See FAMILY GOOGLING On Demand

FAMILY GOOGLING Written by Mark D. Tjarks
Directed by Dennis Gleason

Jacqueline and Frank invite an old friend over for dinner, hoping she will influence their teenage daughter’s decision about her first love. Armed with a smartphone, the youngster starts researching their stories online – and as it happens, grownups learn quite a lot about themselves.

Watch it On Demand at https://vimeo.com/ondemand/familygoogling

Each ON DEMAND Viewing counts as a vote for your play.

The play with the most On Demand Views wins a spot in the FINALS.

The Top 5 On Demand Plays will get extra votes added to the total votes in the festival.

Voting Ends July 26th at 8pm

The FINALS for the Strawberry One-Act Festival is on

Thursday, July 28th at 7pm at the Theatre at St. Clement's

423 West 46th St, NYC

For tickets go to https://www.therianttheatre.com/item.php?date=2016-07-28

FAMILY GOOGLING by Mark D. Tjarks

 











Written by Mark D. Tjarks
Directed by Dennis Gleason

Time:  The present.    Place:  The dining room.

               Characters In Order Of Appearance
Frank...............................     Preston Fritz Smith
Jacqueline........................    Danielle Adams
Maddie............................     Géraldine Dulex
Becca...............................     Ashley R. Brown


Who’s Who

DANIELLE ADAMS (Jacqueline) is thrilled to be part of this production. She is a New Jersey native and graduate of The University of the Arts in Philadelphia.  Previous roles include: Commuters (Bag Lady) Manhattan Repertory Theater, NYC Radio Theatre's H.P. Lovecraft festival, All's Well That Ends Well (Helena) Teatro Delle Due Italy, August Osage County (Barbara u/s) Arden Theater, and Dracula (Mina) Tribe of Fools.  Twitter: danielle_adamz Insta: daniadamz, www.danielleadams.net.

ASHLEY R. BROWN (Becca) is so excited to be playing Becca in Family Googling! She is an American Academy of Dramatic Arts alumni (2013) and graduated from Saint John's University (2015) with a Bachelor of Science in Dramatic Arts, Television, and Film. Other works include MEN (Gina), Bury the Dead (Joan), Lend Me a Tenor (Maggie), Scenes and Revelations (Millie), Open Loop Tour Bus commercial, and most recently Roach, an independent short film.  

GÉRALDINE DULEX (Maddie) has been seen in numerous theater productions in New York and Chicago, including Dead Man’s Cell Phone at Steppenwolf Theatre and the title role in the American Premiere of Howard Barker’s Minna at Trap Door Theatre. She recently played the principal speaking role in the opera The Passenger at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Florida Grand Opera, and Detroit Opera House. Géraldine just returned from her native Switzerland where she performed at the Zürich Festspiele with Dada kam vor Voltaire. In New York, Géraldine is a company member with Broken Box Mime Theater, winner IT Award Outstanding Ensemble 2014. B.S. Northwestern University. www.geraldinedulex.com.

 

PRESTON FRITZ SMITH (Frank). Off-Broadway: Broken Boundaries (June Havoc Theatre); Breaking Rules (June Havoc). Recent New York: The Father (Flying Shapes Productions); Romeo and Juliet (Old Stone House); The Summerhouse (Thespis Festival, Hudson Guild Theatre); Shangri-La (Midtown International Theatre Short Play Lab, Roy Arias Theatre); Many Mansions (Treehouse Theatre). TV and film: Devious Maids, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, True Crime with Aphrodite Jones, Monsters Inside Me, Deadly Devotion, Mysteries at the Museum, Dead Again, Greatest Mysteries, A Crime to Remember, The Sunday Mass, NBC Today Show, NBC Nightly News, Inside Edition, ABC Good Morning America, Lyric Suite, Gray’s Disconnect, Grandpa Ben, Alice in America, It takes a man, The Unknown, New York, Jack of the Red Hearts, and Wait, Wait, Don’t Kill Me. Graduate of Furman University, USC, and Westminster Choir College. NY Training: The Actor’s Project NYC, The Network, TVI Actor’s Studio, Broadway Comedy Club, The Barrow Group (Fall 2016). www.PrestonFritzSmith.com.

MARK D. TJARKS (Playwright) is a professor of English at Hawaii Pacific University, where he teaches scriptwriting, film, and literature. This summer, he has 3 plays being performed in New York. Along with Family Googling in the Strawberry Theatre Festival, he has two plays in the New York International Fringe Festival: The Unsalable Thing and Houseless in Paradise, which won a Po’okela Award for Overall Play in 2014 and was recognized by a State Senate of Hawaii Proclamation. The Unsalable Thing won the judges and audience awards for Best Play in PlayBuilder’s 2015 Festival of Original Plays and First Place in the Best Play Contest in the 2015 William Faulkner Literary Competition. Tjarks is also a recipient of Kumu Kahua Theatre’s Resident Award, a Producer’s Choice and two Best Comedy Awards for his work in Women In Theatre’s Kauai Short Festival, and an Opie for Best Play in Aloha Theatre’s Original Play Festival.  He has had 32 productions and staged readings of 15 one act and feature-length plays since 2004.
DENNIS GLEASON (Director) returns to the Strawberry Festival where four of his shows have been Finalists (Goodnite Lovin' Trail, On Top, Forgive Me Brother, Book Wench); last year he was the only director to have two plays running (does so again this season with Early Bird Special and Family Googling) and is proud that one of his cast members was awarded "Best Actor." With an MFA in Directing, 150 directing credits, and numerous "Outstanding Director/Production" awards, he has worked coast to coast including Off Broadway, regional theatre, dinner theatre, community theatre, and college theatre. Recent shows include And Then There Were None, Side Show, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. This summer he directs the double bill The Unsalable Thing/Houseless in Paradise in the New York International Fringe Festival.


JAYDE LAILA FUENTES (Stage Manager/Tech) is thrilled to experience the Theatre at St. Clement’s through the eyes of a stage manager.  Her most recent work consists of being the Assistant Director of the Off-Broadway production of In My Father’s House and starring in the film Countdown.  As a graduate of the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts she is using what she learned from teachers like Jay Goldenberg and Alan Rackham.

FAMILY GOOGLING by Mark Tjarks-Deleting Trump’s Twitter and other Internet stories

By Gini Chang

Gini Chang

The Internet is an extremely useful resource for me and for everyone else who is reading this. We all benefit from it with our computers and phones, Tweeting and Instagram-ing, even if many of us-including me- don’t exactly know how the internet works. 


Last year, the Republican party’s Presidential nominee Donald Trump stated that in order to stop terrorists from recruiting Americans he wanted to “see Bill Gates and...talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up”. Despite saying that, Trump has continued to use his Twitter account to voice his opinions on current events and spar with other political figures. 

Overall, the efficiency of the internet has changed more than just modern politics. Now there are YouTube stars who earn money just by being popular, there are Linkedin accounts that headhunters can sift through when searching for someone to fill a job vacancy, and the average every day person can share text as well as pictures to update their social networks about what’s going on in their lives. 

My favorite Food Network star's snapchat

Not only can everything be shared with anyone at anytime, but everything that is shared also leaves a record. In fact, our private information is easily accessible, we shared it ourselves, and that can be a little scary sometimes. It’s no surprise that there are privacy issues and updates every once in a while on giant networks such as Facebook, Instagram, or even Snapchat-a mobile phone app that allows users to send each other pictures that supposedly disappear in ten seconds. Even those pictures, believed to be gone, are saved in Snapchat’s database and 2 years ago, 200,000 of those photos were leaked. 

However, that hasn’t stopped the 1.65 billion Facebook users and 433 million LinkedIn users from broadcasting their personal information for the public to see. I bet that with just my first and last name, anyone reading this can find my Facebook profile at the very least. The immediacy with which one can access information is terrifying at times, but also incredible.


Mark Tjarks’ play, Family Googling, is about 17 years old Becca who is having dinner with her mother, her mother’s boyfriend, and her mother’s old friend. Becca’s mother has many concerns about her attachment to her cell phone and her new girlfriend (emphasis on the girl). But Becca has no concerns, and though her eyes never leave her phone, she is constantly paying keen attention to the adult conversations going on around her. She is so interested, in fact that she begins to use her phone to learn more about the past of her dinner guests, keep up with the conversation, and engage more with the people around her. However, Family Googling isn’t just about the Internet or the information that can be easily accessed, it’s about the very human relationships that exist as they always have, despite the changes that have been created by technology. 

Worried about your privacy settings? Or maybe have some tips for people like me who still have no idea what the Internet is? Comment below or tweet us at @RiantTheatre (so then we will be able to find you) and come see Mark Tjark’s Family Googling at the Strawberry One Act Festival on Saturday, July 16^th at 1pm; Sunday, July 17^th at 3pm; and Thursday, July 21^st at 7pm at St. Clements Theatre: 423 West 46^th St, NYC between 9^th and 10^th Ave.