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1100 Playwright Interviews A Sean Abley Rob Ackerman E.E. Adams Johnna Adams Liz Duffy Adams Tony Adams David Adjmi Keith Josef Adkins Nicc...

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Oct 31, 2007

the only responsible thing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDsIFspVzfI

I <3 A.M. Homes

but I have to say even though I'm loving Music For Torching, This Book
Will Change Your Life is my preference.

Jason Grote's project

I'm seeing the play tomorrow. Can't wait. Check out this new site. It's a trip. So I'm very interested in getting your thoughts on a new web-based project. As both a marketing tool and artistic extension of my play 1001, Page 73 and I have created a sort of skeletal alternate site and reality game to accompany the play. Here's how it works: if you go to http://1001nyc.com and click on "Enter The Story," you'll be taken to a web-based alternate reality - the world of the play. This links to character blogs and email conversations, message boards, a 1001 wiki, and a few other easter eggs. Thematically, the play is all about the power of narrative, the porous border between reality and fantasy, and the internet as a real-life Library of Babel, so the site idea fits. In an ideal world, I'd love to see it transform into a Henry Jenkins-like, open-source fan project (mass group dramaturgy!) , with the idea that we are all storytellers in one big infinite collection of Arabian Nights tales, but we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it. You can also get there directly at http://www.1001nyc.com/enter-the-story/ , but the first way is more fun. Thanks! Jason

Oct 26, 2007

are you going to be there?




Monday, November 5, 2007, 6:00 PM
A Rose by Any Other Name: Adaptations of Shakespeare
Herbie: Poet of the Wild West
Reading of a play by Adam Szymkowicz, based on Hamlet.
Introduced by the author, followed by discussion.

Directed by Evan Cabnet.

Starring Matt Stadelmann, Audrey Lynn Weston, Jeff
Biehl and 4 more TBA.

at the New York Performing Arts Library at Lincoln
Center.

Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
40 Lincoln Center Plaza
New York, NY 10023-7498

Oct 24, 2007

FBI threatens torture

http://www.psychsound.com/2007/10/a_tale_of_two_decisions_or_how.html

h/t isaac

http://parabasis.typepad.com/

isaac says:

"The FBI forced a man to confess (Falsely it turned out) to terrorist
activities when they threatened to torture his family. Once the man
was proven innocent, the section about how the FBI forced a false
confession out of him was redacted for national security reasons.
Read all about it here. If this doesn't get your blood boiling, what
will?"

Where I’m At

Last weekend I was creating a packet of writing to try and get a TV gig. I’m doing another one now. I have to revise Herbie for the reading on the 5th and there might be a reason for me to revise Searching as well soon. And I have to go back and fix that screenplay, currently titled Stalker. I am also on page 30 or so of a new play but I have to say, even though things about it excite me, I keep putting it aside. I can’t help but thinking writing a new play is a waste of my time. In some ways it is probably my best work, and it is certainly a play I would like to see, but the thought of going through the channels afterwards, the revising and re-revising, the readings, the waiting, the rejections, leaves me cold. Why am I still doing this? I have all sorts of stamps of approval. I have writers groups and readings when I need them. When my plays do go up, they go well. They go much better than I imagine they will go and I have a great time. But breaking through to the next level seems not to be happening and it’s true I’m not a patient person, but I’m just not sure what exactly I have to do. For the first time, the answer does not seem to be write a new play. And I’m not sure what the answer is. The answer seems to be stop writing plays. I’ve already written about a bazillion of them. Why write more when no one is doing these ones? And the thing is, I have great agents on both coasts. I should revise the plays I’ve written, perhaps and fix this screenplay and figure out how to get into the TV and Film area. Because I’m sick and tired of the day job and of being so poor and of putting so much effort into writing plays and working to get them into the hands of people who are unable or unwilling to take a chance on my work. And it’s not their fault either. The market is flooded with good work. Most theaters have specific needs and only a couple slots and a particular audience they are catering to. But I’m tired of working so hard and not seeing results. If I can’t find a way in here, why should I stick around?

reprinted with permission

FROM THE DESK OF GARY GARRISON US & THEM Billy Crawford was twice my height and twice my weight; he was, in short, a wall of a human being. He seemed to be the only thing that ever stood in my way of being on the first string of our junior varsity basketball team. If I wasn't called off the bench to play in a game, it was Crawford's fault because there was so much of him physically, the Big Coach naturally overlooked me. If I tripped and fell during the warm-up, splaying out like a starfish on the unforgiving hardwood floor of the gymnasium, it was Crawford's fault for distracting me with my evil thoughts of how to make him suffer a slow, agonizing death. If the basketball slipped from my hands during a pass, it was because Crawford sweated it up before he passed it to me. He was my sworn enemy and thank God he was there. What else could I possibly blame for my lack of success? Certainly not my own inability. Cut to thirty-five years later, and I'm sitting in the Ahmanson Auditorium in Los Angeles with two hundred of our Southern California members. In front of us are literary managers, artistic directors and producers from the area's most accomplished theatres - everyone from Pier Carlo Talenti (Center Theatre Group), to Megan Monaghan (South Coast Rep) to Matthew Shakman (Black Dahlia Theatre Company). The memory of Billy Crawford comes flooding back, and it occurs to me how easy it is to make the obvious people the object of our anger and frustration. How many artistic directors, literary managers or theatre directors have I blamed for my not having the career I know I should rightfully have? Too many; I've blamed them more times than I've blamed myself, and that math just doesn't add up. And then, as if the panelists were reading my mind, they one by one begin articulating their love of new plays, playwrights, musicals, composers - all things new and interesting. I hear Talenti say, "Every time I open a large, brown envelope, I'm excited. There's potentially a new discovery to be made. I may learn something new. I may fall in love." Monaghan echoes the sentiment: "I want to like your work. I'm pulling for you from page one." Raul Clayton Staggs from the Playwrights' Arena says what everyone wants to hear: "I want to do your work -- the people in this room, because nobody knows the issues of my community like you." I feel the warmth and generosity of spirit spilling across the stage to a room full of writers, and I wonder, how did we get to this painful divide of what we often perceive as Neglected Us (the writers) and Neglectful Them (the industry)? Is it old history? Is it even true? Or is it just easier (and less painful) to think that way? Is it too hard to accept that they're actually on our side? Gary ggarrison at dramatistsguild dot com

Oct 23, 2007

Mark your calendar

Monday, November 5, 2007, 6:00 PM A Rose by Any Other Name: Adaptations of Shakespeare Herbie: Poet of the Wild West Reading of a play by Adam Szymkowicz, based on Hamlet. Introduced by the author, followed by discussion. at the New York Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center. Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center 40 Lincoln Center Plaza New York, NY 10023-7498 Directed by Evan Cabnet, starring lots of talented actors.

Agreeing with Matt Freeman

http://matthewfreeman.blogspot.com/2007/10/reggie-watts.html

Oct 21, 2007

Monday

The 2nd-Ever New York Theater Review 2008 Edition Fundraiser is tomorrow night, Monday, October 22.
The quick skinny:
Performance Space 122
Upstairs Stage (the larger one, not the one around the corner)
150 First Ave. at 9th St.
Manhattan
8-11pm
$25 door/$20 advance.
Advance sales are available thru the Fractured Atlas donation link on the NYTR home page -- www.nytr.org. Just print out whatever Fractured Atlas sends you as a donation acknowledgment and you're in. The donation process will also put you on a list we'll have if you donate up to about noon tomorrow, Monday. But our crack admissions crew will be accepting anything from Fractured Atlas that has your name, our name and $20 (or more) on it.
This is without question the most reasonably-priced fundraiser probably recent NYC memory if not EVER.
Look at what the admission price will get you:
Performances by:
  • Banana, Bag & Bodice's musical alter-egos, The Rising Fallen
  • The Amazing one-man musical-comedy performance unit that is Reggie Watts
  • Singer-songwriter Beth Collins
And that's just part of the entertainment. There will also be 6 brand spankin' new Tiny Plays created especially for the event by downtown theater groups
  • Direct Arts
  • Bluebox Productions
  • The New York Neo-Futurists
  • Flux Theatre
  • The Shalimar
  • Hoi Polloi
AND more auction and raffle items than I can list here and expect you to keep reading, but suffice to say there is some really good stuff going on the block, including a deluxe ticket package of Fall theater events from the likes of
  • Classic Stage
  • The Flea
  • The NY Neo-Futurists
  • Performance Space 122
  • The Public
  • 2nd Stage
PLUS appearances by playwrights Adam Szymkowicz, Anne Washburn, Tommy Smith & Alec Duffy and Seattle's own Marya Sea Kaminski .
Any help you can give us spreading the last-minute word is most appreciated. And if you're in NYC tomorrow night, I hope you'll come on down and say hi. It should be a truly great and memorable evening.
Thanks!
Brook Stowe
New York Theater Review
917.838.2747 (questions about the event, probably best to direct them to me, as PS122 BO won't be open Monday night).

Oct 17, 2007

nov 5

a reading of Herbie

http://clubfreetime.com/vieweventdetails.asp?ID=74100

sticky

short play of mine in early nov

http://www.broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=22205

Adam Rapp says

I appreciate good criticism and I think it’s really important. I don’t like it when it’s consumer advocacy, like how you should spend your $60. Great criticism is a kind of literature. I’ve written some criticism, and I really enjoy it because I think it’s important for people to know that theatre is vital. Criticism is really unevenly distributed in this town. Obviously the power of the Times is discouraging. It’s killing new plays, demolishing one after another. Charles Isherwood and Ben Brantley have a lot of power. I would like to think that Michael Feingold, Jeremy McCarter, David Cote and people who are really interested in new work would have an equal distribution of power. But we’re so governed by the Times. Everyone is so afraid to talk about it, which is what I hate. Now that I’ve been demolished by them, I’m not going to be afraid to talk about it.

Insurance for 800,000 children costs the same as one week in Iraq

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkAvxrgtLr4&eurl=

Oct 9, 2007

Bragging or My New Career

I came up with the subtitle my friend Jodi is using for her book. How To Eat Like a Hot Chick: Eat What You Love, Love How You Feel do you need a subtitle for your book, too? Contact me and I'll write you a doozy. My rates are very reasonable. For more on the book Jodi and Cerina wrote: here and here and here

review of Departures--GO SEE IT

Both Keira Keeley and Travis York give performances of extraordinary focus and intensity, which only ups the tension for us. They're acting under a microscope, and yet they're entirely in their own world even with the "real" world pressing in so closely—in much the way lovers in a disintegrating relationship often are entirely absorbed in their own emotional states, regardless of what else is happening around them. It's a very discomfiting way to watch such an intimate play—even more voyeuristic than eavesdropping on a couple fighting in a restaurant, because these two are hashing things out in the privacy of their own room. It's a very simple story—and Palmer is wise enough to keep it that way, to make the story develop through the details we learn about Andrew and Cara, rather than through plot twists or high-stakes events. They're just two pretty messed-up, emotionally fragile people trying to keep all their worst impulses from destroying each other—and not succeeding too terribly well. The play is a series of tiny revelations, little cracks in one or the other's armor hastily papered over or shied away from. We learn as much from watching Keeley and York's faces—or from the set of their shoulders, from the tiniest physical details—as they react to each other's barbs, as we do from what they say.

Brustein on huffington

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-brustein/how-not-to-write-a-play_b_49600.html

<3

a new scene. as always, this is a first draft. 5 (In the hospital, the NURSES stand around talking. PETER is visible in a space behind them, working on an artificial heart with a screwdriver.) NURSE 1 Is he in there again? NURSE 2 Yeah. Never eats or sleep, just plays with that damn heart. NURSE 3 Does it work? NURSE 2 Not yet. NURSE 1 If he’s fiddling around with that, he doesn’t have to deal with the world outside or with real problems or with other people. NURSE 2 He’s solving a real problem. You’re not being fair. NURSE 1 I don’t want to be fair to him. He’s never been fair to me. NURSE 3 Can you say that? Can you really say that? NURSE 1 If he’d been fair to me, He would have let me kiss him under the mistletoe at the Christmas party. He would have smiled back more, he would have frowned less. He would have taken the time to notice my body instead of looking away. He’s never been fair to me, so he doesn’t know what could have happened. NURSE 2 He has a higher calling. NURSE 1 He has an escape hatch. I wish I had one. I would have liked to find it in his lips. (The NURSES sigh in unison) NURSE 3 His lips. NURSE 2 His lips. PETER Dammit! Why won’t you beat? Beat! Beat! (PETER fiddles with it some more.) NURSE 1 I’ve seen him in there, you know. With the heart. Shimmying his screwdriver between the chambers. PETER Beat, dammit. Beat. NURSE 1 He wants the heart to beat for him, but a heart will only beat for who a heart beats for. NURSE 3 Isn’t that the truth?

Oct 8, 2007

I had some drinks and some dinner this weekend and now I can't afford
to get my hair cut.

Why did being poor seem so much more romantic when I decided to be a
playwright 9 years ago?

or if not romantic, sustainable.

Oct 5, 2007

trick or treat

And while you're at it, buy a play by Freeman, a play by James, a play by Qui, a play by Reuben, a play by Johnna. Who else has a play for sale? Leave it in the comments.

and now

my plays are finally on Amazon. Get them while they're hot. You can even give them away to trick or treaters who want something new and delicious to..um...read.

Oct 4, 2007

Bush doesn't want children to have healthcare

seriously, one more step towards bringing us closer to third world status

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-Childrens-Health.html

He proved during Katrina he didn't care about Americans in harm's way.

He brought us into a war under false pretenses and kept our soldiers
there--clearly he doesn't care about them.

Why should he care about our children?

national playwriting month

http://www.naplwrimo.org
http://groups.myspace.com/naplwrimo
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4665638038


join dorothy and write a play in november.

Oct 3, 2007

5 and 4

5 things to hate about being a playwright 1. Rejection letters from people who feel compelled to give a fake reason why they aren’t doing your play when the real reason is they are doing Neil Labute’s play instead. 2. Reviews that have the power to set your career back five years. 3. The impossibility of making a living writing for the theater. 4. The waiting. 5. Other people’s fear. 4 things to love about being a playwright 1. Post show beers with talented actors. 2. The sound of people laughing because of your play. 3. The electric buzz in a darkened theater caused by something breathtaking that inspires you to create something beautiful yourself. 4. The joy of writing down what the voices say.

another photo



Jennifer Elise Cox and Marin Hinkle in Adam Szymkowicz' Incendiary, SCR's 100th NewSCRipts reading.

Oct 2, 2007

SEE THIS PLAY



Come see Departures this week and enjoy a special discount:

$12 Tickets (Regular price: $18) ...plus free wine or beer for AEA members!

Blue Coyote Theater Group Presents:

Departures
By Kristen Palmer

Directed by Kyle Ancowitz
Cara is an American ex-pat living in Britain who decides to return to the US after three years abroad. But with the death of her father and loss of her childhood home, what is she returning home to? Complicating things further is the boyfriend who refuses to let go. DEPARTURES is a touching two hander starring Keira Keeley (from Adam Bock's Obie-winning play, THE THUGS) and Travis York (from Anne Washburn's THE INTERNATIONALIST) that crosses time zones and continents to explore questions of family, home, and homelessness.

Featuring Keira Keeley* and Travis York*

Set Design: Kerry Chipman

Lighting Design: Daniel Meeker

Production Stage Manager: Susan J. Sunday

Thursday-Sunday, October 4-28 , 2007
At the Access Theater Gallery
All performances at 8pm.

For more information, visit: Blue Coyote Theater Group
Tickets here or (212) 868-4444.

*These actors are are appearing courtesy of Actors' Equity Association.

Matty Freeman recommends

last night

I had a roundtable reading at MCC last night of Herbie in preparation for my November reading at the NY Performing Arts Library. It went really well and also looks like I need to do a bit of work. Amazing actors though. Thank you all!