"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart." ~William Wordsworth
~new post every Thursday afternoon~
Fields
of November
This
innovative feature film was created through
devised improvisation. As well as the dialogue
"written" for the on screen action, I went into
the studio to record voiceover narration I have
scripted for the entire film. It has been amazing
to help generate this script by giving voice to
'Sarah,' its leading lady.
primary
photography March 2010
additional voiceover recording September
2010
produced
by
Second Variety
Films
Look After You
(my full-length playwrighting debut)
at The SoHo Playhouse as part of The New York International Fringe Festival
August 14th-30th, 2009
produced by Maieutic Theatre Works
My Interview with Patrick Lee of Just Shows to Go You
Official Press Release
"Louise Flory's new play Look After You is a sensitive and touching piece…
The story is intriguing, with several surprising moments. The writing is mainly deft and fearless, with effortless dialogue. This is Flory's first full-length play, and it's an impressive debut- I'll certainly look forward to her future work.
The cast is wonderful, especially Flory in the lead, who shows no hint of self-consciousness over speaking her own words.
A few people have noted to me that it's surprising this piece was accepted into the Fringe, since it's not a campy musical, has no nudity, and isn't a celebrity exposé- it's a real play. I'm glad that it was accepted. Recommended."
Duncan Pflaster
BroadwayWorld.com
SeanRants.com
"Very
often, in order to find something expansive,
the best approach is to make something very
small. I don't know anything about poetry,
but I'm pretty sure this is the idea behind
Haiku, that if you can express something
within a very small structure, it can end up
translating into something very meaningful
for a lot of people.
Look After You is exactly that.
And always, at the root of the play, is the
idea that we can't be sure. Nothing is
guaranteed.
Designed as a full-length with no
intermission, the show flies by. Louise Flory
is on full exhibition here, both as a
wickedly smart playwright and as a very
generous actress. She's the center of the
play, the person everyone else is responding
to and bouncing off of, and she does all she
can to let each person run the play. In one
of the opening scenes with her unbeknownst
fiance, I was astonished at how much kindness
she approached the characters. It's so easy
to be put upon, and he just glows in what
could be a really introspective and downer
role.
I can't do this lovely play justice in the
distracted moments I've stolen this morning.
It is a wonderful companion piece to our
play, at the same venue, in that it really
focuses on the liminal state we exist in,
between life and death, and the importance of
embracing whatever moments we actually
*have*. I would recommend this show without
hesitation, I just know people who see it
will like it as much as I
did."
Sean Williams
Gideon Productions LLC
"Look After You shows the realistic portrait of a life interrupted by a flash of illness that comes quickly and takes certainty with it.
Flory (wearing her play writing hat) does an excellent job of showing how this is not as black and white as it would appear; this is not simply about a man afraid of committing to a woman who now is living in a limbo state, sometimes remembering things they did, sometimes not, and always living in the shadow of the possibility that she could “re-bleed” any time and die.
By giving Jake an obsession with Sherpas who climb and always come back, Flory simultaneously makes Jake heartbreaking yet hopeful.
Some of the best plays conclude not so much with an ending, but with a beginning, as if what you’ve just watched was the prelude to a life you can now settle back and continue to imagine. Look After You is definitely one of those plays. At the end we’re left with just as many unanswered questions about these characters, their lives, their motives, what will happen next, and how it will all bear out, but at least we now know them all a little better, and we had the opportunity to walk in their shoes for a little while."
Karen Tortora-Lee - Managing Editor
Neighborbeeblog.com
Fringe
Can Be A Good Thing: MTWorks' Look After
You
On
the recommendation of a friend, and due to
its overwhelming popularity as the one of the
few "real plays" amongst the campy horseshit
that Fringe has become, I decided to go see
Look After You produced by the up-and-coming
new Steppenwolf, MTWorks. The play, by Louise
Flory and directed by David Stallings, caused
me to be very pleasantly surprised.
Ultimately, Flory had the most difficult role
of all, as both actress, playwright, and the
focus of the show.
She was able to maintain a light-heartedness
that kept the play from being "a movie of the
week" (something that I've noticed a couple
of reviews saying, which just goes to show
that the moment you bring up illness,
people's own personal fears come in between
the art and the ability to review it properly
- this is anything but a Lifetime special)
and she truly dove into the part with all of
herself."
Katherine
Stein
BitchyActress.blogspot.com
"On to Look after You- a very taut psychological drama dealing with the issues of memory loss a photographer suffers from a brain aneurism. This is some very strong writing that reminds us of how much it sucks when you have a "friend" who is "just trying to help". The piece is short, quick, and engaging and I found myself really curious as to what would happen next. Playwright Louise Flory has crafted a very clever narrative that touches on hot button topics like fear of commitment, not following doctor's orders, and independence vrs. Loneliness. She also performs in the piece which is usually not my cup of tea, but I was pleasantly surprised with how well she separated herself as an actor and a playwright. All too often I see playwrights overdoing it. She maintains a very nice balance and deserves to be commended for that."
Michael Roderick
OneProducerintheCity.com
Just Goes to
Show You
&
Show
Showdown
"When
you learn early on that the protagonist
(played by Louise Flory, also the playwright)
has recently survived a brain aneurysm, you
might be led to expect a tearjerker of the
tv-movie variety. But the playwright isn’t
exploitative; her thematic focus is more
true-to-life and her writing shows more
curiosity than that. The play is really about
the shifts that occur in the character’s
relationships after her mortality has seeped
into everyone’s consciousness. The play does
have a sneaking cumulative emotional payoff
but it’s delicate and unforced.
[T]he writing is otherwise solid throughout,
distinguished especially by a sureness of
tone and a keen understanding that believable
drama builds incrementally with seemingly
small events."
Patrick
Lee
ShowShowdown.blogspot.com
&
JustShowstoGoYou.com
"sensitively rendered, offering a respite from the campy fare that makes up much of this fest.
Still, the play largely works, thanks to some amusing dialogue and the appealing performance."
Frank Scheck
New York Post
TheaterMania.com
"Flory
is to be commended for incorporating a great
deal of humor into a script dealing with such
a serious subject."
Brian Scott Lipton
"Flory’s script stands out because it doesn’t study the illness, or how Hannah’s copes with it, but focuses instead on the relationships between the characters and how the aftermath of the illness affects them, often using humor to keep the tone from becoming too depressing.
How they 'find their way back to their lives' is the crux of this thoughtful work."
Lauren Yarger
NYTheatre.com
"'People
feel fine. They come home. And then they drop
dead.' This is what Lucy says to her younger
sister, Hannah, who has just recovered from a
head injury, in Louise Flory's new
thought-provoking drama Look After You,
playing at the Soho Playhouse in this year's
FringeNYC Festival.
Fear and indecision are the monsters that
haunt Jake in this play, but as Jake's
all-knowing bartender friend Paul says to
him, quite eloquently, 'Pick a life or the
world will pick one for you. And most of the
time, the world is wrong.'
Like the characters in the play, we can never
fully leave the stress of Hannah's situation
and it hovers over every scene.
Look After You moves at a steady pace with
some great performances and smart
dialogue."
Dan Kitrosser