At the Firehouse
That partner you love ... What happens when they get UGLY?
Marriage ... money ... communication (or lack of it)...
Newly married, two actors prepare to go onstage,
one playing a hideous troll.
Their banter is fun till —
Oops ... Out comes a whopper of a secret!
(The performers will swap roles with each performance.)
PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
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In a challenging twist, the real-life actors will swap roles with each performance. Justin Demers will play “Lee” (and become the troll) on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday evenings; Tara Johns will play “Lee” (and become the troll) on Thursday evening and in the Saturday and Sunday matinees.
Wed. evening
MAY 13
JUSTIN DEMERS as “Lee” — TARA JOHNS as “Alex”
Showtime 7:00 PM
Thu. evening
MAY 14
TARA JOHNS as “Lee” — JUSTIN DEMERS as “Alex”
Showtime 7:00 PM
Fri. evening
MAY 15
JUSTIN DEMERS as “Lee” — TARA JOHNS as “Alex”
Showtime 7:00 PM
Sat. matinee
MAY 16
TARA JOHNS as “Lee” — JUSTIN DEMERS as “Alex”
Showtime 2:00 PM
Sat. evening
MAY 16
JUSTIN DEMERS as “Lee” — TARA JOHNS as “Alex”
Showtime 7:00 PM
Sun. matinee
MAY 17
TARA JOHNS as “Lee” — JUSTIN DEMERS as “Alex”
Showtime 2:00 PM
PRESS
New Hampshire Invades Massachusetts
They ❤️ NH, but these actors are crossing the border
It’s not a full-scale invasion, perhaps, but two New Hampshire actors hope to conquer Massachusetts — Newburyport, anyway — in a world-premiere stage comedy.
N.H. native Justin Demers and transplanted New Yorker Tara Johns will appear in the world-premiere stage comedy Things Get Ugly at Newburyport’s Firehouse Center for the Arts in May.
Born and raised in Nottingham NH, Demers attended Bates College in Maine — where he got his start as an actor — then returned to New Hampshire and began landing community theatre roles.
A career move with Marvel Studios took him to New York City for several years, then to the Boston area, where he lives now. But most of his professional theatre work has happened in New Hampshire.
“I just can’t stay away,” Demers says. “I just love it.”
Plus, he’s connected by numerous friends and family members; his parents still live in the state.
“I think of it fondly,” he says of New Hampshire. “The arts scene is so great!”
Things Get Ugly castmate Tara Johns is a native New Yorker, born in Yonkers, and raised about 90 minutes north of the city. In her earliest memories, she’s dressed up in feathers and fringe like a showgirl; she was tapdancing onstage by age 3.
Johns attended American Musical & Dramatic Academy on New York’s Upper West Side, and spent 10+ years in New York before deciding to find a change of pace. That turned out to be New Hampshire.
Johns fell in love with the place — especially Dover, “a lovely little corner of New England,” she says, yet “sort of a melting pot,” where “the people are really kind.... I was met with nothing but support and understanding and patience; people just accepted me with open arms.”
She moved to Dover, began appearing with New England theatre companies, and never looked back. “Everything sort of blossomed,” Johns says.
Second foray
Both actors have tackled Newburyport before. Demers appeared in the jukebox musical Rock of Ages, Johns in another world-premiere comedy The Stands, both also at the Firehouse.
For both performers, this latest endeavor is one of the most challenging ever. In Things Get Ugly, they portray a newlywed couple — actors cast in a show together, preparing to go onstage, one playing a hideous troll — and they’ll swap roles with each performance.
The audience will look on as one of them literally gets ugly, using makeup and costuming, while the other becomes dazzlingly beautiful.
Their witty Noel Coward-style banter reveals how much the newlyweds still have to learn about each other. (And when a secret slips out, everything goes sideways.)
The role-swapping trick, Demers says, is “daunting ... a lot of pages!”
“A tall order,” Johns calls it.
But both actors also call it an “exciting challenge.”
They’re hoping to see lots of New Hampshirites in the audience for their world-premiere run across the border.
Things Get Ugly runs May 13-17 at the Firehouse Center for the Arts in Newburyport, Mass. Tickets and info at ThingsGetUgly.com.
Should a playwright expose his own marriage issues onstage?
Ipswich humor columnist Doug Brendel took a chance and did it — for laughs.
Now his daughter, theatre professional Lydia Charlotte Brendel, is directing her father’s new comedy, Things Get Ugly, at the Firehouse Center for the Arts in Newburyport, Mass.
“My wife Kristina read the first draft and said, ‘I can’t even comment on this objectively; it’s a transcript of our marriage,’ Doug says.
But their daughter read it, fell in love with it, and launched a series of workshops with trusted theatre folk, to refine the script and heighten the comedy.
Players’ Ring Theatre in Portsmouth NH also adopted the play for its New Works program, and hosted a free public staged reading in January.
Doug took all the feedback, revised the script repeatedly, and finally turned it over to daughter Lydia Charlotte.
“It’s hers now,” he says: “casting, staging, directing. I’m just hoping for the best — theatrically and maritally.”
Things Get Ugly features “banter sparkling with Noel Coward-style wit,” says Players’ Ring executive director Margherita Giacobbi, “playful in form and daring in content.”
The play, starring beloved New England actors Justin Demers and Tara Johns, finds a married couple, professional actors, cast in the same show. In the theatre’s dressing room, one has to get into grotesquely ugly costume and makeup, while the other dons a beautiful look.
But the couple’s clever banter reveals trouble under the surface ... and oops! Out slips a whopper of a secret.
Things Get Ugly is “a bracing look at beauty, betrayal, and the bargains we make to stay together,” Giacobbi says.
Says the playwright’s wife, with a shrug: “You marry a writer, this is the risk you take.”
Kid gets last laugh on Mom and Dad’s marriage
Ipswich father-daughter team launches new comedy
VID SPOT on Ipswich Community Access Television for North Shore followers of the playwright’s Outsidah.com blog
FLYER to download, print, share
N.H. native Justin Demers and N.H. transplant Tara Johns begin learning to become trolls. They’ll swap roles with each performance of the world-premiere run of the stage comedy Things Get Ugly at the Firehouse in Newburyport MA May 13-17.
Director Lydia Charlotte Brendel coaches Tara Johns as the actor becomes a troll for Things Get Ugly. In the background, stage manager Samson Willcox takes notes.
CAST & CREW
Justin Demers
Tara Johns
(Lee/Alex) is thrilled to be getting ugly! Recent credits include: Richard Saad in The Humans (Arlington Friends of the Drama) and Mike in Freaky Friday: The Musical (Prescott Park Arts Festival).
Originally from the New Hampshire seacoast and a graduate of Bates College, Justin is an avid songwriter and musician with rock groups Jean Paul Jean Paul and Float Stanley.
He sends a bushel of love to Mom & Dad, Emily Rose, Cara & Thomas, the roommates, and his dear dear friends for the unwavering support.
@justindemers_
(Alex/Lee) is delighted to be part of Things Get Ugly. Her most recent roles include Lorain in the Players’ Ring world premiere run of Enid’s Mill in Portsmouth NH, Calonice in Lysistrata at The Actors Studio of Newburyport, Rita in Educating Rita at The Hatbox Theatre, and Tess in The Stands at the Ring and The Firehouse Center. She is also proud to have been part of the Ring Works New Play Development Program for two consecutive years, reading for Elana in The Sisterhood of the Survivors and Cat in Beast of Eden.
Tara is a native New Yorker, now residing in New Hampshire, whose heart has found a genuine home in the seacoast theatre community. She is a graduate of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy of New York City and has been working in the performing arts for 20 years and counting.
Her second love in life has always been fashion, and when she’s not on stage, she is hosting live shows on Instagram for New England Market Square Jewelers, showcasing an eclectic variety of vintage and estate jewelry to viewers across the country.
She would like to thank her friends (old and new), family, and fellow artists. Their unyielding love and support are what inspire her to continue the work that makes her whole.
Lydia Charlotte Brendel
Doug Brendel
(Director) is a North Shore based actor, director, and stage manager known for co-founding Castle Hill Productions in Ipswich, MA. She is a graduate of AMDA’s New York conservatory program and Los Angeles BFA program.
Backstage credits include International Thespian Society Award Nominee The Door (Director), Massachusetts Thespian Society Award winner Tracks (Co-Director), Castle Hill Productions Romeo and Juliet (Co-Director) and Arcadia (Props Manager), Boutcher Theater Company’s Red (Stage Manager), and Players’ Ring Theater’s A Funny Thing… and Twelfth Night (Stage Manager).
(Playwright) began his theatre career as Bigot the Bad Elf in a first-grade Christmas musical. His stage comedy Best If Used By ran at the Firehouse in 2023.
Doug has authored two award-winning novels and produces the humorous Outsidah.com blog, a big-city guy commenting on life in small-town New England. (He’s a recovering Chicagoan.) “The Outsidah” was recently named #1 Humor Columnist by the New England Newspaper & Press Association.
In real life, Doug writes fundraising letters for good non-profs, and with his wife Kristina leads NewThing.net, a volunteer humanitarian aid effort in Belarus.
Chris Cardoni
(Fight Choreographer) Chris is an actor, director, and stage combat choreographer from Billerica, MA. Chris has taught and choreographed stage violence for professional, community, and educational theatres throughout eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, and has worked on over 130 productions, in 27 years. He is a long-time member of the Society of American Fight Directors, and has been a member of the Independent Fight Directors Guild and a Visiting Lecturer in Stage Combat at Curry College in Milton, MA.
A partial list of the organizations at which Chris has worked includes Umbrella Center for the Arts, Concord Players, Walnut Hill School for the Arts, Vokes Players, Hovey Players, Walpole Footlighters, Quannapowitt Players, Salem Theatre Company, Wellesley College, Acme Theater, Arlington Friends of the Drama, and many more.
His fight direction credits run the gamut from Gilbert and Sullivan to David Mamet, from modern farce to Shakespearian tragedy, and include Jesus Christ Superstar, Man of La Mancha, Appropriate, The Outsiders, Shakespeare in Love, Henry V, Bent, I Hate Hamlet, She Kills Monsters, Les Miserables, Dracula, A View from the Bridge, Bonnie and Clyde, The Pirates of Penzance, True West, Extremities, King Lear, Cyrano de Bergerac, Hamlet, Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and many others.
His website is cjfights.com.