Ray Rizzo - Motherlodge Director and Co-Organizer

Thursday, 04 March 2010 20:32

About Ray

I played my first show in 2nd grade, singing the bejeezus out of "Toyland" for a Christmas pageant. I staged my first play in 4th grade, writing a mock presidential debate between Reagan, Carter, and Anderson. I was humiliated when the class laughed at a line because I did not know that the Shah of Iran had died. 

Between the years 1990 and 1999, I helped start the Louisville bands Java Men, L’Woo, lovesauce and soulbones, M, and a.m. Sunday. I played drums with King Kong, Days Of The New, The Ron Jones Quartet, and Janitors Of The Apocalypse.

From 2000-2002 I wrote a bi-weekly column called Notes from a Rock Hard Rocker for the Louisville Eccentric Observer. It centered around my experiences while playing drums for Days Of The New, which I did from Dec. 1999 to 2002. I recorded percussion on the Green Album, and played drums for the Red Album and the band’s cover of “LA Woman”, which Robbie Krieger played on although he wasn't in the room when we recorded it.

In 2002 I originated the role of Speed in Adam Rapp’s play Finer Noble Gases. In the play I would urinate on stage for up to 3 minutes. Later that year I was whipped by a dominatrix in the film “Paper Cut”, and I acted like I played keyboard in the film “Keep Your Distance”.

In 2003 I married Traci in an old church in Middletown, KY. That same year, some friends and I compiled Motherlodge Vol. 1 - A Tribute To The Rudyard Kipling. Shortly after, Traci, myself, and our friends Barbara and Andy started promoting shows, bringing bands like The Walkmen and French Kicks to Louisville for the first time.

In 2004 I administered drug tests to the Louisville Athletic Department. Then Traci and I went to Guatemala with a group of friends and came back with different eyes. In September of that year in a bakery on Mulligan Street in Little Italy, we decided to buy a house in Shelby Park and move to New York City on the same day. That Fall I played Speed again for a production of FNG at Rattlestick Theatre in the West Village.

In 2005 we moved to Bushwick. I made recordings with Dawn Landes, Buddy Miller (we weren’t in the same room either), and Less the band, producing the latter. I also worked under Philip Seymour Hoffman’s direction for a workshop of Essential Self Defense by Adam, which I wrote songs for and later collaborated with Adam and Lucas Papaelias on the Edge Theater/Playwrights Horizons production, for which we received Drama Desk nominations for best music in a play.

In 2006 Less the band toured the UK, performing FNG at the Edinburgh Fringe Fest and opening a few shows for My Morning Jacket. Later that year I reunited with Travis Meeks and we toured and recorded for most of 2007. During that year I met Julia Steele Allen and we collaborated on and recorded music for A Boy Called Noise.

In 2008 I co-wrote music with Molly Rice for her musical Canary, which remains a fruitful work in progress. I produced songs for Amelia Zirin-Brown (a.k.a. Lady Rizo) and had the good fortune of playing drums with her and Yo Yo Ma for a song on Yo Yo’s album Songs Of Joy and Peace. (Again, Yo Yo wasn’t in the room, but that didn't stop him from winning a Grammy for the record.) I co-wrote and arranged music for Less the Band’s Astroland, which premiered at The Kitchen in December of 2008 and was music supervisor for early stagings of Ithaca by LP Funk and The Cheerful Colony. I collaborated with Dawn Landes on another record Sweet Heart Rodeo and formed Moose Lamp as a name for myself and the teams behind the works I have generated. In Summer 2009 my lucky ass was part of the company for New York Shakespeare Festival's production of Twelfth Night. I also produced a recording with Michael Shannon for our band Corporal which will be out in Spring 2010. I volunteer as events coordinator for The People’s Garden in Bushwick, Brooklyn and run a rehearsal/performance space in Dumbo called F Stop.

In 2009 Motherlodge was reborn as a Live Arts Exchange in Louisville, KY, ready to hit the road. Motherlodge is the most enriching dialogue I have ever taken part in. The art is the thing itself, and I am the secretary, steward, and student. On days when humility makes it hard to make a decision, I chant a mantra taught to me by the wise sage Snoop Dogg: My shit is dope origino now you know and can't no hood fuc' wit' Def Rizzo. 

Molly Rice - Resident Writer and Creative Developer

Thursday, 04 March 2010 20:30

Molly Rice’s plays have been developed and produced in Austin, Dallas, Providence, Ithaca, Montana, Delaware, Philadelphia, Aspen, Baltimore and New York (Playwrights Horizons, Rattlestick, Clubbed Thumb, Atlantic Theater, Women’s Project, Mint Theater, Drilling Company, New Georges). Residencies include the Yale/ P73 Residency (2008), Missoula Colony (2007), Voice and Vision (2006), and Hangar Theater (2005); awards include the Weston Award for Graduate Playwriting (Brown University); Women’s International Playwriting Festival (Perishable Theater); and nominations for the Kesselring Fellowship, Cherry Lane Mentor Project, and New York Innovative Theater Award (Outstanding Original Short Play). She has been a finalist for New Dramatists (2006-2008), the Heidemann Award (2003, 2007), the O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference (2006, semifinalist 2007), and the Princess Grace Award (2004). Recent projects: book, lyrics and music (with Ray Rizzo) for the new musical CANARY, developed by Rattlestick Playwrights Theater and Playwrights Horizons. She is a member of the America-In-Play Commission/Workshop, Electric Pear’s Outlet development program and P73’s writing lab Interstate 73. Heinemann Press, the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor Press, Salvage Vanguard Press, Perishable Press, Austin Script Works Press, and DEVICE have published her plays, and her articles have appeared in the Austin Chronicle, Kenyon Review and American Theater. Upcoming projects include FIREHOUSE 17, in development with director Kara Lynn Vaeni, an adaptation of James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, in collaboration with director Rachel Chavkin and composer Stephanie Johnstone, and a musical play about bullfighting. She has taught at Brown University, the Brown/ Trinity MFA Acting Program, the University of Rhode Island, Kenyon College, where she stood in for Wendy MacLeod last year. She currently teaches at Marymount Manhattan College and Brown University, where she teaches Site-Specific Playwriting in an old mansion. Molly was a Lucille Lortel fellow at Brown (2004-2006), where she earned her MFA in Playwriting.