a poor player on theater education and lies

http://www.apoorplayer.net/blog/2007/09/07/theatre-education-part-2-the-big-lies/

h/t isaac

http://parabasis.typepad.com/blog/

Stalker or Heart Stopper or something unknown

I have a screenplay which has been sitting around since the 30th unread by me. I’m going to have a reading with some actors next Monday. I know it will need some more work. My first draft is always underwritten and I wrote this fairly quickly. Not quickly for a play but quickly for a screenplay…for me. Those screenplays are killers. Now I’m in that in between time where I’m dying to start writing something. (especially because writing the screenplay was work and I want to play with something…like a play now) So I’m itchy, but I don’t have enough information to write a new play yet. I could go work on the novel, but that will be like work too. I could write some short stuff but that feels like a waste of time and energy. In the meantime, I’m reading Nobody’s Fool by Richard Russo and am loving it. He’s so good. It makes me want to go back to the novel. If only a novel didn’t take 3 to 4 times longer to write than a play. But really all I want to do is write a new play. Although this will never lead to financial solvency like a novel or a screenplay or a musical might. Maybe I should be writing a musical. I feel in some ways completely free to do whatever I want when I’m writing a play. Because I know so well what a play is and what rules I can break. But maybe I should be thinking how to write the play that a big regional or NY theatre will do. I wonder what that is. Anyway. Back to your usual programming.

mark your calendar

On Monday night, October 22, the New York Theater Review hosts the 2nd-ever Fall fundraiser at Manhattan's Performance Space 122!

an email I recieved from Epiphany Theater

Epiphany is on the brink and I need your help to get to the other side. I don’t usually send appeals to artists, but this is an extraordinary year and I’m hoping that you will pitch in to help us support the work of early career artists the way that it SHOULD be supported. I’m not asking for much – just the equivalent of a few drinks in a trendy bar. I’m very proud of the fact that we’re heading into our 9th season of producing the work of early career theater artists. Two short years ago, we were producing one showcase a year, had no paid staff, actors got $50 a week, and our designers scrounged together sets from found objects. I’m sure you’re familiar with the process. Now, just two years later – we’ve moved into a new theater in Saratoga, we’re on a full equity contract, and our designers have budgets with a whole extra zero on the end. We’ve come a long way. But let’s not kid ourselves, we have a long way to go. This year is the crossroads. If we can pull off our ambitious season plans (in Saratoga Springs), we will be in position to become a true regional theater committed to producing the work of early career artists. That means playwrights will see their work developed and premiered (even though they don’t have an agent), directors will have full rehearsal processes (even though they’ve never won an NEA fellowship), designers will have the budgets they need to realize their artistic visions (even while they’re moonlighting as dressers), and all of us in that very difficult first period of our careers, and those who follow us, will have the chance to work in the professional environment we, and they, deserve. So I appeal to you, as an artist, to help create a regional theater specifically dedicated to the work of early career artists - those artists who are either within the first 10 years of their professional careers or still earning supplementary income from something other than their craft. If you no longer meet that criteria I invite you to remember back to when you did. It was hard. Please take this opportunity to help make it easier. I hope you’ll consider donating $25 to $100 today. You can do it online with a credit card by clicking this link: http://www.epiphanytheater.org/newyork/ or you can mail a check to 154 Christopher Street, suite 2B, New York, NY 10014. Thank you! And we wish you the greatest of success no matter where you are in your career. Fondly, Amy Kaissar Producing Director

We Don't Get fooled again

<3

my next play

He takes a screwdriver to the artificial heart. He shimmies it
between the chambers. There must be some kind of missed connection.

"Beat, damn it! Beat," he rails at the artificial heart on the table
before him.

But the heart won't beat for him. Because a heart will only beat for
who a heart will beat for and no one has any say in the matter but the
heart in question.

Go See

Riding the Bull by my friend Gus in the Fringe Extension

http://sabo.seatadvisor.com/sabo/servlets/TicketRequest?eventId=60807&presenter=SOHO&venue=&event=

The Newest News

So that thing I wasn't sure if I was going to mention that I was so excited about was that I got into the MCC Playwrights Coalition. Apparently they are graduating some of their members and taking on some new members of which I am one. I find this incredibly exciting because 4 years ago I interned at MCC and I got to hang out with the Coalition and they were incredibly nice and amazingly talented and I must say I feel truly honored to be among their number now. I've already set up two table reads. I plan to make good use of their developmental help.

Indie Theater Fall Preview

http://www.indietheater.org/preview.htm

Check out the Blue Coyote. They just started rehearsals. Travis York is in it.

crazy mo fos in the white house at it again

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2007/08/if-there-were-a.html

h/t freeman

http://matthewfreeman.blogspot.com/

brightly colored and ready for purchase

me and K this weekend past

http://www.lifemagical.com/index.php?c=1571

photo by minwin

another member of the theatrospehere

have you seen tlaloc?

http://tlalocnyc.blogspot.com/

welcome to the theatrosphere

director Andrew Utter

http://sfacting.blogspot.com/

and playwright Ruben Carbajal

http://reachruben.blogspot.com/

The realization of the satire of Catch 22

http://alternet.org/waroniraq/60950/

h/t grote

http://jasongrote.blogspot.com/

Iraq where "private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they fuck things up."

This article is truly shocking. I didn't realize the extent that the US government is actively giving away money to unqualified people who are not doing the work they are hired to do and are merely ripping us off. Meanwhile whenever someone tries to hold these companies and individuals accountable, this person is threatened or demoted and Bush steps in to prevent the private companies from being accountable for their fraud.

November 5 at the NY Public Library for The Performing Arts

Reading of my play Herbie

http://www.nypl.org/research/calendar/eventdesc.cfm?id=3408

Sept 2 in Chicago

Reading of my play Open Minds

http://www.browncouchtheatre.org/index2.htm

In April in Wisconsin,

my play Deflowering Waldo

http://www.overourheadplayers.org/PR.asp?id=20070806a

this morning

I finished the screenplay or the first draft anyway.

more on the showcase code

http://www.villagevoice.com/theater/0735,eisler,77610,11.html

SGSP and our practices

a blog post from the reviewer we called up to the stage about being called up:

http://www.indietheater.org/blogmc/archives/47

from David Cote

http://histriomastix.typepad.com/weblog/2007/08/art-for-critics.html I can’t wait to see Letts’ play. But wait, what’s this Charles Isherwood wrote in the Times on August 13, 2007… After comparing the play’s pill-popping, bile-spewing matriarch to Albee’s Martha, O’Neill’s Mary Tyrone and Williams’ Amanda Wingfield, he puts on the brakes toward the end of an otherwise enthusiastic review. After a few good strokes of the chin, quoth The Ish: Mr. Letts is as yet more a skillful entertainer than a true visionary or a dramatic poet. August: Osage County is a ripsnorter full of blistering, funny dialogue, acid-etched characterizations and scenes of no-holds-barred emotional combat, but I would not say it possesses the penetrating truth or the revelatory originality of a fully achieved work of art. Spoken like a true cultural arbiter. Still, let’s pause and rescan. The play “does not possess the penetrating truth or revelatory originality of a fully achieved work of art.” Really? So…it’s not art? Is it at least a fully achieved piece of entertainment? What is the difference? If, in 50 years, no one has written a large-scale family drama that is better than A:OC, will it be upgraded to the ranks of fully-achieved art (FAWA)? Is Isherwood speaking as a newspaper reviewer of 2007 or a cultural commissar from the distant future? Where does he park his time machine?

reprinted with permission

FROM THE DESK OF GARY GARRISON

GOOD SPORT, TRYING

While I was in Houston this past weekend meeting local DG playwrights and attending a fascinating festival of short plays by the really talented members of Houston/ Scriptwriters, something smacked me in the face - hard - and it wasn't the legendary humidity (though I have to say, that knocked the wind out of me more than once). I'll play the scenario for you. It's 5:00 a.m and I'm checking out of the hotel I've stayed in. A sleepy desk manager presents a bill to me. I scan it, look closer, review it one more time to make sure I'm reading it right, then look up to the hapless, sleepless desk manager and bark - and I do mean, bark - "This has got to be a joke, right?"

"What joke, sir?" asks the desk manager, managing to come to life.

"A sports tax? What's a sport tax? You're putting a 2% sports tax on my bill? What sport did I play while here?" I insist to know. I could barely say it without spitting it at the same time, and in this moment I feel every ounce of my identity as a New Yorker.

Now the desk manager clearly has a challenge: how can he keep a potentially explosive, sleep deprived, New York Southern Transplant with fire in his eyes from getting loud and unruly in the otherwise quiet lobby. He makes a questionable move: he decides not to fight me, but placate me.

"I know it seems odd, sir, but Houston passed a city ordinance in 1997 that allows a tax on hotel rooms and rental cars to help pay for new sports stadiums, which in turn, keeps our sports teams here."

"But I don't care about your sports teams," I blurt out.

"I understand," he assures me. But he can't understand; not really.

"I don't want to pay it," I posture.

"You don't have a choice," he counters.

"I should have a choice," I posture.

"But you don't," he counters.

"They're rich enough! They don't need my money. I can give you a list an arm's length long of people who really need my money."

"I understand," he quietly offers.

Now I want to strike him. He can't know in that instant I'm heart-broken thinking about all the theatres I know all over the country that are closing because they can't afford to pay their electricity bill; he can't know I'm thinking of dramatists who can barely afford a ream of paper to print a script on. He couldn't possibly understand that my rage is historical; I have spent years thanking artists with love and affection for their immeasurable hours of work because there isn't a spare dime to pay them for their efforts. He couldn't possibly know that my fury turned further inward on myself and my own community for not finding a way to convince every city council in the country that an arts tax on hotels and rental cars is AS important as a sports tax. And yes, I know the sports/arts argument: I've lived it all my life. But I foolishly, unabashedly want parity. I want to see a puzzled linebacker at a front desk, questioning his hotel bill and saying, "An arts tax? You mean, I have to pay for someone's musical?"

Gary
ggarrison at dramatistsguild.com

damn, the damage we've done

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/08/23/daily-show-three-generations-of-america-to-the-rescue/

h/t Joshua

http://writerjoshuajames.com/dailydojo/?p=379

"In perhaps the most brilliant segment on "The Daily Show" I've ever
seen, last night Jon ran through the last three decades of United
States intervention in the Middle East to show how incoherent,
ass-backwards and counter-productive it has been."

and these

wise words from Grote

http://jasongrote.blogspot.com/2007/08/white-house-manual-details-how-to-deal.html

Lyle the Future King of the Great Expanding Universe

This is a play I started to write several years ago. I think it was going to be a musical actually. And then instead I wrote Herbie which is in many ways the same story. KING Welcome my subjects. I’m so glad so many of you could make it. You know me as your King of the Great Expanding Universe. (Applause.) You know my daughter, the delicate yet violent and vengeful Princess Francesca. (Applause.) And my son the prince of poetry, magnets and other somewhat useless pastimes, Prince Lyle. (A few claps.) Now I’ve called you all here today, my subjects because Lyle is fast approaching the ripe old age of eighteen . . . billion and it is time that he find a wife. (murmers.) I myself have several million wives as you all know. (Laughter.) No, but seriously, only a couple million or so. So for Lyle we are just looking for one right now. Is there anyone here today who may be possibly slightly interested in marrying the future king of the ever expanding universe? VOICE OF WOMAN He’ll never be king. KING Now that’s not entirely true. I could die someday. (laughter) I could. Someone could try to kill me or I could just die of old age in a few trillion years. VOICE OF MAN You won’t die. You’ll fucking be here forever. KING Now remember, I wasn’t always king of the ever expanding universe. VOICE OF MAN But the old king’s not dead either. He’s still alive. KING Is he? VOICE OF MAN You just overthrew him. You never chopped off his head. KING Really? Is that true? Well I apologize for the oversight. We’ll get right on that. (Makes motion with his hand. ADVISOR puts on a hood, picks up an axe and walks offstage.) But that doesn’t mean I’ll be the last king. At some point like any good son of the king of the great expanding universe, I expect Lyle will kill his father. (LYLE looks dubious.) Now who wants to marry him? (Silence.) Well, someone’s got to. Come on, now people. Really. This is getting serious. (To LYLE.) What did you do to all the people in the universe? LYLE I don’t know. KING Why don’t they like you? LYLE I don’t know. KING All right, well I gotta make a proclamation. If no one agrees to marry my son by the seventh day hence, one week from today, Lyle will be beheaded in the royal expanding courtyard. (Cheers, ad lib. Yay! Yippee. Three Cheers for the King!! Long live the King!) LYLE But Dad. KING I had to kill my dad, so now I have to kill my son. The life of a King is a lonely life. Where are my wives? Send my wives to my room. I’m going to be sad. (MAN IN HOOD returns with decapitated head.) KING Ah, good. Looks like your Grampa kicked it, son. LYLE Dad! KING I have spoken. Go now in peace to serve me and one another. FRANCESCA Tough break. LYLE I am so screwed. FRANCESCA They don’t like you, huh? LYLE Guess not. FRANCESCA Have you tried a personal ad? LYLE What? Future King of Expanding Universe seeks someone special? FRANCESCA I guess not. LYLE It’s not like there are people that don’t know me. FRANCESCA You could wear a disguise. LYLE They’d figure it out at the wedding. FRANCESCA They might. LYLE I should just kill myself. FRANCESCA Don’t do that. You got a few days to try and find a wife. You may as well wait it out. We can think of something. LYLE I guess. I don’t even want to get married. FRANCESCA I didn’t either but look how happy I am. LYLE Are you happy? FRANCESCA Well, I’m married. LYLE I’m going to go to my room and weep and write some poetry. FRANCESCA This is fixable. I mean, we knew this was going to happen. You just need a P.R. machine. We’ll make you look good and then all the girls will love you. LYLE How? FRANCESCA We could publish your poetry and then when the women arrive for a book signing, you hit on them, get them back to your place, put the moves on them and then get them to agree to marry you. LYLE I don’t know. FRANCESCA Either that or you chop Dad’s head off. LYLE All right. I’ll try it. FRANCESCA Tell you what? If it doesn’t work out and you really want to kill yourself, I’ll kill myself too. It’ll be like a pact. LYLE You’d do that for me? FRANCESCA Sure. Why you wouldn’t do that for me? LYLE No, I’d do that for you. Sure. Why’d you want to kill yourself again? FRANCESCA In case you do. LYLE Oh, right. Good. Good. Good.

3 more performances

http://www.nytheatre.com/nytheatre/fr_rev2007.php?0=S&1=122

from Patrick

Interesting post from Patrick on race in the theatre and the reception
of his play "about well meaning white people."

http://writinglife3.blogspot.com/2007/08/white-guy-writing-about-race-part-i.html