Thanksgiving, already?

It's about that time of year again--the time to think about that Thanksgiving Play you want your 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th graders to perform in front of an invited audience, perhaps in a classroom. Where will you find this play? Why don't you run over to Dramasource and buy the play yours truly wrote on commission for his older sister. I just lost whatever downtown cred I had, didn't I? Oh well. With each copy you purchase, you will put 60 cents into my pocket (minus the 20 percent agent commission). I could use your 60 cents. If you want to just give me 60 cents and want to forgo purchasing the Thanksgiving play and paying my agent, well we can make that happen too.

Big Congrats To J and K!!!

Sat I attended a party to honor the marriage of J and K. Being a talented group of people, many of the attendants got up and did touching pieces in their honor. I wish I had had the impulse to get up and do something in front of the group (or the content to share) It's nice to see love. And the wedding sounded ideal. I unfortunately came to the shindig with a headache. What's best for a headache? Why beer of course. I left with a bigger headache. Now I'm back at work after a three day orientation hiatus. The real world is much harsher than the soft lights and large open spaces of Juilliard.

Blog review from AZ

The best review I've ever received About my short play Save Oh. But my favorite was Save. You know how I sometimes talk about how such-and-such is a "perfect" story? Save is a perfect story, perfectly told. Thank you jamiam from livejournal. Note to Larry: You see the kind of self congratulating posts I am forced to put up? Get me that article I commissioned.

Juilliard Days

Except for having to get a physical at 9:40 tomorrow morning and possibly having to get some shots of some sort, Juilliard is a magical dreamworld so far. Keep in mind I have not yet begun classes, however, there is plenty of talk of support. Free photocopies. Free mailing. Free classes (if I have the time, which I probably don't. Rehearsal space is available apparently. Also some amount of money will be given to us. Any amount of money thrills me to the core. And apparently there will be help with our professional lives--advice of course, help with where to send plays perhaps phone calls made on our behalfs. They basically said to us today tell us what you want--challenge us and we'll see what we can do. and we all get golden chariots. I spent many hours watching actor monologues today--I am bleary-eyed but saw some good stuff some mediocre stuff and some great stuff. Tomorrow I will see many more actor monologues.

today

Today is Juilliard orientation where I will get much needed orienting. A tour, perhaps some registration. Today will culminate in a school picnic. Yum. And of course they will tell me all the secrets to success and happiness in the theatrical world. Last night T-Dawg had a going away/birthday party. He goes off to Austin, TX to perform in a new Dan Dietz play. He will be missed here in New Babylon. Bonne Travails T-Dawg!!

Sept 10 in Philly come see my death play

There will be three Death plays presented this Saturday night, September 10 as part of the closing night of the First Philly FridgeFest. Where: Spirit Wind 213 New Street, Philadelphia (one block north of the Ben Franklin Bridge) (take Market-Frankford line to 2nd Street and walk north) When: 6:30pm onward Other performances include: ==>songs by Kurt Weill ==>MY SIN, by New York performance artist Toni Silver ==>Fly by Night, the culmination of a 24-hour playmaking experiment ==> Death plays by Adam Szymkowicz, Sheila Callaghan, and Sam Wallin ==>and musical performers TBA

Nothing new Here

Move along. Move along.

photo from New Orleans

or this

The white couple "found" some food in a grocery store, the black man "looted" it.

Katrina Aftermath

I'm so pissed off about the way this disaster is being handled I can't speak. Michael Moore says it much better than I ever could. Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag. Or Paul Krugman at NY Times about how this was preventable. Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all." It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening. What is wrong with you, Mr. Bush? Why aren't you taking care of your own people? I am so angry.

Dear Apple or Microsoft or Google or Someone,

Alright, here's what I want. A camera phone with radio that is also an ipod and a pda. That way I can hook it up to my computer and while it uploads photos it has taken, it downloads my calendar, address book and songs. And I want it to be small and have a multi-use headset with really good sound quality that I could also use to record my voice or a concert. and I want this machine to be really cheap so I can somehow afford to get one. Is that too much to ask?

new scene--first draft

(Alice looks through a microscope. FRED enters wearing a labcoat. He probably has a moustache.) FRED Hi Alice.

ALICE (not looking up) Fred. FRED What are ya looking at? ALICE My sister’s husband. FRED Is this your current project? ALICE (Coming up from the microscope.) What can I do for you, Fred? FRED Well, I was thinking—are you, um . . .. I was going to eat something tonight and maybe drink and I thought if you weren’t doing anything . . . ALICE I’m sorry Fred but I already have a date tonight, but if you want to add your name to the chalkboard of suitors on the wall, I may be able to fit you in sometime next month. FRED (looking at chalkboard.) That would be— ALICE I mean if you’re serious. FRED There’s a lot of names. ALICE If you’re not serious— FRED Oh, I am. There’s just something about you. ALICE What you speak of, I think, Fred is a coldness I have managed to cultivate towards the majority of men. Because I give off the air of not caring about you and because I speak to you and others brusquely, because I am short and dismissive with you, you think there must be something about me. I get many dates because of this. Perhaps you think I am like this all the time, but I am not. It disappears when I go home. It is not anything true. Because when I go home I am under a different spell. Not unlike the way you are under mine. Do you understand? FRED I think I love you. ALICE All right, well, add your name to the chalkboard and leave me a sample of your genetic material and we’ll see what comes of it. I promise not to erase your name prematurely. FRED Thank you. ALICE Now please go. I have to look at this some more. FRED Thank you. (Exit FRED. ALICE goes back to her microscope.)

Floyd B, Franny M and I were having lunch on Sat after a fringe show and Floyd turned to look up from his smoked sausage and said to me, “You’ll blog about this, won’t you?” I said nothing and he said. “Please be kind.” Franny just smiled. Larry said something completely different and unrelated yesterday as we were eating dinner in the east village after the second consecutive fringe show. But I won’t repeat it. You had to be there. K brought home a bunch of instruments like she was starting a band. I wonder if she’s starting a band. I told her I want to play the sax she brought, and I do. I do want to learn to play it. --------------------------------- August Wilson is dying. What must it be like to know you’re dying and to know no one can do anything about it? Is he rushing to write a new play in the months he has left? What does one do with those months? We’ll miss him.

in the middle of the street

Don't talk about the elephant in the blog

I have blog block. Want to hear about the elephant? no, no...we can't talk about that. How about the elephant? sorry, can't talk about that. How about...no.

The Writing Game and The Waiting Game

Sometimes even the Crying Game. Sometimes the day in day out working at the day job, coming home and trying to write, waiting for the inevitable rejections to come in gets to be too much. But there doesn't seem to be another way.

O’ young little theatre company Far away from here Do you want to do my plays? Would you like to drink a beer? I want to get my words on Inside of your black box Morning after we’d have breakfast A bagel and some lox You’d remember it till the day you die The night you did my show The throbbing pulse of polite applause Like a geyser in mid flow And afterwards we have some drinks And talk about our genius So clear that night to one and all Wish everyone could have seen us

Hope

Read this inspiring article by Oskar Eustis about what he wants to do at the Public.

Fly to Arizona to see my short play

Second Annual Lesbian Shorts Theater Festival! The Bloody Unicorn Theater Company will present LESBIAN SHORTS II, their second annual festival of lesbian-themed original one-act plays, this September at the Temple of Music and Art in Tucson, AZ. This year's shows include "What If I Don't", by Rebekah Lopata, "Paris", by Lyralen Kaye, "Save", by Adam Szymkowicz, "A Lover's Quarrel, A Parent/Child Conflict, And A High Speed Car Chase All Neatly Resolved In Under Fifteen Minutes (Just Like In Real Life)", by Matthew Hanson, and "Lemonade", by Ginger Lazarus. It stars Allison Rose, Teresa Simon, Martie van der Voort, Sara Thompson, and Sara Lafontain. There will also be performances by Midriff Crisis, Tucson's leading tribal bellydance troupe. The festival runs from September 2 through September 11 at the Cabaret Theater of the Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave. in Tucson. The shows will be presented Fridays at 7:30 PM, and Saturdays and Sundays at both 2:30 PM and 7:30 PM, and all plays will be presented at each performance. Tickets are $14 and can be reserved by contacting bloodyunicorntheater@yahoo.com or calling (520) 990-3628. More information is available at www.bloodyunicorn.com.

Discuss

From an email that Larry Kunofsky wrote to me reprinted with his permission: I think that there's been a growth spurt in American Playwriting in the last ten years or so. It seems to me that Angels in America and even, perhaps to a smaller degree, Three Tall Women, helped energize the medium. When each of these plays won the Pulitzer, one year after the other, it seemed – at least to me - to be more significant than what the Pulitzer committee had been recognizing in Drama for years. I think these two plays and the cultural dent they made helped create avenues for political and aesthetic explorations in the theatre that had not previously been in the mainstream (to the extent that theatre can be mainstream in this country). It seems to me that real artistic expression kind of evaporated, for the most part, in American Theatre since the late 60's. Absurdism was embraced by all the "serious" playwrights of that era to the extent that it got really old really fast, creating a self-marginalizing effect, keeping American Theatre in a kind of museum-piece mode. It was stifling in the same way that "kitchen-sink-realism" suffocated theatre a decade before. The novel was a far more important medium throughout this time, and in the 70's, it seemed that cinema became the most "important' American art form. The 70's and early-to-mid 80's-era theatre was dominated by strong personalities such as Mamet and Shepard, but they abandoned theatre for film to a profound degree, and the late 80's and early 90's seemed to me to be a Dark Age for theatre, probably due to NEA-fallout and the Recession. It became increasingly improbable to expect serious artistic expression from commercial theatre throughout this time. I think now people are writing plays with no real expectation of commercial success, which is terrible for the most part, of course, but creates a kind of hopeful by-product, in that it actually separates the irrepressibly real playwrights from the hacks. 13P, I think, will prove to be an extremely important artistic and political phenomena in that it reflects in microcosm the serious playwrights are putting out there against the grain of - if not in direct opposition to - commercial or developmental theatre. I can only hope that similar groups will pop up in the near future. I also feel that a lot of the more interesting work that keeps springing up seems not to belong to any kind of "school" of writing and that original and individual kinds of theatre seems to emerge more strongly and distinctly currently than it has in recent memory. I also suspect that American universities strengthened their playwriting programs in the time since I left school. This is certainly true of graduate programs. From Chris Durang's time as a student up until very recently, Yale was pretty much it. But I think that even undergrad playwriting programs became a lot more relevant of late. I actually think that the importance recently placed on grad programs in the career and artistic development of playwrights is somewhat destructive. It prevents playwrights from poorer economic backgrounds from finding a career track, and probably confines original artistic expression, churning out a cookie-cutter mold of playwrights in much the same way that places like Iowa churned out one Raymond Carver-esque fiction writer after another for decades. Regional theatres have stopped discovering new talent independent from grad schools long ago. But in the short-term, the rise of the Playwriting MFA has produced a lot of interesting playwrights. Anecdotally, I hardly knew any other serious-minded playwrights when I was in school, but about five years after graduating, I seemed to encounter an inordinate amount of serious and seriously talented playwrights who were just a few years younger than me. I acknowledge that this could largely be a product of my own limited experience, but I've always kept my eye out for the real deal, and I remember a time where I mostly couldn't find it. And now it's all over the place. Does this make sense? l Adam’s Note: Larry is a 35 yr old playwright who has lived in NY all his life

The Missouri Girl

films for monday

I would like to recommend two great rentals. First you need to see My Dinner with Andre. I saw this maybe 10 years ago and it made a slight impression on me. This time around I was impressed with how well it holds together and how much there really is in there. If you're struggling with how to live your life like many of us, you need to see this film again. (especially if you're an artist.) Secondly, may I suggest Dirty Filthy Love, about a guy who has Tourette's and OCD. The English know how to make a good film. Not that it's perfect, but it is charming yet harsh and has an edge that hollywood can never get to. Definitely worth a look.

Burying what there is

The gravedigger was adept with the shovel and pick, with the backhoe too and the bulldozer and the spoon. The poet, wife of the gravedigger, mother of three, was haunted by images she could not control. So she kept with her at all times the tiniest pad and would throw on the pages these waking nightmares. When she came down with pneumonia, it was said, she got sick because, while away from home, she had lost her pad and when she couldn't find it, she began to run and simply couldn't stop. She couldn't stop that is until she collapsed on a stranger's doorstep outside of town. When the poet died, there was a usual funeral, but the gravedigger sick with grief could not dig her grave. A substitute gravedigger had to be found--someone not so adept with the shovel and the pick . . . and the backhoe.

Ripley's post linking to very funny article about intelligent design.

whew

The fine people at the place I got into –see post below-- are allowing me to start their program when I finish Juilliard. That way, someone else can have my slot but then I still get to do it in a year or two. That’s really very nice of them. They didn’t have to do that for me. I feel much better about the whole thing—because I didn’t want to give up an opportunity but I didn’t want to hog support when I was already going to be supported by the colossus that is Juilliard.

For all you dialogue lovers: Overheard in New York And now pictures from the winter.

Tightly to my bosom

All of a sudden I'm getting support. I'm not used to being supported, accepted. Hell, I'm a playwright. Rejection is constant and predictable so when I'm not rejected, it's a shock. It's almost as hard to accept as the rejections. I just got into something and I'm not sure they'll let me do it because I'm going into Juilliard and if they do let me do it should I feel guilty for having too much support? It's so hard to get support that when it comes I grab it with both hands and hold it tightly to my bosom. That's right. I said bosom.

Too Ate

It's my birthday. I am young, perhaps, by comparison to most people I know, but I feel old. Should I have done more? Should I have written more? Achieved more? Who can say? I better get cracking. I saw some of the Teen Choice Awards last night. That made me feel old. And male. It should be called the Screaming Fourteen Year Old Girl Awards. All the young movie stars sort of look generically the same. And all the girls act the same. They aren't allowed to have personalities or be funny. They are only allowed to look good. It worries me. But perhaps that is simply an old man worry.

Read my plays

www.adamszymkowicz.com