Amphibian Stage Productions (Kathleen Culebro, Artistic Director; Melissa Mitchell, Managing Director) is pleased to present the regional premiere of First Person Shooter by Aaron Loeb. The play, directed by Jaime Castañeda, will be performed as a staged reading at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell Street, on Sunday, April 6 at noon and Monday, April 7 at 7 p.m.

First Person Shooter takes us inside ‘JetPack Games’, a start-up video game company, where the hottest, most violent game on the market has brought instant success to its twenty-something
tech geniuses. Their celebration fizzles when their game is blamed for a schoolyard shooting. As the young CEO of Jet Pack deals with an impending lawsuit and the father of one of the victims, he must confront whether he bears has any responsibility for the events that have unfolded.

The play draws on the national debate over the link between violent videogames and school shootings, which first came to the fore after Columbine. Loeb, who now develops videogames, worked as a journalist covering the world of videogames at the time of the Columbine shootings and “wanted to write a play about the people caught in the echo chamber of the debate. What must it be like for the people actually accused of making a game that turns kids into killers? What about the parents of the victims? Their children are dead and the news is jam packed with talk of something so trivial as videogames!”

From the sound and the fury of the headline-rattling conflict emerges an evocative drama about two men trying to maintain their integrity and focus in a society pushing to reduce them to sound bites about violence, school bullying and race.

San Francisco Chronicle

This on-edge piece will stay in your mind for days…A provocative play full of tension.

Talkinbroadway.com

Audiences are invited to join the cast, author, director and mental health professionals to discuss the themes addressed in the play following Sunday’s performance at Dos Gringos restaurant, 1015 University Drive. On Monday evening, Amphibian offers a cash bar in the lobby from 6 to 7 pm. The reading is free with a suggested donation of $10 for adults and $5 for students. For tickets and more information, call 817-923-3012 or visit www.amphibianproductions.org. The play is rated R for strong language.

Bios for First Person Shooter
Jaime Castañeda (Director) Amphibian Stage Productions credits (reading): Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They’re Not out to Get You (also NYC), Credeaux Canvas. New York City (off-Broadway): Welcome to Arroyos (Summer Play Festival), DirectorFest: One for the Road (DirectorFest). Regional: (west coast premiere) Red Light Winter (Perseverance Theatre), Crave, Closer (DFW critics forum award), Momentahn, Blue/Orange, Nocturne, Sonnets for an Old Century (FireStarter Productions), Attack of the Asians (reading/Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts), Lincolnesque (Circle Theatre). Others include: Blood Wedding, Bash, Tape, and Beirut. (assistant direction) Anon, Pig Farm (Old Globe Theatre in San Diego), Going Gone (Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park), Hispanic Playwrights Project (South Coast Repertory). Jaime is the producing Artistic Director of FireStarter Productions. In the spring of 2007 he received the Bill Garber Young Theatre Artist Award. Jaime is a Drama League Directing fellow and holds an MFA in Directing from the University of Texas in Austin.

Aaron Loeb (Playwright) Since 2002, Aaron has been a regular writer for the Bay Area theater company, PlayGround, and has won five PlayGround Emerging Playwright Awards for his 10-minute plays as well as a PlayGround Fellowship (a commission, with which Aaron wrote First Person Shooter) and a PlayGround Alumni Fellowship (a new commission, which he is working on now). Aaron’s 10-minute play The Maror the Merrier was included in Three Plays About Your Mom, a production of three short plays that won “Best of Fringe” at the 2005 San Francisco Fringe Festival. His short works have also been produced at LaMaMa E.T.C. and the Playground theater in New York City as well as college venues around the country as part of the Performers’ Workshop Ensemble. His play, Brown, was produced in 2005 at Berkeley’s La Val’s Subterranean Theater by Crowded Fire as part of their Matchbox Workshop Series. Aaron studied playwriting at New York University where he received BFAs in Dramatic Writing and Dramatic Literature. He is a member of the Dramatists’ Guild of America, Inc. By day, Aaron is the Chief Operating Officer of Planet Moon Studios, one of San Francisco’s fastest growing videogame developers.

The cast includes Amphibian company members Katya Campbell, Jonathan Fielding, and Sarah Elizondo as well as Lloyd Barnes, Lisa Davis, David Fluitt, and Jomar Tagatac.

Amphibian is generously sponsored by the Arts Council of Fort Worth & Tarrant County, Amon G. Carter Foundation, Helen Gertrude Sparks Charitable Trust/Bank of America - trustee, the Pangburn Foundation, Pier 1 Imports, Virginia & Robert Hobbs Charitable Trust/Wells Fargo Bank - trustee, Tobin Theatre Arts Fund, Webb-Maddox Trust/JP Morgan – trustee, Worth Bank, and Ms. Ann L. Rhodes, among others.