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

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

elect green

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/opinion/21friedman.html?em&ex=1193198400&en=e37767045a13e87c&ei=5087%0A

political theater and the Times

http://www.indietheater.org/blog/archives/149

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

www.nytr.org

917.838.2747 (questions about the event, probably best to direct them to me, as PS122 BO won't be open Monday night).