a new medium

Greetings! The Medium Theatre Company's new online counterpart can be found at www.mediumtheatre.org. That's right, since forming to make out first play in early 2012 and after nearly 2 years and with 5 plays under our belts, we've mustered up the courage to rent an apartment on the internet. 

Every theatre artist who makes a website does so for one reason: to facilitate your coming out to see their work. So when you visit our new site, click on the upcoming tab to see where and when our plays are playing, or click about and scroll down to find out how we can come haunt your space or even make original work for it. Our goal with our new site is to provide the essentials: not to much, nor too little, but that Goldilocks zone known as medium.

Happy perusing, and please express your like for us. We like you too.

The Medium Theatre Company

Medium: Definitions

"the middle quality between two
extremes of size or another quality"

me•di•um |ˈmēdēəm|

noun (pl. media |-dēə| or mediums)

1. an agency or means by which something is communicated, expressed or performed; the intervening substance through which impressions are conveyed to the senses; the substance in which an organism lives or is cultured.

2. the material or form used by an artist, composer, performer, writer or other craftsperson.

3. a person claiming to be in contact with the spirits of the dead and to communicate between the dead and the living.

"an agency or means by which
something is communicated"

4. adjective: the middle quality or state between two extremes of size or another quality; a reasonable balance; halfway between rare and well-done.

5. the name of a fictitious family and a real theatre company encompassing all of the above ideas.

Meet: Professor Sonia Doré

THE WANDERING PROFESSOR WHO

CARRIES A LAB IN HER SUITCASE

A Strange Science Exclusive!

From Strange Science Monthly, April 1938

The every-changing science of chemistry has mystified man he first discovered fire.  The ancient Vedics and Greeks saw the universe as being made up of just five elements: earth, water, air, fire and sometimes ether.  By the Middle Ages, alchemists had isolated 13 mineral elements and tried in vain to transmute one into another well before the Renaissance brought us the knowledge of our air being a mixture of elemental gases.  In 1869 the Russian D. I. Mendeleev gave us the first modern Periodic Table listing 63 chemical elements, and just last year the Italians Perier and Segrè raised that number to 89 with their synthesis of technetium.  Indeed, something akin to alchemy is alive and well, even in our modern 20^th century.  But dabble in alchemy—or anything other than “established” science—and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a job.

That’s been the challenge for “wandering professor” Sonia Doré.  “There are other approaches to understanding these universal building blocks,” says this woman who holds a PhD in chemistry from New York University.  “We look at the periodic table with all of its colored squares as a way of grasping how the smallest of particles relate to each other.  It’s a useful tool, but only one of many for unlocking the secrets of the world.”

Doré’s lab work began in the southern college circuit, but that was only part of her training.  As a chemist by day, Doré spent her nights with doing field work professed healers—jujus and hoodoos, modern-day alchemists working in Harlem and New Orleans, Cuba and Haiti.  Combining her academic acredidation with these other understandings of chemistry—many as ancient as the Greek lore handed down to western men— Professor Doré is taking science to where few men (or women) have taken it before—in more ways than on.  Traveling by train with a portable laboratory, small enough to fit into a suitcase, she collects her atomic wherever she can find them: sticks of chalk, roots rich in mineral content, and ordinary sand are some favorite staples that she uses for experiments, as well as reading dreams, healing psyches, and chasing out evil spirits.

Professor Doré often adds to her lectures
by accompanying herself on the autoharp.

With her presentation that’s part lecture, part séance, Professor Doré never turns down an invitation to speak.  Roaming from town to town, she’s visited veteran’s hospitals, sanitariums, horse doctors, events hosted by the Rotary Club and the American Theosophical Society, and even some churches.

“The university will teach you so much,” says Professor Doré, “but only so much.  And they aren’t yet ready for a woman like me to literally come and stir things up.”

Professor Doré’s Traveling Lecture and Séance will be passing though the Midwest this spring, then over to California for the Summer before making its way back east this fall.  For an updated itinerary of Professor Doré’s engagements, please send a self-addressed envelope to the address given at the front of this magazine.

An Invisible Parrot, Perhaps

MEDIUMS: MINDREADERS

OR MASQUERADERS?

Common thieves, Russian spies, and invisible parrots all suspected

From The Cincinnati Scepter, August 8, 1936

The world famous Medium Family of Allamuchy, New Jersey, has made quite a splash of late.  At a recent New York City engagement, these Mediums (in more than one sense of the word) described past events for dozens of people in the audience, listed objects that people had in their pockets, and forecast a number of in-house happenings mere moments before they occurred—all with absolute certainty and correctness.

“I had a silver pocketwatch with a crack in the glass, a billfold with two dollars and a stick of gum in it, and a lucky thimble that I always carry around with me,” says Sheldon Sheingold of Brooklyn who was in attendance and came onstage as a randomly chosen volunteer.  “Not only did they name all these things, but they talked about Kugel, which was not just my favorite food as a kid but also the name of my puppy dog back then.”

The crowd applauded for the Mediums and for Sheingold alike when, just before walking offstage, Montrose Medium, the head of the family proclaimed, “In just a moment, Mr. Sheingold shall trip and fall on his way down the steps.”

He did just that.

“How’d they know?” said Sheingold, talking to the press from his hospital bed, his bandaged leg elevated in a sling.  “And if they did know, why didn’t they stop it from happening?”

★ ★ ★

Questions like Mr. Sheingold’s are on the minds of many who have come in contact with the Medium Family. 

Alleged senatorial conset 

At one engagement in Chicago, Mr. Medium stated, “Before you leave the theatre, those of you who left your coats with the check girl are in for a nasty shock.”  Sure enough, all the contents of patrons’ pockets were missing and the check girl was nowhere to be found. 

At a gala event in Atlanta, Georgia, Marsha McMedium (her maiden name) divulged that a Democratic senator was wearing a corset and brassiere beneath his tuxedo, right after Mr. Medium pronounced, “In just a moment, this gentlemen shall turn the color of a beet, grab his hat, coat, and wife, and then vacate the premises.”  These events transpired, though the senator's alleged corset and brassiere were never verified.

“I have many theories as to what’s transpiring at these events,” says Dr. Randall Harris of Missoula, Montana.  “One theory is that these so-called mediums* are using the power of suggestion to make these events occur.  Suggestion can sometimes be so strong that it can almost be called coercion—or even hypnosis.”

Dr. Harris, whose specialty is psychology, when asked about a theory that the Mediums are in cahoots with a ring of pickpockets said,  “As a man of science, I can neither verify nor refute these claims.  Not without hard evidence.  There are those who say that Mr. Medium has spent time in Communist Russia and carries a device that sends direct signals to the KGB.  I’ve also heard a theory that there is an invisible parrot sitting on Marsha McMedium’s shoulder, whispering secrets in her ear.”

Dr. Harris went on to say that an invisible parrot was implausible, but that a “very small parrot” would be possible.

The Medium Family performs this Tuesday, August 11^th, at the Bastion Hill Auditorium in downtown Cincinnati.  It is predicted that there will not be an empty seat in the house.

*Editor’s note:  Mr. Harris’s use of the phrase “so-called mediums” refers to the family’s occupation being put into question, whereas the family’s surname is indeed “Medium” , a fact that this reporter has verified through reputable sources.