history.sesow.com/Press Room/2003

Press archive · 2003

F**king Wasps

Text of the original page

Sesow paints for Hollywood play, 2003 at Theatre of Note

click image to visit sesow.com

BACKSTAGE WEST- Critic's Choice (OCTOBER 8, 2003)

Sesow creates backdrop paintings for play in Hollywood

("F**king Wasps")

2003

from the Santa Monica Mirror (October 2003):

"Add it Up (with the birds,the bees and bunny)"

6 feet x 4 feet

acrylic/oil stick, lumber crayon on unstretched canvas

SOLD

PAINTING DETAIL

used for "f**king wasps" play in hollywood, california at 'theatre of note'

"Kinsey"

12 feet x 6 feet

acrylic/oil stick, lumber crayon on unstretched canvas

SOLD

PAINTING DETAIL

used for "f**king wasps" play in hollywood, california at 'theatre of note'

"Twisted Spine (with gall wasp)"

6 feet x 4 feet

acrylic/oil stick, lumber crayon on unstretched canvas

SOLD

PAINTING DETAIL

used for "f**king wasps" play in hollywood, california at 'theatre of note'

"Kinsey Crucifixion (with testicular stigmata)"

6 feet x 4 feet

acrylic/oil stick, lumber crayon on unstretched canvas

$2000

used for "f**king wasps" play in hollywood, california at 'theatre of note'

Coagula Magazine

(Los Angeles)

Review of Sesow's work

with Theater of Note

F**king Wasps

November 2003

"Gal Wasps (f**king wasps)"

12 feet x 6 feet

acrylic/oil stick, lumber crayon on unstretched canvas

SOLD

PAINTING DETAIL

used for "f**king wasps" play in hollywood, california at 'theatre of note'

BACKSTAGE WEST- Critic's Choice (OCTOBER 8, 2003)

F**KING WASPS

Steve Morgan Haskell's zany yet tributary dramatization of the

life of groundbreaking sex researcher Alfred Charles Kinsey plays out like an

X-rated valentine. Amid the current climate of sexual boundaries being pushed

in proposed legal reforms, this juicy story cries out for dramatic treatment,

and Haskell brings it to the stage after several years of extensive research.

Kinsey's life was rife with fascinatingly edgy aspects, and the surprising

thing about Haskell's crisply entertaining work is that, compared to the

typically iconoclastic Theatre of NOTE fare, it is a fairly conventional

comedy. Haskell tempers the tragic and explosively controversial aspects of this

story with sharp laugh-out-loud humor and his obvious affection for the

beleaguered protagonist, who died a famous but broken man.

(CONTINUES�.)

Haskell directs his new work with great energy and style. David

Bickford performs with zest at an onstage piano, highlighting the script's

paradoxical mix of the seedy and the beautiful, and accompanying a few snappy

cabaret-like interludes. Kathryn Stockwood's costumes offer another

21 images from the original page · click to enlarge

F**king Wasps, 2003: image 01 from the original sesow.com press page
wasps.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 02 from the original sesow.com press page
wasps3.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 03 from the original sesow.com press page
wasps4.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 04 from the original sesow.com press page
wasps2.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 05 from the original sesow.com press page
wasps5.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 06 from the original sesow.com press page
wasps6.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 07 from the original sesow.com press page
additup.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 08 from the original sesow.com press page
kinsey.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 09 from the original sesow.com press page
twisted.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 10 from the original sesow.com press page
kinseycross.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 11 from the original sesow.com press page
galwasps.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 12 from the original sesow.com press page
wasps7.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 13 from the original sesow.com press page
wasps8.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 14 from the original sesow.com press page
wasps9.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 15 from the original sesow.com press page
wasps10.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 16 from the original sesow.com press page
wasps11.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 17 from the original sesow.com press page
wasps12.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 18 from the original sesow.com press page
additupd.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 19 from the original sesow.com press page
kinseyd.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 20 from the original sesow.com press page
twistedd.jpg
F**king Wasps, 2003: image 21 from the original sesow.com press page
galwaspsd.jpg

Searchable text of the clippings

Machine-read (OCR) from the scans above on October 11, 2026. Spelling and line breaks may be wrong; check against the image before quoting.

Image 04 wasps2.jpg view scan

BACKSTAGE WEST- Critic's Choice (OCTOBER 8, 2003) FP*KING WASPS.

BACKSTAGE.COM

BACK STAGE BACK STAGE WEST THE COMPLETE GNLINE PERFORMING ARTS REBOURCE Steve Morgan Haskell's zany yet tributary dramatization of the life of groundbreaking sex researcher Alfred Charles Kinsey plays out like an X-rated valentine, Amid the current climate of sexual boundaries being pushed in proposed legal reforms, this juicy story ‘ties out for dramatic treatment, and Haskell brings it to the stage after several years of extensive research. Kinsey's life was rife with fascinatingly eday aspects, and the surprising thing about Haskell’ crisply entertaining work is that, compared to the typically Iconoclastic Theatre of NOTE fare, itis a fairly conventional comedy. Haskell tempers the tragic and explosively controversial aspects Of this story with sharp laugh-out-loud humor and his obvious affection for the beleaguered protagonist, who died a famous but broken man. (ConTiNuEss.) Haskell directs his new work with great energy and style. David Bickford performs with zest at an onstage piano, highlighting the script's paradoxical mix of the seedy and the beautiful, and accompanying a few snappy cabaret-like interludes. Kathryn ec tec eMC ACGCOC AI me Ea SE mG en eS ea Strowilouthe bing hatch <oupestia cule bles taal

LA WEEKLY REVIEW- (OCTOBER 9, 2003) *Recommended

Even as he probed the secrets of others, granddaddy of American sexology Alfred Kinsey kept many of his own. Born in 1894, he grew up oppressed by a domineering father, developing closeted attractions for other boys early on. In writer-director Steve Morgan Haskell?s abstruse stylistic play, Kinsey (Terry Tocantins) emerges as an ambitious weakling, a former Eagle Scout who, following 18 years of dry entomological research on wasps, achieved national acclaim by counting Americas orgasms. At his Institute for Sex Research, the married Kinsey reportedly engaged (according to a recent biography) in numerous homosexual affairs and ménages a trois with his wife and employees. His career stalled after sanctimonious right-wing elements leveled charges of communism against him; he died two years later, a depressed man. With

its crucifixion dream sequences and composite characters, the play is less one

(LAWEEKLY.COM)

individuals story than a metaphoric social critique. Here, a vigorous ensemble brashly explicates the ironies of a sexually dysfunctional individual at the forefront of the

libidinal revolution, emphasizing the materials garish humor while minimizing its

insey played and loved « urrishes awalcome sai of underving poignancy. Theater of NOTE, 1517 Cahuenga Blvd., Hlywd.; Thurs.~Sat. 8 p.m.; thru

Image 05 wasps5.jpg view scan

On The Stage

From Boy Scout to Sex Scholar: A new play explores the life of Alfred Charles Kinsey

Anne Kelly-Saxenmeyer Mirror drama critic

Early on in Steven Morgan Haskell’s play about pioneering sex researcher Alfred Charles Kinsey, the Kinsey character thinks aloud about the insufficiency of art without science and science without art.

As happens in Haskell’s Fucking Wasps, the Kinsey-novice wonders whether these words come directly from the subject (from the speeches, letters, and quotations that are woven into the play) or if they are an inference from the conceiver. Either way, Haskell has taken their substance to heart, creating by that balance that Kinsey refers to — between hard fact and the ambiguous magic that gives it character — a portrait that feels both trustworthy and inspired.

Excellently acted and fast-paced, Haskell’s is the kind of show that seems to overflow with its material. Zigzagging forward through Kins life, from his adolescence (when he became one of America’s first Eagle Scouts) through his years at Bowdoin College, the play zips past Kinsey’s Harvard years and lands at Indiana University where he did extensive studies of the gall wasp and later amassed the research that would become Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (or “The Kinsey Reports”), the latter of which was so negatively received that it led to the loss of his Rockefeller funding and, Haskell contends, his death three ‘years later.

Image 06 wasps6.jpg view scan

Much more than a laundry list of Kinsey's accomplishments, the play offers a compelling portrait of a fallible genius caught between a host of opposing forces. To this challenging role, Terry Tocantins brings humor, complexity, and physical grace, conjuring the magnetism and torment of a great man,

‘Atthe start of a lifelong struggle with the religious establishment, Kinsey breaks with his Methodist upbringing and his father (an imposing Greg Wall). In the academic world he’s driven by both pure-science idealism, embodied by his exuberant, high school biology classmate Alice Field (a delightfully odd Celia Anne Brown), and bare ambition, which he shares with star chemistry scholar and wife Clara Bracken McMillen Kinsey (the formidable Jennifer Ann Evans

Kinsey and the research team of Paul Gebhard, ‘Wardell Pomeroy, and Vincent Nowlis (a well-teamed Spencer Robinson, Joe Foster, and Dan Wingard) thrive and fall under the pressure of their sexuality research, becoming immersed in their data and in their own tangled relationships, and tom by public opinion, which alternately praises and condemns theit work.

If Haskell uses Kinsey's texts to capture the man’s mind, he locates his emotional life in music (Kinsey loved to play the piano), and on-stage pianist David Bickford adds an essential layer to the piece.

The focal points of a relatively bare set are paintings by Washington, D.C.-artist Matt Sesow. ‘With their mix of frank images (which willfully reduce the human to his base realities) and brash artistry (which attests to something more), they are the ideal backdrop for Kinsey's story.

Fucking Wasps presented by and at Theatre of NOTE, 1517 Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. Thursday-Saturday 8 p.m. October 3-November

Source and citation

Cite as: “F**king Wasps.” Matt Sesow press archive, 2003. history.sesow.com/press/2003-f-king-wasps.html. Accessed [date].

Clippings and photographs are kept here so the record survives if the original pages go offline. Copyright in each article stays with its publisher and author; corrections and permission requests to sesow@sesow.com.

Saved copies — every page, full text

The original page as it was saved, every page as an image you can zoom.

Every outside source cited on this page, kept here as page images you can zoom and as complete, searchable text — so nothing depends on a link that may disappear. Use your browser’s Find (Ctrl/Cmd+F) to search all of it.

Saved copy · 10 pages

zoomable page images

zoomable page images, page 1
Page 1
zoomable page images, page 2
Page 2
zoomable page images, page 3
Page 3
zoomable page images, page 4
Page 4
zoomable page images, page 5
Page 5
zoomable page images, page 6
Page 6
zoomable page images, page 7
Page 7
zoomable page images, page 8
Page 8
zoomable page images, page 9
Page 9
zoomable page images, page 10
Page 10

Click a page to open it — scroll or pinch to zoom, drag to move, arrow keys for the next page.

The full text of this page is printed above, under “Text of the original page”, with the machine-read text of its clippings.