Jan 24, 2008
Download a song--The Night Bobby Came Back To Town
The lyrics are here, although not all of them made it into this demo. (It was for the 1 min play festival and had to be distilled down to one minute)
Download it here. I'm told it disappears in 6 days so now would be a good time to download it.
Music composed by Matt O'Hare.
Jan 23, 2008
How You Write
Marisa started it all. Then Matt chimed in. Let me add my 2 cents on how I write. Please feel free to add your process in my comments or in Marisa's or Matt's.
I spend a great deal of time covering the fronts and backs of composition notebooks with collages from magazines and stickers and scraps from my life, some more important than others. Recently I've been breaking cds and taping them to the covers, mirrored part up. The images on the front and back of my notebooks often inform what I'm writing. I also have smaller notebooks I carry around or slip in my coat. I often start writing in a new notebook before finishing the last one. Especially the small ones. I have lots of half filled notebooks of various sizes and about 15 or so full composition books that I don't go back to as much as I should. There are lots of ideas that might slip away even after I write them down if I write the play without looking at the pages or if I never get around to writing that idea or finding a way to make it work.
I write in pen in these notebooks. These are my favorite pens.
In the notebooks, I write scenes or parts of scenes, ideas about plays, ideas for plays, songs, stories, things I need to remember, people's emails, books people recommend. It's actually very disorganized. I write wherever I am, whenever I get an idea.
When I'm actually writing a play or screenplay or trying to write that novel, I am doing it on my laptop. For plays, I use 12 point times new roman and I write in word without any sort of template. I hit tab a lot. I usually look at what I might have written in my notebook about the play before writing. My favorite place to write is at my desk but I can write in cafes or on a friend's couch in a strange city.
The last few plays I wrote mostly at 5:30 am. I drink some green tea and crank out some pages every day or most every day until the play is done. The subconscious is still present in the morning, I think, before I'm quite awake and the apartment is quiet. Before that, I used to write at night after work but I see too many shows now and am too tired after work to do my preferred work. This most recent play I have been writing in fits and starts. I have trouble getting up these days and there seems to be no reason to rush. There are too many written plays in the pipeline for me to rush this one. I write a lot on the weekends these days, when I'm not revising something. I've been going to Flux Sundays and have of late written on Saturday to have scenes to show for Sunday.
I sometimes transcribe with music on but if I'm trying to come up with a completely new scene from nothing, I can't write if the music is on. Music I have in the past written to includes but is not limited to The Bosstones, Phish, Paul Simon, Aimee Mann, Catch 22 . . . Sometimes I need something upbeat to write to and sometimes I don't.
I usually wear clothes. In general and when writing.
Jan 22, 2008
Scott has something to say
about Denver Theater and risky new plays and Grote vs Shakespeare
http://theatreideas.blogspot.com/2008/01/denver-center-new-plays-great-but-come.html
get the guests
Hey Playwrights and Playlovers!
http://gettheguests.blogspot.com/2008/01/everything-scrubbed-clean.html
Jan 18, 2008
quote of the day
From the Chester Theater Company website:
"My primary goal is to make CTC a fully integrated part of the Hilltown and Pioneer Valley community. The function of a theatre is to provide a forum in which artists engage the community in the lasting questions of life. If a theatre fails in the honest attempt to pursue that end, it has no function at all."
The full quote, Byam tells me is this:
"My primary goal is to make The Miniature Theatre of Chester a fully integrated part of the Hilltown and Pioneer Valley community. Not to educate, nurture, or enlighten, but to serve. People are rightly wary of artists who pretend to have answers. That function (pretending to have answers) is best left to schools and churches. All a theatre can claim to do is provide a forum in which artists engage the community in the lasting questions of life. If a theatre fails in the honest attempt to pursue that end, it has no function at all... The theatre is here to provoke, stimulate, excite, horrify. Actors, like shamans, enact the mysteries so that the audience may, by the leap of faith, take the hero's beautiful and terrifying journey. That is how we may serve the community."
And here is another:
"It is not unusual, these days, for arts organizations to serve notice about the great good they perform in a given community. As if the community was an under-served, undeveloped country lucky enough to have somehow attracted the artist's beneficent presence. Artists can, and do, make contributions to the quality of life. But is it truly greater than the shoemaker, plumber or grocer? As confirmed a theatre-lover as I am, I have often gone longer playless than shoeless or hungry. One doesn't even want to consider a world without plumbing... The fact is we would make plays even if we didn't believe they somehow improved the quality of life. We would make plays because, like all creators, we love the making."
us and them
This is taken from a description of an undergraduate theater program. I don't understand exactly what it means but I think it's safe to assume this particular college will not be producing my play Deflowering Waldo this year.
"Christians are called to use their creative abilities to the glory of God. For those whose talent lies in theater, this calling can pose a difficult challenge, given Jesus' admonition to live in the world but not be of the world. Unfortunately, today's entertainment industry often promotes values that run counter to a Christian lifestyle.
For this reason, any Christian young person considering a future in theater - whether as a performer, teacher, or graduate student - needs a positive Christian environment in which to nurture both creative ability and spiritual growth.
Lipscomb University offers the opportunity to study under professors who are concerned about values: the value of imagination and creativity, the value of discipline, the value of excellence in the classroom and on stage, and most important of all, the value of a life lived for God and for others.
If you share these values, if you want to grow as a theater artist and as a Christian, Lipscomb may be the place for you. A Christian education can help put talent, career, and spiritual life in the proper perspective, so that Christian faith and involvement in theater need not conflict."
What I find most interesting about it is all the unspoken and half spoken but assumed "values" that supposedly go with being a Christian. I was raised Catholic but this is not that. And I'm not from this community so I'm not certain what they mean when they say Christian or if it indeed means anything at all. Perhaps it's just a theater program that is presented to parents this way. I don't know. But I am curious to hear your thoughts.
Jan 17, 2008
Jan 16, 2008
fascinating story on sleep and schools
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/opinion/14kalish.html?em&ex=1200632400&en=546e61aa52ea3027&ei=5087%0A
In 2002, high schools in Jessamine County in Kentucky pushed back the first bell to 8:40 a.m., from 7:30 a.m. Attendance immediately went up, as did scores on standardized tests, which have continued to rise each year.
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