Adam Szymkowicz

Oct 31, 2007

but I have to say even though I'm loving Music For Torching, This Book
Will Change Your Life is my preference.

Jason Grote's project

I'm seeing the play tomorrow. Can't wait. Check out this new site. It's a trip. So I'm very interested in getting your thoughts on a new web-based project. As both a marketing tool and artistic extension of my play 1001, Page 73 and I have created a sort of skeletal alternate site and reality game to accompany the play. Here's how it works: if you go to http://1001nyc.com and click on "Enter The Story," you'll be taken to a web-based alternate reality - the world of the play. This links to character blogs and email conversations, message boards, a 1001 wiki, and a few other easter eggs. Thematically, the play is all about the power of narrative, the porous border between reality and fantasy, and the internet as a real-life Library of Babel, so the site idea fits. In an ideal world, I'd love to see it transform into a Henry Jenkins-like, open-source fan project (mass group dramaturgy!) , with the idea that we are all storytellers in one big infinite collection of Arabian Nights tales, but we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it. You can also get there directly at http://www.1001nyc.com/enter-the-story/ , but the first way is more fun. Thanks! Jason

Oct 29, 2007

what to do about despots

Post by Patrick

http://writinglife3.blogspot.com/2007/10/calling-all-daily-show-liberals-you.html

I welcome your thoughts.

Oct 28, 2007

feed the hungry, improve vocabulary

http://www.freerice.com/index.php

Oct 26, 2007

are you going to be there?

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.

Directed by Evan Cabnet.

Starring Matt Stadelmann, Audrey Lynn Weston, Jeff
Biehl and 4 more TBA.

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

Oct 24, 2007

FBI threatens torture

http://www.psychsound.com/2007/10/a_tale_of_two_decisions_or_how.html

h/t isaac

http://parabasis.typepad.com/

isaac says:

"The FBI forced a man to confess (Falsely it turned out) to terrorist
activities when they threatened to torture his family. Once the man
was proven innocent, the section about how the FBI forced a false
confession out of him was redacted for national security reasons.
Read all about it here. If this doesn't get your blood boiling, what
will?"

Where I’m At

Last weekend I was creating a packet of writing to try and get a TV gig. I’m doing another one now. I have to revise Herbie for the reading on the 5th and there might be a reason for me to revise Searching as well soon. And I have to go back and fix that screenplay, currently titled Stalker. I am also on page 30 or so of a new play but I have to say, even though things about it excite me, I keep putting it aside. I can’t help but thinking writing a new play is a waste of my time. In some ways it is probably my best work, and it is certainly a play I would like to see, but the thought of going through the channels afterwards, the revising and re-revising, the readings, the waiting, the rejections, leaves me cold. Why am I still doing this? I have all sorts of stamps of approval. I have writers groups and readings when I need them. When my plays do go up, they go well. They go much better than I imagine they will go and I have a great time. But breaking through to the next level seems not to be happening and it’s true I’m not a patient person, but I’m just not sure what exactly I have to do. For the first time, the answer does not seem to be write a new play. And I’m not sure what the answer is. The answer seems to be stop writing plays. I’ve already written about a bazillion of them. Why write more when no one is doing these ones? And the thing is, I have great agents on both coasts. I should revise the plays I’ve written, perhaps and fix this screenplay and figure out how to get into the TV and Film area. Because I’m sick and tired of the day job and of being so poor and of putting so much effort into writing plays and working to get them into the hands of people who are unable or unwilling to take a chance on my work. And it’s not their fault either. The market is flooded with good work. Most theaters have specific needs and only a couple slots and a particular audience they are catering to. But I’m tired of working so hard and not seeing results. If I can’t find a way in here, why should I stick around?

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

Oct 23, 2007

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

Oct 21, 2007

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).

Oct 19, 2007

Oct 18, 2007

Reggie Watts Headlines New York Theater Review Fundraiser October 22

http://espanol.clasificadosnewyork.univision.com/communidad/clasificados/ViewAd?oid=oid%3A2729902&name=events

Oct 17, 2007

nov 5

a reading of Herbie

http://clubfreetime.com/vieweventdetails.asp?ID=74100

sticky

short play of mine in early nov

http://www.broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=22205

Adam Rapp says

I appreciate good criticism and I think it’s really important. I don’t like it when it’s consumer advocacy, like how you should spend your $60. Great criticism is a kind of literature. I’ve written some criticism, and I really enjoy it because I think it’s important for people to know that theatre is vital. Criticism is really unevenly distributed in this town. Obviously the power of the Times is discouraging. It’s killing new plays, demolishing one after another. Charles Isherwood and Ben Brantley have a lot of power. I would like to think that Michael Feingold, Jeremy McCarter, David Cote and people who are really interested in new work would have an equal distribution of power. But we’re so governed by the Times. Everyone is so afraid to talk about it, which is what I hate. Now that I’ve been demolished by them, I’m not going to be afraid to talk about it.