A one-act play based on poems from The Hollywood Dreamcatcher by Susan Dingle and Broadway, Booze and a Song of Life by Maggie Bloomfield
“Break Out!”—a new two-woman play by Maggie Bloomfield and Susan Dingle—was presented at the Southampton Cultural Center for one night only, September 24, 2016. Bloomfield and Dingle played themselves in the one-hour production, directed by Andrew Botsford and Rosemary Cline.
The two playwrights, who are both poets and therapists, share one other thing in common: both are in longtime recovery from alcohol and drug addiction.
Using poetry from their separate collections, in “Break Out!” Bloomfield and Dingle take their stories—of separate downfalls on Broadway and in Hollywood, respectively, and their eventual paths to recovery—to a prison population. Inside the jail, they encourage the members of their captive audience to find their own voice as writers, as a possible path to change and perhaps their own recovery.
Susan Dingle and Maggie Bloomfield star in "Break Out!" which they wrote based on their poetry. (photo Brendan J. O'Reilly)
With warmth and wrenching honesty, the dialogue and poetry of “Break Out!” relate the crazy, at times hilarious, and too often heartbreaking misadventures that came before the two women’s eventual turning toward hope and their escape from the bondage of addiction.
“Our idea was that creative writing makes it possible for people to access well-being and to enhance and strengthen their recoveries”
PRAISE FOR BREAK OUT!
BREAK OUT! was selected as one of six new original plays for the East End Fringe Festival to be presented at the Vail-Leavitt Music Hall, Riverhead NY.
Fringe Fest showcases original works at Vail-Leavitt through Aug. 6
—riverheadlocal.com
Maggie Bloomfield And Susan Dingle Present Poetry And Addiction Therapy In ‘Break Out!’
—27east.com
The poems in “Break Out!” are drawn from “The Hollywood Dreamcatcher” by Susan Dingle and “Broadway, Booze and a Song of Life” by Maggie Bloomfield. For the past three years, the two poets have co-hosted and read their work, with partner Bubbie Brown, at Poetry Street at The Blue Duck Bakery and have been featured at open mics throughout Long Island. They have also done readings at the Nyorican Poets Café in NYC, at Southampton Cultural Center to benefit Maureen’s Haven, and at local libraries as well as national conferences.
Directors Andrew Botsford and Rosemary Cline are both longtime members of the Hampton Theatre Company in Quogue, with an array of other theater credits on their resumes. In addition to her recent work on stage as an actor, Cline has been directing all productions for Westhampton Beach High School for the past eight years, including last spring’s blockbuster, Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance.”
Botsford’s most recent directing credits include the Hampton Theatre Company’s 2014 production of “Heroes,” by Gerald Sibleyras with translation by Tom Stoppard, and HTC’s 2016 production of Theresa Rebeck’s “Dead Accounts.”
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