64 The Queens Courier • buzz • NOVEMBER 3, 2016 for breaking news visit www.qns.com buzz Bayside man presents his special one-man show in his adopted hometown BY SUZANNE MONTEVERDI smonteverdi@qns.com/@smont76 Bell Boulevard will soon be the temporary home of a one-man show written, produced and performed by a Bayside resident. A vacant storefront along the bustling venue will soon be repurposed into a pop-up theater hall and feature “The Boy on the Bureau,” a one-man show by actor and writer Lon Blais. “It’s a story of finding my own version of my family’s truth,” Blais said. “A story of my coming to grips with my family: who I really was and who they really were.” The show — what Blais describes as a “stage documentary” — examines what it was like to grow up in his home from his point of view: being “the white sheep” of the family, as he puts it. After giving the show a trial run last month at the same location, the production is back in Bayside for three more nights before it travels across the country. “It’s a little edgy, a little comic,” Blais said, who referenced the style of playwrights and actors John Leguizamo and Spalding Gray as creative influences. “Lon sets up the rich, complex dynamics of a large, dysfunctional family filled with jealousies and envies large and small, backstabbing, decadeslong withholds, and webs of deceit,” wrote one attendee on the production’s website. “Lon’s family members are, of course, strangers to us. By the end of the performance, we’re no longer strangers, and we’ve come to know Lon on an incredibly intimate basis.” Born in Salem, MA, and raised in the nearby town of Danvers, Blais is one of nine children. “I ended up being the favorite child: not a position I ran for,” Blais said. Blais explained that he originally set out to write from all of his siblings’ perspectives, but that he eventually decided to focus on his own narrative point of view for this production. “What I’ve written is a prequel to what I thought I was going to write,” Blais continued. “My point of view was so dense I turned it into a whole play.” Blais earned a degree in theater and was a teacher until he retired in 2004 to pursue an acting career. Together with his wife, he ran a theater company for some time. Blais has been a Bayside resident since 1989. While workshopping the production in Astoria, he was approached to bring the show to his current hometown. You should catch it while you can: the production heads out on a cross-country tour shortly after the Bayside showings. “Five days later I’ll be performing the play in Gloucester, MA,” Blais said. Planned stops in 2017 currently include Seattle, San Francisco, Denver, Omaha and Phoenix. After touring, Blais plans on taking time to write from his siblings’ points of view, with their permission. Tickets are $20 each and can be purchased through the show’s Facebook page via message, or by calling or texting 646-996-6231. “It’s so much of a one-man show that I am the box office” Blais joked. The show will be performed at 41-23 Bell Blvd. this Friday through Sunday. Friday, Nov. 4, and Saturday, Nov. 5, showings will begin at 8 p.m. and the Sunday, Nov. 6, showing begins at 6 p.m. Visit the show’s website, www.theboyonthebureau. com, for more information. Remembering the Holocaust through film in Flushing BY ALEXIS RAMOS editorial@qns.com/@QNS The annual Queens College Kristallnacht Commemoration on Sunday, Nov. 6 will focus on recommitting to combating anti-Semitism and hatred through keynote address, The Holocaust in American Film, by an awardwinning author and educator. Dr. Annette Insdorf will feature clips from films including “None Shall Escape,” “The Pawnbroker” and “Schindler’s List.” This free and open-to-the public program will include a candle light ceremony with Holocaust survivors and family members escorted and introduced by students from the schools Center for Ethnic, Racial, and Religious Understanding. Each student have pledged to combat anti- Semitism and hatred. There will also be a multicultural invocation and audiovisual and musical interludes during the event. As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Dr. Annette Insdorf is an expert in film and Holocaust studies. She is a Queens College and Yale University alumna and current educator in the graduate film program at Columbia University. She has received awards as an educator, scholar, and public intellectual as well as received the National Board of Review’s William K. Everson Award in Film History in 2003. The Commemoration will take place in Goldstein Theatre at Queens College from 3 to 5 p.m. It is presented by the Center for Jewish Studies at Queens College and Sinai Chapels of Fresh Meadows. The Center for Jewish Studies aims to be the community resource for Jewish intellectual endeavors in the Queens-Long Island area and has became one of the best known in the country. Sinai Chapels is a funeral home serving the New York Jewish Community for four generations and is a proud supporter of the Jewish Studies Program at Queens College. Photos courtesy of Lon Blais Bell Boulevard will soon be the temporary home of a one-man show written, produced and performed by a Bayside resident. Lon Blais
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