3 Female, 3 Male, 1 Any Gender • Two-Act/Full Length • ~120 Mins

Four vengeful, narcissistic actors, with the assistance of a brutish stage manager and a cynical stagehand, abduct and hold captive a theater critic notorious for shutting down productions and ending careers through his malicious reviews. To confound matters, they intend to carry their plan out during a performance of a show they’re all currently appearing in. Less than an hour before the curtain is due to rise, their scheme begins to quickly unravel as we discover that none of the conspirators are familiar with the actual plan or its designed outcome. Brute Farce is a satirical commentary on the perpetually symbiotic, oftentimes dysfunctional, and occasionally turbulent relationship between actors and reviewers.

A future theater-laughs-at-itself classic alongside Michael Frayn’s Noises Off.

Houks comedy is a near-perfect, laugh-out-loud farce, owing not only to the cockamamie plot but to the comic invective among the bungling actors, harried production crew, and acerbic critic.

In what has to be one of the funniest props in theater lore, Reggie has rigged an elaborate electrical cueing system involving four colored light bulbs, one for each actor, and four clear light bulbs, one for each scene. The actors all being themselves dim bulbs, the device results in complete confusion.

High stakes, nutball characters gifted with enormous self-regard and not much else, an over-engineered backstage prompting system, and no recurring gag too cheap to revisit, Brute Farce is a venomous delight.

A very funny, very dark backstage comedy of errors and terrors.

A backstage - or in this case under stage - farce worthy of being ranked with The Play That Goes Wrong and Noises Off.

Full of laughs and vile, self-centered characters who suffer the tortures of the damned.

5 Female, 4 Male • Two-Act/Full Length • ~150 Mins

Carly Weekes and her sisters, Lolly and Shirley, are witches. Determined to find Carly a mate, the three cast a circle to summon a popular recording artist from Colorado. However, Shirley casts what appears to be a dubious and deadly spell. Worried that Carly and her new family might now be cursed, Lolly endeavors to reverse the hex, but fails, resulting in her expulsion to an alternate world. Years later, the Pacheco twins mysteriously drown. The case goes cold, but many believe Carly’s oldest son, Johnny, is responsible. Cold Rain is an account of a family bound by black magic, a dark and sometimes comical tale of ill-conceived machinations, misdirected resentment, and repressed desire.​

The reverse audience omnipotence made the aha moments both more frequent and rewarding, as you often learned something new and discarded old assumptions in the very same snippet of a scene.

The dark humor laced throughout was almost always impeccably landed to provide a release from the tense situations. The dry, damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t humor paired wonderfully with the main themes of family, fate, and choice.

This was art and theater imitating life in all of its strangeness and ironic sadness.

The characters are all well developed, and each of them, in their own way, is a person who doesn’t belong. This play is hard work that looks effortless.

Epic, sprawling, structurally ambitious, wildly funny, wildly horrifying, Cold Rain grabs one’s attention from its first lines and keeps it through every twist and turn of its haunting, dark magic-tinged plot.

Hulking, encompassing, evocative of that special feeling you find in vintage Stephen King, where every word and scene drips world-building of historical proportions.

If this show is any indication, then, much like this tantalizing family mystery, Craig Houk is a force to be reckoned with.

Houk cunningly constructs the play to reveal each secret, motivation, and detail drip by inexorable drip.”

2 Male, 1 Female • Two-Act/Full Length • ~105 Mins

Oscar winner, Jack Dunn, returns to Connecticut after being gone for nearly four years in McGrath, Alaska. His closest friend, Wade Henry, also an award-winning actor, has something Jack wants. After a long evening of drinking and poker with their pals, Jack and Wade, both eager to cement their legacies, face off one last time. Or so it seems.

Houk tackles toxic masculinity here with his accustomed caustic wit and singularly off-kilter view of the world, and proves once again he can write straight male characters with strength, heft, and grit while being unforgiving of their sometimes idiotic foibles.

With a setting and characters that seem to have stepped out of the glorious golden age of stage and screen, we\\\'re thrust into a Who’s Afraid of Virigina Woolf type atmosphere riding along on one whiskey after another as the characters open a new pack of playing cards in an attempt to start afresh. But can they? Houk offers up some great comic lines which buffer the tension that builds and the pathetic fallacy throughout will leave an audience on the edge of their seats.

10 Female, 5 Male (Doubling, Tripling) • Two-Act/Full Length • ~105 Mins

Clearys Delicatessen has been the most popular dining destination in Clarksville, Tennessee for nearly fifty years. Nowadays the business practically runs itself. It’s best-selling item? Grandma Cleary’s potato salad. Three generations of Cleary men have reaped the rewards of its success. And now young Herb Cleary will be the next to take the reins. One minor problem, however: Herb ain’t right in the head.

Craig Houk’s delicious knack for redneck repartee is one of my absolute favorite things, and that gift is on full display here: A Robert Altman movie’s worth of diner denizens cheerfully muddle through one very peculiar day, with disturbing and hilarious results. Underneath the barbs and shenanigans, you’ll also find an allegory about institutional rot - showing how dumb ain’t harmless, and good intentions and benign neglect can allow poison to fester and grow.

3 Female, 2 Male • Two-Act/Full Length • ~120 Mins

Years before the horrific mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016, thirty-two men perished in an arson attack at a gay bar in New Orleans on June 24, 1973, a fire set by one of their own. On that same evening, Sydney “Syd” Trahan, a young nursing student, is taken into custody for dancing at Brady’s, a notorious lesbian bar in the French Quarter nearby. Immediately following her arrest, Syd’s parents, Bud and Helen, struggle to gain control over their lives and to restore normalcy. At the same time, their neighbors, Beau and Beverly Larson, are hiding their own dark secrets that intertwine with both the fire and Syd’s arrest. While Syd demands the chance to be the person she’s meant to be, the Trahans and Larsons are forced to face the truth.

From the good things come in small packages file, an incisive, emotional script, an engaging and committed cast and brisk, clear direction make SYD, the new show at Ybor City’s tiny LAB Theatre Project, a major accomplishment.​ - Bill DeYoung, The St. Pete Catalyst

It’s a slow burn, with a great act one/into act two question and a perfect closing image. I loved every word of this piece.

The characters are written with humor, salt, specificity, and empathy. A compassionate and thoughtful work.

The greatest strength of the piece lies in Houk’s sure-footed characterizations of the main players.

Houk pulls you in with the complexity and strength of the characters. A truly compelling and heart-breaking story.

Syd is a play, a character, and perhaps a warning. Lush dialogue and dialect place this play in a New Orleans of the not-so-distant past and raise familiar issues of family and acceptance. An important story, very well told.

With a nod to William Inge and Horton Foote, Craig Houk\\\'s SYD is a theatrical treasure of drama, social commentary and vivid storytelling.

Houk expertly renders the regional dialect while giving each character a believable individual voice within it. Family tensions and affections feel complex and real. Some of the characters make disturbing choices, while others rise to the challenges with unexpected grace, and it’s all written with compassion and insight.