July 5th, 2011
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Author: 
Robert Dubac, creator and star of “The Male Intellect” in the role of Bobby, the everyman character who’s just been dumped by his fiancee.
The most important thing playwright Robert Dubac wants you to know about “The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron” is that, contrary to appearances, the piece is not a “male bashing show.”
“It’s a nonstop, laugh-your-head-off, rolling-in-the-aisle kind of show. People have forgotten about theater and I love to get them back in — they’ll never see anything like this on TV,” said Dubac of Act II Playhouse’s latest offering.
The actor/comedian, having spent decades in Hollywood as a writer and stand-up comic, has a good handle on what works and what doesn’t and readily admits he stumbled upon a gold mine when he wrote “The Male Intellect” more than 15 years ago. The show has since played on thousands of stages domestically and has been translated and performed widely overseas as well.
“[The play] seems to have an evergreen element that makes it sort of a phenomenon. It’s a very universal topic, men trying to figure out women … then the men forget what they learned and the next day they have to come back,” joked Dubac.
“The Male Intellect” is a one-man play that centers around everyman character Bobby, who’s just been dumped by his fiancée. The character, confused — and … well, mostly just confused — gets drunk and takes a good hard look at where he may have gone wrong.
The play presents his inner journey by physically presenting both sides of Bobby’s brain — the left, representing the male side, cluttered and messy as any frat boy’s dorm, and then the right, the feminine, orderly and pristine as a hospital room. The Bobby character embarks upon a quest to figure out where he may have gone wrong with his girl and does so by rehashing advice from his most formative male role models.
By seeing the five mentors in action — the too-macho Colonel, cerebral Jean-Michel, vengeful Fast Eddie, the elderly Old Mr. Linger and sensitive Ronnie Cabrezzi — the audience begins to see where poor old Bobby went astray.
“In this show I portray all these different characters and they have all their own points of view. … It’s these five guys who all have one great trait but they’re not well-rounded, and so Bobby has to find a balance between those guys and his feminine side,” said Dubac.
“It’s really a great time for both men and women: if you’re a man you’ll say it was written for you and if you’re a woman you’ll think it was written for you — it is very identifiable to both sexes. The hermaphrodite population, I guess I don’t know how they handle it,” quipped the comedian.
The 90-minute play will not just give women unique access to the innermost workings of the male mind, but it will also give audience members plenty to chew on after the show is finished.
“Audiences aren’t thinking about heavier messages during the show, but they think about them afterwards and have psychological discussions. You don’t see that after TV or the movies — no one sits around after ‘The Biggest Loser’ and discusses it,” said Dubac.
Ambler’s Act II Playhouse will also host some of Dubac’s latest material during two special benefit shows on July 17 and 24, when Dubac will test out his latest material for a play called “Free Range Thinking,” a script that is still in the finishing stages. The performances’ proceeds will benefit the theater directly.
“‘Free Range Thinking’ is more about thinking outside the box and accepting other points of view. It tackles sex, views and politics from the point of view of a man who’s lost his memory and it is all about the things we as a society have problems with. Continued…
Robert Dubac, creator and star of “The Male Intellect” in the role of Bobby, the everyman character who’s just been dumped by his fiancee.
The most important thing playwright Robert Dubac wants you to know about “The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron” is that, contrary to appearances, the piece is not a “male bashing show.”
“It’s a nonstop, laugh-your-head-off, rolling-in-the-aisle kind of show. People have forgotten about theater and I love to get them back in — they’ll never see anything like this on TV,” said Dubac of Act II Playhouse’s latest offering.
The actor/comedian, having spent decades in Hollywood as a writer and stand-up comic, has a good handle on what works and what doesn’t and readily admits he stumbled upon a gold mine when he wrote “The Male Intellect” more than 15 years ago. The show has since played on thousands of stages domestically and has been translated and performed widely overseas as well.
“[The play] seems to have an evergreen element that makes it sort of a phenomenon. It’s a very universal topic, men trying to figure out women … then the men forget what they learned and the next day they have to come back,” joked Dubac.
“The Male Intellect” is a one-man play that centers around everyman character Bobby, who’s just been dumped by his fiancée. The character, confused — and … well, mostly just confused — gets drunk and takes a good hard look at where he may have gone wrong.
The play presents his inner journey by physically presenting both sides of Bobby’s brain — the left, representing the male side, cluttered and messy as any frat boy’s dorm, and then the right, the feminine, orderly and pristine as a hospital room. The Bobby character embarks upon a quest to figure out where he may have gone wrong with his girl and does so by rehashing advice from his most formative male role models.
By seeing the five mentors in action — the too-macho Colonel, cerebral Jean-Michel, vengeful Fast Eddie, the elderly Old Mr. Linger and sensitive Ronnie Cabrezzi — the audience begins to see where poor old Bobby went astray.
“In this show I portray all these different characters and they have all their own points of view. … It’s these five guys who all have one great trait but they’re not well-rounded, and so Bobby has to find a balance between those guys and his feminine side,” said Dubac.
“It’s really a great time for both men and women: if you’re a man you’ll say it was written for you and if you’re a woman you’ll think it was written for you — it is very identifiable to both sexes. The hermaphrodite population, I guess I don’t know how they handle it,” quipped the comedian.
The 90-minute play will not just give women unique access to the innermost workings of the male mind, but it will also give audience members plenty to chew on after the show is finished.
“Audiences aren’t thinking about heavier messages during the show, but they think about them afterwards and have psychological discussions. You don’t see that after TV or the movies — no one sits around after ‘The Biggest Loser’ and discusses it,” said Dubac.
Ambler’s Act II Playhouse will also host some of Dubac’s latest material during two special benefit shows on July 17 and 24, when Dubac will test out his latest material for a play called “Free Range Thinking,” a script that is still in the finishing stages. The performances’ proceeds will benefit the theater directly.
“‘Free Range Thinking’ is more about thinking outside the box and accepting other points of view. It tackles sex, views and politics from the point of view of a man who’s lost his memory and it is all about the things we as a society have problems with.
“Once upon a time, when our country was still new, the more opinions and information, the better; but now there’s so much of both, so people can just go to the information they want. The trick is to get people with all these different opinions to laugh at something and not to offend them,” said Dubac.
“The Male Intellect” plays at the Act II from July 6 to 31 and promises to not just provide laughs, but a little love too.
“People always take away something different — I think men learn to cherish women and women learn to respect men — it’s always different depending on the audience members’ awareness and they realize we can all get together — there is a little kumbaya in all of us.”
“The Male Intellect:
An Oxymoron?”
runs at Act II Playhouse,
56 E. Butler Ave.,,
Ambler, PA 19002,
through July 31.
Tickets: $20 – $33.
Info: 215-654-0200
or www.act2.org.
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