Byrdcliffe Bound

 I was blogging very regularly at one point basically to follow the progress of my first major production of one of my solo pieces, Old Hickory, up at the Woodstock Fringe in the Byrdcliffe Theatre.  That was 2010.

Since then I've posted haphazardly but not all that much.  I think now is a good time to start again, what with the stuff we have going on this summer.  So yeah, it's twelve years down the road, and it's back to Byrdcliffe to do one of my solo pieces.  And yes, still with Wallace Norman and Woodstock Fringe.

This time however it's different.  Three of us are doing solo pieces, Wallace is diving into the deep end of the acting/writing pool doing his first solo piece 'Brother's Keeper'.  And Bette is doing her newest piece 'Doris Does the Edinboiger Fridge'.  Bette is also directing my piece and Wallace's and Wallace is directing Bette's, so it's like we're a mobile, mini Fringe Festival.

The four performances at Byrdcliffe are a warm-up/fundraiser for our adventure abroad, and I am very excited to be able to do these shows there.  It wasn't certain we'd be able to do them there, but Wallace found a way and now we're a week away!

Byrdcliffe really is a special little theater.  It's up on a mountain behind Woodstock and is part of an artists colony that has been there for over a hundred years I think.  It's rustic, and lovely and it feels like home because we've done so much of our work there over the last few years.  Wallace, of course, produced the festival there long before I became involved, but after 'Old Hickory', I did readings of my other solo pieces there, Bette and I were in Wallace's play 'It Can't Happen Here' and then . . . Beckett's 'Happy Days'; what an experience that was!

Byrdcliffe is our artistic home, so it's amazing to be going back there.

More to come!

now you see me . . .

So my 'regular' blog posting hasn't turned out so regular after all.  But whatever.

Had a great weekend.  Spent Saturday exploring the sculpture gardens at PepsiCo  . . .  what a rush that place is; great art spread over many acres of manicured lawn and trees . . . it really is beautiful, but beautiful isn't really a strong enough word . . . it's astounding really.  A smaller version of Stormking!

We also checked out the Neuberger at Purchase College just across the street.  Nice little collection there.

Sunday we mostly chilled at home.  Read a bunch of Don Quixote and looked about for a new audition piece, and found one I liked from Rocket to the Moon, by Clifford Odets.

Last night caught a couple of episodes of some old Omnibus episodes from the mid fifties, which featured Leonard Bernstein talking about Beethoven's 5th in the first episode and jazz music in the second one.  There were two more but I went to bed.

Anywho . . . onward.

Writing via blog posts

In the absence of working on a play I can use my blog post for 'morning pages' to keep those muscles flexed.  Actually cheating though because morning pages are supposed to be every day and these blog posts . . . well . . . not exactly.

We saw Leave No Trace yesterday.  A beautiful film and Ben Foster once again shows why he is one of his generations' most compelling actors.  I've seen him in four films and he has been a standout in each . . . but this one . . . he rips your heart out!  Thomasin (sp?) McKenzie is amazing as his daughter as well.

I just finished the first part of Don Quixote.  That's slightly over half of the book.  My plan is to finish reading it and then get jiggy with the writing, all the while making notes as to ideas that pop into and out of my brain pan.  Nothing has really caught fire yet.

Bette, Wallace and I have started the Edinburgh conversation again.  We'll see what we decide but it probably won't be Happy Days.  Leaning toward original stuff . .. we'll see.  But exciting to be working toward that again.

Not much else happening.  Between Don Q and yard work, not to mention 'work' work, been a pretty busy summer!

Burbling

So in my typical summertime-let's-read-and-reboot phase I'm enjoying Don Quixote very much and just appreciating life in general.  Which is a good place to be I'd say.

Nothing concrete on the front of new plays just yet, but ideas pop up and I make note of them.  Not ideas for plays particularly but just thoughts, things that might be useful later.  Might be related to something else and might not be.  Might be and I don't even know it yet!!!

One thing for sure:  I do my damnedest to write them down as they come to me because then I won't forget them.  Once something blurps up from the deep, like one of those muddy volcanic bubbles blorping . . . in it goes.  Noted and waiting for the thread that binds it all together.

Not for nothing but I'm thinking of a ghost story.

First half recap

A week early, I know, but I was thinking about the year so far as far as my theatrical efforts go.

Nice year so far I'd say.

I spent the spring term of the Woodstock Fringe Playwrights Unit working on The Craftsman, scene by scene.  It was a lot of fun and culminated in the Voices From the Fringe reading.  It was a very satisfying event; made more so by Bette reading her new piece, Glass Slipper, to open the evening.  Her writing just keeps getting better and deeper; a very moving piece.

The reading of The Craftsman was all I would have hoped for, with the unexpected last minute addition of me reading the part of Ralph Peterson, whose two scenes are the heart of the play.  I wrote the part of Ralph for myself over twenty years ago, but had never had the chance to read it, so it was a very special occasion for me.  It was also gratifying to have the array of talent reading for me, and we can't forget Craig's puppet of the Homeless Man that he created FOR THE READING!

Unforgettable evening.

I've kept track of the plays I submit on a spreadsheet; I started doing this four or five years ago as a way to keep track of these things.  I have submitted The Craftsman to seven competitions/theater companies, with more to come, no doubt.  I believe in the piece, and while it scares some folks off due to the potential threat of violence to women . . . the dark comedy aspects of it seem to mitigate those concerns nicely.  None of the women who have heard/seen the play read have expressed concerns regarding our current moment.

I've also submitted Brother of the End of the World seven times this year . . . another recent favorite.

I've gone back in the archives and sent Pigotry to EST (figuring it might benefit from the #metoo moment).  I also sent The Straight and Narrow to a competition.  Interesting that of the fourteen full length plays on my resume, this one isn't on there . . . never had a reading or anything.

And finally I submitted The Rumpled Man for a horror competition.

 Having a body of work in the metaphorical vault, you can respond to just about anything.

We can't forget the reading we did for the Welsh Women's Club either.  Bette read the Glass Slipper there as well, and we read scenes from my sort of in the works series of scenes called Random Encounters.

What does Act 2 of 2018 hold?  Don't know but can't wait to find out!!!!!

25th anniversary!

Right about now is the 25th anniversary of the production of Trip to Bountiful that I did with Ellen Burstyn in the lead.

That occurred to me the other day as I ready a monologue for the B'way production of To Kill a Mockingbird.  The EPA is tomorrow and I reserved a slot and will be there.  The monologue is the one I wrote for the audition for Bountiful . . . and writing that monologue changed three people's lives in a major way.

I believe I've written about this before, but I wrote the monologue about my grandfather, who was a farmer,  because I didn't have a regional piece to use for the audition.

So I sat down at a typewriter and wrote it (actually not sure if I wrote long hand first).  That monologue got me cast, which led to us finding Nyack (where Ellen lived) and got me into Equity.  It also woke me to the possibilities of writing, or, as Bette put it:  'See what happens when you write'.

So . . . for the past 25 years I've been applying myself to the writing craft.  I had written this or that, all along . . . short stories, poems, songs and such . . . but I didn't have the focus to keep it rolling.

For tomorrow's audition it seemed like a no brainer to use that monologue again. I kept it and knew exactly where it was . . . except it wasn't!  I was very upset, this was a keeper the one page typewritten (before we even had a pc) marked up sheet that I thought should be kept for 'posterity'.

To make long story short:  I eventually found it.  So onward.  We'll see if lightening can strike twice!

Familiar territory

Right back where I often am this time of year:  wondering what to write next.  So we can expect to get more frequent blog posts just to keep the writing muscles honed as much as possible.

So far this year has been fairly productive I'd say.  It was a lot of fun adapting The Craftsman to a play and solving the problem inherent in a transfer from screenplay to stage.  And having the platform for a reading with 'civilians' in the room reacting to it from afresh was very helpful as well.

I'm proud of the play and welcome it to my stable of submittable material . . . when I become an overnight sensation there will be no shortage of material!

But now what?  I've recently submitted both The Craftsman and The Brother of the End of the World to various places, and will continue to do so (and other stuff as well).  The flint will eventually hit the steel and create the spark but for now I'm refilling the cistern, so to speak.

We went to see a less than perfect Long Days Journey Into Night at BAM last night.  It is a wonderful play, but this production wasn't firing on all cylinders.  Jeremy Irons was fine as James Tyrone, and Leslie Manville was an adequate Mary, though when she makes her entrance at the end of the play she wasn't that much crazier than she was earlier, which sort of diminishes the impact to say the least.

Neither of the actors playing the two sons caught my fancy.  The actor playing Edmund was not well cast at all, seemed to be in a different play at times, and the actor playing Jamie, while he had his moments, really dropped the ball in his big scene with his younger brother in the second act.  Any time I see this play it'll be haunted by Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance on Broadway.  His meltdown in that scene was a sight to behold, and this guy didn't even come close.

Oh well . . . nobody's perfect.  We have seen in recent weeks a wonderful Lear, with Antony Sher, and Three Tall Women, which was astounding so I guess that's a pretty good track record.

Now we're going to lay back a bit, we are saving shekels for Italy of course but a couple of things on the horizon are interesting:  a Japanese production of Macbeth in July and The Ferryman opening on Broadway in Oct.  But for now we can relax a bit.  The only things on the horizon are concerts, unless something strikes our fancy.