DARK ARTS

https://www.buzzfeed.com/samanthasouthwick/hff17-enter-the-shadow-world-of-adark-artsa-2f31q

Billed as “Veep” meets “House of Cards”, the Hollywood Fringe Festival production of “Dark Arts” crackles with witty dialogue, sharp political satire, and a surprisingly effective love story.

The one-act whisks audiences through the daily battles of this crisis PR firm – where spin doctors extraordinaire Andrew St. Jude (Playwright Lawrence Meyers, in his first lead) and Lyndsey Klein (Stephanie Hyden, “The Tension Experience”) battle a Deep State conspiracy against a small business owner.

Playwright Meyers picks up from where he left off with last year’s political freak show (“Porn Rock”), and assigns the spin doctors with the task of unraveling the real story behind a woman entrepreneur who has come under media and government assault. This comes in the form of Elizabeth Dement (“Porn Rock”, “Dreamboy”, “Guest Room”), playing a sympathetic, if somewhat batty, CEO of a skin tan product.

From a review by Noah Nelson of No Proscenium:

“The show is at its best when it’s Meyers and Hyden… Both are very comfortable in their own skin as performers, and the time spent watching them on stage made me appreciate the time I had spent with them…

You have to hand it to Meyers for not just playing it safe and making a House of Cards knockoff on a unit set. Points for ambition and experimentation, and some hope that Meyers keeps playing in these kinds of sandboxes."

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Dark Arts
From the creator of last year’s hilarious and incisive “Porn Rock” comes “Dark Arts”, described as, “HOUSE OF CARDS meets VEEP in this dark comedy about America’s hidden power structure, and the professional spin doctors locked in eternal war with it. Entrepreneur Marcia Bradford is in crisis: someone is smearing her in the media. The crisis PR firm of Lyndsey Klein & Andrew St. Jude must find out who the perpetrator is before Bradford is destroyed…or they destroy themselves.”

It sounds like playwright Lawrence Meyers is playing with political satire again, and the world of crisis PR sounds captivating, a world we have not seen portrayed before. “Porn Rock” was exceptionally well-cast, and Meyers has gone back to the same well with Elizabeth Dement portraying Bradford.

“Dark Arts” also takes a new presentational approach, blending immersive and proscenium elements. The Fringe description says that there will be an immersive “Prelude” that takes place in a separate locat

Step inside the mysterious world of crisis PR with “Dark Arts”

May 4, 2017 (Los Angeles) – Former episodic television writer-producer Lawrence Meyers, creator of last year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival’s award-winning “Porn Rock”, returns to HFF with “Dark Arts”, a comedy about the high-stakes, mysterious life of corporate “fixers”.

Described as “Veep” meets “House of Cards”, “Dark Arts” takes audiences into the offices of Andrew St. Jude (Meyers) and Lyndsey Klein (Stephanie Hyden, “The Tension Experience”), when a female CEO seeks help combating a media smear campaign that is destroying her business. When evidence suggests Deep State machinations behind the crisis, the partners must face off against a trio of deadly enemies.

Meyers, who is a crisis communications consultant, says he wrote the play “because the world of crisis PR is endlessly fascinating, filled with the sharpest strategic minds, battling in the media trenches over the most compelling narrative.”

The cas