Features
- Publication:
- The Drama Review
- Title of Article:
- “Comedy, Truth, and Like Real Shit.” Derek Ahonen, The Amoralists, and The Well Made Play
- Hook:
- One who comes to know their work begins to appreciate the way the Amoralists’ brazen technique invigorates even as it assaults, personalizing the characters through their self- aggrandizing angst.
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- Publication:
- The New York Times.
- Title of Article:
- The Amoralists Ready A New Play.
- Hook:
- AT the first performance of an early run of “Amerissiah” in 2008, Derek Ahonen, the director and playwright, was becoming increasingly, intensely angry. The audience was not laughing. He could forgive the cast forgetting some lines or even performing drunk, but botching jokes was far worse. At the curtain he charged backstage and screamed at the company.
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- Publication:
- Time Out New York
- Title of Article:
- Bar fighting and Playwriting with The Amoralists
- Hook:
- For the critics and audiences who have fallen hard for the Amoralists’ sprawling, knockabout style, the news is good. Nobody else weds old-fashioned realist structure to working-class-hero lunacy quite this way, and no other acting collective seems so raw, so heartfelt, so exuberantly extreme onstage and off.
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- Publication:
- Paper Magazine
- Title Of Article:
- Stage Notes: Happy In The Poorhouse
- Hook:
- Writer/director Derek Ahonen, actors and co-artistic directors James Kautz and Matthew Pilieci are at the helm of the “neither moral nor immoral” named troupe, currently one of the wilder, must-see theater groups around. I spoke with Ahonen and Kautz on a conference call.
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- Publication:
- Nytheatre.Com
- Title Of Article:
- NYTheatre Voices Cyber Interview
- Hook:
- Ahonen: Amerissiah is about the huge problems that happen on a national level and how they develop and are grown from a small family level. Religious, philosophical, financial, sexual, and military corruption all begins with the family. When enough families water the weeds of corruption a country begins to host the many problems we read about daily in the news. The play is about breaking personal cycles of damaging behavior and how that affects the country at large. I think audiences will find it hilarious and disgusting and ultimately satisfying.
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- Publication:
- Stage Voices
- Title of Article:
- Derek Ahonen: ‘Happy in the Poorhouse’; Artistic New Directions: ‘Boxers & Briefs’
- Hook:
- If you want to talk seriously about playwrights in the 2000s, Derek Ahonen is a name to know, even if he’d seem more comfortable in the ‘60s.
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- Publication:
- Theaterspeak
- Title Of Article:
- Actress Sarah Lemp talks about her roles in The Amoralists double header at PS122
- Hook:
- Due to previously sold-out runs and growing interest in The Amoralists, the company has remounted Derek Ahonen’s The Pied Piper of the Lower East Side and Happy In The Poorhouse at PS122 this month. Sarah Lemp, who is a major force in both plays, takes a quick break from shows and rehearsals to talk to Theaterspeak about her work.
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- Publication:
- I Iinterview Playwrights
- Title of Article:
- I Interview Playwrights 133: Derek Ahonen
- Hook:
- It’s really a throw back play our company wanted to do out of love for works like, THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES and A HATFUL OF RAIN. It’s a big love letter to another era but it’s set in the current day.
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- Publication:
- Show Business Weekly
- Title of Article:
- Beyond Good and Evil
- Hook:
- A local playwright and founding member of the theater troupe the Amoralists has made a name for himself by creating morally ambiguous characters
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- Publication:
- Theaterspeak
- Title of Article:
- The Amoralists Derek Ahonen on his play Happy In The Poorhouse and Other thangs
- Hook:
- “The natural dialogue in my brain is not necessarily that funny. It’s like FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, but I understand what they’re really saying. It’s just coming out fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, then that’s where you add in lines like ‘baby duck kissing my heart’.”
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- Publication:
- New York Theatre Review
- Title of Article:
- Q and A with Actors/Producers James Kautz and Matthew Pilieci Co-Founders and Co-Artistic Directors of The Amoralists
- Hook:
- Actor/ Producers James Kautz and Matthew Pilieci (The Amoralists) who just finished a successful off-Broadway run of Happy in the Poorhouse talk to NYTR-
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- Publication:
- The New York Post
- Title of Article:
- Stages of Confrontation
- Hook:
- WHEN “The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side” ran at PS122 back in June, the play’s poster bore a deadpan warning for “explicit sexual content and utopian ideals.” In turn funny, thoughtful and ferocious -- and, yes, naked -- the high-octane show told the story of a polyamorous New York household sharing radical politics and a vegan diet.
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- Publication:
- Backstage
- Title of Article:
- Company Town
- Hook:
- When they were students at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, James Kautz, Matthew Pilieci, and Derek Ahonen were already disaffected with mainstream theater. They wanted to “open up an honest dialogue between audiences and artists,” says Kautz. “We wanted to ask difficult questions: social, political, spiritual, sexual.”
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- Publication:
- The Queens Courier
- Title of Article:
- From Astoria to Off Broadway
- Hook:
- “I always wanted to write plays from the time I was a kid,” said Ahonen, who is the writer and director of the show. “I just love making theatre.”
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