"50 Years Hungry" by D. Heath

I caught Daniel Heath's Fifty Years Hungry as a staged reading part of The Best of Playground festival earlier this year.

The Aurora Theater in Berkeley also staged a reading of the play just last week I think and by all accounts it went off great.

Fifty Years Hungry is Heath's first full length drama, commissioned by Playground in 2009, and he wrote it just after completing his first full length comedic show, FORKING! which PianoFight premiered in SF for a month and moved to Theater Asylum in Hollywood with the help of Combined Artform.

The two plays could not be more different. It's staggering. FORKING! is a hooping and hollering audience driven riot while Fifty Years Hungry is a razor sharp deconstruction of family and funerals full of dark wit. What's truly amazing is how good both of these shows are, and Heath's apparent ability to write high caliber work for whatever audience will be seeing it.

I hope the Aurora picks it up, cause Hungry is perfect for that community (feel free to email the Aurora at general@auroratheatre.org and lustily voice your need to see Fifty Years Hungry fully produced on their stage). And if they foolishly pass on the script, there are always a few stages at Off-Market.

Speaking of, if you'd like to catch another of Daniel's fully scripted plays in which the audience decides the ending, A Merry FORKING Christmas, premieres at Off-Market on December 15th, and runs like crazy through the holidays (more info coming soon).