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1100 Playwright Interviews
1100 Playwright Interviews A Sean Abley Rob Ackerman E.E. Adams Johnna Adams Liz Duffy Adams Tony Adams David Adjmi Keith Josef Adkins Nicc...
Jul 24, 2006
An eye for
Bush does what he wants
First draft of something new
I'm not sure what this is yet but it might be the start of a new play.
(Three women in hard hats, A, C and S sit on a steel girder eating lunch from their lunch boxes. Faint sound of jackhammer.)
C What you got?
A Ham.
C You?
S Tuna.
A What about you?
C Yogurt.
S Yogurt again.
C I like yogurt. I used to like yogurt.
S (shouting down below) Hey! You! Let me see you shake that ass!
C And carrots.
S Youre making me all wet! I can barely control myself! Flex it! Flex it! Hey meatboy, where you going?
A He cant hear you.
S Fuck.
C I hate my lunch.
(Pause)
A I have something to tell you.
S Not again.
C Seriously?
A Yeah, Im afraid so.
S Fuck.
A Will you help me?
S What the fuck?
A I know.
C Seriously.
A I know. I know. Im sorry.
C Are you?
A Yes. Will you help me?
S What, tonight?
A Could you?
S I guess.
A What about you?
C OK. But Im not doing any of the heavy lifting or the digging.
S What are you going to do then?
C I could sing.
A I dont think we should sing. Then people will know were out there digging and that wouldnt be good.
C I could hum.
S Shell dig. We both will.
Jul 22, 2006
In DC
Jul 13, 2006
Jul 12, 2006
thanks to Jason Grote for this
http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/julyaugust06/humana.cfm
"It is strikingly evident in Six Yearsand in the entire crop of this year's Humana playsthat 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."
Jul 11, 2006
yet another good review from the Times
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/theater/reviews/11fish.html
Jul 10, 2006
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
Jul 9, 2006
Jul 5, 2006
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
Jul 3, 2006
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 Dont 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 Im 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 Its 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 didnt 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. Im 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, dont 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?
Jun 30, 2006
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.
Jun 27, 2006
Jun 25, 2006
Jun 22, 2006
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.
Jun 21, 2006
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.
Jun 15, 2006
Jun 14, 2006
F4F
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.