BlindSquirrel Bloggings

OWP's New Catalogue - Angel Eaters

2010-03-18T06:57:00.000-07:00

The new Original Works Publication Catalogue (links to pdf) features a whole side bar on the Angel Eaters Trilogy! (p.6)

And go buy my friend Eric Eberwein's play GREAT WESTERN WANDERLUST (p.4), and while you are shopping: Jeremy Gable's THE AMERICAN WAY (p.2), Jason Aaron Goldberg's MAIN DRAG (p.4), Matt Casarino's THE PORNOZOMBIES (p.5), Amanda Ticsher DeMaio's UNRELENTING RELAXATION (p.8), and James Comtois' SUBURBAN PEEPSHOW (p.10).

Kudos to Jason and OWP-- the catalogue really looks great!

Johnna Conquers GRE, 670 670

2010-03-18T06:32:00.000-07:00

First off, did you see that Goldstar commented on my last blog and they are fixing the name typo?! Wow. Goldstar is watching. Goldstar is monitoring us. Goldstar reads my blog. Goldstar cares.

I am going to add them to my links section. No one ever uses my link section and I forget it exists a lot, but it is the least I can do in return for Goldstar. That was neat.

I took the GRE yesterday and didn't totally embarass myself! I thought I would brag to the world at large. 670 in verbal and 670 in math. I thought when I saw the scores that I had scored the same in math and verbal and must be some sort of unknowing math savant who had intuitively guessed right on the ten or so questions I absolutely didn't know. Then I went home and googled it and they weight the scores way differently. 670 in verbal scores 94% and 670 in math is 64%.

So, okay, it's basically an F in math-- but it's a MIDDLE F! Smack in the middle of F territory-- the 60s. And I took a practice test two weeks ago in which I score a 200 - which would have given me a percentage of bottom 12%. So middle F is VICTORY!

Yeah, I know that all of you know ten or fifteen people who each scored 800 verbal and 780 math, no doubt, but I am 15 YEARS away from college! So I want more credit than my scores merit, okay? I killed that GRE (as far as I am concerned)!!!

I am applying to Hunter College's new playwriting MFA program with Tina Howe. I will keep you posted on how that goes.

Mary Mack's Baby Landing in Orange County March 26!

2010-03-02T09:51:00.000-08:00

My play THE MIRACLE OF MARY MACK'S BABY will be opening in Fullerton, CA, at STAGEStheatre on March 26.

Goldstar has a nice promo write up on the production (in which they call me Joanna Adams, and not Johnna Adams).

This is the tenth anniversary production of this play, which premiered at STAGEStheatre and was the first full length play I ever had produced. They are going to reunite as much the cast as they can. I can't wait to see it. I will be in LA from the 25th to the 28th.

My Fisher Price Little People

2009-11-23T14:02:00.003-08:00

My favorite toys.

Cropped Cardigan I am Knitting

2009-11-23T13:59:00.000-08:00

Knitting a sweater for Xmas for my friend Charlyn. It is a cropped cardigan (Berocco.com, pattern Alpine). I have the back and sides done and just need to knit the sleeves and neck band.

Long overdue praise for Mac Rogers' VIRAL

2009-10-13T07:28:00.000-07:00

Since I am months behind in blogging, I thought I would go ahead and be the last blogger on the planet to write a glowing review of Mac Rogers' VIRAL.

Yes, the show has closed. No, you can't go and see it now, even if I make it sound really good. Yes, this makes me very lame.

BUT . . . is there really an expiration date on praise? Is there? I don't think so.
VIRAL was part of the NY Fringe Fest and then part of the Festival Extension. Being generally late about things, I saw it on closing night. If I made a top plays of the year list, this play would be the top play for this year and next year, too. No matter what anyone does next year. I liked it that much. It is like a little theatrical virus-- you see it and you want to go out and infect other people into seeing it. As if you were a little Mac-germ, biologically programmed to think he is great and run around trying to osmose this idea into other people.

The play is a tour de force, lyrical tragedy with a dark comic candy-coating. Meredith (Amy Lynn Stewart) plays a life-weary woman who reaches out over the internet to three Pacific Northwest fringe-dwellers for help with her own euthanization. She turns to Geena (Rebecca Comtois), her boyfriend Colin (Kent Meister) and her brother Jarvis (Matthew Trumbull) who share a fetish for filming suicides as erotic art and posting the films on the internet. Mac crafts a haunting ode to the loneliness of all four characters. These are people who have tried and failed to connect with any external support systems and have lost themselves to dark and destructive fantasy. Meredith seems to be the most clear-headed and sympathetic one, her inevitable path to self-destruction is a seductive poison that leaves a bittersweet taste in the audience's mouth.

Rebecca Comtois and Amy Lynn Stewart were brilliant in this. Perfectly mirrored portraits of cringing insecurity and ferocious determination. And the script is simple one of the best-craft and best-realized visions you are likely to see. Or, ahem, likely to catch in the hopeful revival since I have blogged this too late to infect you with a need to go see it.

Sneak Peak Angel Eaters Booklet Cover

2009-07-29T11:57:00.000-07:00

Original Works Publications is putted out editions of Angel Eaters, Rattlers and 8 Little Antichrists later this summer. Here is a sneak peak at the Angel Eaters cover. It is still in development, but probably won't change much.

Pimping Friends' Shows

2009-07-29T11:38:00.000-07:00

I have two good friends in shows this month, so I wanted to encourage everyone out there to attend.

First, you can catch Isaiah Tanenbaum (Angel Eaters' resurrection boy) in The Secret of our Souls, A Kabalistic Love Story. This is a cool-looking Fringe Fest musical. About 18th Century spiritual master, the Baal Shem Tov.

Looks really cool and I don't think I have heard Isaiah in a musical before.

And second, Candice Holdorf (clone sisters and Claudia in 8 Little Antichrists) is in NeverCracked, an evening of two one acts, presenting as part of the Midtown Festival.

I hope to catch both shows. With NeverCracked closing Aug 2nd, I may have to really hustle.

Quilt for Kay's Wedding

2009-07-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

Most of my spare time lately has been taking up trying to finish this quilt for friend Kay Mitchell's (soon to be Kay Carey) wedding (on Saturday, Aug 1). I am definitely not going to finish it in time for Saturday (I should have the main part quilted, but will still have the border and binding to do). So, all she is going to get by Saturday is a link to these photos and some swatches.

Which, funnily enough, is all her sister Beth got on her wedding day about ten or twelve years ago. During college, Kay and I decided about two weeks before Beth's wedding that we would make her a king size quilt together and have it ready by the wedding, of course. Kay ended up giving her swatches on the wedding day and she didn't see the quilt for about three years. We over estimated our quilting abilities a tad. This one so far has taken about five months, so I am hoping it will get to Kay by the end of the year at least!

Loved Bird House, Flux Sunday 7/26

2009-07-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

I LOVED Kate Marks' BIRD HOUSE on Friday. Of course, I went to see it on the last weekend, so am recommending it too late to do any good. It closed Sunday.

The design work on the play was outstanding. It featured precious little insect and bird puppets, gorgeous projections, a quaint fairy tale cottage on one side of the stage and a gritty, drear warscape on the other side of the stage. Very evocative. Leads Cotton Wright and Christina Shipp could not have done better jobs with challenging and quirky roles. Their highly physical approach was reminicent of circus clowns and silent movie comedians, but they always remained grounded and genuine. Kylie Liya Goldstein as Myra was wonderous and astonishing. She completely changed my concept of a child actor by delivering a performance I would not have thought possible from a girl her age. Layered, vulnerable, delightfully comic, fully believable and heart-wrenchingly charming. Kate's script is a dreamscape masterpiece, with a bubbly surprise twist to every line leading up to a grim and satisfying darkening end.

Also attended a Flux Sunday (where writers, actors and directors gather to read or put together staged readings of scenes from writer's latest plays) on the 26th. We only had two plays to read, Corey Ann Haydu's WIFE TRAINING (I may have screwed up the title, sorry) and my new play, working title CURSED (but that sucks, so I am still searching for a new one) the first play in my new ANGEL EATERS: ORIGINS trilogy. We were going to have a play from Gus Schulenburg, too, but the printer ate it. :-(

I love WIFE TRAINING. I wish I had written it. It is a sci fi-ish, alternate reality, distopia play about gender politics that is just endlessly fascinating. I love plays that are world-building in nature, that take you to a completely realized new world. I can't wait to see the whole thing read-- thus far I have only seen serial installments.

My new play is basically a Western, set around 1842, exploring the origins of the Angel Eaters curse. A Cherokee medicine woman unleashes a power that dooms seven generations to unnatural evil and crushing despair. Light, cheery stuff.

Ordered a bunch of hardcopies of my verse play, LICKSPITTLES, BUTTONHOLERS AND DAMNED PERNICIOUS GO-BETWEENS. Digging this online copy place, Best Value Copy.
15 copies (front and back and drilled) were only about 35bucks - and they shipped them to my apartment. Shipping might have been an extra 10 bucks, I think-- but still, it beats the hell out of Kinkos.

Seeing Kate Marks' BIRDHOUSE on Saturday

2009-07-23T16:00:00.001-07:00

Looking forward to friend Kate's play BIRDHOUSE on Saturday! Join me if you can.

Dates & Times: July 10th – 26th, 2009

Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays @ 8pmSundays @ 3pm

and Monday, July 20th @ 7:00pm

Ticket Price: $18
Tickets at Theatermania.

Congrats to all New York Innovative Theater Nominees

2009-07-22T10:48:00.001-07:00

Congratulations to all NY IT Award Nominees. Matt Freeman has posted a list of nominees at: On Theatre and Politics - Matthew Freeman: New York Innovative Theatre Awards Nominees for 2009

The Angel Eaters trilogy received seven nominations:

Outstanding Full Length Script: Johnna Adams (for Angel Eaters)
Outstanding Actor In A Lead Role: August Schulenburg (for 8 Little Antichrists)
Outstanding Original Music: Gerard Keenan (for the trilogy)
Outstanding Costume Design: Emily Morgan DeAngelis (for the trilogy)
Outstanding Lighting Design: Jennifer Rathbone (for the trilogy)
Outstanding Sound Design: Asa Wember (for the trilogy)
Outstanding Set Design: Caleb Levengood (for the trilogy)

I am also especially happy and excited for these fellow nominees and friends:

Outstanding Full Length Script: Mac Rogers, Universal Robots
Outstanding Production of a Musical: Ragtime at APAC (director Tom Wojtunik), and The Who's Tommy (director Tom Wojtunik)
Outstanding Actor in a Lead Role: David Ian Lee, The Reckoning of Kit & Little Boots

Of course I think several performances and plays were overlooked, including:

James Comtois' Colorful World (Outstanding Play)
Richard B. Watson, Rattlers (Actor, Lead)
Marnie Schulenburg, Angel Eaters (Actress Lead)
David Ian Lee's Sleeper (Outstanding Play)
Ensemble, Sleeper
Jeff Lewonczyk's The Grand Uncle Quadrilogy (Outstanding Play)

Good luck to all.

Antiqbooks.com has one of my show programs on sale ($30) - WTF?

2009-07-21T22:27:00.000-07:00

I was, ahem, googling myself (oh, don't look at me like that, you do it too) and came across this bizarre for sale item on www.antiqbooks.com.

They are charging $30 (EUR 21.5) for a souvenir program from the Oberon Theater Ensemble production of my play Cockfighters (in rep with Mice & Men) from 2003. I think that is more than I earned in royalties for the production. Who would buy this and how exactly did "Europe's Premier Antiquarian Booksite" come to be selling it??

The item is offered by: Julian's Books 35 W. 64th Street, New York, NY 10001

I think I need to go browse there. Maybe they have a souvenir program from when I played the back end of Paul Bunyon's blue ox in grade school.

https://www.antiqbook.com/secureorder.phtml?nr=1177268050&l=en&searchform=

Booknumber: 112201STEINBECK, JOHN / JOHNNA ADAMS, - Of Mice & Men /
Cockfighter - Souvenir Program -. New York: The Oberon Theatre Ensemble.
Softcover. "OF MICE & MEN" BY JOHN STEINBECK WITH SCOT CARLISLE - JANE
COURTNEY - JAREL DAVIDOW - PHILIP EMEOTT - BILL FAIRBAIRN - TIMOTHY JENKINS - ED
JEWETT - RICHARD KOHN - PATRICK MELVILLE - DAVID SITLER, ETC...ETC... - DIRECTED
BY ERIC PARNESS - "COCKFIGHTERS" BY JOHNNA ADAMS WITH SCOT CARLISLE - BILL
FAIRBAIRN - RAPHAEL FETTA - EEVIN HARTSOUGH - PATRICK MELVILLE - DAVID SITLER -
DAWN SOBCZAK, ETC...ETC... - DIRECTED BY SARAH GURFIELD. ; 8vo ; 16 pages. NF.
USD 30.00 [Appr.: EURO 21.5 £UK 18.5 JP¥ 2882]
(I have a souvenir program from this that I will sell for $29 if anyone is interested.)

Back to blog, Sans Merci

2009-07-21T22:13:00.001-07:00

Okay. I suck and didn't blog for 9 months. Am trying to get things rolling again. I have some blatant self-promotion and some congratulations to post, so that is sucking me back into the blogosphere.

First item to brag about: my play Sans Merci has been published by Original Works Publishing (http://www.originalworksonline.com/) and should be available in New York at the Drama Bookstore within a month. Here's the cool cover:

Bianca Bagatourian's Beautiful REMNANTS OF A LIQUID WORLD

2008-11-18T09:17:00.000-08:00

Caught Bianca Bagatourian's wonderful play REMNANTS OF A LIQUID WORLD at the SOHO think tank's 6th Floor Series last night. Bianca is a recent graduate of the Mac Wellman-led MFA program at Brooklyn College and has create lustrous and deeply personal play.

REMNANTS OF A LIQUID WORLD explores the repercussions of the 1979 Iranian revolution in personal terms. The main character, SHE, was evacuated from Iran on the eve of the Shah's overthrow as a young child and relocated to the United States. As the character eloquently says in the first few moments of the play, "childhood is the end of feeling," for her and the 800,000 or so other children whose culture was destroyed as a result of the Iranian diaspora. I loved the monologues in the play. There was an especially haunting passage about the poor during the lead up to the revolution digging bloody sheep fat from the gutters outside the slaughterhouse to survive-- gorgeously poetic and horrific at the same time. Bianca also has some very effective memory scenes showing a young child and her mother in pre-revolutionary Iran. The child is always bitterly complaining that the mother is drawing her away from something pleasurable (ice cream, swimming, comic books, etc.) because they are late or out of time. I got chills when I realized that was a set up for the heart-rending scene between the mother and child when she is told she must leave the country or die. Very effective.

I thought that Daoud Heidami (FRIEND) and Danelle Eliav (HOMA) were especially good in an outstanding cast. Dyana Kimball's direction was also powerful. I hope to go see more SOHO Think Tank stuff.

Going to see Richard Martin Hirsch's play tonight:

A workshop production of the winner of
Reverie's 2008 Next Generation Playwriting Contest

REGARDING THOSE RESPONSIBLE
by Richard Martin Hirsch
directed by Tania Inessa Kirkman
Sun Nov 16 @ 3pm
Tues Nov 18@ 8pm
Wed Nov 19 @ 8pm

@ The Kraine Theater
85 East 4th St (btw 2nd & 3rd Ave)
admission Pay What You Can!
RSVP: reserve@reverieproductions.org

Then tomorrow I will catch my own show, Rattlers, at Wings Theatre. Shaping up to be a good week at the theater.

Rattlers NY Production Team Photo

2008-11-17T09:01:00.001-08:00

Autumn Horne (Rattlers, stage manager), Asa Wember (Sound Design), Jerry Ruiz (Rattlers, director), Me and Jen Rathbone (lighting designer).

Everybody looks grim in this, huh? Imagine the worst tech week you have ever had and multiple it by THREE! That was our little world.

The Angel Eaters Trilogy is www.nytheatre.com's pick of the week!

2008-11-17T08:36:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytheatre.com/ has selected the Angel Eaters Trilogy as pick of the week:

"THE ANGEL EATERS TRILOGY: Flux Ensemble Theatre and Johnna Adams deserve major kudos for the most ambitious work of the indie theatre season--a trilogy of plays tracing the supernatural saga of a family over a hundred years. PICK OF THE WEEK!"

Another Lovely Blog Review of Angel Eaters

2008-11-17T08:16:00.000-08:00

From Zack Calhoun.

Thanks so much, Zack! I love Sarah Kane. Being mentioned in the same breath is head swelling.

Bloggers are nice.

I need to go see BLASTED at SoHo Rep. I saw the LA premiere that Rude Guerilla Theatre Company did in Burbank a few years ago and can't really imagine anybody surpassing director Dave Barton at Sarah Kane. The production of CLEANSED he directed in the middle of Republican-as-hell Orange County, CA, could not be improved on-- it was just awe-inspiring. It is all well and good to do in-your-face theater in SoHo, but in-your-face theater in Orange County? We should just all send Rude Guerilla money right now for the hell of it.

But, I'll go see it at SoHo, I am sure it is brilliant. If they would like to continue copying Rude Guerilla's programming, my play THE SACRED GEOMETRY OF S&M PORN is available.

Rattlers OC is a Backstage West Critics' Pick!

2008-11-17T05:37:00.000-08:00

Rattlers at STAGEStheatre in Fullerton, CA, got a great review from Eric Marchese at Backstage West and is a critcs' pick! Congrats!!!!!!

Flux is doing an amazing job of collecting the Angel Eater Trilogy reviews on their blog and presenting them attractively with show pictures here. And by "Flux" I really mean "August Schulenburg" who is the main blogmeister.

I keep meaning to post snippets of the reviews (artfully presented with ellipses in place of any negative comments), but haven't yet. We got very lovely and wonderful blogger reviews from James Comtois on ANGEL EATERS and Toby Ring Thelin on the whole tril.

More Angel Eaters Photos

2008-11-13T12:17:00.000-08:00

From my crappy little camera.

Doodles

2008-11-13T12:08:00.000-08:00

Had to attend a three day meeting for work. Got some nice doodles out of it.

Justin Hoch's Angel Eaters and Rattlers Photos

2008-11-13T09:07:00.000-08:00

Check out the Flux Theatre Ensemble collection on photographer Justin Hoch's Flickr account for some cool show photos. I like this one of me and Angel Eaters director Jessi D. Hill at the Angel Eaters dress rehearsal. We look very intent on something. I also sort of look like I have heartburn-- but I think that was powerful emotions. Or maybe we said the pledge of allegiance that night. Anyway, all the photos are cool.

Rattlers photos from STAGEStheatre in Fullerton, CA

2008-11-11T09:59:00.000-08:00

Photos from the Rattlers production that opened in California a few hours after the play premiered in NY.

Meme'd By Freeman

2008-11-04T23:15:00.000-08:00

Public menace and funny playwright Matt Freeman insists I blog about "seven strange things" about myself. Gosh, where do I start?? Only seven . . . .

1. This is sort of strange, but not especially. More like "mildly amusing lame thing" about yourself. I took a writing class with awesome pulp science fiction and fantasy writer Gene Wolfe in 1997 in Chicago. In one of the stories I wrote and Gene marked up, I wrote: "She took it in her hands and slid it under a glass." (Brilliant, huh?)-- Gene circled the words "in her hands" and wrote in the margin of the story "if she takes it in her mouth, tell me." It took me eleven years to realize that was a dirty joke. At the time, I thought he was just making a point about overwriting. I remember my earnest little 20-something self pouring over his advice and thinking that he meant I should only specifiy how a character handles an object if he or she is behaving unusually. I made notes to that effect in my journal. Earnest little notes. I pulled out the story and looked over it during my last round of 8 Little Antichrists rewrites a couple weeks ago (it is the first attempt I made to write the Claudia / breeder vat warehouse storyline) and laughed my head off. Hell is being stranded on a deserted island with yourself in your 20s.

Okay, the rest are shorter.

2. My cat's full name is Andrej Wajda Zbigniew Adams. Vets love me.

3. My favorite chef in California works in Little Saigon at a small storefront Vietnemese vegetarian restaurant. He has taken a vow of silence. I once got seriously insulted when I was leaving the restaurant because he frantically signalled that he wanted to 'talk' to me and then made a bunch of hand gestures I thought were telling me I looked taller and fatter. Turns out, he was just asking why my friend who'd been going there with me (and is taller and fatter) was not with me. But things were really tense for a moment. Silent, but TENSE.

4. I did a nude talkback for a one act of mine at a naturist resort. I was nude and the 60 people watching were nude. The first comment we got was that the way the actors had groomed their pubic hair did not represent their characters well. Luckily, I have plenty of experience being naked and feeling completely awkward-- that came in handy.

5. I like to cut lemons in half, sprinkle salt on them and eat them.

6. I brought fresh durian to work once in California and the facilities manager came into my cube thinking there was a gas leak in the building. My coworkers lit matches outside my cube and glared at me all day. We had layoffs that day, too, and that made them all even madder.

7. I have a large, paint-by-numbers portrait of Jesus kneeling in the garden of Gethsemene on black velvet in my living room. My mother painted it when I was five. After she died it ended up in an aunt's garage for while. She gave it to me after I graduated college because I was old enough to "take care of it." Unfortunately, she didn't mean old enough to take Jesus out behind the garage and shoot him in the head kind of take care of it. She meant frame it and display it properly. And I can't bring myself to get rid of it.

My strange things are concentrated around sex jokes, nudity, fruit, my cat, and Jesus resentment. Hmmm. That is probably a strange thing in and of itself.

I am not meme'ing anyone else. I am breaking the chain. I think you are all weird enough as it is.

ANGEL EATERS Podcast

2008-11-04T13:55:00.000-08:00

Gus Schulenburg, Marnie Schulenburg and I recently appeared on http://www.nytheatre.com Indy Theater Now podcast #254, promoting Flux Theatre Ensemble's production of THE ANGEL EATERS TRILOGY. Download the podcast at: http://www.nytheatrecast.com/wordpress/archives/171

I got to hang out at Martin Denton's place and meet the moderator, Trav S. D. and the sound designer Rochelle. That was cool. I am a subscriber to the podcast (you can do that on itunes) and it is like I suddenly jumped into my own ipod.

Gus sounds good. My laugh sounds really annoying. Ugh. I am not going to laugh anymore.

Cool Angel Eaters and 8 Little Antichrists Photos from my Crappy Little Camera

2008-11-04T07:27:00.000-08:00

Catherine Michele Porter, Isaiah Tanenbaum and Tiffany Clementi in Angel Eaters.

Satanachia the antichrist (puppet) and Gus Schulenburg (non-puppet) in 8 Little Antichrists.

Felicia Hudson, Zack Robidas and Elise Link in 8 Little Antichrists.

Candice Holdorf, Gus Schulenburg, Zack Robidas and Becca McHugh in 8 Little Antichrists.

Cotton Wright and Marnie Schulenburg in Angel Eaters.

Great Sans Merci Review for BPP

2008-10-29T06:18:00.000-07:00

Got a great review from the Bloomington Herald on my play Sans Merci, produced by the Bloomington Playwrights Project as this year's Reva Shiner winner. I spent the weekend in Bloomington, getting to meet Reva Shiner and hang some with my amazing cast and uber-cool artistic director Rich Perez.

Here's the review. I totally agree that the acting and directing on this show was amazing! As were technical elements. Feeling very blessed.

HeraldTimesOnline.com
THEATER REVIEW: ‘SANS MERCI’
‘Sans Merci’ both brutal and tender
By Glenn Kaufmann H-T Reviewer
October 27, 2008

This past week, Bloomington Playwrights Project unleashed this year’s winner of the
Reva Shiner Full Length Play Contest on the world.

A take-no-prisoners, highly charged emotional drama, “Sans Merci” is by turns brutally
honest and achingly tender and gentle.

Set in both San Francisco and Colombia, “Sans Merci” draws its name from the John Keats poem “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” which tells the tale of a knight who is bewitched by a woman who steals his heart and then leaves him stranded and alone, but forever thinking fondly of her. This theme of a woman who has stolen your heart and left you stranded is key to “Sans Merci,” the play, and writer Johnna Adams deftly mirrors and reflects it in every second of the drama on stage.

Elizabeth has come to visit the home of her deceased daughter’s best friend to collect any and all tokens of her daughter’s life that may be left behind. Though they’ve never met, it’s clear from the very beginning that there is a tension between Elizabeth and Kelly (the friend). When it’s revealed that one of the possessions left behind was Tracy’s Gay Pride flag, the pieces drop into place.

The scene shifts to the day that Kelly and Tracy met and first fell in love. On that day, Tracy presented an oral critique of “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” to her sophomore literature class. Nervous, she falls into a panic attack and is “saved” by Kelly. The two develop a bond of friendship that quickly grows into a love affair.

As “Sans Merci” shifts back and forth between the combative conflict a grieving mother has with her daughter’s lover and the growing passion of two young lovers, headstrong, blissfully unaware of their own, and filled with the urge to make things “right” in the world, we are granted glimpses of both beginning and end. But Sans Merci never betrays itself. Nothing is ever spoiled. No piece of information is meted out too soon. We are given just enough to push the story forward. Though in the end we know too much. The truth of how and why Tracy died is so painful and the delivery so moving that it challenges our notions of love, and what it means to carry a person with us forever.

All three women in this show are outstanding. Francesca Sobrer is deeply moving as Elizabeth, a loving parent who wrestles with not only her daughter’s death, but her daughter’s sexual orientation, and finally the knowledge that she was loved more deeply than she ever imagined. Margot Morgan is a wonder as Kelly, the lover left alive but mortally wounded and forever recalling the woman who stole her heart. Molly Kruse, a newcomer to the BPP stage, is spot on as the beautiful, brilliant, yet painfully shy college student, who learns to embrace love and life, and sadly pays the ultimate price. There is a very rare chemistry between these women and it fills the stage with a palpable energy.

Director Bruce Burgun molds this energy exquisitely, creating moments of utter clarity onstage. While Lee Burkes’ set design deftly keeps Elizabeth and Kelly apart for much of the play, mirroring the emotional distance they feel toward one another, his set gives Burgun the freedom and flexibility to bring the women together from across the room in the play’s most powerful scene, as they divide the artifacts of Kelly’s life between them.

Despite the fact that this play does contain nudity and graphic content, I highly recommend it for all but the youngest or most impressionable audience members. For sheer theatrical skill and raw emotional power, this show is a rare gift to the artistic life of any community, and we are blessed to have it in Bloomington for even a short time. You must go see this show.

Photos of some doodles from my writing notebook

2008-10-22T08:08:00.000-07:00

Notice I misspelled antichrists in the middle doodle and had to squeeze in an 'H'. All my doodles right now are screaming women. I wonder what that means. Nothing good.

Angel Eaters Postcard

2008-10-22T07:56:00.000-07:00

Get your three show pass here.

Rattlers Postcard from Orange County, CA

2008-10-17T07:29:00.000-07:00

Here is the postcard for my STAGEStheatre production in Fullerton, CA. I am so bummed that I am not going to make it to the show. The cast is fantastic, the director (David Campos) is amazing-- and my thoughts are with them.

Tickets on Sale for my Angel Eater Trilogy!

2008-10-08T07:33:00.001-07:00

Photo by Isaiah Tanenbaum. Pictured: Rebecca McHugh as Melanie, Zack Robidas as Jeremy from 8 LITTLE ANTICHRISTS

TICKET SALES

Tickets are now on sale for the Trilogy, you can buy tickets on the Flux Theatre website, http://www.fluxtheatre.org/, now.

Special Discounts Offers!
Flux is offering $11 tickets for the first week only (Nov. 3-9) for a limited time. Use code "AEWEEK1" to take advantage of this deal. Offer ends October 17th, so buy early. Here's the link:

https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/30123

SHOW PACKAGE for only $40!
We are offering a special mini-subscription package for audience members who are interested in seeing all three plays in the trilogy. This offer is valid for pre-sales only. Here's the link: http://www.ovationtix.com/trs/store/3012/pk/19462

TRILOGY BENEFIT and opportunity to buy flexible tickets
On Sunday, October 19th in the evening, Flux will be holding a benefit party to support The Angel Eaters trilogy. Venue details are being finalized. Flux will be offering the best deals on tickets at the benefit party.

FLEX TICKETS at the benefit
Only at the Trilogy benefit party will people be able to purchase (cash only) flex tickets. This means, they can buy their ticket but don't have to lock down a date right away. This is a great option if you definitely want to come but don't know your schedule yet.

Prices will be as follow:
One play: $15
Two plays: $24
All Three plays: $30 (there will never be a discount lower than this one!)

Sans Merci at the Bloomington Playwrights Project

2008-10-08T07:31:00.001-07:00

Artwork for the Bloomington, IN, production of Sans Merci.

Monologue from New Verse Play

2008-10-02T13:41:00.000-07:00

I am calling the play LICKSPITTLES, BUTTONHOLERS, AND DAMNED PERNICIOUS GO-BETWEENS.

It is a light, frothy silliness that desperately wants to be a Moliere play. But he is dead, so it is stuck with me. It is supposed to be written in iambic hexameter with rhyming couplets-- but I suck at iamb's and hexameter, so I am mainly just going for the rhyming couplet part right now.

STUB is the worst buttonholer in the Danish court (circa 1807). He has buttonholed a young maid (SESTINE) in a chapel.

STUB
Oh, I say, I say, dear girl, do you have the time?

(SESTINE shakes her head no.)

STUB (CONT’D)
Of all things on this planet, aren’t churches sublime?
This nice spot, how the light from the stained glass ripples!
But the reverend here, dear, well, you know he tipples.
Churches are like that. Gorgeous, breath-taking exteriors,
But inside, clergy and parishioners, oh, simply inferiors.
No, it never fails. Yes, it’s just the way of the world
Ever since God, glorious majesty, his creation unfurled.
Not a simple apple can be found, without a worm at its heart,
Nothing man builds with his hands will not fall apart.
Oh, it distresses me greatly, every night I weep and moan,
But pray as we might, God’s left this poor world on its own.
We must learn to care for our brethren, our fellow man,
On that topic, I’d like to give you some advice if I can.
Do you mind? Would it bother you? Tell me if you’re peeved.
I won’t say it if you think my intentions ill-conceived!
Oh, you sheltered darling! Poor God-fearing Lutheran child,
In this apostolicity is one who would see you defiled!
Apostolicity. Greek derivation. Of or pertaining to
Apostles. Etymology? Are word origins of interest to you?
Well, not important. Off the subject. I digress,
I’m here to save you, Sestine, in your time of distress!
No, don’t look ‘round you, as if you fear I am mad,
If you value your virtue, of my counsels be glad.
A dark skulking despoiler mars the chapel’s serenity,
Determined enemy of your precious virginity!
He hides at the church door, plotting the longer you stay,
To grab you and hold you and have his fiendish way!
I see you grow pale and then bright red at the image.
He’s eager for his sport. He’s at the line of scrimmage.
There’s not a moment to lose in evading his plan.
Poor dear, flee the church, or know too much of man!
I see you hesitate. I see you uncertain. You waver.
Sestine, honest maid, I can’t believe this behavior.
I’ve said it before, child, let me say it again,
A darkness hides in the most light-hearted of men.
Do you doubt me? Is it possible? How unkind and thorny.
Sestine! You know nothing of men when they’re horny!
Get out now. While you can. You’re young and strong,
Don’t let him degrade you and then string you along.

(SESTINE picks up her bible and exits into a side chapel.)

STUB (CONT’D)
Where are you going? That’s not the exit I see.
Now, now, my dear Sestine, flee the pervert-- not me!

Angel Eaters Teaser Photo

2008-10-02T11:52:00.000-07:00

Marnie Schulenburg as JOANN and Cotton Wright as AZAZYEL

Facebook Distracts Big-Name Playwrights from Writing

2008-10-02T11:17:00.001-07:00

UPDATE 2: Also managed to spell Jeffrey Sweet's name wrong (Jeffrey not Jeffery). I do nothing but spell names wrong on this blog, it is official.
UPDATE: Oops, that should be Mike Daisey -- not Daisy. Sorry. I do nothing but misspell people's names on this blog. Sorry, Mike! Thanks for letting me know. :-/

I spent a good portion of yesterday messing around on facebook and decided to invite every playwright I could find to be my friend. Within 24 hours I got an accept friendship notice from every playwright listed below (loosely in order of response time).

James Comtois
Matt Freeman
Gary Winter
Qui Nguyen
Kate Ryan
Jeffrey Sweet
Colin Young
Carlyle Brown
Aaron Zook
Barry Rowell
Stephen Adly Guirgis
Kristen Greenidge
Madeleine George
Annie Baker
Carlos Murillo
Kara Lee Corthron
Young Jean Lee
Crystal Skillman
Prince Gomolivilas
Nicky Silver
Dale Andersen
Mike Daisey
Patrick Gabridge
Lucy Thurber
Erik Ehn
Susan Bernfield
Luis Alfaro
Kathleen Warnock
Carolyn Hoederman
Rafael F.J. Alvarado (poet)
Hilly Hicks
Jeff Jones
Andrea Ciannavei
Tim Fannon
Liz Duffy Adams
Jonathan Marc Sherman
Julia Jordan
Tom Jacobson
Gina Gionfriddo
Israel Horowitz
Adam Rapp
Randy Baker

I wonder who many plays are not being written because we are all messing around on facebook?

1928 Lecture on Playwriting from "Leading Woman Playwright in America"

2008-10-02T08:25:00.000-07:00

Was wandering through the mid-town branch library pulling books on writing verse for the next play I am writing, when I came across a slim volume of playwriting lectures from 1928. The University of Pennsylvania English department arranged for five speakers to come lecture playwriting students ("thirty-three seniors and juniors who had shown evidence of special ability and serious interest") in the spring of 1928 and created a publication based on the lectures due to popular demand.

The last lecturer in the series was (to quote the introduction by Arthur Hobson Quinn, the Chairman of the English Department):

". . . Miss Rachel Crothers, generally recognized as the leading woman playwright in America. . . . "

Sadly, I had never heard of Rachel Crothers. Her wikipedia entry says that in 1937 she wrote her most famous play SUSAN AND GOD, which was turned into a 1940 movie with Joan Crawford. And amazon is actively selling several of her plays, so she is hardly forgotten today, just fairly obscure.

I have pulled out a few of the more interesting bits from her lecture for your delectation and delight.

"The theatre, of course, is the quickest escape from ourselves into the world of imagination and apparently that escape is more and more imperative as civilization makes life more hideous for us. A long time ago, when we were all more or less disdainful of the movies, Jennie-- who spent her life rubbing fat off ladies of leisure to keep them beautiful, and whose husband apparently had no name and certainly no job, and was always referred to by Jennie as 'him' --- Jennie said to me, "When I go home at night I'm too tired for anything. I can't sleep-- I can't read-- I can't speak and I don't want nobody to speak to me-- but for five cents I can go to the movies and set [sic] and rest and see things I never could see in any other way-- grand people-- wild animals-- foreign cities-- wonderful houses and strange and beautiful things-- and I forget about myself and go home all made over-- and the things I have to stand from him don't seem half so hard."

I thought this was an interesting little tidbit. A woman whose job centers around other women's bad body images, turning to movies for an escape from an (apparently) abusive spouse. And basically Crothers goes on to say, isn't this great? Look how powerful theater is? She is subtly indicting the women of lesiure who are obsessed with their looks and the abusive husband, but only as an aside while making her point about the theraputic efficacy of movies (which she interestingly does not really consider a separate art form from theater).

She also has some very nicely put language on the musicality and artistry of playwriting structure:

" . . . . in these acts and scenes and speeches and lines is rhythm. Each can only carry so much-- its own beat. A little too long and the effect of the whole is hurt. Music-- harmony. And in it all and through it all well-balanced movement-- groups of characters flowing together and dissolving into smaller groups with variety and grace. . . . Grace and variety of movement are as necessary to playwriting as color is to painting."

Also, I collect metaphors about playwriting (i.e., "playwriting is like architecture because . . .", "playwriting it like choreography because . . . .", "playwriting is like archeology because. . . ") and Crothers presents an interesting one I hadn't considered before:

"It is also a science-- chemistry. Imagine a glass of clear water into which two chemicals are dropped-- two different colors. We watch them come together and change color-- moving, twisting, growing, evolving, gradually becoming one new color because of their own natures and their effect upon each other-- until a new shape and composition-- a result, is formed. That's playwriting."

I like this because it describes conflict in a very organic sense. Characters come into conflict, not because they are seeking it, but because there is a chemical reaction that forces them inevitably into the conflict. Perhaps against their will. That seems to me a very feminine way of expressing it. I have often heard professors or playwriting lecturers liken theatrical conflict to things like boxing matches or other sporting events where people are directly pursing conflict. And that runs a bit counter to my personal understanding of conflict (perhaps a more feminine idea?) that it is something you avoid desperately, but seems to seek you out anyway-- because you fell into the wrong petrie dish with the wrong other chemical compound. I don't have much interest or affinity with characters who enter knowingly into boxing matches I suppose. Much more interested in characters who find themselves in boxing rings because of unavoidable circumstance.

Anyway, the lectures are collected under the title THE ART OF PLAYWRITING, and feature additional lectures from Jesse Lynch Williams (winner of the first Pulitzer Prize for playwriting), and Langdon Mitchell, Lord Dunsany and GIlbert Emery (whoever they were). It is an entertaining read. They were concerned with the exact same issues modern playwrights are concerned about. I will try to hit some of the highlights before I have to return the book to the library.

Angel Eaters Production Calendar

2008-10-01T12:07:00.000-07:00

Helpful graphic to aid you in figuring at when you are going to see each of the plays in my trilogy. Created by Isaiah Tannenbaum, cast as Enoch in ANGEL EATERS (little red angel icon on the calendar).

Chance to see the Adam Kraar play I liked

2008-10-01T10:37:00.000-07:00

Are you gnashing your teeth because you didn't get to see that Adam Kraar reading I blogged about attending a couple of months ago? Well, now is your chance. Adam has scored a Lisa Peterson-directed reading at LaMama.

I don't think my rehearsal schedule is going to permit me to attend, but everyone else on the planet should go.

EMPIRE OF THE TREES

by Adam Kraar

Directed by Lisa Peterson

Monday, October 13th, at 7:30 pm

74A East 4th St

EMPIRE OF THE TREES is set in India in 1963. When Deborah, a young American woman living in New Delhi, strikes up a literary and romantic bond with a traveling Indian bookseller, she discovers she has a mysterious connection to ancient Indian myth. She tries to share her new awareness with her husband, an ambitious journalist, but clashes with his inter-cultural suspicions, and cruel facts of class and history. She seeks spiritual solace with the bookseller, and from the wise old Banyan tree in her yard - which causes her household to explode, and myth to spill into reality.

I Can't Go, But I Wish I Could, to Chad's Reading

2008-10-01T10:34:00.000-07:00

I have a rehearsal, so I can't make this. But , you can go without me!! I am sure it will be fantastic.

Partial Comfort Productions presents The 2008 Welcome Mat Reading Series...

"That Men Do"by Chad Beckim

Directed by Heath Cullens

Featuring: Andrew Garman

Sarah Nina Hayon

Mark Rosenthal

Paris Yates

Tuesday, October 7th @ 7:00 pm

(Doors open at 6:45 pm; First come, first serve)

Teatro Circulo

64 East 4th Street (between Bowery & 2nd Avenue)

All readings are FREE and open to the public. No RSVP necessary.

Door-to-Door Prince!? Seagull and Beast

2008-09-30T08:26:00.000-07:00

Why am I just now learning that Prince goes door-to-door to proselytize as a Jehovah's Witness in Minneapolis??? I am getting that Jerome Fellowship application in this year, then! My life could end after 25 minutes of Prince explaining the beliefs of the Jehovah's Witnesses to me. I really don't have any desires in life beyond that.

On a related note, I saw Kristen Scott Thomas in THE SEAGULL at the Walter Kerr Theatre last Friday. (Why is that a related note, you ask? Shame on you! Didn't we all see this the day it was released in theaters--first showing of the day!--, wear out a VHS tape of the movie, and perform a scene from it for a high school drama camp mimicking KST as exactly as we could- to our everlasting shame?).

KST was absolutely magnifcent in the role of Arkadina. Her scene with Trigorin (an understated and deeply resonant Peter Sarsgaard) in the third (?) act was the highlight of the performance. Zoe Kazan was brilliant as Masha- giving the role a sense of humor and intelligence that it rarely possesses. I wish the production had been a little braver and less traditional and tried her in the role of Nina, actually. Or saved Lisa Joyce from her current blind hooker/battered woman job at NYTW's production of Michael Weller's BEAST and tried her as Nina. The design work on this production is worth the price of admission all on its own. Christopher Hampton's adaptation seemed to abstract and distance me from the play in a way that was not wholly satisfying-- but that may have been because I had a nosebleed seat and felt physically distanced from the action. All in all, it is a lovely to look at and intriguing production. I wished fervently that Arkadina had more stage time, but was very glad to have attended.

Also caught Michael Weller's BEAST at New York Theater Workshop. I really admired the heart of this play and the boldness of it's premise (American soldier comes back from the dead as a disfigured zombie after being killed in Iraq and seeks revenge). And the gorgeousness of the talking Mount Rushmore set in the second act (way to go Blue Demon set designer Eugene Lee!) is not to be missed! That is probably the best set I have ever seen in a theater that size.

I felt the script had a diluted focus at times that detracted a bit. The zombie character, Voychevsky (a fantastic gravelly-voiced Corey Stoll) and his soldier buddy Cato (the affable and extremely engaging Logan Marshall-Green) take a long time to figure out what their aim in life (and after-life) is as they torment arms dealers, engage blind hookers, visit Voychevsky's wife and her new abusive boyfriend, and hitchhike. Most of the play the two men seem to be wandering with little purpose and that works against the tightly constructed and urgent thematic drive of the play. Mid-second act, they decide their goal is to exact revenge for their disfigurements and death, and if Voychevsky had crawled out of his flag-draped coffin at the start of the play with this purpose, I think this would have been a play for the ages.

Weller portrays his female characters, distractingly as victims. Lisa Joyce pulls off an amazingly charming blind southern hooker, and fights admirably to work out a muddily motivated Bonnie Ann (Voychevsky's wife) but, ultimately the male / female dynamic in the play remains strongly unbalanced for no obvious plot or thematic purpose.

I skimmed a couple other reviews and saw that critics are having a strong tendency to relate the play to other works. One critic tries to align the story to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I, for some reason-- I guess triggered by the title-- kept waiting for the story to resemble the Beauty and the Beast fairytale. I think it is admirable that Weller did not make the play a direct adaptation, but nevertheless, the urge is there in the audience to try to make sense of things by relating the story to some archetype- and this functions as another distracting itch to the brain as you are watching.

All in all, despite the things that bothered me, I found this play extremely intriguing, bold, original, and challenging. Not sure that it is in the right theater. The NYTW subscribers seemed a bit perplexed. But it is definitely worth going, experiencing, and discussing extensively.

My Play Sans Merci Won the 2008-2009 Reva Shiner Award!!

2008-08-07T09:05:00.000-07:00

I just got off the phone with Richard Perez, Artistic Director of the Bloomington Playwrights Project. My play SANS MERCI has won the 2008-2009 Reva Shiner Award.

I am ecstatic. I will get to go to Bloomington in October for the production. Jason Grote and Adam Kraar (whose reading I went to last week and recently met) are past winners.

I can't wait to see the production.

Herb Gardner on Playwriting

2008-08-05T06:38:00.001-07:00

I absolutely love the following excerpt from the introduction to Herb Gardner's THE COLLECTED PLAYS. It is written by Herb and was read out loud to my acting class a few weeks ago by a substitute instructor (John Korkes). John knew Herb fairly well and was in the Broadway production of CONVERSATIONS WITH MY FATHER. I have to retype all of this to get it online, but it is worth it:

"The editor of this volume, a hopeful and kindly fellow, has been waiting for this introduction for two months. I have offered him a series of deadlines, lies, promises and apologies which we have both decided to believe. How do I explain that I write plays, that I speak in the voices of other people because I don't know my own; that I write in the second person because I don't know the first; that I have been writing plays most of my adult life waiting to become both an adult and a playwright, and that it takes me so many years to write anything that I am forced to refer to myself during these periods as a playwrote? I have tried to write this introduction at desks, in taxis, on long plane rides; I have worked on it at thirty-thousand feet and in bathtubs; I have spoken it into tape-recorders and the ears of friends and loved ones. There are several problems: I can't seem to invent the character who says the lines; I am writing words that won't be spoken aloud and in a strange language, English-- my first, last, and only language; and, most importantly, I cannot offer an explanation for why I wrote these plays because there is none. Playwriting is an irrational act. It is the Las Vegas of art forms, and the odds are terrible. A curious trade in which optimism, like any three-year-old's, is based on a lack of information, and integrity is based on the fact that by the time you decide to sell your soul no devil is interested. Your days are spent making up things that no one ever said to be spoken by people who do not exist for an audience that may not come. The most personal thoughts, arrived at in terrible privacy, are interpreted by strangers for a group of other strangers. The fear that no one will put your plays on is quickly replaced by the fear that someone will. It's hard to live with yourself and even harder for people to live with you: how do you ask a Kamikaze Pilot if his work is going well? The word "Playwright" looks terrible on passports, leases, and credit applications; and even worse in newspaper articles alternately titled "Where Did These Playwrights Go?" and "Why Don't These Playwrights Go Away?," usually appearing in what the New York Times whimsically refers to as The Leisure Section. The most difficult problem, of course, is that I love it.
God help me, I love it. Because it's alive. And because the theatre is alive, exactly what is terrible is wonderful, the gamble, the odds. There is no ceiling on the night and no floor either; there is a chance each time the curtain goes up of glory and disaster, the actors and the audience will take each other somewhere, neither knows where for sure. Alive, one time only, that night. It's alive, has been alive for a few thousand years, and is alive tonight, this afternoon. An audience knows it's the last place they can still be heard, they know the actors can hear them, they make a difference; it's not a movie projector and they are not at home with talking furniture, it's custom work. Why do playwrights, why do we outsiders and oddballs who so fear misunderstanding use a medium where we are most likely to be misunderstood ? Because when this most private of enterprises goes public, and is responded to, we are not alone. Home is where you can tell your secrets. In a theatre, the ones in the dark and the ones under the lights need each other. For a few hours all of us, the audience, the actors, the writer, we are all a little more real together than we ever were apart. That's the ticket; and that's what the ticket's for."
Herb Gardner, NYC, January 2000

Check out David Ian Lee's SLEEPER this weekend!

2008-07-29T09:04:00.001-07:00

David Ian Lee's play SLEEPER (along with Flux's recent production of Midsummer Night's Dream) has made the short list of plays that I am enthusiastically going to see TWICE!

I went on opening night, and it is one of the most intelligent and beautifully performed original plays I have seen in ages. The run is very short, so book tickets now! I am going back with friends to see the play on the 5th.

The play is an impossibly complex study of an Afgan hostage situation, the events leading to the abduction and the emotional aftermath. The play never condescends to the audience and presents mesmerizingly intelligent characters grappling with extreme and unresolvable dilemmas. There is a sequence in the second act-- presented as a taping of a right-wing TV talk show in counterpoint to the downward spiralling emotional journey of the man taken captive by terrorists, that is some of the finest and most haunting writing I have ever seen on stage. Bravo.

So, what are you waiting for? Go buy a ticket for the 5th and find me after the show to discuss.

SLEEPER
A new play by David Ian Lee
Directed by Nat Cassidy
July 20-22 & August 3-5
Manhattan Theatre SourcePurchase tickets now by visiting: https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/60282

For reservations call 212-501-4751

Handcart Ensemble's Reading of Adam Kraar's EMPIRE OF THE TREES

2008-07-29T08:43:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Adam emailed me to let me know that the play is set in New Delhi, not New Calcutta. Oops. New Calcutta apparently only exists in my imagination, alas.

Caught the Handcart Ensemble reading of Adam Krarr's EMPIRE OF THE TREES yesterday. This play placed second in their playwriting contest. Mary Fengar Gail, who is friends with Adam, invited me and met me there.

This was a very evocative and rich script set in the early 196os in Calcutta. An American journalist (Carl) and his wife (Deborah) are living an isolated life abroad. Deborah is trying to recover from a miscarriage and becomes increasingly withdrawn and disappointed with the men in her life, finding refuge and romance with an untouchable book peddlar/beggar who comes to the house selling possibly stolen books. Adam developed the play at the William Inge Theatre Festival in Kansas earlier this year.

The lead actress, Catherine Eaton, did a suberb job with the play, I thought. She was playing a very meek and overly-polite southern woman of the sixties, but the actress' naturally forceful personality and passion spilled out of the character at unexpected moments-- created a compelling portrait of frustrated desire and longing for adventure. Also Ben Masur, who played her husband, lifted his character from what might have been a moustache-twirling melodrama villian into a fully human and almost sympathetic figure. Also Ed Hajj, who played roles as various as JFK, Indian servants, animate trees, and an oustanding Robert-Duval-from-Tender-Mercies southern patriarch, really stole the reading.

Went to the Zipper room afterward with Mary Fengar Gail, Adam, Ben, and Lorca Peress-- the artistic director of MultiStages, who produced a stunning and gorgeously realized version of Mary's play THE JUDAS TREE a few months ago. It is wonderful to go out with theater people and have long, wide-ranging discussions about the state of theater and trends in playwriting. Quite an enjoyable evening.

Back to Blog

2008-07-29T08:17:00.000-07:00

I am a roach amongst blogsters, I know. Was my last blog entry really in April? Ouch. Many thousands of apologies. I will do my best to be better.

During my blog absence I have been rewriting plays like crazy getting ready for this Fall's production of the Angel Eater trilogy by Flux Theatre Ensemble. We will be at Wings, a little proscenium stage on Christopher Street in the West Village for the production. I hope to see you all there. I will post a lot of promotional material, and probably hit most of you with an email when we get closer to the show.

My production of San Merci was canceled by Maieutics due to lack of funds. That was a bummer. I have the script out a few places, so maybe it will pick up a production for next year.

My play RATTLERS will be produced at STAGEStheatre in Fullerton, CA, in November. It will open there on November 8th, about a week after it opens in New York, and run for 8 performances in rep with and on the set of THE DINNER PARTY. I am hoping to some see it-- RATTLERS on the set of THE DINNER PARTY is not to be missed in my opinion. Plus, the STAGEStheatre people are my favorite people on the planet and that is worth a plane ticket to LA. It is being directed by David Campos, who hid in a baby's basinet and made lizard/alien noises back in 1998(?) when STAGEStheatre produced the 15-minute one act version of my play THE MIRACLE OF MARY MACK'S BABY, starring myself and the wonderous Patti Cumby. Ah, good memories. Good times.

RATTLERS will also be party of Gallimaufry Performing Arts' first annual New Works Festival and receive a staged reading in the Pageant of the Masters Complex in Laguna Beach in the first or second weekend of November. Hoping to catch it and the STAGEStheatre show on the same weekend if I can. While not missing the trilogy's opening weekend in New York, of course.

Started an acting class with Austin Pendleton, who is wonderful and amazing. That is on Saturday mornings at HB Studios in the West Village. Loving that.

Will post something on what I am seeing later. Glad to be back!

Babylon Babylon, Room for Cream, crooked, Top Girls - Theaterorama

2008-04-25T07:32:00.000-07:00

Had a big theater-going week. I caught the opening night of Babylon Babylon at the Brick last Friday. Then on Saturday I caught a double feature, hitting the Theatre of Two-Headed Calf's Dyke Division serial Room for Cream at LaMama Etc. in the afternoon and The Women's Project's crooked by Catherine Trieschmann that night. Then last night, I caught a preview of Caryl Churchill's Top Girls at MTC's Biltmore Theater.

Babylon Babylon. This is perhaps the best concept for a theater piece I have seen since attending a storefront production of Mary Zimmerman's Arabian Nights 13 years ago in Chicago. Author/director/performer Jeff Lewonczyk gets high points for scope of vision and audacity with this. The action follows a group of townswomen in Babylon who prostitute themselves at the temple of Ishtar on the eve of Babylon's fall to the Persian army. The tone is largely comic, although some serious and mythic notes creep into the script. The costumes and set have a delightful thrift-store pagentry to them and the 30+ member cast is gorgeously committed and adorably enthusiastic about their roles. It runs a bit long (2 hours 15 minutes with no intermission on the night I went), and there is some uneveness in the script-- but there is a lot to enjoy about this quirky and unlikely assemblage. I loved Hope Cartelli as the priestess to Ishtar, Mike Criscuolo as a hapless prince of Babylon, Iracel Rivero as a simple country girl, Robin Reed's rich snotty lady, Melina Gac-Artigas as a serene and reluctant virgin and Kamran Khan as both a beggar and a rich slaver. Amantha May's choreography was also stand-out and bewitching (I went to college with her, many, many years ago).

Room for Cream. RfC is an on-going lesbian supernatural soap opera that plays to sell-out crowds at LaMama each week. Each Saturday brings a new script, fully produced and memorized by an eclectic cast and weekly guest star. I caught episode #8, Chaotica by Laura Stinger. This was all the campy, sexy, silly fun you could expect. Becca Blackwell as Dire Owens was wonderfully authentic and comic and script was imaginative and outrageous. At only 8 bucks is it a theatrical bargain-shopper's paradise, too. I hear that tickets tend to sellout as soon as they go on sale on Sundays, though.

crooked. I thought this Catherine Trieschmann script at the Women's Project was truly outstanding. Definitely a not-to-miss experience for playwrights. The begining is a little soft and some staging issues interfere with what should have been a powerhouse ending-- but the dramatic engine and the complex, layered meat of this script is enthralling. I was thinking about this one for days after I saw it. The relationships are intricate and involving in a messy, organic way that is very hard to capture on stage. The cast (Betsy Aidern, Carmen M. Herlihy, and especially Cristin Milioti) was absolutely perfect. Direction (Liz Diamond) was wonderful throughout, until we hit the ending, which lost a lot of its impact because focus was drawn away from the strongest visual moment and boldest choice in the script. But, I walked out deeply satisfied. Two of the playwrights I play wisth every week at Flux Theater Ensemble's weekly Flux Sunday development workshop, Katie Marks (who has the misfortune of seeing me bumble my way as an actor through her delightful comedy Birdhouse at Flux) and Erin Taylor (whose excellent play Narrator One is getting a reading at Flux soon!). That was cool, to see some of my favorite women playwrights out supporting a woman playwright.

Top Girls. What an amazing experience to sit in the audience at MTC's previews, a couple rows away from Caryl Churchill, watching the Broadway debut of her classic and moving play Top Girls. I saw Chris Shinn there and he said outside the theater after the show, "they just don't make them like that anymore." This script shows up the banal, slick, and superficial gloss that modern playwrights feel compelled to cover their scripts with. There is a rough, organic, and beautifully unfinished poetry to this play that really sings forth in this production. The acting is already wonderful and seems to poised to grow as the play opens next week. It's true that some of the dialects are uneven-- but that is my only minor acting quibble. The delightful surprise of Martha Plimpton as 15-year-old Angie, Marisa Tomei's chameleon-like transformation into her mother Joyce, Elizabeth Marvel's tour de force Marlene, and Mary Catherine Garrison's astonishing turns as Kit and Shona are stand-outs in a tremendous ensemble show. The design is compellingly abstract, the costumes are a joy, and this is a production that grows on you as the night progresses. Highly recommended-- get tickets now.

Am off tomorrow night to see Mary Fengar Gail's The Judas Tree. Might sneak in a show tonight, too.

Untitled Mars and The NYTR Book Launch

2008-04-17T08:36:00.001-07:00

Caught Untitled Mars by Jay Scheib at PS 122 last week. It is a sci/fi tech romp based heavily on Philip K. Dick's Martian Time-Slip. In fact, it is pretty much a straight adaptation of Martian Time-Slip, with a few interviews with current Martian colony experts on the science of Mars colonization inserted and some intriguing staging.

I thought the cast was top-notch. Tanya Sevaratnam (Jackie) really pulled me in and made me feel like I was watching a real person. The staging is very reminiscent of Ivo van Hove's Misanthrope at NYTW last year-- with cameras and big screens and backstage moments. Not a device that does a whole lot for me, but people who dug Misanthrope should also like this. I liked the real science tidbits the best. I was happiest in the moments where I felt like I had accidentally intruded on an MIT lecture on the probability of Martian colonization. That was all fascinating. It is a good show for a techno-geek or Philip K.-fanatic.

On Friday, I caught the New York Theatre Review book launch at the Drama Bookstore. They presented an excerpt from Tommy Smith's play White Hot that was one of the funniest and most engaging scenes I have seen in a long time. I was really bummed to have missed the production last year! Maybe it'll come back with the Fringe Fest or something. Also a fascinating essay from Victoria Linchong about the early history of and demise of the Cafe Cino in Greenwich in the 1960s. I finished reading that essay on the subway ride home from the launch and loved it. Lots of strong stuff this year!

In other news, the Maieutics Theatre Works' production of Sans Merci is cast and rehearsals should begin in a few weeks. I am not sure if actresses have been notified/accepted yet-- so no hints. Except the cast rocks and I expect miracles. I am frantically rewriting Godsbreath and 8 Little Antichrists simultaneously. Which will undoubtedly lead to my antichrist puppets raising game cocks and a procreationist multi-birth breeder vats with uterine simulant technology appearing in the Godsbreath cemetery. Which, hmmmm, might not be such a bad thing.

Planning to check out Babylon Babylon at the Brick on Friday. Am very excited about a play about temple slaves. How did they know about me and temple slaves?

Flux Theatre Ensemble's Spring Benefit on Monday April 14th

2008-04-09T14:48:00.000-07:00

I will be at Flux's benefit on Monday April 14th for their spring production of Midsummer. And my lovely publisher, Mr. Jason Aaron Goldberg of Original Works Publishing, has graciously donated copies of my plays COCKFIGHTERS and THE SACRED GEOMETRY OF S&M PORN for the silent auction part of the benefit-- along with a selection of other great titles from OWP (he didn't tell me what other scripts he gave Flux, so you will have to come see).

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”A Midsummer Night’s Dream” Benefit Party
April 14th, 2008
.
6:30pm to 10:30pm (arrive anytime)
The White Rabbit
145 E Houston St., NY, NY 10002 US
Door Price: $15
.
We are delighted to invite you to our Benefit Party for our production of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” held at the White Rabbit. There will be drink specials, light hors d’oeuvres and a Raffle at the end of the night with excellent prizes. If you are unable to attend, but would still like to participate in our raffle, please go to our blog where you can view the prizes and buy your raffle tickets. More information can be found HERE.
.
All of the money raised will go directly to supporting our production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. We hope to see you there!

And check out the great raffle prixes up for grabs HERE.

Artwork for Maieutic Theatre Works Production of Sans Merci

2008-04-08T13:09:00.000-07:00

Coming to the Roy Arias studios on 43rd and 8th in June.

Cool, huh? I can't wait to get postcards to push on people.

Congrats Christopher Shinn!

2008-04-07T14:10:00.000-07:00

Shout out and congrats to playwright (and teacher of the EST summer conservatory workshop I did last summer) Christopher Shinn, who was a announced today as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize with his play Dying City. Way to go Chris!

I also recently solved the mystery as to why the Union Square Barnes & Noble features Chris' play book prominently on a table in the drama section all year round and not just when he has plays running. Connor Ratliff, the B&N staffer who mans that part of the fiction section on weekend mornings, premiered the role of June in the Royal Court (London) production of Chris' play Four in 1998. And they are buds. How is that for theater-based, Nancy Drew-style investigative journalism? Connor is also a playwright and has a reading coming up this summer at Theater for a New City.

Congrats also to Tracy Letts, winner of the Pulitzer for August: Osage County, and David Henry Hwang, finalist for Yellow Face. I don't know them, though.

Feed the Rude Guerilla

2008-04-07T14:07:00.000-07:00

Just went to paypal and donated to help my friends at the spectacular Rude Guerilla Theatre Company. Hereby challenging anyone else interested in supporting exciting new work for the theatre to do the same.
***********************************

Dear Friend of the Rude Guerrilla Theater Company,

We appreciate your support over the past 11 years of our existence. However, ticket sales alone make up only a portion of Rude Guerrilla Theatre Company’s operating budget. In order to grow and to be able to continue providing socially-conscious, provocative theatre that matters, we need your help.

This year, we are establishing The Guerrilla Guild – an annual giving program that will provide you an opportunity to be an active partof what the Los Angeles Times calls “…Orange County’s most daring ensemble”. By being part of the Guerrilla Guild each year, you will:

• Help us bring new and exciting theatre experiences to Orange County. We offer varied and innovative, thoughtprovoking
material, presented in new and daring stagings.
• Participate in promoting local artistic activities. We are gaining a solid reputation for providing cost-conscious access to the arts, and bringing theatre to those who may never have experienced it.
• Improve and expand our facilities and production capabilities, in order to provide even more exciting theatrical experiences. See the Wish List on our website for ways your contributions may be used.

As a Guerrilla Guild member:
• Your donations are tax-deductible. At the end of the year, you will receive a receipt for your total contributions to Rude Guerrilla, a 501(c) 3 non-profit corporation.
• You will receive complimentary tickets and other benefits (see our website).
• You will receive recognition in our program and on Rude Guerrilla’s website.
Guerrilla Guild members may donate funds from $100 up, but all contributions are truly appreciated. To join the Guild, go to our website (www.rudeguerrilla.org) and click on the Donation Page link and you may contribute via Paypal. We also accept donations via regular mail, by check or credit card (Visa/MC/Amex). All donors are free to change the level of their contribution, or to opt out altogether, as circumstances require.

Or click on the link below and make a donation today!

http://www.rudeguerrilla.org/GuildFolder/Guildinfo.html

We thank you for your support in the past and look forward to your continued generosity in the future.

Jay Fraley and Dave Barton
Artistic Directors
Rude Guerrilla Theater Company

Rude Guerrilla Theater Company is a non-profit organization. All donations are tax-deductible.
Federal Tax ID # 33-0859205. California Organization # 2121428
Rude Guerrilla Theater Company
202 North Broadway, Santa Ana, California 92701 714-547-4688

New Headshots

2008-04-02T08:41:00.000-07:00

Got new headshots this weekend with Jason Berger. He is the older brother of my Deloitte coworker Debra, so it was nice to get to meet him and shoot with him.

Wish we could have done more outdoor shots-- but it was too cold and windy. I like the graffiti shot, though. That will be my new business card. I have already ordered them from vistaprint.com.

We took about 760 photos in two hours. I have decided that surely there is a level of hell devoted to looking at over 700 photos of yourself at one time. Yuck! If I am ever feeling conceited and superior, I will just pull out that CD and make myself look at all of them again. But, I did like a handful, so it is worth it.

New $200K Playwriting Award

2008-03-31T10:18:00.000-07:00

From Philanthropy News Digest (pointed out to me by my friend Charlyn):

Steinberg Charitable Trust Establishes Awards for U.S. Playwrights
The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust in New York City has announced the creation of two awards for American playwrights in different stages of their careers.
The Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award will honor a mid-career playwright whose body of work has already been recognized. With a cash prize of $200,000, it is believed be the largest award to honor American playwriting. The first award recipient will be announced this fall, and the prize will be awarded on a biennial basis thereafter. Beginning in 2009, the Steinberg Emerging Playwrights Award, also to be awarded biennially, will honor two early career playwrights whose professional work shows great promise; each recipient will receive a cash prize of $50,000.
The trust has established an advisory committee of prominent theater professionals to determine the criteria for the awards, nominate playwrights, and select the recipients. The members of the committee are André Bishop, artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater; David Emmes, producing artistic director of South Coast Repertory; Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater; Polly K. Carl, producing artistic director of Playwrights Center; Martha Lavey, artistic director of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company; Eduardo Machado, playwright and artistic director of INTAR Theatre; and Marc Masterson, artistic director of the Actors Theatre of Louisville.
"These awards have been years in the making," said the trust's board in a press release. "It is our desire to honor both the achievement and potential of these playwrights and provide them with the financial freedom to devote their best efforts to writing for the theater. We are thrilled to celebrate them, while hoping at the same time to strengthen the vitality and appeal of the theater in our society."
“The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust Announces Creation of Major Playwriting Awards.” Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust 3/27/08.
Link to article here.

The Poor Itch and The Four of Us

2008-03-27T11:58:00.000-07:00

I saw three shows in two days this weekend! Aren't I just a little fireball of theatrical energy?

Friday was American Globe Theatre's The Winter's Tale, Saturday matinee was Itamar Moses' The Four of Us at MTC, and Saturday night was the unfinished The Poor Itch by the late John Belluso. Winter's Tale was nice, my friend Christina Shipp was a fantastic Perdita, but I don't see enough Shakespeare to blog well about it, so I will skip to the other two show:

The Poor Itch by John Belluso is a fascinating production of an unfinished play. This is the play that John was writing when he died unexpectedly of heart failure in 2006. The director, Lisa Peterson, and the cast pulled together drafts and John's notes to fully stage the final draft he was working on at the time of his death. Knowing that gave an already powerful narrative an almost overwhelmly melancholy weight. Increasingly in the second act, the actors would step forward and read a synopsis of a scene John had sketched out in prose and end the description by saying "scene unwritten." That was one of the most painful conventions I have ever experienced in the theater. The story centers around an American soldier (Ian, played by a wonderfully conflcited and complicated Christopher Thornton) who was shot in the spine while fighting in Iraq and is now adjusting to life in a wheelchair in his blue-collar hometown. Deirdre O'Connell did a lovely job as his mother Coral, and Michael Chernus was outstanding as his loser friend Curt. All around, the casting for this was exceptionally good. It was a very gripping story and I hope the play goes on to more productions (like, at the Taper, maybe??). Big kudos to the director and cast. It must have been a very challenging project, and they pulled it off very beautifully.

Play two was Itamar Moses' The Four of Us at MTC. I am HUGE Bach at Leipzig fan, but this one was didn't hit the same level for me. The story is a two-person play about a playwright who has a good friend who is a novelist. The novelist sells his first novel for a $2 million royalty advance / film rights package and the resulting stress on their friendship propels the action of the play forward. About a third of the play takes place in flashbacks. I really, really wanted to like this and was prepared to worship Itamar Moses as a god-- but there were not any pretty Bach-era costumes, so the post of god is still open. (NOTE: I had a little more posted about this earlier, but decided to take down some of it. It was just more snarky than I intended-- really there are good points to the play and I don't really want to discourage people from attending or spoil ploy elements).

Ran into Jerry Patch in the Lobby of The Public Theatre on Saturday

2008-03-25T11:58:00.000-07:00

Nice to see friendly faces from my Orange County days. Well, he didn't recognize or remember me, even after I re-introduced myself, but still it was nice. I guess. He talked to us for a few minutes-- probably because I was with Toby Thelin, who works at his new theater, the Manhattan Theatre Club. Still. He talked to us. He said that Mary Fengar Gail is also moving to NY, so I am glad to get to see her soon.

He opined that Sarah Ruhl, Itamar Moses, and Noah Haidle are the only significant playwrights under 35 in the nation (good thing for him I just turned 35 in November, huh? Otherwise them would have been fighting words!). Ahem. And seemed to be really excited about getting to work at MTC.

I was there seeing John Belluso's THE POOR ITCH (which I will blog about later) and I think Jerry was just hanging around to meet up with somebody important. Not sure. He didn't say.

There is an article in the LA Times about how Jerry is transitioning from the Old Globe Theatre to the Manhattan Theatre Club. Your loss west coast, our gain.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-patch25mar25,1,1139674.story

2008 New York Theater Review is out APRIL 1!

2008-03-07T14:13:00.000-08:00

Looking forward (now that I am debt-free) to buying several copies of this year's New York Theatre Review! It hits the shelves April 1st. The launch party will be April 11th at the Drama Bookstore.

I contributed this year, with rambling comments about moving from LA and launching a Big Apple blog in the bloggers article. That makes me almost spectacularly famous in addition to being debt-free.

Here is there promo stuff:

The third edition of the New York Theater Review, the
annual anthology chronicling the then, the now and that which may some day be in New York City alt-theater and performance, will be available worldwide on April 1.

With a cross-section of the best and the brightest in contemporary NYC alt-theater over the past year, our latest edition offers a combination of new plays from Ping Chong & Sara Michelle Zatz, Taylor Mac and Tommy Smith (see left), essays from Marya Sea Kaminski, Victoria Linchong and Zachary R. Mannheimer (see below), plus all kinds of extra goodies, such as a group mixer with NYC bloggers blindsquirrel (aka Johnna Adams), Obscene Jester (aka T. Nikki Cesare & Steve Luber), Playgoer (aka Garrett Eisler), Rat Sass (aka Nick Fracaro) and the Blog of Many Names that Change Quite Often (aka Jason Grote's).

Spending Some of that Work Bonus on Theaters

2008-03-07T13:18:00.000-08:00

Now that I am debt-free (you are going to get really sick of hearing that phrase leave my mouth!), I am giving to some worthy theaters and thought I'd ~~pressure~~ encourage you to donate, too!

First off Adam Szymkowicz shared an email on his blog that talks about how Culture Project had a pipe burst at their offices last month and lost over $100K in computers, supplies, flooring, lighting, phones, sound equipment, projection equipment, and production equipment. Yikes! Here is how they say you can help:

Please go to www.cultureproject.org or call 212-925-1806 to make a special credit card gift to Culture Project to help mitigate the effects of the flood. You can also mail a check to: Culture Project55 Mercer StreetNew York, NY 10013 Attention: Development

Also, I have sent in a donation to my buddies at Reverie Productions. Despite selling over 80% to their extremely well-reviewed and awesome production of Ariel Dorfman's WIDOWS, they are facing a production freeze next year to pay off the debt from the show. That would be a real shame. There is a donation button their website: http://www.reverieproductions.org/

March 7th is Johnna Emancipation Day!!

2008-03-07T12:54:00.000-08:00

Hereforward we celebrate March 7th as Johnna Emancipation Day.

The work bonus hit my checking account at 9AM this morning. By 9:15AM, I had paid off my last credit card balance. I am, for the first time in my adult life, DEBT FREE.

What strange new world is this? Why, that heavy weight is lifting from my shoulders and I think I feel wings sprouting in its place.

Happy Johnna Emancipation Day.

Newsweek Reporter Writes Opinion Piece on Being Named Johnna

2008-03-06T08:43:00.000-08:00

A coworker interoffice mailed me a Newsweek article by a Johnna Kaplan. It is a 500 or so word rant about the trials and tribulations of being named Johnna. I am disappointed that it never occured to me to try to turn the experience of being named Johnna into an article for Newsweek. Other Johnnas are evidently cleverer than me. That is disappointing.

Erik Patterson has a new blog

2008-03-06T07:56:00.000-08:00

Primo, neato, Los Angeles dog-ear playwright Erik Patterson has launched a new blog.

You should definitely go read. He posted cool pictures of things to do lists he makes in a journal. I want to steal that idea (both the idea of keeping a journal just for to do lists, and the idea of taking photos of your journal to put online).

GUESS THIS! Meme'd with a Movie Thingie by Adam

2008-03-04T14:17:00.000-08:00

Adam is making me do this. It is a guessing game. Here are the rules:

Look up 15 of your favorite films on IMDb and take a
quote from each. List them below. When someone guesses the quote correctly,
cross it off the list

So post your guesses in the comments.

1. "I want a girl who's smart, a girl who can teach me things. I hate stupid women. You know why? You marry a stupid girl, you have stupid kids. You don't believe me? Follow a stupid kid home and see if somebody stupid don't answer the door." HINT: Oscar winning screenwriter

2. "I wouldn't be as fastidious as you are for a kingdom. "

3. "I hear a throat begging to be cut!"
"Are you so eager to see blood flow?"
"As eager as you are to drink it!"

4. "If I'd known we were gonna cast our feelings into words, I'd've memorized the Song of Solomon. "

5. 'I wonder by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? were we not wean'd till then? But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den? 'Twas so ; but this, all pleasures fancies be ; If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee. And now good-morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear ; For love all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room an everywhere. Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone ; Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown ; Let us possess one world ; each hath one, and is one. My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest; Where can we find two better hemispheres Without sharp north, without declining west? Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally; If our two loves be one, or thou and I Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die. "

ADAM GOT LABYRINTH
~~6. "This is an oubliette, labyrinth's full of 'em."~~
~~"Really. How do you know that?"~~
"Oh don't act so smart. You don't even know what an oubliette is." /s>
~~"Do you?"~~
~~" Yes. It's a place you put people... to forget about 'em!"~~

7. "There's a family with kids. Do the kids and make the mother watch. Tell her you'll stop if she can hold back her tears. I *owe* her that."

8. "Once I stole a pair of red underwear from the department store. My mom wouldn't buy them for me - she said they were Satan's panties!
"
KAY GOT THE BIG EASY
~~9. "That's OK. I never did have much luck with sex anyway. "~~
~~"Your luck's about to change, cher."~~

10. "I saw a young officer on deck the other day, and he looked DAMN familiar... even with his clothes on. "
"So... he recognized ya, so?"
"So doesn't that bother you?"
"If it bothered me, I wouldn'ta married ya."
"Well first you arrested me six times."
"Well I had to figure out some way to keep you off the streets... until you'd marry me."

11. "In my mind's eye, I see, three circles joined in priceless, graceful harmony. Two full as the moon, one hollow as a crown. Two from the sea, five fathoms down. One from the earth, deep under the ground. The whole, a mark of high renown. Tell me, what can it be?"

12. "Now look, I once stood exposed to the Dragon's Breath so that a man could lie one night with a woman. It took me nine moons to recover. And all for this lunacy called, "love, " this mad distemper that strikes down both beggar and king. Never again. Never. "

13. "Lastday, Capricorn 29's. Year of the City: 2274. Carousel begins."
"No! Don't! Don't go! Listen to him! He's telling the truth! We've been outside! There's another world outside! We've seen it! "
"Life clocks are a lie! Carousel is a lie! THERE IS NO RENEWAL! "

ADAM GOT FLESH GORDON
14. "I'm Prince Precious, rightful heir to the throne of Porno. Years ago, this planet was a veritable paradise. But Wang, a maniacal botanist whose organ was devoured by a crazed Penis Flytrap, could not tolerate the existence of so much pleasure, and so, banding together an army of the impotent and frustrated, and armed with a small but effective sex ray, plunged my palace into carnal chaos, and took it over. "

15. "De-crucify the angel!"
"What? "
"De-crucify him or I'll melt your face!"

I tag Barton, Modern Fabulosity, Robert T, and Eric Eberwein.

A Midsummer Night's Doodle

2008-03-04T13:21:00.000-08:00

Rainbow over Lady Liberty

2008-03-04T07:09:00.000-08:00

Visited the Statue of Liberty with my friend Lesley this weekend and snapped these photos of a rainbow streaming from the torch. Cool.

Romance at Grand Central Station

2008-02-28T07:59:00.000-08:00

Late posting this, but I took this photo of the florist shop at Grand Central Terminal on Valentine's Day, when the poor florists were besieged by desperate, lovelorn procrastinators. It was quite a madhouse.

Ride the Train in the Snow with Me

2008-02-28T07:43:00.000-08:00

Shot two 30 second clips from an N train window last week when the heavy snow was on the ground. I find watching the clips really peaceful.

Weird Little Doodle From a Few Months Ago

2008-02-13T09:19:00.001-08:00

Went through some strange phase where I was drawing 99 cent price tags from potato chip bags on my doodles. Not sure why. I did this a few months ago during a meeting.

Plays and Playwrights 2008 Release Party on Sunday

2008-02-12T12:09:00.000-08:00

Unless I am eaten alive by terminal flake disease, I plan on attending the Plays and Playwrights 2008 release party to watch the excerpt readings of the plays. Make sure you come up to me and ask me if I have finished the Godsbreath rewrites I am planning on getting done before Sunday if you go too.

Martin Denton's blog has more info.

The readings start at 4pm on Sunday. It is happening at: The Red Room Theatre and The Kraine Theatre, located at 85 East 4th Street (between 2nd Avenue and the Bowery).

Here are the plays they are publishing.

THE TELLING TRILOGY by Crystal Skillman
A gripping and and often chilling full length play that explores the nature of loss, comprising three linked tales of the supernatural.

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN by Daniel Talbott
Two young men, brothers who have recently been separated, reunite of a night of reminiscence and truth telling.

ANTARCTICA by Carolyn Raship
In this sometimes surreal fantasia of growing up, Magda and Winnie set out to become the first American Girls to make an expedition to the South Pole.

CLEANSED by Thomas Bradshaw
An envelope-pushing drama about a biracial teenage girl who joins a white supremacist group, written by one of the Village Voice’s “Best Provocative Playwrights of 2007.”

LINNEA by John Regis
A young writer who is obsessed by Dostoyevsky lives out his own NYC dream version of The Idiot in this remarkable coming-of-age tale.…AND WE ALL WORE

LEATHER PANTS by Robert Attenweiler
In this wild and pyrotechnically poetic comedy, a Midwestern American family searches for redemption in the world of heavy metal & glam rock.

MARVELOUS SHRINE by Leslie Bramm
17-year-old Marvelous isn’t sure if he’s gay, but he knows he wants to play music. His parents battle over his destiny, and nobody wins in this moving drama.

IN OUR NAME by Elena Hartwell
A triptych of short, breathtaking one-acts about the ways that the War in Iraq has hit home, especially among American women.

UNIVERSAL ROBOTS by Mac Rogers
A riveting sci-fi cautionary tale inspired by the lives and works of Czech writer/activists Karel & Josef Capek, especially the play R.U.R. which gave us the word “robot.”

FALL FORWARD by Daniel Reitz
A play about choices and figuring out what really matters, originally performed in a Methodist Church two blocks from the World Trade Center.

Casting a Trilogy

2008-02-12T10:38:00.000-08:00

Spent the weekend at callbacks for the Flux Theatre Ensemble general auditions. The picture above shows headshots organized on chairs.

I had no idea auditions were so grueling. Between the general round of auditions (Feb 2 and 3) and the callback round this weekend, I think I spent about 36 hours sitting in the same chair, in the same room, watching actors. On Sunday, I also watched a huge blizzard build up, rage, and subside out the rooms windows.

I saw so many great performers! We could have cast most trilogy roles about three times over. Not sure when the final cast list will be announced. Hopefully within the week.

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Other things I am reading, seeing, or thinking about:

Gus Schulenburg has a great bit of writing on measuring characters up to a formula (Action=Change=Need) on the Flux blog.
Jason Grote's Maria/Stuart kicked ass at the recent NYU hotINK readings. It was the same director and largely the same cast as when I saw it at the Soho Rep writers/directors lab reading last spring. Reminded me that attending multiple readings of plays in development can be fascinating and not torturous.
Working frantically on rewrites on Godsbreath to email to Darin Anthony in Los Angeles this week. That is going well and I expect to finish the new act one tonight. Hoping to get a new draft of 8 Little Antichrists finished for the March 1st Flux reading of the entire trilogy. I am in rewrite hell this month. Tumblewings, Rattlers, and Angel Eaters may also get new drafts this month.
Going to the Reverie Productions' writers' meeting tonight. I have been a huge flake and missed the last several meetings. Maybe I should bring doughnuts.

Little Xmas Home Movie

2008-01-30T07:10:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know Xmas is over.

But here is a cute video of my dad in his Rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer nose, his santa hat, and his BAH HUMBUG t-shirt on Christmas morning. Also, mom, playing with a stuffed animal from her Xmas stocking. This is right before we started opening presents. It is only 12 seconds long. I am not much of a filmmaker.

Gorgeous SONG OF EXTINCTION at hotINK

2008-01-28T13:17:00.001-08:00

Caught my friend E.M. (Ellen) Lewis's SONG OF EXTINCTION at hotINK on Saturday night. It played beautifully and tenderly. Superb cast and lyrical writing.

We were reading this play in Lee Wochner's playwriting workshop when I left LA, and I got to see the first half but not the conclusion before I moved to NY. The play chronicles the death of Lily (Kathryn Erbe), who leaved behind a biologist husband who appears to be more interested in the extinction of Bolivian beetles than his own wife's extinction (Ellery, played by Frank Wood) and a devastated teenage son, Max (Jade Hawk) who knows he is losing something irreplacable and can't accept it.

I often read the role of Cambodian high school biology teacher Khim Phan in the LA workshop. You will be happy to know, as I am sure Ellen was, that NYU had no trouble finding a much, much better fit for the role-- the incomparable Francis Jue, who is currently in Yellow Face at the Public. He was magnificent! Really a highlight. Such warmth and compassion. Francis had a wonderful scene with Jade Hawk as Max set in a lonely al-night noodle shop, that I thought was just magical. I also enjoyed Kathryn Erbe of TV's Law and Order, as Lily, and Frank Wood's Ellery. They were throroughly believeable and heartfelt.

Am off to see Jason Grote's MARIA/STUART tonight at hotINK tonight. Also planning to catch Mark Schultz' play DEATHBED later this week.

My Friend Jen Maisel's Daughter is Going to Marry Harry Potter

2008-01-24T11:36:00.000-08:00

My friend (LA Playwright) Jen Maisel recently started the cutest blog. It is all about chronicling her five-year-old daughter Julia's obsessive interest in the unfortunately fictional, and therefore unavailable, Harry Potter.

I especially like the post where Jen tries to counsel Julia into a feminist approach to her fictional relationship by telling her not to hate Ginny for marrying Harry, but to try and dislike Harry for dating another woman. Julia says that Harry is more famous and so she doesn't see how she could ever dislike him more than Ginny.

Ah, the joys of parenthood. Link

Enjoyed Partial Comfort's THE MAIN(E) PLAY Last Weekend

2008-01-24T11:25:00.000-08:00

I caught my friend Chad Beckim's The Main(e) Play at Theater Row on Friday and thought I would send a recommendation out into the blogosphere. This the latest from his theater company Partial Comfort.

The actors did a lovely, naturalistic job. The final scene is searing and impactful. You don't see where it is going, so it takes you for a quick sucker punch in a good way. Also nice to see a well-made, naturalistic play that is so bold and well-produced. Kudos all around.

I will try to post about their up-coming fundraiser, Battle of the Bards, when they solidify dates.

Public Announces Emerging Writers Group

2008-01-21T06:53:00.000-08:00

I didn't get in the Public Theater's Emerging Writers Group. Pass the sour grapes, please.

It is not news to me, they had interviews in December and I didn't even make it that far. I didn't even make "alternate" for the interviews, another designation I heard they had. Me big loser.

I don't know anyone on this list, but well wishes to them all. I will definitely go to some of the readings if they open them to the public.

The Public Theater Announces First Emerging Writers Group
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Posted: 11:49 AM - by BWW News Desk
New York, New York --

Expanding on its 50-year history of developing new plays and cultivating new voices for the American Theater, The Public Theater has announced the 12 members of the inaugural Emerging Writers Group, a new program launching next month that targets playwrights at the earliest stages in their careers and nurtures their artistic growth by providing necessary resources and support.

With this new initiative, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights. The Emerging Writers Group is the first element of The Public Writers Initiative, a long-term program that will provide key support and resources for writers at every stage of their careers. Time Warner is the Founding Sponsor of The Public Writers Initiative.

The inaugural group of Emerging Writers was selected from more than 700 applicants. The 12 selected are Radha Blank, Leila Buck, Raúl Castillo, Chris Cragin Day, Christina Gorman, Ethan Lipton, Alejandro Morales, Nick Nanna Hadikwa Mwaluko, Don Nguyen, Akin Salawu, Alladin Ullah, and Pia Wilson. Each writer will receive a $3,000 stipend; participate in a biweekly writers' group led by Associate Artistic Director Mandy Hackett and The Public's Literary Department; attend master classes with established playwrights; receive career development advice and artistic support from acclaimed writers and Public artistic staff; receive complimentary tickets to Public shows and supplemental stipends for productions at other theaters; and have their work presented in at least one reading at The Public.

The Public Writers Initiative will foster a web of supportive artistic relationships across generations of writers that will influence the future of contemporary American theater. Many of today's most honored and recognized playwrights such as John Guare, Suzan-Lori Parks, David Rabe, Christopher Durang, Wallace Shawn, Ntozake Shange, Sam Shepard, Tony Kushner and Nilo Cruz have a long history developing their work at The Public. The Public has also produced some of today's most important plays and musicals, such as Hair, Sticks and Bones, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf, The Colored Museum, Topdog/Underdog, Caroline, Or Change, and A Chorus Line. The Public Writers Initiative will ensure that The Public's great tradition of supporting playwrights and playwriting will remain central to its future.

The Public Theater was founded by Joseph Papp in 1954 as the Shakespeare Workshop and is now one of the nation's preeminent cultural institutions, producing new plays, musicals, productions of Shakespeare, and other classics at its headquarters on Lafayette Street and at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. The Public's mandate to create a theater for all New Yorkers continues to this day on stage and through its extensive outreach and education programs. Each year, over 250,000 people attend Public Theater-related productions and events at six downtown stages, including Joe's Pub, and Shakespeare in the Park. The Public has won 40 Tony Awards, 141 Obies, 39 Drama Desk Awards and 4 Pulitzer Prizes.
2009 Emerging Writers Group application guidelines will be available as of spring 2008. Check PublicTheater. org/artists/ emergingwriters.php regularly for details on applying for the next cycle of this program.

New Convert to the CHURCH of Young Jean Lee

2008-01-18T13:16:00.000-08:00

Saw and loved Young Jean Lee's Church last night at the Public Theater's Under the Radar series.

This interesting play starts with a long sermon, delivered in the darkness, that brilliantly dissects modern unhappiness. It is social commentary with almost mathematical purity and insightfulness. From there we enter into a bizarre church service that is at times heartfelt and full of genuine joy and spiritual connection, and also occasionally a snarky, aggressive indictment of pretentious righteousness.

The genius of the piece is that you never quite know how you are supposed to react. There are a few clear moments where you are obviously expected to laugh at the church pastors, but then there are also moments they make you desperately want to believe, join in, and evangelize. So you end up with a multi-layered experience. You feel partly superior and partly astonished.

The writing throughout is lovely, with an emphasis on self-editor free story monologues that were very evokative of the church experience. Hope some of you can catch it if you haven't seen it already.

Hauntingly Lovely WIDOWS by Ariel Dorfman from Reverie Productions

2008-01-17T10:24:00.000-08:00

I attended Reverie Production's benefit performance of Ariel Dorfman's Widows at the 59 E 59 last night. Reverie is presenting the New York premiere, which is pretty cool.

This is an interesting script that has had a longer than usual development cycle according to my web research (it started as a poem, became a novel, and has gone through several drafts as a play script, including one collaboration draft with Tony Kushner).

The story concerns the plight of a group of women in a small Chilean village. The village men have disappeared and are feared dead. The captain of the occupying army wrestles with the question of whether to deal ethically with the women's requests for news of their husbands or to surpress their potentially violent demands for justice ruthlessly. An elderly woman summons dead bodies of faceless men from the river and has her own internal struggles around the cost of staying silent in the face of injustice.

The play has the smooth, moral purity of Brecht's Mother Courage and the epic and poetic feel of Lorca's House of Bernarda Alba. I enjoyed it quite a bit. The lead performance by Ching Valdes-Aran as Sofia Fuentes has utterly magical. There are not many actresses around who could make Sofia's moral journey so profoundly moving and deeply stirring. On the surface, this is a bulldozer of a character who starts the play righteous and ends the play tragically righteous-- but Valdes-Aran showed me the personal cost and fear at every step of Sofia's crusade for closure. Actor Mark Alhadeff pulls off a similarly satisfying journey as The Captain, the military leader who honestly tries to salvage a bad situation for most of the play and then loses his soul to monstrous compromises and devious manipulations.

Due to the closeness of the room the benefit was held in, I got caught for a moment or two in a close three-person conversation with Ching Valdes-Aran and Ariel Dorfman! That is my celebrity encounter for the week or perhaps the year (decade?). I didn't contribute anything beyond some polite smiles and a muttered "lovely" while they asked each other how the process was going. Cool, cool, cool.

Also got to catch up with playwright Amlin Gray. He is starting up a Latin American Drama class at Sarah Lawrence this next semester (he teaches there) and was getting in some last minute research. He is delightfully nice.

Tonight I am going to see Young Jean Lee's Church at the Under the Radar Festival at The Public. And will round off the week with Chad Beckim's The Main(e) Play at Theater Row on Friday.

Congratulations, Adam Szymkowicz!

2008-01-16T07:37:00.000-08:00

Playwright Adam Szymkowicz is celebrating his new commission from South Coast Repertory!

They couldn't spend their money any better.

New Cockfighters Scene

2008-01-16T07:26:00.000-08:00

Okay, if you haven't read Cockfighters, this new material has spoilers. So, stop now!

For those of you who are familiar with Cockfighters, I tweaked the lines Clarence has while he is holding Shirl's body last week. This section of the play has been a disaster area since the play premiered in Orange County (2002?). I don't know that I can fully plant a flag and declare victory. But, I like this version better.

I will pick it up with the monologue from RYE that prefaces the Clarence/Shirl part. Seriously, this is a spoiler if you haven't read the play!

*********************

RYE: She started screaming at me in the truck. And she started cursing me out. I guess I got mad. Then she grabbed the wheel and drove us into a ditch. I hit her in the jaw with my fist. She opened the passenger door and tried to crawl out of the truck. But I grabbed her around the waist and we both fell to the mud. I landed on top of her and the breath got knocked out of her. She was flailing around with her legs, trying to get them under her I guess. She was trying to stand up. And she kneed me. I guess that is what happened. I saw red and got even madder. I don’t know why now. I don’t know what made me so mad. I couldn’t think about who she was. I didn’t really know it was Shirl, I guess. There was a beer bottle on the floor of the truck and it rolled out when we fell through the door. Shirl was screaming and crying. So I picked up the beer bottle, and I just swung it. Not to hurt her. Just to make her be quiet for a minute.

I don’t remember the rest. I guess I kept hitting her, because the next thing I remember, I was laying on top of her—her soft little body—and her T-shirt was soaked in blood. Her face was all cut to pieces. But her eyes were open and I could see her breath puffing out in little clouds. It was like she was waiting on me to look at her one last time before she passed on. To stop hitting her and look at her. Her eyes met mine, and they had the most glorious look to them. Soft and shining and loving. I don’t know whether she was getting her first glimpse of God or seeing me and saying goodbye. I reckon it was God’s face she was seeing, because I don’t deserve a look like that. Then she just stopped breathing and a little while later her eyes got all cold and quiet. I passed out after that. Must have been out an hour or so.

Then Uncle Hump pulled up in his squad car. And he said he’d take care of it. And I guess he moved her into the ditch. Some how she got moved down there. I guess Uncle Hump did that.

(Light shift. The whole stage is lit. CLARENCE lifts SHIRL’s body out of the truck and carries her near the pit. Her blood runs down his clothes.)

CLARENCE: Shirl? Shirl! Are you sleeping? Wake up, Shirl. We gotta’ get home. Come on and wake up and we’ll go home. He’s sleeping back there by the truck. He won’t care.

CD: And you just drove off and left her there?

RYE: Yeah. Yeah, we did.

(CD points the gun at RYE.)

CLARENCE: We better get home. If Mama knows you snuck out she’s going to be up at her bible reading. Reading her Ephesians. Reading her Nehemiah. Reading her Judges and the Lamentations. . . . . Wake up, Shirl.

(CLARENCE lowers SHIRL to the ground and brushes her hair out of her face.)

CLARENCE: Pull your hair back from your pretty little . . . Oh, Shirl. Shirl? Did he bleed you?

(CLARENCE licks at her blood where it stains his hands.)

TAMMY: Now, CD. Be reasonable, now. We are going home. Come on. Let’s go. CD. Come on.

CD: No.

CLARENCE: If he bled you, Shirl, he don’t know how to do it right. It got everywhere. There ain’t going to be enough for the bucket and the vinegar. You want me to hold Duke’s head down in a bucket of your blood? So he’ll be a good fighter? . . . Shirl? I’ll do it for you.

TAMMY: Now, CD. Now, CD.

CD: Get out of here. I don’t want you watching me.

CLARENCE: Trim his wattle, shave his comb, work him on that ping pong table ‘til he’s spry and mean! Make him a killer. I’ll put your blood in the bucket with Sparky’s, if that’s what you want. That way Duke goes down fighting for you, Shirl. Fighting tasting you. You taste like metal. Like when I cut my tongue running it over the boys gaffs. I like the way you taste.

(CLARENCE licks his fingers some more and then kisses SHIRL.)

*********************

Works a lot better than the crap that was in there before, at least. There is a link to the right where you can order the new Cockfighters book. I think the publihser is getting ISBN numbers on all the books right now. So there may be a hold up if you order the play now. He said he would get that sorted out in the next few weeks.

8 Little Antichrists Draft Gets a Reading

2008-01-15T14:11:00.000-08:00

Apologies for the Christmas shutdown here at Blindsquirrel Bloggings! Christmas always kicks my ass, and I had to finish the draft of 8 Little Antichrists for a Flux reading (held Sunday Jan 13th). Excuses, excuses, excuses.

I will do my utmost to be better. Hopefully, I can post some Christmas pictures from my holiday time in Texas later this week.

I officially have a first draft finished of ALL THREE PLAYS IN THE ANGEL EATER TRILOGY! Hooray! That is the good news. The bad news is that Angel Eaters and 8 Little Antichrists need some big rewrites. Rattlers needs some smaller rewrites. And from my Cockfighters trilogy (btw, the producers hate it when I call it that, and if anyone has a suggestion for a better trilogy name, please speak up!) Godsbreath also needs a desperate rewrite, with Tumblewings also needing a moderate rewrite. So I am in rewrite purgatory for the foreseeable future.

I rewrote a section of Cockfighters (Clarence's monologue over Shirl's body) last week. It felt very strange to re-work a play that old. Like having lunch with old high school or college friends and picking back up on those almost-forgotten personal dynamics. Will post the re-written section later this week for anyone who is familiar with that play and curious.

Flux Theatre Ensemble held an informal reading of 8 Little Antichrists on Sunday for company members-only. I was dreading it, because I know a the script isn't where I want it yet. But, Flux proved once again that their ensemble could cold read the phone book and make it look fantastic. I left with a smile on my face and a heart full of optimism for the future of my most ambitious play yet. Gus Schulenburg suggests I could turn the plot of this one into a sextology (which sounds very dirty) .

Recommended shows I've seen recently include: August: Osage County (brilliant second act!), and Reggie Watts' Disinformation at the Public's Under the Radar Festival.

August: Osage County features a character named Johnna, btw. That was irritating. Every five minutes the cast members were screaming my name. And she is the maid, which meant I kept feeling like I should get up from my seat and fetch things for them when they ordered her around. Also, they all speak in Oklahoma dialects. My mother is from Oklahoma, so it also felt like my mother was screaming orders at me from the grave. Despite all this, it is one of the best things I have seen this year and I heartily recommend it.

Washington Post Survey Tells Me I am an Edwards Supporter! Huh, not what I thought.

2007-12-07T07:40:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post has a blind candidate survey up where you take a 25 question quiz, picking the candidate response to policy questions that you most agree with, and they tell you at the end which candidate you supported the most.

I was stunned to find that out of a possible 100 points, I got 31 points for John Edwards, 27 points for Bill Richardson (who I didn't really even remember was running), 19 points for Obama, 13 points for Clinton, and 12 points for Dodd.

Now, on many of the issues, the responses were all the same and you had to select based on wording. So, it may just really be that I have a deep affinitiy for John Edwards' speechwriter or something. But it is a fascinating quiz. I may take it again, there is an option where you can take it with the candidate names showing I think, and see where I disagree with everyone. Also be interesting to take the Republican quiz.

Thanks to my friend Alison Y for emailing this to me.

Eric Eberwein in Scene4.com this month

2007-12-06T11:01:00.000-08:00

Go read my friend Eric Eberwein's play "My Perfect Face" at www.scene4.com this month! Eric rocks.

Fanfic Plays Inspired by Boing Boing Post

2007-11-30T08:53:00.000-08:00

Boing Boing has a recent post up about Southwest Air's profile of some internet Fanfic writings.

I definitely want to employ my extensive internet sleuthing skills to find the "novel-length story that brought characters and plots from Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series to the setting of Harry Potter." That sounds like genius!!

And in the spirit of cool fanfic melds, I have decided to share the plots of the top ten fanfic plays I want to write before I die.

10. The cast of 21 Jump Street is stranded in the Land of the Lost world, where the LOTL kids (Will and Holly) have massive drug problems. Kirk and Spock from Star Trek (engaged in a torrid homosexual affair) beam down and they all try desperately to get the kids off neolithic heroin. The Peter DeLuise character (Penhall) gets eaten by the T-Rex.

9. Alice's diner meets the plots of Jacqueline Lichtenberg's Sime/Gen sci fi/fantasy novels. The diner survives a nuclear holocaust and then Mel and Flo sprout tentacles from their forearms and chase Vera and Alice around the diner, desperate for their "Gen Juice."

8. Epic trilogy using the ensemble from the sitcom "Amen," where they are all cult members instead of decent church-goers. And someone is carrying an alien parasite that they must find and destroy before it devours them all.

7. Complete re-do of the Bionic Woman, set in 14th century Europe, where the Bionic Woman is a golem animated by an alchemist and hunting and killing crusaders.

6. The 7nth Heaven family re-envisioned as the Lost in Space Family. With Hannibal Lecter as the Dr. Zachary Smith stowaway character and the ship is run by Hal from 2001. Boy, are they in trouble, now.

5. The casts of Battlestar Gallactica (old and new series) find the Deep Space Nine Station, Miles
Vorkosigan from Lois McMaster Bujold’s on-going opera novels is on the station searching for his clone twin, through a time warp thingie all the Star Wars characters show up from all movies, the line marriage members from Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress show up and bring Spock into their marriage, Darth Vader attacks the station, C3Po and R2D2 arrive and build Robby the Robot as a droid sex toy, and then Ming the Merciless arrives-defeats Darth Vader-and turns the station into a casino. Part of a science fiction trilogy with the previous play. All to be performed by two actors who play every role.

4. Complete rip-off of the world created in Esther Friesner’s Psalms of Herod combined with the cast and environs of the TV series Happy Days. The Fonz kills Mr. Cunningham to take over his marriage to Mrs. Cunningham and winnows out (kills) Ritchie, Ralph and the other guy. Also
brings Joanie and Leather Tuscadero into his alpha marriage. Mork from Mork and Mindy shows up and morphs into one of the aliens from Alien. Ends in a big bloodbath as these things generally do. Third play in the sci fi fanfic trilogy.

3. The Eight is Enough cast as a persecuted Mormon family around 1870 when the Morel Act is passed in Congress in an attempt to abolish polygamy. The Big Love cast shows up in a covered wagon and the girls from the EiE family are gradually seduced into becoming Big Love wives. We see excerpts from the writings of the youngest EiE son, who is dramatizing stories from Orson
Scott Card’s The Folk of the Fringe collection. We discover a long, lost EiE sibling who has been locked in a closet his whole life. This one will be a musical for criminally insane children.

2. The Falcon Crest Channing/Gioberti and the Dynasty Carrington families are engaged in a bloody feud for control of the Channing/Gioberti vineyards. Murder rape, infanticide--
these people will stop at nothing in their mad quest for wine monopoly! The women in the cast will all be wearing dresses designed by members of the audience, who compete in Project Runway-style audience-participation segments to design and build formal evening gowns with thrift store clothes and bedazzlers.

1. Willy Wonka is running the cathouse from Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Only the whorehouse is in Narnia. Customers who find a golden ticket in their prostitute get to journey through a magic wardrobe and end up building a free love commune in Walnut Grove next to the Laura Ingall’s family from Little House on the Prairie. This a sex education play meant to tour
elementary schools.

Okay, now you entertain me with fanfic plays you will write. That is what the comments field is for. Go on.

Flux Theatre Ensemble's 2008 Season!

2007-11-30T06:53:00.000-08:00

Guess who has a trilogy of plays premiering in New York next Fall? Read on to find out.

Flux Theatre Ensemble is pleased to announce our 2008 season! We begin in the spring with Shakespeare's classic comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream, followed in the summer by August Schulenburg's haunting tragedy, Other Bodies, and finish in the fall with Johnna Adams' divinely wild Angel Eaters trilogy.
Why these plays? Because they all wrestle in their own unique way with the mystery of how life transforms the body.Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is rightfully considered one of his most warm and humorous plays, but it is also a subtly troubling exploration of the instability of our bodies. The characters find their hearts and bodies transformed against their will, and though in the end Jack will have Jill, no one walks away from this bottomless dream unchanged.

The warm-hearted vision of Midsummer becomes a fever dream in August Schulenburg's Other Bodies. The playwright of last year's FringeNYC Village Voice Audience Favorite, Riding the Bull, returns with the story of Terry, a notorious player whose pursuit of a mysterious woman leads to obsession and violence. What begins as a seductive battle of the sexes deepens into a haunting
parable of the way our bodies betray us.

While Midsummer blurs the line between man and animal, and Other Bodies charts the distance between woman and man, Johnna Adams' Angel Eaters expands into more celestial transformations. Flux will develop this trilogy as it follows a family cursed through generations with the gift of raising the dead. The borders of Heaven and Hell are transgressed as demons masquerade as angels, angels pursue their own uncertain agendas, and even the sweetest mortals grow horns.
Join us in 2008 as Flux journeys through these deeply human and uniquely theatrical plays of transformation.

That Cockfighters Trilogy Report and a Rattlers Reading

2007-11-26T12:50:00.001-08:00

Sorry I have been out of touch! It was the holiday monster that swallowed me whole. My parents came to visit for Thanksgiving, so I have been busy getting ready and then hosting them the last couple of weeks. Sanity has resumed.

I left off promising to write about the reading of my three plays Cockfighters, Tumblewings, and Godsbreath in Los Angeles on Nov 11th. Here goes:

It went extremely well. The readings were held at the old Evidence Room main performance space-- in the new Bootleg Theare. We read straight through all three plays with breaks for snacks and lunch.

Cockfighters featured stand out performances from: Paul Dillon, the original Killer Joe in Tracy Letts' Killer Joe (DWIGHT); amazing local regional actor Hugo Armstrong (CD); playwright Ann Noble, who acts as well as she writes, (TAMMY); and Westley Thornton one of my favorite and most missed LA actors (perfectly cast as CLARENCE). Hugo was my marathon actor, appearing in all three of the plays (CD, BUCK/JACOB, CD)-- he was an amazing Buck in Tumblewings! Jessica Hanna was brilliant as his wife and sparring partner RANETTA, and I was delighted to see Mike Genovese reprsie the beautiful work he did in a reading last year as COY. Godsbreath had a troubled second act, I discovered (that is where I will be focusing the rewrites) but Paul Dillon's astonishing work as HEP kept the play afloat even over troubled waters. And it was great to see Corryn Cummings reprise the role of LOGAN, which read in a Moving Arts reading earlier this year.

Rewrites will focus on Tumblewings (tweaks) and Godsbreath (overhaul of ACT II). Cockfighters held up pretty well. Still don't feel like I have nailed CLARENCE's monologue to SHIRL's body-- so I may do some tweaking there.

Big thanks to the producers, Jessica Hanna, Mike Dunn, Darin Anthony, and Danny F. It was a big undertaking and offered nice munchies and lunch for people. The day didn't really feel long until we hit Godsbreath's second act. That is much better than I expected! Will keep you posted as the work progresses on this one. The ball is in my court to get rewrites done.

Then, since seeing three of my plays read in a week is clearly not enough for me, I got to see Flux Theatre in New York do a table readng of my new play Rattlers on Sunday Nov 18th. The ensemble members took turns reading the roles and we all had a great time. I don't think anyone had read the script in advance (maybe Gus had) so it was great to see what everyone thought about how the story unfolded. There are clearly some tweaks to be made, but I think overall the script is pretty solid.

That is probably more than you are interested in knowing about how things went, so I will stop there. I got to see Chuck Mee's Queens Boulevard while my parents were in town and will try to blog about that soon.

Don't Drop Your Work Laptop

2007-11-19T13:01:00.000-08:00

Don't drop your work laptop on the hardwood floor in your bedroom like I did on Saturday night.

The IT guy at work said it will take them 2 weeks or so to "figure out who will pay" to retrieve my hard drive data off the now very broken computer.

And no one will touch it or attempt to work on the computer until they receive confirmation of which department will pay. Until then they just hold the broken machine hostage in their storage cabinet. Like extortionists.

I asked if we could just agree that the department I work for would pay, and they said it is not that simple. Oh. Okay.

I am limping along on a loaner computer. Also, they told me that since the laptop is leased, I can't expect a new one. They will find out who will pay for repairs after they find out who will pay for data retrieval and then return the mended, busted-up laptop to me in the distant future. Probably with duct tape over the busted place, I guess.

Oh, the unhappiness.

12th Night of the Living Dead and 'Nami in Los Angeles

2007-11-13T12:10:00.000-08:00

I caught the Impetuous Theater's 12th Night of the Living Dead on Friday. I am not sure I have ever seen a more delightful show. The concept of taking Shakespeare's 12th Night and adapting it to zombie fare is flat-out brilliant. The premise is that Sebastian and Viola's ship sinks because it is hit by a green, shiny, radioactive meteorite that turns all onboard into the undead.

So, Viola washes up on the beach already a zombie and the plot proceeds from there. Lindsey Wolf manages to almost steal the show doing nothing but zombie moans in all her Viola scenes. I thought Benjamin Ellis Fine's Sir Andrew Aguecheek was particularly demented and delightful, as well. Not to take anything away from any of the cast members in this, who are all wonderously entertaining. There is not a rotten zombie in the bunch.

Brian MacInnis Smallwood's adaptation deserves to be produced in mutliple cities, countries, and continents, and can't be praised highly enough. It is astonishing how well the original Shakespeare plays lends itself to a zomibe transformation. It is especially entertaining if you know the play backwards and forwards to see how Smallwood shapes it around the new premise.

And John Hurley's direction could not be improved upon. Highlights include: Lindsey Wolf and Erin Jerozal (as Maria), snacking happily on Timothy J. Cox's bowels (as the disemboweled Sir Toby Belch) while Benjamin Ellis Fine works up the courage to challenge Viola to a duel, Viola biting Shashanah Newman's (Olivia's) finger off instead of taking the ring, and the eerie delight of seeing the sister Olivia is mourning (Reyna de Courcy) crawl from her grave and chase her sister around town.

I wish it were extending so I could see it again!

Then on Saturday, I flew to Los Angeles to see the Bootleg Theater reading of my trilogy of plays (Cockfighters, Tumblewings, Godsbreath) held on Sunday. I had enough time when I got in on Saturday to go see Range View Productions version of Chad Beckim's 'Nami. I liked this script a lot and the performances by Aissatou Diallo as Keesha and Hector Hank as Roachie were particularly strong. The story is very haunting and frightening. It is a show where you know tragedy is looming, but I was surprised at the resolution. It was great to see a sharp, young New York writer produced on such a beautiful set at the Hayworth in Los Angeles.

Will give the trilogy reading at Bootleg its own blog entry. Am not sure I will get to it this afternoon, though, and I am out of town tomorrow and Thursday for work, so you may have to be patient. You can read my friend The Misanthrope's take on the Cockfighters reading on the trilogy day on his Toner Mishap blog here. In short, it went extremely well and I am so glad I went and got to see everyone!

Szymkowicz/Szymkowicz, Schulenburg and Stephanie Walker Plays

2007-11-09T14:28:00.000-08:00

Decided to go ahead and kill some time before I head downtown to see 12th Night of the Living Dead by blogging all the readings I caught this week.

In addition to 12th Night tonight, I am planning on going from LAX to the Hayworth Theater in Los Angeles for Chad Beckim's 'Nami tomorrow night. So I will have those to write about in addition to my trilogy reading next week. That is too much to reasonably write about. Especially since next week involves a possible Hank III concert, if I have the energy, and a trip to Boston for work, followed by Tracy Letts' August: Osage County on Saturday the 17th. This is no time to fall behind in my obsessive chronicling of my theater outings.

On Monday, November 5th I got to see two of Adam Szymkowicz's plays read in two different locations. First, I saw Herbie: Poet of the Wild West read as part of the on-going New York Library of the Performing Arts' A Rose by Any Other Name: Adaptations of Shakespeare series. My friend Kay is a librarian and had attended the dance piece based on Romeo & Juliet in this festival and saw Adam's name on the up-coming events list and alerted me to the reading. So, I met her at the NY Performing Arts Library next to the Lincoln Center (boy, the construction they have going on there is annoying!). Playwright Mark Schultz (whose play Deathbed should be opening in January and will doubtless be a must see) was there and I chatted to him before the play started about what we are both up to writing-wise and how crappy those Left Behind books are from a theological and doctrinal perspective (yeah, I don't know how we got off on that, except we were talking about Bridget Carpenter's The Faculty Room that I saw at Wooly Mammoth where Mark was just produced and that has the rapture in it) Mark apparently called into a talk show once and argued with one of the writers of the Left Behind books about how crap and illegit the whole premise was which I find deeply impressive.

Herbie: The Poet of the Wild West was a delightful riff off Hamlet. With Siamese twins standing in for Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, a performing bear, a disgruntled lesbian cowgirl, copious shoot 'em up quick draw killings, a desperately ugly saloon girl, and a deliciously whiny poet gunslinger hero. I thought the script was very funny and engaging. The audience was kind of a dull collection of souls, all thinking about the work they'd just left and were going back to on Tuesday. I didn't think much of the audience. I didn't stay for the talkback, but Adam said they were extremely quiet afterward, too. Sigh. The idea of having Herbie/Hamet be a poet, was especially inspired, I thought. Then he could wander around the desert reciting his poetry to himself in place of soliloquies. Inspired. The cast was divine. I have (true to form) misplaced the program and so can only say: Amelia/Bear Handler actress, you are a gfit from the gods and a comic genius. Ugly Betty actress, I am in awe. I bought that you were ugly and I laughed at the fact that you were ugly and I am sort of disappointed that you are not in fact ugly, because you convinced me you would be so charming as a horrifically ugly person. I don't know how you did it.

Then I skipped out of that reading and headed over to the first Flux Theatre Ensemble bar reading series at Jimmys 40. This was packed to the gills and I had to stand at the back of the room and watch the last two thirds of Gus Schulenburg's play Angel Juice. This is an adorable supernatural comedy. I caught enough to see knock performances from Candice Holdorf and Marnie Schulenburg. The bar series is going to be an ongoing series featuring the best of the Flux Sunday writers' meeting performance in a public format. Adam's Open Minds had a reading after Gus' play. I loved Open Minds, which is a fantastic political thriller/comedy. Also great performances from the Flux Ensemble.

Interestingly, as Adam has mentioned on his blog, both Herbie and Open Minds featured a leading character named Herbie and some similar lines from controling mothers. I love it when writers repeat images like that in their work. I think there is a great tradition in the visual arts (think Monet's haystacks) of an artist using recurrent images in his/her work (Cahlo's self portrait), but it isn't something that is done in quite the same way by playwrights. But in subtle ways, it is done-- thematically, with lines, with sets, with design features, etc. Matt Freeman talked some about this in a self-mocking way in his pretentious theater show when he interviewed himself about his own writing and recurrent auto-biographical themes. While these elements are analyzed in very successful playwright's work (Parks' recurring Abe Lincoln impersonators), no one ever pays any attention when beginning or mid-career playwrights start to work with recurring images. And that is when the phenomenon is at its most interesting because it is just happening.

Then on Tuesday night, I took in Oberon Theatre Ensemble's reading of my friend LA playwright Stephanie Walker's Something of Great Importance. That went over very well and featured some adorable performers. Stephanie seemed pleased and it was great to see a play I'd seen in my writers' group meetings in LA on stage in NY.

Off to see the Shakespeare zombies now. Will report back on how the trilogy reading goes next week.

Sneak Peak Rattlers

2007-11-09T14:03:00.000-08:00

I am flying off to LA tomorrow to see my trilogy reading on Sunday, and I thought I would leave you with a teaser from Rattlers. A monologue and some stage directions toward the end of scene 3. I will blog some recent NY readings I've been to and more than you want to know about my trilogy reading next week!

MATTIE
I was on a bus to Natchitoches one time. . . . Would have
been before you was even born. It was before my girls was
born. . . . And there was a group of slow children on the
bus. They was traveling with a Sunday School teacher, I
think. Or, maybe they was moving these slow children from a
group home into some church home. Some institution. I don’t
remember. . . . But there was this one little girl with these
white, yellow pigtails. Just the brightest little smile you
ever saw. You could tell by her face that she was slow. She
had that look. . . . And she had a book with pictures of
angels in it. And she kept wanting to show me her book. And
she was calling all those angels by the names of birds. “See
pigeon?” She’d say to me and then point to a picture of the
Archangel Michael. Gabriel with his horn was a blue jay. The
whole heavenly host arrayed in the clouds welcoming Jesus’
ascension to heaven was sparrows and hawks, she said. I must
have looked through that book with her a hundred times on
that trip to Natchitoches. “See the pigeon?” “See the
eagles?” You could see how proud she was of herself. How
proud she was of knowing names. I got to Natchitoches to my
aunt’s house. And my aunt was a big Church of Christ woman
and she told me I should have corrected that little slow
girl. I shouldn’t have let her get off that bus not knowing
the right names of the Lord’s angels. I shouldn’t have let
her believe that they was nothing but birds. But, I couldn’t
have done that. Not to that little girl. She loved them
angels better for being birds. I hope nobody ever told her. .
. . There’s something fragile like that inside us. Everybody.

SHANE kisses her.

MATTIE grabs him roughly by the
shoulders and pulls him to the ground.
She takes control of the kiss and rips
his shirt open, scattering buttons on
the asphalt.

Columbia Journalism Review Quotes My Blog

2007-11-05T13:02:00.000-08:00

A reporter for the Columbia Journalism Review quoted my blog about the steam pipe explosion that happened near my office in July. I had no idea and just found out by self-obsessive googling.

Apparently to serious journalists, I am a.k.a BlindSquirrel. Keep that on your list of my known aliases, okay? In case I try to use it for criminal activity or become a superhero. I may also answer to "Citizen Journalist" another cool title the article bestows on me and my fellow crisis bloggers.

My quote:

Others captured the event in words. Johnna Adams, a.k.a. “BlindSquirrel,” described the initial confusion on the ground: “The streets were packed with people and no one knew what had happened. I heard that a building had come down and that an electrical turbine had exploded—but nobody knew anything. I walked passed one delivery truck that was blaring its radio for everyone to hear, all I was able to hear as I walked passed was ‘people are running from the building.’ Which was not encouraging.”

Baby Rattlers on the Loose!

2007-11-05T12:17:00.000-08:00

As of around 11pm last night, I am the proud parent of a lean, mean 93-page rattlesnake play called, RATTLERS.

The play is a muder mystery with supernatural elements, continuing the multi-generational saga begun in my play ANGEL EATERS, and concerning a family cursed with the power to eat the goodness off a dead body and unnaturally reanimate the corpse.

Osley, our second generation angel eater, is kidnapped by a rattlesnake wrangler in rural Okalhoma named Snake. Snake's girlfriend Ernelle wants Osley to resurrect her recently murdered sister Kate. Kate and Ernelle's mother Mattie is seeking a brutal revenge for the crime, while Kate's husband Everett encounters a distraught and secretive undertaker in the funeral parlor parking lot, Ted. A dark tale of murder and retribution where it isn't easy to tell who is a rattler and who is prey.

This is a thematically similar play to my play Cockfighters, for those of you who liked that one.

This is the second play of my Angel Eaters Trilogy. In December, I will have exciting news about how East Coasters can see the entire trilogy next year.

As always, I am delighted to have you read and comment if anyone is interested in seeing the script.

Invitations to my Cockfighters Trilogy in Los Angeles

2007-11-02T11:48:00.000-07:00

Hello Los Angeles / Orange County Friends!

I am coming back to town for one weekend only! For a special appearance at a reading of my Cockfighters Trilogy (name may change) on SUNDAY NOVEMBER 11. We will be reading my plays COCKFIGHTERS, TUMBLEWINGS, and GODSBREATH all on the same day!

I will fly in Saturday and fly out Monday, so the best opportunity to see me and catch up is to come to the reading and/or dinner afterward with the producers and cast.

How do you come to the reading? Well, that is the tricky part. It is an invitation-only affair. The producers want it to be mainly a small-ish event with invited designers and potential collaborators. However, all of my friends, luckily, are amply qualified to be dramaturgical assistants to the playwright. Right? Is there anyone out there who wants to come and thinks they won't have an opinion about the plays? I didn't think so. Presto, you are my special dramaturgical assistance unit (SDAU).

The time commitment is roughly 10:30 am to 7pm, with breaks of about an hour between the shows. You do not have to come to all three shows.

So, EMAIL ME or send me a myspace message if you want to come to the reading and you will get an email invitation from the producers next week.

If you just want to stop by and visit with me at the dinner after the show, let me know and I will send out the restaurant and time (it will be in LA, probably around Hollywood) next week.

Hope to see some of you soon!

The production photo above is Loring Rose and Brad Whitfield in the STAGEStheatre produciton of "Regrets" one of the one act plays Cockfighters is based on. The whole trilogy started with that play, which was an Orange County Playwrights' Alliance themed one act on the theme of 'revenge.'

Beckim's THE MAIN(E) PLAY Reading and Another Cousin's Married Now

2007-11-02T10:43:00.000-07:00

Took in Chad Beckim's reading at Partial Comfort Production's Welcome Mat series of his new work, THE MAIN(E) PLAY, on Monday. Over at Theatre Row.

One of the LIGHTS RISE ON GRACE actors was in the reading, Alexander Alioto. He did another outstanding job here. His co-stars from the Fringe Fest production were in the audience watching him. That was cool. I loved LIGHTS RISE ON GRACE and it was like getting to sneak looks at famous people everytime I looked over to watch the actors watching the reading.

The play is a delightful, comic character study about a family in Maine over a tumultous Thanksgiving weekend. I enjoyed it, particularly, the character of Roy as played by the outstanding David Wilson Barnes. His scenes with Alexander Alioto were the heart of the play for me and quite gripping. Looking forward to seeing what happens next with the script.

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Also went to Dallas last weekend for my cousin's wedding. It was surprisingly painless for a family wedding. I applaud myself for the brilliant decision to get a hotel room of my own and not try to share with any members of my family. That makes things so much less painful.

I bought my outfit in Astoria, about an hour before I left for the airport. The nice Greek Orthodox ladies working at the closest store to my house with evening dresses sold me a rather sparkly gold number with sequins around the low-for-me bodice. It was also, helpfully, a size or so too small. I felt like a Vienna sausage rolled in a bag of glitter. And I am not sure the Presbyterian, Dallas, TX, church knew quite what to make of my Greek Orthodox-inspired getup. It was very fancy. No one else was wearing that dress. Ah, the joys of the last minute shopper! I forgot my camera. If someone emails me photos I will post.

My Dad surprised me by having a fabulous time. It was a wedding for a cousin on my biological mother's side (my mom died when I was 8) and Dad was a little surprised to be invited, with my stepmom. He hadn't seen anyone there in 25 years or so, and the last time was at funerals and hospital scenes he has spent a lifetime trying to forget. But, he started bubble-blowing wars at the reception table, tormented one of my cousins about some episode involving a CB radio and a highway patrol man that my cousin clearly wanted forgot, giggled and gossiped with one of my uncles, teased everyone mercilessly, made everyone laugh. Dad has a life-of-the-party sense of humor and energy that is sort of unpredictable. I forget sometimes what a joy he can be to be around. And everyone loved my stepmom. That was nice. It was short. Not much else you can ask for in a family wedding.

1001 Reasons to See 1001

2007-10-29T09:19:00.000-07:00

Okay, I am not really going to type 1001 reasons to go see Jason Grote's 1001 from Page 73 Productions. That would hurt my fingers. So I will give you a top five list:

5. Costumes, costumes, costumes. How did they know how much I want to be a harem girl and like daydreaming about how I would dress if I were one? Lush, gorgeous and neato-snazzy threads on all the pretty actors.

4. The script is even better than the five page exercise Jason wrote in the Mac Wellman workshop I took with him where he adapted a Circuit City flyer to the stage. And that exercise had big screen TV's screaming obscenities at one another, so you can see how tough that is to beat! Seriously, I loved the way the script evolved in completely unexpected directions and opened effortlessly into deeper and deeper storylines-- there is something so natural and organic about it. It will stay with you a long time. You can't figure it all out sitting there, you have to work some of it out in your head on the walk home- and that is a marvelous achievement.

3. The floaty blue parachute.

2. The perception shift that happens about halfway through when you think you finally know what the hell is going on. Then all the other little perception shifts when you decide you were right, you weren't right, right again, well, maybe it's more like this and then 'ah ha!, I get it!' That's good writing.

1. Decapitations, amputations, royal proclamations, incestuous relations, nuclear annililations, geni-in-lamp infestations, sultanic sexual satiations, Jorge Luis Borges dissertations, the plight of Arab nations, and Jewish-Palestinian reconciliations generate elations, intellectual masturbations, and audience excitations!

So go see it. You can get ticket info here.

What you missed at the New York Theater Review fundraiser!

2007-10-23T11:25:00.000-07:00

Caught the New York Theater Review Fundraiser last night, held at P.S.122. It was spectacular fun.

The New York Theater Review is published by one-time orange County journalist Brook Stowe. They have published buddy playwrights Gus Schulenburg and Adam Szymkowicz work and luminaries like Sheila Callaghan, Quiara Alegria Hudes, and Anne Washburn, et al. I recommend the publication highly. I actually have several copies because I bought two and then keep winning copies in raffles everytime I go to a NYTR event. Last night was no exception. I have a new copy autographed by Adam Szymkowicz, Brook Stowe, and Anne Washburn that I have promised to Eric Eberwein as a belated birthday gift.

The fundraiser was jam-packed with exciting entertainment. My favorites included the astonishingly gifted and exciting soundscape artist Reggie Watts. He is going to be doing a performance at this year's Under the Radar festival at The Public this winter called Disinformation and I am so there. I could listen to him for hours. He does a sort of free-flow storytelling, beat-boxing, fluid sound motion improvizations using electronic looping technologies and microphones. I hate performance art and this had me spellbound.

Also loved the performance by The Rising Fallen, a group of "punk-tinged neo-post-indie-sludge-sladge musical" genius-people. This is a theater troupe that pretends to be an astonishingly weird band and delivers monologues and kicking bizarre music as part of a faux concert. Reminded me heavily of the confounding Skinny Puppy concert a friend dragged me too circa 1990 in Austin, only funnier and less obviously manufactured. They had the brilliant idea to purposefully burn multiple slices of toast in a toaster propped up center stage to create a low-rent smoke machine. That is an idea that stays with you. Especially when, as Brook commented to me at the end of the evening, the entire audience is sure to go home smelling strongly of burnt toast. I am still not sure I have gotten the smell out of my jacket. And I like that.

There were also six short plays commissioned on the idea "what was Suzan-Lori Parks doing and thinking on days 0 and days 366 of the 365 Days/365 Plays project?" These were adorable and presented by exciting up and coming theater troops: Direct Arts, Blue Box Productions, The New York Neo-Futurists, Flux Theatre, The Shalimar, and Hoi Polloi. All or most of the companies are producing some of the 365 Days/365 Plays Project productions and were excited to do their own original take-offs. Most successful for me included Flux's awesome three-part God trinity (Cotton Wright, Tiffany Clementi, and Marnie Schulenburg) in The Alpha and the Suzan. They sang all their lines in knock-out three-part harmony (music by Isaiah Tannenbaum, I believe, and lyrics August Schulenburg). Lovely voices and pretty choreography from director Heidi Handlesman. Hoi Polloi's The Sound of Whales - A Songed Response to Suzan-Lori Parks" by Alec Duffy was also hysterically funny. They get the award for best costume design as well for their wacky rain/beach attire. And The New York Neo-Futurists really blew me away with Some Days, Days in May, Are Slightly Better Than Others (Day 182.5). This play was a delightful crazy safari ride of going-nowhere dialogue and stultifying stage stunts that somehow left me desperate for more. It was written by Rob Neill and featured Eevin Hartsough who played Shirl in my 2003(?) production of Cockfighters at Oberon Theater Ensemble. it was cool getting to catch up with her after the show.

Also, I accosted blogger Matt Freeman in the lobby and forced him and Adam Szymkowicz to pal around with me. Matt had the bad taste to be wearing the same plaid shirt as another fundraiser attendee and was mortified (fashion plate that he is) to be thought of as unoriginal. But he was gracious about it, explaining that it was really his girlfriend's fault for her uninspired shopping. I probably shouldn't talk smack about him since I told him my real age (ancient) and he is the sort to use ammunition like that, but he makes such a convenient target. ;-)

Planning to go see Jason Grote's 1001, Kristen Palmer's Departures, drag my unwilling ass to yet another cousin's goddamned wedding, and see Oberon Theater Ensemble's reading of my friend, LA-playwright Stephanie Walker's play in the next few weeks.

Also have exciting news about ways that people on both the East and West Coast can see a trilogy of full length plays by Johnna Adams in the near future. More info when I have been released from certain vows of silence.

Iphigenia 2.0 and Guitar Master Les Paul

2007-10-23T09:57:00.000-07:00

Quick notes on my two most interesting outings in the city last week. I took in Charles Mee's Iphigenia 2.0 at the Signature Theatre Friday before last and I saw 92-year old jazz guitarist Les Paul's ongoing Monday night show at the Iridium last Monday.

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Iphigenia 2.0 rocked my whole world. I was feeling pretty provincial and sad being the only person I know who did not like The Misanthrope at NYTW (bleeeeechhh! yeeeeek!). In fact, there was a little elderly woman at The Misanthrope who got up from her seat in the middle of a middle row in the theater and walked out huffily in the middle of the show-- and that woman has been my secret hero for the last few weeks. My role model and the person whose balls I most covet. I was so miserable. And I wondered if I had just spent too long in Orange County sucking at the SCR playwriting development breast and having my appreciation for avant-garde NY downtown theater eroded.

Then, Charles Mee made me feel good about myself again! He took the Iphigenia story (one of my favorite Greek tragedy sagas since I did a high school monologue from Agamemnon long ago) and tranformed it into a hugely relevant contemporary political drama/farce in which a president (a lot like Bush) is ordered by his troops and general to sacrifice his daughter (a lot like the blond Bush twin) to prove that he is willing himself to endure the sacrifice he is asking of his nation. His wife, Clytemnestra (nothing like Laura Bush-- way cooler as played by the astounding and gorgeously vicious Kate Mulgrew who I love almost as much as the woman who walked out at NYTW!) protests and vows vengeance. The produciton was lavish, full of music and dance, timely and timeless at the same time, spectacularly choreographed and brilliantly acted. I wish I had gone earlier in the run so that I could see it several times.

The text of the play is posted online by Charles Mee here. Agamemnon's opening monologue is worth a few reads, even if you don't have time/inclination to read the rest of the play. I subscribed to the rest of the Charles Mee series at the Signature and will be seeing his next play, Queens Boulevard in November.

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My friend Jordan, who is a travel writer for the AAA website, came into town last weekend and got us free press tickets to 92-year-old jazz guitar great Les Paul's ongoing show at the Iridium last Monday night (that is Les' pciture above, taken by Jordan). Normally it is a $45 ticket and a $15 drink/food minimum. We only had to pay for food. Here is the Iridium's calendar in case you want to go check it out.

I am the least musical person on the planet and I loved every second of this concert. Jordan had to explain to me several times who Les Paul is-- in case you don't know, he is the inventor of the electric guitar (although, I think the Leo Fender estate disputes that? One of my Fullerton buds should know). He also colloborated with just about everyone in the music business in the 40s and 50s.

The format of the show mimics an old-style musical variety show. Les has arthritis in his left hand, but still manages to pick out a fair riff with just two fingers. But he can't play all night, so he brings lots of guests on stage to come up and play with him. There was a great tap dancer, even better harmonica guy, some guitarists, and Richie Sambora (from Bon Jovi) who was just in the audience (he showed up shirtless underneath a black suit jacket, so one supposes he had some expectation of getting up and playing a song or two, despite some rather hammish demurring when he was first called on stage).

Les told great stories about Bing Crosby inviting him to record with him 'just after the war' and was really sharp. Made a lot of witty jokes that I liked. Every time a new musician joined him on stage he would put the fellow through a mild hazing period before letting him play: To the harmonica playing guy: "How are the subways treating you?" Apparently it is a deathly insult between muscians to be considered a subway performer. To the guitar player who arranged a microphone in front of his acoustic guitar "Oh, that's clever. That's a clever idea. That's why I invented the electric guitar, actually." To his attractive female bass player "You make me feel like a condemned building with a new flagpole."

Highly recommend this show. He is going strong for 92, but who knows how much longer Mondays will be this cool at the Iridium? He signs autographs afterward and chats briefly with the audience. Go to the 10pm show because he plays longer than at the 8pm. It would be a great gift outing for a beloved music buff, too.

Join me tonight at the NYTR fundraiser!

2007-10-22T08:13:00.000-07:00

I am going to head over to this fundraiser after work. It is going to be so, super fun. Why don't you meet me there?

From Brook Stowe:

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 .

Haircut Photos

2007-10-16T10:17:00.000-07:00

Hair today, gone tomorrow. Got a haircut in my Aunt Bonnie's salon in Maine on Saturday. That is not Aunt Bonnie doing the cut, but her friend Marie from Florida. Aunt Bonnie insisted Marie was the better stylist and made her do it. Apparently Marie cuts her granddaughters' hair and was considered to be the 'hipper' stylist as far as Aunt Bonnie was concerned. Marie has 8 great-grandchildren, btw. I find that very impressive. I thought she did a great job. I love the new 'do. I feel much lighter. And short hair is just as easy as everyone has always said it is.

Save the Environment One Blog at a Time

2007-10-15T12:30:00.000-07:00

Modern Fabulosity informs me that today all bloggers are supposed to devote a post to saving the environment.

I will perform my civic responsibility by directing you to a post on making recycled paper at home that I found on a stranger's blog:

http://consumption-rebellion.blogspot.com/2007/03/homemade-paper.html

May actually try this. It looks like fun.

Spent the weekend in Maine, visiting my aunt Bonnie. A friend of hers visiting from Florida gave me a haircut. I will post before and after pictures in the next couple of days. It is the first time I have had short hair since grade school. I like it. Also will post notes on some theater outings. Got my very first invitation to see a show free and write about it on my blog. That is cool. I feel very official now.

Catch Up Blog Post on What I am Doing Lately

2007-10-03T08:32:00.000-07:00

I have seen quite a few shows/readings lately and a movie. Thought I would try to do a brief paragraph on a variety of topics and call it a blog post.

Saw New York Theatre Workshop's production of The Misanthrope on Friday. Hated it. They called me yesterday trying to sell me a subscription based on "we are so glad you came to see The Misanthrope, and did you know that Mikhail Baryshnikov is starring in our next production of Samuel Beckett short plays, some of which have no dialogue?" I told the customer service rep that if I ever re-write Dante's Inferno, watching Mikhail Baryshnikov mime Beckett and sitting through The Misanthrope again will be two of the lower levels in my own personal hell. Okay, I didn't really. I thought of that line after I already hung up with the poor telemarketer. I just told him the Naomi Wallace play they have planned for later this season sounds good and to call me back when that is playing. I am a weenie and only clever on my blog. Not in person.

Playwright Chris Saunders and I went to the MCC reception for the new playwrights they are inducting into their development program on Sunday. Adam Szmykowicz, Ashlin Halfnight, Anton Dudley, Dan LeFranc, and Kathryn Walat are the inductees. They made them wear strange robes, stand inside a pentagram, and summon demons during the induction ceremony. Okay, not really. But, I'm going to do that when I start a playwriting development program. We watched ten minute plays and excerpts from their work and then there was free booze. Chris and I both realy liked Adam's play Snow and I adored the Anton Dudley ten minute play about the two Scottish boys. The actors were phenoms. Chris and I talked to Mark Schultz at the reception and I am planning on going to the next MCC playlab event, which will be a reading of Mark's new play.

****POSSIBLE SPOILERS****Saw the new Jose Rivera-penned movie Trade last night at the Angelika Film Center. This is a play about a young Mexican man who is trying to free his 13-year-old sister from a sex slave ring in a cross-country chase. I thought it was great-- but with a few minor quibbles. Mostly, the slave ring was being run by a bunch of idiots! I am just a sales manager with no personal experience in the global sex slavery trade-- but I walked out of that film convinced that I could run a better sex slave ring in my spare time than these bozos. For instance, I would know better than to ask the enforced sex slaves to give me their passports IN PUBLIC, IN THE AIRPORT. Where you might arouse suspicions. That can wait until we get them back to the evil lair, or at least into the car! And if I find that I need to give one of my underaged sex slaves a good beating-- I would know not to do this AT A PUBLIC REST STOP STANDING IN FRONT OF A LARGE CLIFF! No, no, no all of the Johnna Adams' Sex Slave Production Company slave beatings will happen in the goddamned van or somewhere else where we are not at risk of losing a high-quality sex slave to suicide and where we don't have to chase her to administer the beating. Incomprehensible to me that people could run a business this way. I think you were supposed to come out of the film with your heart breaking for the poor sexually abused children, but I have a highly developed sense of frustration with corporate inefficiencies that I had a hard time setting aside. Performances are really good. And when I wasn't frowning and wishing I could do some consulting work on improving enterprise risk performance for the slavers' ring, I found the story very engaging.

Working on some play pages to take to the Flux Sunday writers meeting that starts up again on Sunday.

Public Theater's Emerging Writers Group Gets Over 650 Applications!

2007-09-27T12:50:00.001-07:00

The literary staff at the Public Theater sent out an email revising their schedule for interviewing candidates and determining the composition of the Emerging Writers Group today because they got OVER 650 APPLICANTS.

That is more than twice what New Dramatists got last year (306). Wow. And, I believe that their publicity was strictly web/blog based. Not sure about that though. I guess their standards are a little lighter than New Dramatists (they only require you send one full length play, not two). But, I was still stunned to read that number!

The revised timeline for selections:

Finalist Interviews: Mid-December, 2007
Notification: Week of December 17, 2007
Program Start Date: Week of January 15, 2008
Program End Date: Week of December 15, 2008

Memed yet again, this time by Adam

2007-09-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

Memed again. Adam Szymkowicz is making me. From a meme written by Marisa http://chainsawcalligraphy.blogspot.com/

List 5 things that certain people (who are not deserving of being your friend anyway) may consider you to be "totally lame," but you are, despite the possible stigma, totally proud of. Own it. Tag 5 others:

1. Prince’s UNDER THE CHERRY MOON was my favorite movie in middle school. I had whole scenes memorized and was very good at reproducing Kristen Scott Thomas’ British dialect. I wrote a 45 page screenplay for 7th grade English that was thematically quite similar called UNDER THE CLOUDS (winning a class award for Best Screenplay from the other 20 honors English class attendees, ahem). When Becky Johnston, the writer, later was nominated for an Oscar for PRINCE OF TIDES I felt completely vindicated.

2. I watched every episode of CBS’ Big Brother this season. Catching ones I missed on the Internet, religiously. I also read blog recaps of episodes on Modern Fabulousity three times a week.

3. I read all 25 books in John Norman’s Gor series in middle school.

4. Took first place at the Texas State High School Latin Convention (circa 1990) on a test on Roman History, shocking myself and my Latin teacher deeply. I acted really casual about it when I was picking up the medallion. Also unexpectedly took regional first place in a poetry interpretation contest reading “The Pied Piper of Hamlin.” Still shaking my head over that one.

5. Was in a production of a musical called MONSTERS when I was 17 or so (with the now defunct TEXAS REAL CHILDREN’S THEATER), for which Willie Nelson wrote a song called “We’re All a Blur Under the Fur.” Lyrics the ensemble sang:

We’re all a blur under the fur
People dogs and monsters, too
Far as I can tell
Underneath our shell
There’s no difference between me and you!

Not a big hit for Willie afterward. He never came and saw the show (which explains why I was never discovered and taken off to Nashville to be a big county star—that and the fact that I can’t really sing.)

I have to meme other people now. I’ll pick different peeps from last time: Eric Eberwein, Kyle, Patrick Gabridge, Erika Tai, Jami McCoy.