I got on my blog to post again without really knowing what I was going to write about, but I saw the title of my most recent post (May? I gotta get better at this!) and figured I should address this Emma phenomenon with an update: to wit: I didn't make the finals of the free speech competition. Oh well. Who knew there were so many plays laying around in people's drawers about free speech! They got fifty one submissions and narrowed it down to a handful of finalists (six I think) and I wasn't one of them . . . on to the next thing.
One thing about having a pipeline of unproduced plays at my disposal: I have something for nearly any occasion!
On the topic of new plays yet to be written: nothing boiling inside that makes me want to drop everything and start writing. I was playing around with a series of vignettes about blind dates . . .and wrote several, but it hasn't really caught fire just yet.
Of course there is always Self Inflicted Wounds, my most recent. It needs some work and I should go back to it to smooth out some rough edges . . . this weekend is a nice long weekend, maybe I can get to it then. We'll see.
Bette and I took part in a farewell event at Shades Rep. They are moving to a new space. It was fun. First off I love Sam Harps, so when he asks 'Do you want to' I figure 'why not?'. I just read a couple of monologues from my plays, the Buffalo Creek story from Where the Rain Never Falls and the Kerouac scene from Dead Authors. It went over very well. I really connected emotionally in the Rain monologue, always nice when that happens; and the Kerouac monologue was a hit as well. Bette read a new solo piece of hers, nice reaction from the audience. It's a challenging piece, but she pulled it off beautifully.
We're holding off on theater excursions right now because of Edinburg. We'll be seeing some nice stuff there so we're hoarding our shekels for now. Too bad. Would have liked to have seen Sweat and Indecent. Oslo and Dolls House part 2 as well, for that matter . . . but timing is everything.
We did see the controversial Julius Ceasar. Loved John Douglas Thompson (as always) and the guy who plays JC was great as well . . . the direction and technical aspects were good as well, a lot of nice touches. When we left I predicted they'd get some push back for the depiction of JC as Trump . . . and they did . . . but since JC's team wins in the end, everyone should just chill out . . . of course with Trumpy as president things are pretty f'n chilly as it is.
Onward.
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Sunday, May 28, 2017
Everything's coming up Emma!
I saw in the Dramatists Guild publication an ad for plays related to free speech issues. I immediately thought of my play about Emma Goldman, Words of Fire, and started compiling a character breakdown in preparation to send it in. Then I put on the brakes for a second and decided to have a look at my second Emma Goldman play, The Nature of the Beast. Turns out it is specifically related to free speech issues as Emma and Alexander Berkman were being persecuted for speaking out against the war effort in WWI.
Well . . .that was a surprise . . . so I figured I should read the play and much to my surprise and delight, it worked pretty well. So guess what, I decided it was the one to send. Yesterday I spent about four hours on reformatting the play, writing the bio, history of the play and how it relates to first amendment issues and sent it in.
Now, this is a play I haven't looked at or thought about much in oh maybe at least ten years (though more likely twelve since that is when I applied for the copyright). This play is one of the few that I've written that I have never had a reading of and never worked on in workshop (that I can remember). So what made me think of it now?
No clue.
This was the second of a planned trilogy, but I have not yet gotten around to play three . . . so I guess it's a duology. I did have something of a false start on a third play at one point but couldn't sustain it.
There was a moment in time when I was deeply immersed in all things Goldman/Berkman. I read her two volume autobiography, read other books about her and wrote a fairly massive first play, which had a successful reading or two way back when. But I never could crack the nut on play three. Perhaps part of that is that I never got any nibbles on Words of Fire . . . it is quite an effort to write a play, and even harder when you have to adhere to the facts of someone's life. I may get around to it one day or may not, but either way I am happy with the two plays as they stand right now.
Interestingly enough, I recently entered Words of Fire into a competition for plays about a famous woman. Maybe it's the year of Emma - it has been 100 years since the events that kick off The Nature of the Beast, which is another interesting note.
So onward.
Well . . .that was a surprise . . . so I figured I should read the play and much to my surprise and delight, it worked pretty well. So guess what, I decided it was the one to send. Yesterday I spent about four hours on reformatting the play, writing the bio, history of the play and how it relates to first amendment issues and sent it in.
Now, this is a play I haven't looked at or thought about much in oh maybe at least ten years (though more likely twelve since that is when I applied for the copyright). This play is one of the few that I've written that I have never had a reading of and never worked on in workshop (that I can remember). So what made me think of it now?
No clue.
This was the second of a planned trilogy, but I have not yet gotten around to play three . . . so I guess it's a duology. I did have something of a false start on a third play at one point but couldn't sustain it.
There was a moment in time when I was deeply immersed in all things Goldman/Berkman. I read her two volume autobiography, read other books about her and wrote a fairly massive first play, which had a successful reading or two way back when. But I never could crack the nut on play three. Perhaps part of that is that I never got any nibbles on Words of Fire . . . it is quite an effort to write a play, and even harder when you have to adhere to the facts of someone's life. I may get around to it one day or may not, but either way I am happy with the two plays as they stand right now.
Interestingly enough, I recently entered Words of Fire into a competition for plays about a famous woman. Maybe it's the year of Emma - it has been 100 years since the events that kick off The Nature of the Beast, which is another interesting note.
So onward.
Saturday, May 13, 2017
Post reading thoughts
I guess I owe myself some reflection after the reading of Self-Inflicted Wounds the other night.
It was nice to hear it read and to experience it from beginning to end. Especially nice in that there weren't any glaring bits that got in the way. Yeah there's some repetition, things could be condensed a bit, but overall I wasn't unhappy with the results.
I worked very hard on this play for a long time, and I'm not exactly sure what to do with it next, but one thing I do plan to do is let it rest for a bit. Give it time to breathe and come back to it in a few weeks with fresh eyes and see what I make of it. (I say that but damn it, when you're working on something it just keep muscling its way into your life at the oddest times - I had a thought about the piece while walking the dogs yesterday ... and it might not be a horrible idea . . . ok I'll tell you . . . the thought came to me of starting at the end and working backward, or if not strictly backward, then in a sort of shuffled idiosyncratic trajectory . . . might be more work than I want to do, but once planted seeds sometimes grow!)
It's also kind of an awkward length - too short for a full length (maybe) and too long for a one act (maybe). It's 35 pages and I wanted to get a running time on it the other night but I forgot to look at my watch at the end so I don't know. If you figure a minute and a half a page 35 pages would be in the neighborhood of 55 minute to an hour . . .
A little early for those considerations anyway. I need to work on it. Mostly the aforementioned redundancies. But it's funny . . . most of the time when I work on cutting a play it ends up longer ... the great work continues!
I've also been noodling around with a new idea . . . a series of vignettes under the organizing principle of 'Blind Dates'. Little two character scenes wherein I explore people exploring each other . . . it's a fun break from the intensity of Self-Inflicted Wounds.
What's really fun about Blind Dates is that I've been sitting down to write without a plan and just coming up with these things. The characters do the talking and I just write down what they say. It's fun. Nice little writing exercises and who knows . . . maybe it'll end up becoming something.
Coming up to the final meeting for the year of the Fringe, and the week after that the final reading night. I'll miss the Fringe this summer (but not the shlepping) but we have our scouting trip to the Edinburg Fringe Festival in August and work on Breaking the Code starting soon with a November production date . . . so all ahead full!!!!
Keep writing!
It was nice to hear it read and to experience it from beginning to end. Especially nice in that there weren't any glaring bits that got in the way. Yeah there's some repetition, things could be condensed a bit, but overall I wasn't unhappy with the results.
I worked very hard on this play for a long time, and I'm not exactly sure what to do with it next, but one thing I do plan to do is let it rest for a bit. Give it time to breathe and come back to it in a few weeks with fresh eyes and see what I make of it. (I say that but damn it, when you're working on something it just keep muscling its way into your life at the oddest times - I had a thought about the piece while walking the dogs yesterday ... and it might not be a horrible idea . . . ok I'll tell you . . . the thought came to me of starting at the end and working backward, or if not strictly backward, then in a sort of shuffled idiosyncratic trajectory . . . might be more work than I want to do, but once planted seeds sometimes grow!)
It's also kind of an awkward length - too short for a full length (maybe) and too long for a one act (maybe). It's 35 pages and I wanted to get a running time on it the other night but I forgot to look at my watch at the end so I don't know. If you figure a minute and a half a page 35 pages would be in the neighborhood of 55 minute to an hour . . .
A little early for those considerations anyway. I need to work on it. Mostly the aforementioned redundancies. But it's funny . . . most of the time when I work on cutting a play it ends up longer ... the great work continues!
I've also been noodling around with a new idea . . . a series of vignettes under the organizing principle of 'Blind Dates'. Little two character scenes wherein I explore people exploring each other . . . it's a fun break from the intensity of Self-Inflicted Wounds.
What's really fun about Blind Dates is that I've been sitting down to write without a plan and just coming up with these things. The characters do the talking and I just write down what they say. It's fun. Nice little writing exercises and who knows . . . maybe it'll end up becoming something.
Coming up to the final meeting for the year of the Fringe, and the week after that the final reading night. I'll miss the Fringe this summer (but not the shlepping) but we have our scouting trip to the Edinburg Fringe Festival in August and work on Breaking the Code starting soon with a November production date . . . so all ahead full!!!!
Keep writing!
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Reading tomorrow
So my new play, as blogged about two months ago, now has a name: Self-Inflicted Wounds. And it's being read tomorrow night. Nice.
I started work on this piece right after we finished up with Happy Days last August . . . it started out as one thing and then over the course of the last seven or eight months has become something distinctly different.
It will be interesting to hear it read tomorrow night and maybe to see what folks think about it, if anything!
A lot of work and major changes . . . it doesn't look much like it started out . . . but that's par for the course. You get your ideas down and then you start to refine them . . . this started out as a 60+ page piece and now it's at about 35 . . . and not much in that 35 was part of the original piece.
Sure looks easy when it's up there on stage . . . sure ain't easy to get it there!
When I was doing that audition a few weeks back I had occasion to look at an early version of Old Hickory . . . amazing how different it was from the piece I've performed so many times.
But that's the journey . . . and it never stops.
Speaking of which . . . I'm bapping around ideas for a new piece . . . I took a brief bit into the workshop last week to see how it went . . . it was encouraging.
So now? The reading tomorrow and then I can chill a bit. Write when I want to, read the Power Broker . . . and generally kick back (well. . . working for a living figures in there as well)
I started work on this piece right after we finished up with Happy Days last August . . . it started out as one thing and then over the course of the last seven or eight months has become something distinctly different.
It will be interesting to hear it read tomorrow night and maybe to see what folks think about it, if anything!
A lot of work and major changes . . . it doesn't look much like it started out . . . but that's par for the course. You get your ideas down and then you start to refine them . . . this started out as a 60+ page piece and now it's at about 35 . . . and not much in that 35 was part of the original piece.
Sure looks easy when it's up there on stage . . . sure ain't easy to get it there!
When I was doing that audition a few weeks back I had occasion to look at an early version of Old Hickory . . . amazing how different it was from the piece I've performed so many times.
But that's the journey . . . and it never stops.
Speaking of which . . . I'm bapping around ideas for a new piece . . . I took a brief bit into the workshop last week to see how it went . . . it was encouraging.
So now? The reading tomorrow and then I can chill a bit. Write when I want to, read the Power Broker . . . and generally kick back (well. . . working for a living figures in there as well)
Thursday, March 23, 2017
A new post about a new play
I have a new play that I've been working on for the past five or six months, though it's been in my head a bit longer than that. I got the idea, or at least the germ of the idea while reading The Brothers Karamazov last summer. There was a chapter in which a wealthy businessman confesses to a crime that someone else was blamed for and no one believes him. That got me thinking. And then I read an oral history of the sixties called Witness to the Revolution and the two just sort of came together. While I was working on this piece last fall with the idea that the crime these guys had committed was a bombing in which innocent people were killed, I read about one of the people who robbed the Brinks truck in Nyack in the early 80's and how she was trying to get out of prison, but not everyone is happy about that.
At any rate all those elements lead me over the last months to what I have now. It's not in finished form right now but it's at least has a beginning and an ending. I have asked for a May 25 reading slot so that gives me plenty of time to get it ready. We'll see. I had originally thought of it as two acts but right now I'm settling in on a long one act . . . it's 37 pages right now so we'll see where it ends up. With the political upheaval that we are living through right now the timing might be right!
The play involves two guys who were involved with a robbery like the Brinks one, and they haven't been found out. One is living off the grid and the other is successful, with a wife and kids and a business. The successful one finds his old friend and tells him he wants to speak on behalf of their imprisoned cohort.
I have been through the ringer with this one. It went from the bombing idea to the armored car theft idea and I'm hoping it's something I'll be happy with when all is said and done. Right now I'm at about medium on the happiness scale, but I plan to get back at it this weekend and see if I can tip the scales in the happier direction!
At any rate all those elements lead me over the last months to what I have now. It's not in finished form right now but it's at least has a beginning and an ending. I have asked for a May 25 reading slot so that gives me plenty of time to get it ready. We'll see. I had originally thought of it as two acts but right now I'm settling in on a long one act . . . it's 37 pages right now so we'll see where it ends up. With the political upheaval that we are living through right now the timing might be right!
The play involves two guys who were involved with a robbery like the Brinks one, and they haven't been found out. One is living off the grid and the other is successful, with a wife and kids and a business. The successful one finds his old friend and tells him he wants to speak on behalf of their imprisoned cohort.
I have been through the ringer with this one. It went from the bombing idea to the armored car theft idea and I'm hoping it's something I'll be happy with when all is said and done. Right now I'm at about medium on the happiness scale, but I plan to get back at it this weekend and see if I can tip the scales in the happier direction!
Sunday, November 13, 2016
Damage Control through the years
The upcoming reading of Damage Control has brought back a lot of memories of the life of the play, not all of them pleasant. So I thought it was worth a post. I don't remember exactly what set me off on the path of writing this play, but in its infancy it was originally a solo piece. A guy alone in a room with a phone awaiting a call that he could let his victim (a young lady) go,or otherwise. He'd get a call on the hour, which was a signal: one ring everything was ok, two rings the ransom had been paid and he could let her go . . . or three rings . . .which wasn't good. Needless to say with each ring of the phone he got a little crazier. For whatever reason (shame I wasn't blogging at the time)I decided to make it two characters, and then it morphed to three when I added the victim bound to a chair. The two main characters are an inexperienced kidnapper working off a gambling debt, and a more seasoned enforcer who is there to see things through to the end and to clean up any messes that might ensue, or as he says, he is damage control.
The play came to life pretty quickly, as I remember it. Aside from my usual theater influences, this one owes a lot to good ole Sam Peckinpah, whose films, while flawed, held nothing back. (The director of this reading likened it to Tarantino, which I can see as well).
Damage Control was my second full length play, coming on the heels of Last Request.
At any rate, I entered into competitions and eventually sent it to Jerry Davis at Burning Coal Theater in Raleigh, NC. He and I had met while working on The Trip to Bountiful with Ellen Burstyn.
Jerry offered to have a staged reading and flew me down there for the weekend. It was a wonderful experience, complete with interview for the local paper and I got a lot out of it. Most notably I saw the impact that the play could have on an audience.
After that a pause in the action for this one . . . I was writing other plays and sending this one out I suppose, at any rate the next action came in 2002, with a reading as part of the TRU Voices series, this time in NYC. The director was Jules Ochoa, and Jules found the actors. The guy who played the inexperienced kidnapper was amazing. Great energy. A real high tension wire. The young lady who played the girl was funny because she, though she had no lines to speak of, was so into it . . . ah actors!
This reading was in a 99 seat theater that was packed and round two for this play showed yet again the kind of reaction you could achieve . . . everybody was glued to their seats.
Very nice feedback as well.
Then things went to a place . . . well lets just say it's a great example of what working with friends can cost you. The producer of the TRU reading was a very good friend of mine. He wanted to produce the play god-bless-him and we had another reading for the artistic director at the Rattlestick Theater (with the same cast and director as TRU) . . . then things went off the rails . . . my friend started listening to a guy who was involved in film, and what a wonderful film this would make (it would, I had even written a screenplay already and entered into the Project Greenlight competition). To make a long story short: the film guy was a tad duplicitous, my friend and I ended up with a very damaged relationship, and the whole thing culminated in a rare explosion on my part over what the film guy wanted to do with my play.
Not a happy story, but as my friend Angelo Parra said not long after this debacle: better the script is gathering dust on a shelf than you have a film you're not embarrassed by.
Since then I have entered the piece from time to time in various competitions, but not much play until the Monsterpiece Theater Collective opted to present it. So away we go. It'll be interesting to see what they do with it. I've yet to meet anyone involved and am not able to get to rehearsals, so this will be the least engaged I've been with one of my readings, and we'll just see what happens.
The director of this reading, Kate Tenetko, speaks highly of it. It'll be interesting to see how having a woman directing will influence the piece. The inexperienced kidnapper is a bit of a cad, with a very unhealthy view of women. Should make for an interesting perspective.
The least that could happen is that a suspenseful good time will be had by all!
I'm attaching the photo I took for the flyer for the reading. I think it is very evocative. I took it in the basement on a sunny day, the noonday sun blasting through the window above the chair. Nice image and perfect for the piece.
The play came to life pretty quickly, as I remember it. Aside from my usual theater influences, this one owes a lot to good ole Sam Peckinpah, whose films, while flawed, held nothing back. (The director of this reading likened it to Tarantino, which I can see as well).
Damage Control was my second full length play, coming on the heels of Last Request.
At any rate, I entered into competitions and eventually sent it to Jerry Davis at Burning Coal Theater in Raleigh, NC. He and I had met while working on The Trip to Bountiful with Ellen Burstyn.
Jerry offered to have a staged reading and flew me down there for the weekend. It was a wonderful experience, complete with interview for the local paper and I got a lot out of it. Most notably I saw the impact that the play could have on an audience.
After that a pause in the action for this one . . . I was writing other plays and sending this one out I suppose, at any rate the next action came in 2002, with a reading as part of the TRU Voices series, this time in NYC. The director was Jules Ochoa, and Jules found the actors. The guy who played the inexperienced kidnapper was amazing. Great energy. A real high tension wire. The young lady who played the girl was funny because she, though she had no lines to speak of, was so into it . . . ah actors!
This reading was in a 99 seat theater that was packed and round two for this play showed yet again the kind of reaction you could achieve . . . everybody was glued to their seats.
Very nice feedback as well.
Then things went to a place . . . well lets just say it's a great example of what working with friends can cost you. The producer of the TRU reading was a very good friend of mine. He wanted to produce the play god-bless-him and we had another reading for the artistic director at the Rattlestick Theater (with the same cast and director as TRU) . . . then things went off the rails . . . my friend started listening to a guy who was involved in film, and what a wonderful film this would make (it would, I had even written a screenplay already and entered into the Project Greenlight competition). To make a long story short: the film guy was a tad duplicitous, my friend and I ended up with a very damaged relationship, and the whole thing culminated in a rare explosion on my part over what the film guy wanted to do with my play.
Not a happy story, but as my friend Angelo Parra said not long after this debacle: better the script is gathering dust on a shelf than you have a film you're not embarrassed by.
Since then I have entered the piece from time to time in various competitions, but not much play until the Monsterpiece Theater Collective opted to present it. So away we go. It'll be interesting to see what they do with it. I've yet to meet anyone involved and am not able to get to rehearsals, so this will be the least engaged I've been with one of my readings, and we'll just see what happens.
The director of this reading, Kate Tenetko, speaks highly of it. It'll be interesting to see how having a woman directing will influence the piece. The inexperienced kidnapper is a bit of a cad, with a very unhealthy view of women. Should make for an interesting perspective.
The least that could happen is that a suspenseful good time will be had by all!
I'm attaching the photo I took for the flyer for the reading. I think it is very evocative. I took it in the basement on a sunny day, the noonday sun blasting through the window above the chair. Nice image and perfect for the piece.
Thursday, August 18, 2016
The final weekend
It's Thursday morning. This evening is the first performance of our final weekend at Byrdcliffe. There isn't a person among us (us being Bette, Wallace and I) that wouldn't like more life for this production, but for now we will kill it four more times and then move on.
It may be redundant to express what a thrill ride this has been. Two weeks in Woodstock rehearsing leading up to the opening . . . the feedback we got referring our production to the top of the heap (and comparing Bette's performance to Billie Whitelaw!) . . . then the night the lights went out and we persevered anyway . . . amazing stuff.
As Winnie would say: 'And now?'
So here we go. There will be much to cherish forever with this production. Much that will linger on. A new frame of reference for what theater can be and how it can communicate. It's what we all strive for. As another Beckett heroine says: 'More!'
It may be redundant to express what a thrill ride this has been. Two weeks in Woodstock rehearsing leading up to the opening . . . the feedback we got referring our production to the top of the heap (and comparing Bette's performance to Billie Whitelaw!) . . . then the night the lights went out and we persevered anyway . . . amazing stuff.
As Winnie would say: 'And now?'
So here we go. There will be much to cherish forever with this production. Much that will linger on. A new frame of reference for what theater can be and how it can communicate. It's what we all strive for. As another Beckett heroine says: 'More!'
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