Off to DC

to rehearse Pretty Theft. See you the last week of July.

thanks to Jason Grote for this

http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/julyaugust06/humana.cfm

"It is strikingly evident in Six Years—and in the entire crop of this year's Humana plays—that American writers aren't just dusting off old ideas and giving them fresh varnish. Instead, they are taking real risks and reinvigorating our repertory of contemporary drama with muscular ideas and imaginative fervor. The bitter irony is that these bringers of new works are treated as if they were glassy-eyed dreamers and beggars in a house of plenty."

An article the amazing Sheila Callaghan wrote for the Brooklyn Rail about me. Thanks Sheila!!

yet another good review from the Times

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/theater/reviews/11fish.html

Did I mention I'm having a good summer?

Insert arresting image here

So this santa play isn't working at all at the moment and unfortunately I don't have lots of time to write anyway because of the show but I will perhaps start to write again next week while I'm rehearsing in DC. I think I need to be working on a different project than the one I'm trying to work on and I have a queue of ideas and I should wait to see what jumps to the front of the queue. And read some novels. I need to read.

How are you? I saw Nervous Boy and The Most Wonderful Love recently and I highly recommend both although I think they've both closed. How about that for helpful press?

http://www.adamszymkowicz.com

Listen to a podcast of my play Pretty Theft, playing in DC later this month. http://dctheatrereviews.com/fringe/_17_-_madcap_players_final.mp3 If you're in New York, come see Food For Fish. We had our official opening last night and it went very well. Reviews come out soon but buy your tickets now. http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/122580 Sorry I'm all business right now. it's just consuming me.

Come See FOOD FOR FISH

opens tomorrow

To order tickets just go to: http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/122580 or call 212-352-310

GOD HOLE FOR SANTA

The original 1st scene of a play I'm working on. i'm not going to use this at all because I decided we shouldn't ever hear god. but here is the rejected 1st scene followed by another scene i can't use at all.

(JULIUS sits on a beat-up couch. He stares at a television and holds a video game controller in his hand. He is playing furiously. JULIUS is dressed hipster sloppy, and it may take us a second to notice his large pointy ears, the only clue to us that he is an elf. )

(We watch JULIUS play for a while and then a booming voice interrupts.)

VOICE OF GOD JULIUS!

JULIUS (not looking up) What?

VOICE OF GOD JULIUS! This is your Lord.

JULIUS Who?

VOICE OF GOD This is God speaking. Can I get your undivided attention?

JULIUS (Putting down his controller, looking around.) God?

VOICE OF GOD Thou hast been chosen.

JULIUS What?

VOICE OF GOD Thou art the chosen one. I come onto you to tell you I have chosen you.

JULIUS For what?

VOICE OF GOD You are he.

JULIUS Who?

VOICE OF GOD He!

JULIUS Who?

VOICE OF GOD HE!

JULIUS Well what does that mean?

VOICE OF GOD Don’t ask questions. Have faith.

JULIUS In what?

VOICE OF GOD In me.

JULIUS Well, OK, but you got to give me a little more information. God! (silence) Hey, God! (no answer) God! God! GOD!!

(JULIUS stares of into space for a minute and then picks up his controller and continues to play his game.)

--------

(Exit ELLIE. JULIUS goes back to playing his game.)

VOICE OF GOD Julius!

JULIUS Oh, Shit! You scared me.

VOICE OF GOD Julius!

JULIUS God?

VOICE OF GOD It is I.

JULIUS God, when you said I was the chosen one, what does that mean exactly? Like I’m the most special? Like the most special on the Earth? Is that a fair assessment?

VOICE OF GOD Let me tell you a story.

JULIUS OK.

VOICE OF GOD Once there was a lonely sheep herder who lived in the mountains.

JULIUS What was his name?

VOICE OF GOD It’s not important. This sheep herder herded the sheep by day and by night looked up at the stars and wished for something more. One night I sent an angel down to talk to this sheep herder.

JULIUS Why didn’t you go talk to him yourself?

VOICE OF GOD Stop interrupting. The angel said unto him, “Sheep herder, you will be given a test by God. You will be asked to do something and you must do it without questioning or thinking for yourself. You must prove your love of God and your faith in Him.” The sheep herder wanted to know what he would be asked to do but the angel would say no more and flew away.

(Pause)

JULIUS Is that the whole story?

VOICE OF GOD Now Julius, the time has come for you, the chosen one. I give unto you a blessed task to prove you are worthy and to show your love for me and for the universe I created.

JULIUS Oh. Well, I dunno. I’m kind of busy right now what with the job search and all and I really had to pick up slack here helping my dad out since my mother died.

VOICE OF GOD Julius, don’t bullshit God.

JULIUS Sorry. Do I have the option to say no to your request?

VOICE OF GOD Do you not know that I am your Lord God and that saying no to me might be a very bad idea?

JULIUS All right. (He sighs.) What do you want me to do?

VOICE OF GOD Kill Santa.

JULIUS Wait, what? (Beat) What did you just say? (Beat) God! Hey, God, come back here. (Pause) Why do you keep doing that?

What I didn't expect

was that there would be so much stress associated with getting some shows up finally. Nerve is without a doubt a success. It's going really well and its almost over and it's freaking me out just a little that it's going so well. i'm so used to the rejection that so many people telling me they like it is kind of confusing and i had no idea that would be the case. Not that everyone liked it. (I've read some reviews now) But most people did seem to really enjoy the play. Which makes me feel great and yet I'm sure i have sent it to probably a hundred theatres which either rejected it or never responded. And i don't understand that.

But I have no time to try and figure that out because now there is all this stress about getting people in for Food For Fish. (opens the 6th. buy your tickets now) And the thousands of other things that have to happen to make it all come together in time. I'm scattered. It's been really hard to rehearse something while something else is going up.

Not to mention that I wish I could leave for a few days and see how Pretty Theft is going in DC. I'm not going to get there until right before it goes up. which means I have to leave in the middle of the Food For Fish run.

Not that I'm complaining. I'm thrilled to have all these productions. It's just sort of disorienting. there are a lot of plays on my shelf. a lot. i hope this burst of shows will lead to some more of them getting done though I'm not sure it works that way exactly. You might have to get a pulitzer before that happens. Although I'm not sure that even a pulitzer will ever make it possible to quit the day job, will it? i wonder what makes that possible.

Mike Boehm Suzan-Lori Parks offers a play a day

http://www.calendarlive.com/stage/cl-et-quick30.2jun30,0,7782431.story?coll=cl-stage-features

Oprah may know how to get the whole country reading the same book, but Pulitzer Prize-winner Suzan-Lori Parks has come up with a way to get it performing the same plays, week after week, for an entire year.

From Nov. 13, 2002, to Nov. 12, 2003, Parks wrote a short play each day. Now comes "365 days/365 plays," conceived and produced by Parks and Bonnie Metzgar. Billed as the largest theatrical collaboration in U.S. history, hundreds of theater companies around the nation will team to make sure that each play is staged on its fourth birthday — or at least during its birthday week — starting Nov. 13, 2006.

From the NY Times--Guantanamo

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/29/washington/29cnd-scotus.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5087%0A&en=016f4299710789ee&ex=1151812800

In the courtroom on Thursday morning, the chief justice sat silently in his center chair as Justice Stevens, sitting to his immediate right as the senior associate justice, read from the majority opinion. It made for a striking tableau on the final day of the first term of the Roberts court: the young chief justice, observing his work of just a year earlier taken apart point by point by the tenacious 86-year-old Justice Stevens, winner of a Bronze Star for his service as a Navy officer during World War II.

Nerve closes on the 1st. Food For Fish opens on the 6th.

Pretty Theft in DC

Can anyone recommend a good romantic comedy? I'm going to write a film and I'm looking to watch comedys and dramas that end well, but good ones with developed characters. Love stories. Anyone got a favorite?

Because everyone loves fake moustaches

Nerve is Pick of the Week at offoffonline

http://www.offoffonline.com/reviews.php?id=770

Nerve closes on the 1st.

Food For Fish opens on the 6th.

Hope you can come.

I'm very happy with the Nerve production and very happy with how rehearsals are going for F4F. And they are VERY different kinds of plays. One is nothing like the other so I think assumptions about one based on the other just aren't going to work. The only solution is to see both.

HIBERNATE

I am in a sort of self-imposed hibernation. Trying to write something new. Trying to see my show--trying to get other people to see my show and trying to go to rehearsals for other show.

I had yesterday and today off and used it to write letters and start a new play--you know that crazy ubu santa thing I've been offhandedly mentioning? Oh, you don't? Remember those crazy pictures a few months back? Well, I'm working on that. And I need to write a one man show and a film. i have what I think is a great film idea and I'm dying to work it through but there are only so many hours in the day and 8 of them are at work (and two of them are to and from work)

and then there are the plays I saw that were great (Dead City, Quail, the new Anne Wasburn...) and the ones I still have to see (off the top of my head, Jason Grote's Walmart play, James Comtois' show, The Most Wonderful Love, Gary Winter play, Hunka play coming up and I'm sorry if I'm forgetting someone. Plays at EST? The Production Company has a bunch of shorts. Did I miss those?) I'm in a fog still.

They tell me the Times review was very positive today. I am not reading it but I am very happy to hear this. Especially after so so many theatres rejected this play.

Also come see Pretty Theft in DC

F4F

Chekhov-Inspired Play Food for Fish Opens Off-Bway,7/8 On the heels of Nerve, Sanctuary: Playwrights Theatre will premiere the second play by Adam Szymkowicz when Food for Fish debuts. Under the direction of Alexis Poledouris, the play will begin previews on July 6th at the Kraine Theater and open on July 8th.

Food for Fish is loosely inspired by Chekhov's Three Sisters. In the play, "young Bobbie drops pages from his novel into the Hudson River. The pages tell a story of three sisters: a stalker, an agoraphobe and a scientist with a secret plan to isolate and eliminate the gene for love. It is set in a world where men became women and women became men. But how far do you have to bend a gender before it breaks?"

...A current Juilliard Lila Acheson Wallace Fellow, his romantic comedy Nerve recently premiered at the 14th Street Y (where it plays through July 1) and his play Pretty Theft premieres July 22 at the first Annual Capitol City Fringe in Washington DC.

The show is going really well. Although I'm not reading reviews. Don't talk to me about reviews please.

But do come see the show if you can. It's called Nerve. Runs until July 1 and you can get tix on www.smarttix.com.

Charge Them With a Crime or Let Them Go

WASHINGTON, June 10 — Three detainees being held at the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, committed suicide early on Saturday, the first deaths of detainees to be reported at the military prison since it opened in early 2002, United States military officials said.

Lawyers for the detainees, human rights groups and legal associations have increasingly questioned whether many of the prisoners can even rightfully be called terrorists. They note that only 10 of the roughly 465 men held at Guantánamo have been charged before military tribunals, and that recently released documents indicate that many have never been accused even in administrative proceedings of belonging to Al Qaeda or attacking the United States.

Advocates for the detainees said they believed the suicides resulted from the deep despair felt by inmates who are being held indefinitely

The Show went REALLY well last night. Hope you can all make it out. I'm quite proud of it.

Nerve today until July 1

Please come and bring everyone you know. Buy Tickets FREE BEER with each full price ticket purchased

A play for the subscribers

Eduardo (see post below) encouraged us to write what we were afraid of-- he encouraged us to go someplace scary and to not worry about what our family or friends or lovers would say but to write the individual perhaps strange things that make us unique and to tell the stories that come from us. And sometimes this was successful and sometimes not but I think we were encouraged to write in the realm of dangerous--in other words write the kinds of plays that are not being produced off broadway these days.

And I want to hold onto this but I want to have a play off broadway too. How do we write true and not dampen too much the weirdness about ourselves and still succeed in this theatrical world? It's something I'm wrestling with.

Because I think the audience should be challenged. But does my work even do that? Should it? Is that the way I should be writing and if so how do I go about that? Or am I already writing that way? It's hard to tell from the inside.

I wrote a play called Open Minds that I thought was political and fierce but I couldn't get anyone to do it although it was a finalist in a couple of contests. Was it not a good enough play or did I not send it to the right places or was it in fact too dangerous?

I need to write another dangerous play now. The time has come. I'm too angry at Bush, at where the country is going, too afraid for the future. And then after I'll go back to writing the other kinds of plays I write, about love and relationships and gender roles.

Of course is this really a dangerous play I have in mind? What is it? A political satire/allegory. Will that help at all? Will that change anything or even make me feel better? Does it need to be out there? I want to write the play that needs to be out there.

Go Eduardo!!

Parabasis Posts Eduardo Machado's recent speech. he was my prof a couple years ago for 3 years. Some highlights: I don't feel we are brave enough. I feel the theatre that I see for the most part is watered down. It's getting ugly out there. Let's show it as much as we can on our stages. And I beg you let us stop being afraid of the audience. They are supposed to be afraid of us. But ever since the National Endowment got cut down to barely nothing we have had to follow a corporate model. We have to show profit in non-profit. Isn't that ridiculous? It's like an Ionesco play. We have become Rhinoceri. I know we feel we have to go along with it to survive... by it I mean pandering. Because we think we need a certain amount to make it. But how much are those dollars worth? And exactly how much do we need to survive? Non profits theatres should not sell tickets for a hundred dollars a seat. That's criminal. How are we ever going to find a new vital audience at those prices? Even sixty five to forty-five is unrealistic. Not everyone has a trust fund. Not everyone in New York City is rich. The audience we're missing can barely afford 20 dollars. But if we gave them a reason to, they'd get the money together. I did. We have given into the worst kind of greed. The corporate model. And I'm sorry but our work has suffered because of it. Let me be frank, I teach at Columbia because I need the money, there is no grand scheme or noble purpose, just dollars and cents. And I try very hard to do a good, professional job. But is that mentorship? Is it inspirational? I do my best, but I don't think so. As for that last part, it was not mentorship for me though I wanted it to be. It was at times inspirational. And I did learn about writing, and I wrote a lot for 3 years, but fuck am I in a lot of debt right now.

in chicago/Brown Couch Theatre

That's right! It's time for BCTC's 4th annual ten-minute play festival! BUY TICKETS NOW! This year's theme is mating rituals...

We have ten great plays and 21 really talented (and hot!) actors. Comedy...drama...sex...there's something for everyone, every ten minutes. We hope to see you there!

The Mating Game @ the Viaduct Theatre 3111 N. Western Ave. Friday, June 9th - Saturday, June 24th

Performances are Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30pm Sundays at 3:00pm

Call 312.409.2010 to make reservations or BUY TICKETS ONLINE!

$15 on Fridays and Saturdays $12 on Thursdays and Sundays

For more info, or to see slide shows from our previous festivals, please visit our website.

Hey! Check out all these people involved with the show! That's a lot. You probably know at least one of them...

Jenn Adams � Torey Adkins � Shea Bredenkamp � Alex Broun � Kate Cares � Kyle Cobb � John C. Davenport � Robert Dennison � Heather Durham � Trey Edge � Marc Friedman � Colette Friedman � Kendall Gray � Andy Grigg � Charles Hall � Jennifer Hawk � Marcus Kamie � Dan Kennedy � Peter Kersten � Anne Korajczyk � Morgan Leavitt � Eric Lee � Kyra Lewandowski � E. M. Lewis � Kate McDermott � Dane Mehringer � Lydia Milman � Firestone Mulvaney � Frank Murphy � Beth Novick � John Oster � Mark Pracht � Lisa Joy Raffety � Sara Ritz � Denise Santomauro � Adam Szymkowicz � Pam Tierney � Bryan White � Carol White