it within a context that is, itself, an act of political engagement. He will conduct his improvised performances around the country at meetings of political science classes and campus chapters of Democracy Matters, a nationwide non-partisan campus-based organization that works to engage young voters in the electoral process through the issue of campaign finance reform. At these sessions’ conclusions, the Z Space will produce a theatrical workshop of the monologue and then its premiere in a co-production with Magic Theatre to open May 2007. Performances will include weekly “talkbacks” on the state of American Democracy with Bay Area experts.

Josh Kornbluth performed his first monologue, Josh Kornbluth’s Daily World, in 1989. Major works since that time have included Haiku Tunnel (1990 performance premiere and 2001 feature film release); The Moisture Seekers (1991); Red Diaper Baby, (Off-Broadway premiere 1992); and The Mathematics of Change (1993-94). Kornbluth’s monologue Ben Franklin: Unplugged–the first in the “Citizen Josh” series—opened in New York in 1999, and the second piece in the series, Love & Taxes, toured nationwide in 2003-04. Kornbluth’s Red Diaper Baby was nominated for a Drama Desk Award in the Solo Performance category and selected for inclusion in Best American Plays of 1992. In 2005, a concert film of Red Diaper Baby, directed by Doug Pray and produced by the Z Space and Sundance Channel, was released.

David Dower is the founder and Artistic Director of the Z Space and maintains an active directing career in regional theaters around the country. He collaborated with Kornbluth on Ben Franklin Unplugged and Love & Taxes, and served as a script consultant to the film Haiku Tunnel and as co-executive producer of the film Red Diaper Baby. Dower has mentored the development of more than 50 new plays and solo performances, many of which have gone on to win awards.

The Z Space Studio is one of the nation’s leading new play laboratories. Since its inception in 1993, the Studio has been the incubator for plays performed in theaters all over the world. Sara Felder, Leigh Fondakowski, Brian Freeman, Anne Galjour, Mark Jackson, Mark Bamuthi Joseph, D.W. Jacobs, and Gary Leon Hill are among artists developing current projects at the Studio. Z-Space-developed plays have earned the Bay Area Critics Circle Award, the Helen Hayes Award, the Kesselring Prize, the MacArthur New Play Award, The Will Glickman Award, and two Pulitzer Prize nominations.

Democracy Matters informs and engages college students and communities in efforts to strengthen United States democracy. With headquarters in Berkeley and in upstate New York, it is the brainchild of NBA player Adonal Foyle (of the Golden State Warriors) and Professors Joan and Jay Mandle of Colgate University. Now with campus-based chapters nationwide, Democracy Matters encourages the emergence of a new generation of reform-minded leaders by emphasizing the importance of community activism. Its Campus Intern Program provides year-round paid training for undergraduates and the support and tools for those students to lead their campus chapters’ efforts for campaign finance and democratic reform. It also works with faculty and students to bring issues of democracy into classrooms.

LEAD ARTIST

Josh Kornbluth was born in Roslyn, New York, and raised in New York City. A brief and happy visit to San Francisco soon led to a full-fledged move to the Bay Area, where he performed his first monologue, Josh Kornbluth’s Daily World, in 1989. His second show, Haiku Tunnel, debuted in 1990 and his third, The Moisture Seekers, in 1991. In 1992, he made his Off-Broadway debut, at the Second Stage Theater and the Actors’ Playhouse with Red Diaper Baby (a piece combining elements of Daily World and The Moisture Seekers, along with new material), and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award in the Solo Performance category. Red Diaper Baby also was selected for inclusion in Best American Plays of 1992. In 1993-94, Kornbluth premiered The Mathematics of Change in San Francisco; at the same time, the back of his head was making its feature-film debut in Paramount’s Searching for Bobby Fischer. He went on to perform Math at P.S. 122 in New York, participate in the Sundance Screenwriters and Theater Labs, and play the small but pivotal role of “Cigarette Pack Man” in Francis Ford Coppola’s film Jack. Ben Franklin: Unplugged, his first collaboration with director David Dower, opened in San Francisco in 1998. In 2001, a feature-film version of Haiku Tunnel, which Josh co-directed with his brother Jacob Kornbluth, was released nationally by Sony Pictures Classics. It is now available on video and DVD and is priced to move.

Josh also appears in two other recent feature films, Jonathan Parker’s Bartleby and Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Teknolust. And as a writer, in 2001, he collaborated with the San Francisco Mime Troupe on Mr. Smith Goes to Obscuristan. In 2003, he opened his most recent one-man show, Love & Taxes, another collaboration with David Dower, in San Francisco. Shortly thereafter, he and Dower joined forces with producer Jonathan Reinis and began touring that piece around the country. Now the same team is touring a revised version of Ben Franklin: Unplugged as well. A concert film of Red Diaper Baby—directed by Doug Pray, and with original music composed by Marco d’Ambrosiso—had its world premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival and premiered on the Sundance Channel on May Day 2005. Red Diaper Baby is also the title of a book from Mercury House (San Francisco) that contains three of Josh’s solo pieces. It has recently come out in a second printing.

Josh’s web site is www.joshkornbluth.com