StageBlog-G.L.Horton

just a quick stop-gap

2011-09-14T11:43:00.000-07:00

I have pic and news and "reviews" of the Precious Bane reading , but no time to post now.

What I do want to post before I lose it is a comment I couldn't resist making on the "Artful Manager" blog|:

The whole idea of non-profit needs to be overhauled. Increasingly our institutions reinforce extreme inequality. Minimally, tax free status should only go to organizations that put the majority of their money and effort into serving the bottom half of the income ladder, and pay employees and leadership no more the average wage for a graduate of an open-enrollment public school and university degree-holder. Our "meritocracy" is an illusion: money opens the gates at every checkpoint, and make sure that those who make decisions will make them from the POV of the richly credentialed.
Our local non-profit hospitals are being taken over by corporations. Apparently nobody has standing to sue on behalf of the 1000s of people who over decades donated to those hospitals believing that their donations were charity, not an "asset" to make businessmen rich. Donations of time, blood, services are even more important than mere money: the corporation should be made to return the value of those assets to charity; to the struggling real non-profits who serve the poor and the uninsured.

Photos of Kiss The Twins from June 2011

2011-08-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

Scott Welty sent me the dress rehearsal photos he took of my play in the Playwrights Platform Festival this summer. I'm so busy with preparations for the Precious Bane rehearsal on monday that I can't properly label and edit these, but I'm going to post them now and fix them later: otherwise I may just lose track of them!

Monday, Tuesday... I must be printing, collating, stapling...

2011-08-16T19:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday beyond the not-so-bad of the dentist and the lovely-but-I'm distracted visit of the utterly charming Martha Rose was the final prep for an ensemble rehearsal at Miriam's for the read-through of Precious Bane. David took some photos but I'm too tired to post any! Discovered discrepancies in both music and script! Yuck! Spent today at Miriam's fixing them. most email or hand-deliver the corrected scripts and sheet music to the cast ASAP. But I think tomorrow's the As Possible. I think the last thing I'm going to be able to do tonight is take my shoes off, lie on the sofa and skim through the Globe....

I'm mostly working on organization for the Precious Bane reading

2011-08-08T13:27:00.000-07:00

I'm mostly working on organization for the Precious Bane reading, which is a secretarial/scheduling/proofreading/PR work of the kind I dread most, calling up demons of dyslexia I thought I'd mostly banished from my life.

This is so unpleasant that it makes other drudgery attractive by contrast. Yesterday I alternated it with particularly yukky household chores, like tending the compost bin and scrubbing the shower stall. Today, when lightning knocked out our cable I couldn't email or post, I finally got around to editing the notes I took at the Dramatists Guild's 1st National Conference in DC June 9-12th.

Here's the first installment:

The first session I went to, 4 pm Thursday, was the National Songwriter/ Bookwriter Exchange, run by Roland Tec. To actively participate a member had to pre-register and send in a bio and work samples, which were distributed to the others in the group. Those of us who hadn't got our act together in advance were permitted to be there as observers as long as there were some left-over handouts from people who had signed up but didn't show up. There were some major travel snafus this particular day, which might account for there being enough for room us, the handful of observers. It was very interesting to see the variety of people at work and looking for collaborators. There was an undergraduate fresh from working with a hip hop ensemble, and several veterans with decades of production credits. In the material they provided for the handouts they talked about their ideal collaborative conditions and the makeshift conditions under which they had managed to survive. People went around the room, putting their faces to the names in the handout and saying a few words about themselves. After the go-round, there was a period where people could mingle and make connections with potential collaborators whose handouts sounded compatible. This is a good event, as is the similar event NOMTI sponsors in Boston. I'm delighted with my present composer, but still eager to hear about other combos' projects and processes. I'd eagerly attend another. Good start!

The new musical I've been working on for the last 4 years

2011-08-04T08:54:00.000-07:00

Precious Bane, a new musical by Miriam Raiken-Kolb (music, lyrics) and G.L. Horton (book, lyrics), will have its first full sing-through at Boston Playwrights Theatre at the end of August. The professional cast includes singers Shannon Muhs, Steven Murray, Bob DeVivo, Kaja Fickes, Charles Taylor, Jeremiah Alto, Jonas Budris, Renee Miller, Pamela Wolfe, and Abby Cordell, many of whom have been part of the musical's development process in the New Opera/Music Theatre Initiative's Advanced Workshop at Berklee.

Precious Bane is adapted from the celebrated novel by Mary Webb. It tells the sweeping dramatic story of Prue Sarn, born in 1800 with the "Devil's Mark" of a harelip, in Shropshire, England . Convinced by her brother Gideon that no man could ever love her, Prue agrees to join him in his obsessive quest for wealth and power. However, Kester the Weaver sees beyond her flawed face to the inner woman who should be his life's Companion. Now Prue must find the strength to believe in love and break free of the downward spiral set in motion by Gideon's ruthless choices.

Precious Bane is a classic large scale musical with soaring melodies and vivid characters. More information and six songs from the show are on the musical's Web Site.

I seem to have found my way back in to my STAGEBLOG

2011-06-20T18:11:00.000-07:00

After years of being caught in a feedback loop because Blogger became part of Google when I was away during my mother's last illness, I stumbled onto a way to re-set my password! I hope I remember how to get in again, and post! I have photos and programs from the 2011 Playwrights Platform festival, an account of the Dramatists Guild Conference in DC, all sorts of news and opinions to share -- just in case I ever have some readers.

Happy 4th of July -- bye, Boston, for Now

2008-07-04T21:40:00.000-07:00

Louise Kennedy reviews in the Boston Globe

I'm so glad she is reviewing! A play like Look Back In Anger is where I'm particularly interested in the opinion of a woman younger than I. Kennedy says:

".... the Orfeo production reminds us, its vital fury, its dramatic crackle, and its vivid evocation both of specific characters and of their larger society make it worth seeing as well as reading.

It's hard to imagine being shocked, as 1956 audiences reportedly were, by the play's grubby realism and violent brutality; we've had far too much of that in the ensuing decades to be surprised by much of anything now. But what does still shock is the mix of cruelty, lust, fury, and grief that propels Osborne's characters together and apart. It's not surprising; it's just startling in its complexity, contradictoriness, and raw power....

Part of what makes Orfeo's production work is that its limitations become strengths. The tiny, cramped, muggy space of the Factory Theatre intensifies the claustrophobia of the play's setting, a dingy attic flat in England's industrial Midlands. Cristina Todesco's artfully cluttered set is clearly furnished with cheap castoffs, just as the actual flat would be. And, with only 45 seats, the theater puts the audience right in this grungy room with Jimmy..."

My family had our traditional July 4th barbeque in the back garden, followed by walking a little under a mile to Newton's Town Fireworks display. This year I stayed home to pack for Florida, and watched the Pops and the Esplanade display on TV. The commercials are horrible, and so is most of the music-- but I love watching the people of Boston, who look so happy to be together in their silly patriotic costumes, dancing and bouncing and singing along. I sing along, too. I'm going to miss Boston while I'm away.

Taking a Break

2008-07-03T21:22:00.000-07:00

My mother is in the hospital in Florida, and I am flying to the Tampa area Saturday to see what I can do to help her get back on her feet. I still have photos and descriptions and quite a bit to say about the recent furry of local production, but it will have to wait till I return. Must get packed! lightly, now that the airlines are charging to check bags.

Look Back in Anger -- Orfeo Group

2008-06-26T23:44:00.000-07:00

I went to see John Osborn's post WWII bombshell, which premiered in 1956, with "the girls". We remember WWII, we were children then, and the attitudes towards women's agency that prevailed when we came of age. June was surprised because she had recently seen the movie and in performance the play seemed much more cruel. I remembered it as very cruel-- cruel enough that I carried away a lesson from the play: beware. Stay away from brilliant fascinating men who feel entitled to make demands and heap abuse on woemn who don't meet them. Orfeo's was an intense and impressive staging, but I was not wholly absorbed. I was remembering working on the script when I was very young-- and thinking at the time I was miscast as Helena and would have found Alison a more comfortable fit. Now, I can see what it is about Helena that is more me-ish, though Helena's facade is so utterly unlike the woman I thought I was when I was 19 or 20 that the idea would have shocked me then. Working on LBIA may have been in a class rather than a production. Although I remembered the plot and the sound of the words and and the shape of the scenes after all these years, none of it had the physical detail that a play usually retains for me if I've performed at least a short run before an audience. Except for the ironing! i do remember doing the ironing and trying to make it look "real". When I saw Chris Hayes (who just played the student actress opposite June's Olga Chekhova in "Russian Mast Class" ) as Alison ironing so badly, without a clue, I spent some considerable energy wondering whether it was an acting choice, showing a young woman raised by servants at home and in India-- or simply that ironing is now done so infrequently that none of the young women connected to the production has ever learned the technique. Hopefully they needn't have learned the "lesson", either. I would have stayed for the talk back to congratulate the director and actors, and even asked about the ironing, but the Factory Theatre's noisy air conditioning had to be turned off for the performance and between the heat and intensity and the late hour we were just too exhausted.

Carolyn Clay reviews LBIA in the Boston Phoenix

..."Gabriel Kuttner helms the period-faithful production on Cristina Todesco’s old-furniture-crammed set in a space so small that the testosterone-fueled fisticuffs, linguistic vitriol, sexual steam, and little-boy-lost remorse spill out over the audience like splashes from that non-existent kitchen sink.... And the performances are nicely calibrated to the space, so that you feel the friction of tight quarters but no one appears to be overacting.

The drama crackles despite its creaky three-act structure and vivid verbosity, and Daniel Berger-Jones (of Company One’s Mr. Marmalade) wrestles manfully with the problem of Jimmy, who, like compulsive theatrical misanthropes from Shakespeare’s Timon to Molière’s Alceste, both has a point and is hard to take. Scathing in company, he finds cruel satisfaction in humiliating his wife, who for him represents the enervated rapaciousness of her class. Tender in private, he turns to her for comfort, indulging in a marital game of bears and squirrels (also hard to take) in which the two pretend to be furry animals fleeing the pain of being human. Berger-Jones’s surly, soulful Jimmy leaps out of the small space, waving his natural superiority like a red flag, defying the other characters and a world that refuses to give him his due.

Liz Hayes.. rises wrenchingly to the final scene, in which she describes to Jimmy the crucible he has always wanted to put her through. Two-time Elliot Norton Award nominee Georgia Lyman brings a cool containment, albeit one that melts down convincingly, to angry-young-man poacher Helena.... Risher Reddick makes a compassionate if occasionally slack Cliff..."

Steven Barkhimer rounds out the cast as Alison's father, and is such a presence that one rather wishes this long play were even longer and had more Steve Barkhimer in it.

Platform series B -- Bisantz's On The Rocks

2008-06-21T11:06:00.000-07:00

photos from the Bisantz-Carozza musical

Independent Eye seeks info RE: Theatre Blogs

2008-06-20T19:11:00.000-07:00

This query on the Theatre Discussion List from Conrad of The Independent Eye:

"Are any of you using a blog, whether as promotion, as a means
of community dialogue, or to document your creative process? If so,
we'd like to know.

Right now, The Independent Eye is involved in developing a
co-production with a local theatre in Sebastopol, CA, of
Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST as a live theatrical animation with
puppets, digital media, shadows, lotsa stuff, for September 2009. As
part of this, along with community forums and a year-long
developmental lab, we're planning to do a collaborative blog that
both documents our process (with posts from staff, actors & other

associated souls) and also invites public input. Hopefully we can

link with various theatre & puppetry websites and really contribute a
model of functional documentation."
I'm sure others are doing this, or something like it, and I'd
love to see what there is out there that we might build on. Any
leads, whether to your own site or to models in other arenas that
might be useful in our planning? Or initiatives that went
ignominiously belly-up?

I REPLY:

I have a blog -- http://stageblog-glhorton.blogspot.com/

It's a couple years old. I guess in some sense it documents my
creative process. I try to track my theatre activities and musings,
including some list posts that may be mini-essays, plus some OT opinions.

Sometimes I neglect it for months, sometimes I post

daily. I put on it the kind of thing I would put on my Stagepage web
site if the site hadn't grown to be so complicated and huge-- photos,
programs, commentary. My blog is lonesome. I don't know if anybody
reads it. You'd be doing me a favor if you went to it: wearing a path
to its door, so to speak. I hope this query results in some interesting blogs and possible links to them. The Theatre blogs I read-- connected to Terry Teachout's, which I read religiously at Arts Journal, that Blog Roll makes those easiest to click to-- are sporadic and not very interesting

Platform Series B is underway!

2008-06-19T22:00:00.000-07:00

Joe Orrigo and Teagan Rose in "The Cell"

I saw the shows Thursday night-- well done, people ! Vincent Siders was terrific as a war-damaged Vietnam Vet in Gail Phaneuf's "Stop Request", set on an MBTA Bus. I not only believed in the actor, but the character is close kin to some I put in my own 1979 play re: the MBTA, Breaking in on the T. A pic from this play is on this blog from about a week ago.

I've grabbed a jpeg from Kelly DuMar's spooky piece set in a graveyard, The Cell. Good acting in that one, too-- the acting level this year is very impressive. I hope other Series B shows will have pics to share, too.

Come out and enjoy the Second Weekend of the Playwrights' Platform Summer Festival! It's great to see everyone there lending their support, laughter and applause! Thanks to everyone who has volunteered and helped make this another very successful year for the Festival and the Platform! Bravo! (We can't do it without you...) Help us spread the word for the final two performances. AND... Don't forget the party on Saturday night at the theater after the show! ** -Gail

Kelly Dumar talks about rehearsing The Cell (series B)

2008-06-18T11:35:00.000-07:00

On Kelly DuMar's blog:

The Cell

Written & Directed By Kelly DuMar

Pleasant Lawn Cemetery, A Throne Like BenchSeating for Two

TICK Teagan Rose

CORT Joe Orrigo

Our Journey to the Underworld

For the fourth time during a Playwrights Platform Festival I get to work with great actors to present a scene from my Away Message Series. Last year, Birds Egg, Blue drummed up TICK's birth at the annual festival, and Clay gave us TICK's first kiss at the Our Voices Festival. The year before, New Digs brought us to the cemetery so TICK and KIP could do their goodbye thing at Clay's grave. The Cell is set in the same cemetery, but another dimension.

When I first met Joe Orrigo to audition him for The Cell it was at a sunny outdoor patio table at Panera, and he told me exactly what a playwright wants to hear: Love the script. Even more encouraging, he connected with the mythological dimensions of the story and sparked my vision as director. By the time we were done reading the script aloud, I was - along with the rest of the diners - scared shitless. I drove home wondering if Joe Orrigo was really an actor or an ethereal visitor from another realm, and for a lot of reasons I hoped he would turn out to be a real actor, not the least of which was so that he'd show up for rehearsal when I cast him.

He did. It's been great working with Joe and Teagan whos so fresh and eager and talented. Joe's not afraid to try anything, and Teagan's not afraid to ask anything, so the three of us became collaborators in the truest sense of the word, inspiring and trusting each other's creative instincts.

During rehearsal I told them I wasn't convinced I had found the right ending. We agreed to trust the process to find it, and I almost blew it. Out of habit, I kept ending the play in the same old place. At the last rehearsal when I said "done", I realized Joe wasn't. We agreed to run it one more time and Joe was free to end it wherever he ended it. So, we got to the end, and CORT makes this seductive gesture, "Come". And TICK must. That's what I'm getting at: that as adolescents, certainly, but also as creative people, we're compelled to follow our curiosity to the Underworld, the shadow elements of our own psyches, and we have to figure out, as TICK will, how to dance new life out of dead hopes, dreams, and illusions-- without sacrificing our souls.

~ Kelly DuMar

Artists in America -- economic stats

2008-06-17T11:48:00.000-07:00

NYTimes reported on a US gov't study:

...... In 2005 nearly two million Americans said their primary employment was in jobs that the census defines as artists’ occupations — including architects, interior designers and window dressers. Their combined income was about $70 billion, a median of $34,800 each. Another 300,000 said artist was their second job.

......The percentage of female, black, Hispanic and Asian artists is bigger among younger ones. Among artists under 35, writers are the only group in which 80 percent or more are non-Hispanic white. Overall, women outnumber men only among dancers, designers and writers.... Overall, the median income that artists reported in 2005 was $34,800 — $42,000 for men and $27,300 for women. The median income of the 55 percent of artists who said they had worked full-time for a full year was $45,200.

.....Over all, artists make more than the national median income ($30,100). They are more highly educated but earn less than other professionals with the same level of schooling.

{like, half as much. I know: I've worked jobs where I had to have my Master's degree, but made less per hour than a fully employed high school grad}

They are likelier to be self-employed (about one in three and growing) and less likely to work full-time, year-round. (Dancers have the lowest median annual income of all artists, architects the highest — $20,000 and $58,000, respectively.)....

...About 13 percent of people who say their primary occupation is artist also hold a second job — about twice the rate that other people in the labor force work two jobs......

Pictures from Playwrights Platform Festival Series A

2008-06-15T13:53:00.000-07:00

Here are photos from the Festival taken June 9th

Anabel Graetz and Geralyn Horton in The Entertainer by Phyllis Rittner

Lia Adams, Mike Haddad and T.Anthony Donohoe in Short Cuts by Christopher King

Above: Rene L. Pfister & Anabel Graetz in The Entertainer

Opening Night! Playwrights Platform Festival, Series A

2008-06-12T11:56:00.000-07:00

June Lewin as Marion and Jackie Davis as Evelyn in G.L. Horton's Best Practice

Hooray! My play is up and running, and I couldn't be more pleased with the way it turned out!

Here's the bios insert from the Platform Program:

BEST PRACTICE by G. L. Horton

CAST

JUNE LEWIN (Marion) has worked in Boston area theatre as an actor and director since 1986. One of her particular interests is helping to develop new scripts, and shortly after her move she directed G.L. Horton's full length set in a Boston abortion clinic, "Choices" and Rosanna Alfaro's "Martha Mitchell", which was recently revived and performed at NYC's West End Theatre in April. June has continued to work closely with local playwrights and makes frequent appearances in new plays and in the Boston Theatre Marathon. Last season she was seen in Alfaro's "Sailing Down the Amazon" and Kate Snodrass's "Haiku" at the Boston Playwrights' Theater and the West End Theater in Gloucester. Also at the West End, she performed in "Kindertransport" and "Women and the Sea". A few favorite roles: Mary in "On the Verge", Miss MacKay in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie", E. M. Ashford in "Wit", and Valentina in "The Bay at Nice". June has appeared onstage in New York City, Long Island, Berkeley, California, and throughout New England, after receiving her early training at the Cleveland Playhouse, Barnard College and Boston University. She is member of, Actors' Equity Association and the Screen Actors Guild, and on the Board of StageSource.

JACKIE DAVIS (Evelyn) is a member of Theatre Espresso and an Affiliate Artist of the Providence Black Repertory Theatre Company. Directorial credits include staged readings of “Hurry Tomorrow” by Platform writer Frank Shefton, and "The Trial of One Short-Sighted Black Woman vs. Mammy Louise and Safreeta Mae" for Roxbury Crossroads Theatre at the Calderwood Pavilion. Productions include: A Black Arts Drama Showcase in Boston and New Jersey, "BIRTH" for Bold On Labor Day at the Cambridge Y, and "The Eight: Reindeer Monologues" at the Factory Theatre. Jackie served as assistant director/ choreographer during the 6th African American Theater Festival and as choreographer for the Lyric Stage’s production of "Crowns"; and won IRNE nominations for her choreography of Speakeasy’s production of "Caroline or Change" and AATF's "The Wiz". At the PBRT she played Mrs. Breedlove in "The Bluest Eye" and Rashida in the World Premiere of "The Etymology of Bird". Choreographer for Company One’s "Assassins", she will be conducting summer workshops at COne. Theatre credits include: Tituba, New Rep’s "The Crucible; understudy, Huntington Theatre’s " Well"; "Wind In The Willows"; "Body & Sold"; "Spell #7". Her Ms. Olson in "Promises Promises" and Lady in Blue in “For Colored Girls…” won IRNE nominations. Television credits include National Geographic’s documentary of Hurricane Katrina, and commercials national and local. Jackie is a proud member of the Screen Actor’s Guild and can be seen in the upcoming Pink Panther Deux and Bachelor Number Two.

GERALYN HORTON served as director for her play-- which means that she was fortunate enough to get this stellar cast to take on the roles and has tried to stay out of their way. Geralyn started directing when she was a kid, and has directed on and off for half a century. Most of her work has been with new plays written by colleagues or with the late lamented Arlington Street Light Opera Company in the church's basement, where for 25 years she applied the music theatre techniques she picked up working as Sarah Caldwell's Production Assistant during the Opera Company of Boston's 1971-73 seasons.

Thanks to Kate and Marc at BPT and to the NPG and the Platform for feedback during re-writes

More Platform Festival actors and Series B

2008-06-12T07:42:00.000-07:00

PLAYWRIGHTS PLATFORM

36th Annual Festival of New Plays, 2008

Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Comm. Av., Boston.

Tickets $14-$17 at 866-811-4111 or at www.theatermania.com

Series A Program: June 12, 13, 14 - Curtain 8pm

Series B Program: June 19, 20, 21 - Curtain 8PM

CUT by R. Holly Jensen

Tradition! Or..? A Blessed Event threatens family chaos.

FORGIVING by R. Lida McGirr

A daughter's struggle to face her less than valiant behavior.

ON THE STRUT by Hortense Gerardo

Is a 2200 ft parachute jump a good time for lovers' confessions?

STOP REQUESTED by Gail Phaneuf

A stranger's perspective can open our minds and hearts.

THE CELL by Kelly DuMar

He's King of the Underworld: will she be his Queen?

ON THE ROCKS- musical by Jerry Bisantz and John Carozza

Sometimes that last drink really is the last.

WHAT WOULD DEBBIE DO? by Scott Welty

A TV show character as role model in a bank's moment of crisis.

FESTIVAL ACTORS: Lis Adams, Sandy Armstrong, Zele Avradopoulos, JerryBisantz, Jackie Davis, Laura DeCesare, T. Anthony Donohoe, Peter Floyd, Jennifer Fogarty, Scott Giangrande, Anabel Graetz, Michael Haddad, Geralyn Horton, Trudie Johnson, Eliot L Johnston, Spencer Klein, June Lewin, Jennifer McCartney Joey Orrigo, Alli Ritts, Fred Robbins, Liz Robbins, Teagan Rose, Dan Schuettinger Jen Shotkin, Vincent Siders, Stephanie Steinbeck, Steve Triebes, Andrew Wetmore

Grant Keener's Obit and Memorial Service

2008-06-11T22:32:00.000-07:00

I don't know if anyone else is still around who was a member of Playwrights' Platform when Grant Keener was active. We read several of his plays: I particularly remember the full length portrait of Nora Barnicle, Joyce's wife. He has attended Platform Summer Festivals off and on until quite recently, when he had to give up his car.

OBIT:
U. Grant Keener 89, loving father, grandfather and friend of Waban formerly of Cambridge, died on Friday June 6, 2008. He is survived by a sister Marilyn, four children; Robert L. Keener and his wife Betsey of Needham, Jessie Keener of Ft. Lauderdale, FL, Matthew S. Keener of Los Angeles, CA and Amelia Pantaze and her husband Adam of Lexington, VA, his six grandchildren: Karina, Sarah, David, Grace, Ana Grace and Myles. Grant was born in Philadelphia, he grew up in Brazil and attended Columbia College. He received a Ph.D. from Columbia and was a professor at Bridgewater State College. During W.W. II, Grant he served with the U.S. Army. A lifelong writer, he was recently working on several plays and a short story. A Memorial Service will be held Wednesday June 11th at 7 PM at his Church, The First Unitarian Society in Newton, 1326 Washington St., Newton. In lieu of flowers, please donate to PEN New England

The Memorial was lovely: his bright and vital family from the 4 corners of the USA, church friends, handfuls of friends from Pen, his Cambridge Pub Writers' group, 3 of us from the Platform, memories of the Poets' Theatre..... wonderful anecdotes and tributes. The hastily assembled and rehearsed choir sang some of Grant's favorites -- we was a big choir fan, and would come early and listen to us rehearse. I'm sorry I missed hearing him telling tales of foreign adventure and spying in WWII-- I never dreamed Grant was old enough to have been in WWII: I was in a tennis class with him in the late nineties, when he must have been in his 80s already!

LA Times on marketing movies for women

2008-06-11T12:04:00.000-07:00

Hollywood rethinks chick flicks

By Rachel Abramowitz, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

June 11, 2008

...half of Hollywood is trying to parse the lessons of the resounding success (unexpected to some) of the "Sex and the City" movie, the event film for women.

A $57-million opening weekend? And $192 million worldwide within two weeks? Chicks en masse go to the film as a religious experience. Is there a stampede to knock off other hit TV shows, figuring that TV is to women what comic books are to men? A product with pre-established awareness and mythic potential? Or will "SATC's" hitdom be chalked off as a periodic anomaly, just like "First Wives Club," "Fatal Attraction" and, of course, the bestselling movie of all time, "Titanic," whose tidal wave of gross profit was driven by human beings lacking the Y-chromosome.

...... "I hope ['Sex and the City'] will at least bring about more of a trend toward films made specifically for adult female women," says Donna Langley, Universal's president of production, who ran out opening weekend to catch the film, both as a consumer and a professional. "You would hope, given the success of 'Sex and the City,' people will remember there is a huge female audience out there, and, judging by these numbers, they're clearly starved, for the most part.....I hope the film's success encourages not only studios to make more films for women but more female writers and directors to step forward with their own unique voices,' says Langley"

Step forward? From where to what? Every woman playwright I know has written at least one screenplay, and would happily write others if given the least encouragement! As for directors, it's not as if there are women turning down opportunities.

Additional pics from Platform Series A

2008-06-11T11:30:00.000-07:00

Jennifer McCartney, Scott Giangrante, and Sandy Armstrong in P.A. by Lydia Bruce and Sandy Burns

Photos taken June 9th and 10th

photos from The Entertainer -- tech rehearsal

2008-06-10T09:09:00.000-07:00

Here are some pics from last night's Playwright's Platform tech rehearsal of Phyllis Rittner's "The Entertainer" at Boston Playwright's Theatre

Liz Robbins as Edith and Geralyn Horton as Gertrude

Rene Pfister, The Entertainer

Anabel Graetz as Maxine, Geralyn Horton as Gertrude

Geralyn Horton, Liz Robbins, and Zele Avrodopoulos as Ruth

Anabel Graetz and Rene Pfister

Florida Playreading Group Offers feedback

2008-06-09T12:15:00.000-07:00

Hello.

I am a member of an informal drama group of about 4-5 women and 2-3 men. We meet once a month in each other’s homes.

I found your website, and would like to use your plays in our readings. We have not performed publicly, and at this stage, don’t plan to in the near future.

Our reading group is just for our enjoyment.

Would it be all right to use your plays?

I said "sure" and added

I'd be interested in what you choose to read and if it goes well. I try to keep track of which sorts of plays appeal to which sorts of people. I occasionally get asked: "Which of your plays do you think will appeal to our audience of retired bookkeepers and their teen aged grandsons?" and having a record of who has laughed at X or wept at Y is very helpful.

and got a report back:

HI, Geralyn.

Our drama reading group met last Friday night.

There were 6 of us—4 women and 2 men.

We read two of your plays: “Showtime” and “Rehabilitation.”

The first, “Showtime,” had mixed reviews. We all enjoyed it to some degree. One of the men said it was “interesting.” I think we were all surprised at the mention of the sex toys. We are for the most part a conservative group. One of the women, MaryBeth, said she enjoyed doing the reading—“I thought it was fun!” We all laughed all the way through it. MaryBeth and I have a history of NOT reading the plays that we choose ahead of time. So we always are surprised at what happens when the group gets together.

“Rehabiliation” was a nice contrast to the first. Everyone thought it was very timely. We all enjoyed Deena’s forthrightness.

We plan to read “A Late Lunch” at the next meeting on July 11.

C. R., Librarian
Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University; Fort Pierce, FL

Next productions: Playwrights Platform Festival

2008-06-08T13:46:00.000-07:00

I'm directing my own play, and acting in The Unveiling and The Entertainer

Playwrights' Platform 36th Annual Festival of New Plays, 2008
Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Comm. Av. Boston.
Tickets $14-$17 at 866-811-4111 or at www.theatremania.com
www.playwrightsplatform.org

Series A Program: June 12, 13, 14 - Curtain 8PM

SHORT CUTS by Christopher L. King
How is friendship like a haircut?

POLE DANCING by R. Eliot Ramsay
Backstage, a dancer's dressing room: an erotic confrontation.

BEST PRACTICE by G.L. Horton
Why does Evelyn get to decide how Miriam lives - or dies?

A BAR, A MAN WALKS INTO by Bob Boulrice
Whimsy featuring the Son of God as a bartender.

THE ENTERTAINER by Phyllis Rittner
A struggling musician plays the gig of his life at a nursing home.

PAVEMENT PICASSO - by Richard Pacheco
Two road line painters clash over what a man’s work means.

P.A. by Lydia Bruce and Sandy Burns
A powerful addiction is sweeping America.

THE UNVEILING, by Ellen Sullivan
A family discovers their loved one is buried in the wrong place.

Halcyon Theatre schedules 100 years of females!

2008-06-06T12:22:00.000-07:00

June 6

I just got this on an e-list! WOW!!!

Anybody with a sofa to spare in the Chicago area? I'd seriously consider a trip to see Cowley and my "subject", Centlivre.

(no immediate offers from ICWP sisters....)

In June and July, Halcyon Theatre in Chicago will present it's first annual

Alcyone Festival. This year we are presenting almost a thousand years of

early female playwrights in rotating rep.The line up includes:

*Aria da Capo* by Edna St. Vincent Millay;

*The Belle's Stratagem* by Hannah Cowley;

*A Bold Stroke for a Wife* by Susanna Centlivre;

*Callimachus* by Hrosvitha;

*La Hija de las Flores o Todos Están Locos *(The Daughter of the Flowers or

Everyone Is Crazy) by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda*; *Performed in Spanish

with projected supertitles.

*The Massacre* by Elizabeth Inchbald;

*Orra* by Joanna Baillie;

*Safe *by Georgia Douglas Johnson;

*Spreading the News* by Lady Augusta Gregory;

*Trifles* by Susan Glaspell;

*The Yellow Wallpape*r by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; adapted and performed by

Chicago DanzTheatre.

For more info: halcyontheatre.org/alcyone

Young People put my words and their voices/bodies on YouTube

2008-06-02T11:33:00.000-07:00

Google Alert told me about these, which are linked to a couple more. I don't remember anybody asking permission to post them, and I'm not sure how many people I'd want to see them... as video, they are not quite ready for prime time.

But if the actors and their private circles of friends are happy, I'm not complaining. If I were long dead and my scripts in the Public Library, I'd hope young people would want to perform my stuff.

Video 1

Video 2

Report on the Sunday service June 1st

2008-06-01T18:29:00.000-07:00

I've sung in Unitarian church choirs since I was a child. Choral singing is much less nervous-making than soloing-- almost as relaxed as songs around a campfire. No so getting into the pulpit and Preaching, even as part of a group. Why is a congregation of 300 people some of whom you know more daunting than an audience of 30 to 1300? I don't know. I seldom suffer stage fright, but I was so nervous I shook when I delivered my segment of the lay service on Our History at First Unitarian Society in Newton. I was afraid that when I went to sing the snatches of hymns I used as examples of the evolution of texts and music in UU Worship Services a tuneless croak would come out, or I would forget where I was in the piece and try to match the words to a different section of the melody....

But it went well, and the whole group of us, though carrying on a tad longer than optimum, were well-received.

"REVIEW" Sunday, June 01, 2008 4:21 PM

Subject: today's service

Dear Noreen, Alan, Geralyn, Linda, Gayle, Jackie, Peter, Anne W.B. and the Gospel Choir,

So one of the very first people to speak to me about the service this morning left me feeling satisfied that mission (at least my mission, or hope for this service) was accomplished. She said something like, "Hearing all of those stories was so wonderful, it brought the big picture into view and helped me to see the many changes we've endured over the years. The subliminal message that came through is that everything is really going to be okay. We can do this just fine." Hearing what she took from the stories made my heart sing.

I feel that the depth of feeling in each reader's message showed the relational/spiritual value of each facet of the community. I am also glad that at least this one person did feel comforted by taking the long view of FUSN 's history, I think we can assume others did as well. We can only hope that we took a step or two this morning toward getting folks in the mood (girding our loins?? hoisting our sails??) to meet the changes ahead with confidence and happy anticipation.

Deep thanks to you, Noreen, for tending this service so closely, and to everyone who contributed, for being generous with your time and hearts. I think it turned out to be a lovely, community sustaining service.

Holly (and the Worship Committee)

Why don't Americans write big plays anymore?

2008-05-22T13:39:00.000-07:00

Why don't Americans write big plays anymore?

I've written 8 big American plays -- which I define as plays that deal with public as well as private concerns and a cast that goes beyond a domestic circle, with subplots. I've also written 4 modest-sized plays and 2 biggies set in England. Americans can't afford casts the size of Streetcar or Salesman-- the big cast social cross-section plays we get to see today mostly come from England, where they are pre-screened through success in a subsidized production.

American Repertory Theatre appoints a woman AD!

2008-05-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

I confess to being stunned by this news. I have long fulminated that there is not a single female in a decision-making position at ART/Harvard, and the evidence is in the male-and-gay centered stuff-- plays, directors, number and substantiality of acting roles-- that fill their seasons year after year. I don't know why women buy tickets, except that women are so conditioned to be interested in "people" that they often don't notice when story tellers treat females as not-quite.

The next season is already far more female-friendly than any in memory, and I'll be watching eagerly to see how this goes. I fear, of course, that critics will be hostile, audiences dwindle, and the experiment in inclusivity pronounced a failure. Below is the announcement that went out to the ARt email list:

... exciting news to share with you. Today we named Diane Paulus as our new Artistic Director, the third in our twenty-eight year history. Diane’s relationship with the A.R.T. began over twenty years ago as an undergraduate at Harvard, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa. In her words, “I feel my perspective on theatre was shaped by my years attending the A.R.T.” Diane has gone on to direct a distinguished repertoire of work that fuses together the traditional with contemporary and popular culture across a variety of genres, including theatre, opera, rock, musical theatre, and innovative jazz-inflected pieces. Her work has drawn acclaim from remarkably diverse audiences and critics around the world. Diane’s body of work includes:

• The Donkey Show, a disco adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream which ran for six years Off-Broadway and toured internationally

• Another Country, a stage adaptation of the novel by James Baldwin at Riverside Church

• Obie-award winning Eli’s Comin’, featuring the music and lyrics of Laura Nyro

• 40th Anniversary Concert Production of Hair in Central Park for the Public Theatre

• Don Giovanni, Le Nozze di Figaro, Turn of the Screw, and Cosi Fan Tutte, all for the Chicago Opera Theater

• The upcoming Kiss Me, Kate at the Glimmerglass Opera

Diane has asked me to share this statement with you:

“I am deeply honored to be appointed Artistic Director of the A.R.T. When I was a student at Harvard, there was no question A.R.T. was the most exciting and vibrant theater in America. I am thrilled to build on that legacy, and lead the A.R.T. into the future, creating a home for the next generation of outstanding theatre artists who will redefine and revitalize the meaning of theatre for our society.”

I am both excited and proud to have an artist we helped nurture take the organization into a dynamic new era. Please join me in welcoming Diane into our growing family, and supporting her as she leads us down new artistic paths and reaffirms our dedication to creating the most compelling, thought-provoking theatre in the country.

On behalf of everyone here at the A.R.T., I want to thank you for your support over the past several years. Now more than ever, we need to hear from you! So please let us know your thoughts and feelings as we move forward. And please join us in welcoming Diane back to Cambridge, and in celebrating the start of what promises to be an era of renewed artistic exploration and creativity!

Talk about Hot Actresses makes me hot under the collar

2008-05-16T10:56:00.000-07:00

This week a theatre blog where the talk is generally serious got OT onto rating performers on hotness, and some playwrights and directors I have respect for got drawn arguing re: who they fantasize about and who they think is skanky or "past it". I took time off my heavy rehearsal schedule to rant against this:

Must we have this conversation? It is vulgar and offensive and most of what passes for evidence is junk science. We just don't know enough about primate sexuality or the brain/body connections in humans to accurately describe what is going on in the parings and rankings we observe-- or even our own responses

The folk saying "it is just as easy to love a rich person as a poor one" is is true only so far as assuming any rewarded behavior is "easy". If "attraction", or "hotness" refers to the sending and reception of hormonal signals (which are probably olfactory) we haven't figured out how to measure it or control for other variables.

Marilyn Monroe said in an interview that when she was walking around the Village in glasses and a scarf and not "performing" Goddess Marilyn, nobody looked twice at her. Acting is believing is data. I do know that hotness, like other emotional signals, can be acted. I'm not attractive, but I can play it on stage. Imagination releases the hormones, and audience-- and scene partner's-- hormones respond. Our ancestors called it "casting out lures". Sometimes the effect carries over into "real life". It happened to me recently: I performed in a show I first did 21 years ago, and managed to cast the necessary sensual spell. As I walked down the street afterwards, men's heads turned and I felt that response I just don't get in my day to day existence. I'm in my sixties, and I know what signals are no longer appropriate. But it was really fun watching a month or two back Jane Fonda turn them on for Steven Colbert and reduce him to a quivering mass of protoplasm.

A request that delights me...

2008-05-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

Hi Ms. Horton :

I would very much like my English as second language students to stage (in class) your plays next session (September 2008).

Students will present in small groups. As they are Second language students, I thought it might be a good way for them (another way) to speak in English. My question to you is the following :

Which plays would be best suited for college level students who are looking at themes like censorship, reality TV and mindless entertainment, happiness, ecological footprint, relationships, love… etc…?

Thank you for getting back to me.

Sincerely,

ESL teacher

College Edoaurd Montpetit

Longueuil, Quebec

I hope I answered this! I was in production at the time and very busy...

I'd be delighted for your classes to use my material. There are short synopses of each play in the alphabetical listing.

No plays about TV, however. Reality interests me more -- although I'm a fan of David Kelly, laughed myself silly over Allie MacBeal and now watch Boston Legal with great pleasure.

Orphan Works Bill - author's opinion

2008-05-12T10:23:00.000-07:00

I'm getting emails urging me o "tOke action"The changes in the copyright laws proposed under the new "Orphan

Works" bill have been released and it will affect your creative career!

Write your Reps and Senators.

Refer to Bill H.R. 5889 when writing a House Rep.

Refer to Bill S. 2913 when writing a Senator.

Same Orphan Works bill, different #'s for Senate and House.

A colleague writes:

"If this is a hoax I want to know, if not-I want to do something.

I just received the email (below my signature) and wondered if anyone else has heard of this. (I am usually the last person to find out stuff or hear gossip.) If this is something that has been discussed, junk the email. If this is new to the rest of you, please check it out and send it on to as many artists and writers and creative people as you possibly can.

It is very disturbing to think that our hard work could be used and claimed by others if this goes through."

BUT: I'm on the other side of this one: to me these "rights" are Wrong! I think the opposition to this law is from publishers and other middle-men who want to limit what art is available to that which currently makes money for THEM. Copyright has been extended to a creation-killing degree. Under this law, once something is out of print and the author cannot be found, it will go to Public Domain-- as all published material did after set term for most of the history of copyright (which is a small part of the history of creativity). 26 years, 52 years, was long enough! I've been waiting my whole adult life to do a dramatization of a novel written before I was born and out of print for many years-- and each time I think the copyright will expire, lobbyists extend it! Now I know I will die before that story is free to be used. Under this new law, IF the author or heir is living and wants to reclaim the Orphan, s/he may do so -- but otherwise the the next generations of artists (and more importantly, readers) will have access to "orphan" work-- as our parents and grandparents and forebears did. Lengthly copyright is a phenomenon of OUR deprived generation! Publishers who would be willing to print on-demand a long out of print work by a dead author, composers who would like to adapt it for a musical or opera, are prevented from doing so now because a commercial enterprise "owns" the rights. No publisher or adapter of an "orphan" will be able to "claim" another's work: the original author will be credited and acknowledged: s/he simply is not around to collect royalties or give permission for adaptations. It breaks the "If our company can't make enough money from this work, we won't let anybody else distribute it-- after all, it would be "competing" with the authors we ARE marketing these days!" attitude. Otherwise, Disney will "own" the fairy tales and stories they stole from Public Domain forever after. I'm for "copyleft" and a generous Public Domain for our grandchildren.

Our Voices Together II

2008-05-03T18:31:00.000-07:00

Our Voices Together II
2008 ICWP Showcase of Playwrights' Platform Women Writers's New Work
May 17th, 7:00pm Ruth Nagel Jones Theatre, Wellesley College, MA.
Free and open to the public. See some of the Boston area's best actors in Staged Reading premieres!

7:00 pm Pre-show reception with refreshments.
7:30 pm the short plays:

Russian Master Class by Ludmila Anselm *
Cut by Holly Jensen
Unconditionally by Lida McGirr
Shopping Cart by Regina Ramsey*
The Acolyte by Kelly DuMar *

Intermission

The Unveiling by Ellen Davis Sullivan
Last Glance by Hortense Gerardo *
Best Practice by G.L. Horton *
Pull a Costner -by Phyllis Rittner

9:15 pm Post-show discussion moderated by Platform board members Chris King and Kelly DuMar.

* members of the International Centre for Women Playwrights, co-sponsor of this second annual celebration.

Web Links:
Stage Page Pod Cast Re: Our Voices Together >
Ruth Nagel Jones Theatre, Wellesley Summer Theatre
International Centre for Women Playwright
Playwrights Platform

Busy Spring

2008-05-03T10:43:00.000-07:00

It's been so long since I've blogged that I've forgotten how!
Now I've retrieved my password I'll do some catching up. I'm in a period of intense production activity, acting and directing in a number of short term projects of co-operative Festival-type presentations that add up to constant busy-ness. I haven't the attention span for serious writing, so it seems a good time to make a record of what I've been up to -- starting with the things that are about to happen, and then going back to fill in the ones recently completed. For instance, April 19 & 20th I was performing Martha Mitchell at the West End Theatre in NYC!

Advice on forming a writer's group

2008-04-22T13:36:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a playwright friend from Michigan. She says make up
a flyer that describes your ideal colleagues and what you want to work
on, plus gives a contact number, and pin it up on the multitude of
bulletin boards and kiosks at the University-- and in libraries. Also
post the call on Craig's List. You'll have an abundance of applicants
from which to pick the most compatible.
We just formed a group via a PS paragraph in the suburb's weekly.
This is in addition to the Oldest Established large group I've been in
for 30 years, that only critiques actor-read completed pieces and has
a long waiting list for its public readings/feedback. The informal
new group is small enough to respond to ideas and fragments as they
emerge, and can save months of work on an unpromising direction.

Photos from Martha Mitchell in NYC

2008-04-22T12:27:00.000-07:00

Wonderful final matinee! A final party with friends, and then back to Boston on the bus.....

Joan Faber, June Lewin, and Geralyn Horton after rehearsal in the Graycliff Music Room, then on to NYC!

You won't believe the stories I've got to tell you! -- Martha

testimonial for Martha

2008-04-21T13:25:00.000-07:00

Just saw Geralyn Horton in the one-woman show MARTHA MITCHELL - IN MOSTLY
HER OWN WORDS by Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro (who is a member, just not a
lister). Geralyn was, as expected, radiant. A delight. I didn't know she
could sing too. Beautiful voice soared in the baptistry stage space of the
86th Street Theatre. I wouldn't change a word of the 50-minute show. Pretty
darn good-sized audience too (not easy to get on a beautiful spring
afternoon in NYC).

- Robin

Didactic theatre -- arguing pro vs general con

2008-04-15T13:13:00.000-07:00

I know there is no support-- the past is inscrutable. But I don't think religion/ritual/education/propaganda/language/music/storytelling can be separated out. Groups develop ways of being together within an environment that (sort of) works. The "imitation of an action" that elicits a pattern of shared feeling builds and maintains the structure that every child must grow to fit into if the group is to survive. I remember seeing a PBS show on a dying tribe. They needed about 15 specialists in addition to the 60-70 hunters fishers and gathers to make a go of their island. They have songs and dances about their work and play, and as you say the kids work alongside their parents and learn from them. But the youth are no longer willing to be, say, the trap maker's apprentice just because the tribe has to have one to survive on the island. The kids have heard stories of the city, and they want to go experience those more exciting roles.... So in a few years they will all have to leave-- or die.

Is a seder didactic? It is ritual and lesson and religion and history and a play within which the players and audience are the same.....

Info re: Martha in NYC

2008-04-14T13:10:00.000-07:00

This sent out by June April 14th

We are bringing the Boston production of MARTHA MITCHELL by Rosanna Alfaro to New York next weekend! This is NOT the most recent version of MM's story (written by someone else and produced, with Annette Miller, at Shakespeare & CO. last summer). This is a one-woman play with music, featuring Geralyn Horton (I directed), which we originally produced in Boston & took to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1989! We took it out of mothballs a couple of years ago when it was clear the wire-tapping and other excesses of the Watergate years were being re-played, and we've been going strong ever since. We'll appear for 2 performances under the umbrella of Six Figures Theatre Company, in their Artists of Tomorrow Festival. Sat. 4/19 at 8 pm and Sun. 4/20 at 3 pm at the West End Theatre, 263 West 86th St.
I'd be grateful if you'd circulate this to the Bostonians-in-NY gang, who might be willing to come and support a few old friends & colleagues. Also, this company seems like a lively group, and it might be a good contact.
Hope you're doing well; haven't been in touch in some time. Theatre in Boston is alive and very well just now. I went to the IRNEs last night and was excited at how vibrant and diverse the quality of the work is. The Cyclorama, which as you know is huge, was packed, and clearly there was a lot to celebrate!!!

2008 Future Fest -- NYC

2008-04-13T12:42:00.000-07:00

April 13th announcement:

I will be performing Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro's solo musical "Martha Mitchell" as the opening show in the Artists of Tomorrow 2008 FutureFest series presented by Six Figures Theatre Co. at the West End Theatre, 263 West 86th Street NYC at 8 pm on Saturday April 19th and 3 pm Sunday April 20th. Martha's director, June Lewin, musical director/pianist Joan Faber, and Stage Mgr/Tech director Jeff Brewer are taking the bus to the Big Apple too. If anyone has friends in NYC they can recommend it to, we'd be grateful. I know it's an honor to be invited, but it'd also be nice to have an audience!

Here's the Six Figures web site

The Smarttix blurb for the NYC "Martha"

Martha Mitchell Musical's own web site is

I also have a little Podcast re: the NYC gig at G.L.Horton's Stage Page Pod Cast

REPLY to email: Dear Geralyn I wish I knew someone in NYC, but I don't. However I wish you the very best and wish you could do it here in Boston. Martha was a very funny, exciting, bright, independent and out spoken women and I'm sorry to say women of a younger age probably don't know who she is or realize her connection in part to the downfall of the second Nixon White House via the Watergate Connection and her charming husband Attorney General, John Mitchell. If I remember correctly still a little mystery surrounding her passing. Break a leg Kid. Have fun I know you'll knock em dead. They could not have a better opening. I send prayers for a full house. Blessings Peg H

Ludmila Anselm's Russian Master Class

2008-03-31T13:32:00.000-07:00

Photos June Lewin as Olga Chekhova in Ludmila Anselm's Russian Master Class (I directed)

SwanDay Photos of Precious Bane

2008-03-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

Prue and Gideon Sarn

Here are some shots from ICWP/March Madness Women Playwrights staged readings of Miriam Raiken Kolb's musical on SwanDay, March 29th, at Boston Playwrights Theatre

Platwright's Platform member John O'Brien's Obituary

2008-03-27T09:09:00.000-07:00

Platwright's Platform member John O'Brien's Obituary appeared in the Globe, along with his photo.

There's no photo credit for John's picture, so I assume it is one supplied by the family that I'm free to use. I have a few dozen photos of John from the thirtysome years I knew him, but none are "newfangled digital" .

QUOTE: "One of his plays that I worked on was called 'Due to Die at Dawn,' about a guy who was going to get executed in the morning," said Jason Taylor of Boston, who directed or acted in more than a dozen of Mr. O'Brien's plays. "I don't know how he did it, but he managed to put laughs into the play, and it's not a particularly humorous subject. When he gave me the script, I have to say I didn't know if it was going to work, but it did."

I remember that play well. Another memorable one is about a couple staying in a luxury hotel outside the US who see out their window the police clearing out a gypsy camp of squatters. It is similar to one of Wallace Shawn's works, but based on John's personal experience, and written before Shawn's. John chose it as the play to summon his theatre friends to hear read at Community Church when he was told that he had not long left to live. His voice was diminished and his energy limited, but he served as chief jokester and story teller at his own Irish Unitarian wake, giving us all a chance to say, "Thanks, friend, for the memories. We love you."

I'm thinking of sending in a Correction. The Globe says "more than 20 works for the stage..."

In the early 1980's, when I known him for a decade, I asked John how many plays he'd written. He said "One hundred and five." In the quarter century since, surely John at least equaled that rate of production-- so somebody must have slipped a decimal point. It should be "more than 200 works for the stage...".

Surely I'm not the only Boston-area playgoer who has personally seen far more than 20 of John O'Brien's plays!

Annoncement: ICWP/Swanday Celebration

2008-03-20T13:43:00.000-07:00

2^nd Annual MARCH MADNESS

SWAN Day Celebration!

Readings and Performances of the work of

Boston-area Women Playwrights and Artists

Boston Playwrights' Theatre

Saturday Afternoon, March 29 @ 2-5 PM

Come join us for a program of readings and performances of eleven theatre pieces created by local Boston playwrights and artists. This year there is a theme of relationships and all work treats the subject in some way. The work, all new and not previously presented, includes short plays and scenes (including one from a new musical!) plus a movement piece--- from area artists Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro, Ludmila Anselm, Sue Brody, Hortense Gerardo, Lyralen Kaye & Amy West, Lynn Liccardo, Miriam Raikin-Kolb & Geralyn Horton, Monica Raymond, Diane Ripstein, Phyllis Rittner and Debbie Wiess. Some of the Boston theatre scene's favorite directors and actors will be involved such as Danny Gidron, Ken Baltin, June Lewin, Bobbi Steinbeck and Jerry Bisantz. After the program, there will be a party with light refreshments for mingling and socializing

This event is part of a new international celebration of women artists called SWAN Day (Support Women Artists Now Day), and is being organized under the auspices of the International Centre for Women Playwrights. March Madness takes place at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre located at 949 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, (Pleasant Street stop on B-line) on Saturday afternoon, March 29, from 2-5pm. There will be no ticket sales, but donations ($5 suggested) at the door are welcome. All proceeds of the event will go to The Fund for Women Artists organization, one of the two groups, which conceived SWAN Day, to support its efforts. For more information, please contact Debbie Wiess

Kennedy @ Globe weighs in on BRENDAN

2007-10-25T18:34:00.000-07:00

Review: Noone's Brendan Is at Home in Boston
By Louise Kennedy, Globe Staff | October 25, 2007
Fluid, funny, and heartfelt, "Brendan" is Ronan Noone's most expertly crafted play yet. And that's saying something.
.... "Brendan" places its central character in the midst of complicated relationships: with fellow Irish immigrants in Boston, with the American women he pursues with touching awkwardness, and most of all with his mother back home.
Brendan's relationship with Mammy is particularly complex, not least because she's dead. ... the play finds ways to be about one particular guy, Brendan, while also saying some interesting things about the United States, Ireland, and what it means to change your allegiance - or at least your passport - from one to the other.
The Huntington has given "Brendan," which Noone developed as a playwriting fellow with the company, a stylish and substantial production. Alexander Dodge's set begins by capturing a specific, and quintessential, Boston sight: It's the mirrored walls of the Hancock Tower, reflecting the older architecture around it.... with sections sliding out or swiveling open to represent an apartment, a pub, or a courtroom, as Brendan moves haltingly along the path to citizenship....
Nancy E. Carroll ... as the Woman {is} charming, exasperating, amusing, controlling;
Mother and son are surrounded by a capable cast, with Ciaran Crawford particularly vivid as the foul-mouthed joker Steveo, and Natalie Gold bringing a nice mix of timidity and strength to Brendan's attractive neighbor, Rose. But what matters here, what we'll remember, is the way Brendan talks to his mother, and the way she talks to him - and the way, inevitably, Noone brings them to a point where they can accept the gulf that now lies between them.
Brendan may never see his mother, or his motherland, again. But so deftly does Noone trace his journey that we, with Brendan, come to understand: Nothing loved is ever wholly lost.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

The Kentucky Cycle

2007-10-19T10:33:00.000-07:00

The Kentucky Cycle was "in development" at Sundance in 1990, when I was "in development" there with my play set in a Boston abortion clinic, "Under Siege" (at that point titled "Choices"). I was so impressed by the Cycle that I took the dawn bus to NYC to see both parts, matinee and evening, and staggered onto the wee hours red eye bus to ride back home. That was a good production, a memorable one-- but I thought at the time that the play was actually more moving in the bare-bones intimacy of the well-rehearsed reading it got at Sundance than in the elaborate proscenium staging it got on Broadway. I was very much looking forward to seeing it again staged by Zeitgeist/Way Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts

Carolyn Clay gave it a rave in the Boston Phoenix

"Whitewash has floated like a soap scum on the bloodbath of America’s past as told in the history books. Robert Schenkkan’s THE KENTUCKY CYCLE blows the skim off the water, offering 200 years of Appalachian “progress” — from lawlessness to vengefulness to Norma Rae. This seven-hour, nine-play saga, which begins in 1775 on a precious piece of Eastern Kentucky ground that will be strip-mined before all is done, premiered in Seattle in 1991 and in 1992 became the first stage work to win the Pulitzer Prize before being produced in New York — which, of course, propelled it to Broadway, where it ran for a month. The Kentucky Cycle may be just too expensive and unwieldy for commercial production, requiring as it does two three-and-a-half-hour sit-downs and 20-some actors deployed in 120 speaking roles. (It probably didn’t help that the cycle came to fruition at the same time as Angels in America.)"

[Don't I know! It was hard for the rest of us at Sundance in 1990 to get any attention at all, with Angels there to blow us away! And Kushner got the epic sweep staged with a more economical cast, half the size of Kentucky's, or my own female epic's -- GLH).

CLAY again: "Perhaps the only sort of theater that could, with any thought toward fiscal prudence, take a shot at Schenkkan’s epic would be a non-Equity troupe whose leader is insane enough to try. Enter David J. Miller, honcho of two-time Elliot Norton Award–winning Zeitgeist Stage Company, which teams with Way Theatre Artists to present an area premiere of The Kentucky Cycle (at the Boston Center for the Arts through November 17) that is a sweeping, small-scale triumph..."

"Schenkkan’s cycle offers, along with its large doses of history and melodrama, flights of poetry and a keen sense of place. What Zeitgeist adds, in this vigorous chamber staging, is human scale. The saga unfolds in the tiny BCA Black Box on and between two small stages.....As he proved with Stuff Happens, the David Hare drama ... Miller is adept at deploying his talented non-professionals — who here include two refreshingly natural kids, Matthew Scott Robinson and Jacob Rosenbaum. The actors bounce among roles without, for the most part, falling into delineating caricature. Even the worst of the characters is pitiable. Callous dynasty maker Michael Rowen is imbued by Michael Steven Costello with a demonic energy that’s irresistible. Christine Power brings a lyrical fierceness to reluctant union matriarch Mary Anne Rowen. Peter Brown is effective as both a fire-and-brimstone preacher whose Bible is a retribution manual and a 20th-century United Mine Workers leader squeezed into a compromise that proves both fatal and personal. There are robust turns, too, by Bill Bruce, Amanda Good Hennessey, and Jonathan Orsini. And the whole cast is to be admired for getting its collective arms around this Herculean effort and remembering from moment to moment just where in the course of its all-too-human events they are."

I went to see part #1 with June Lewin last night, and we're going to pt #2 tonight.
The cast is uneven, but unified as an ensemble, those who are good as individual characters are astonishingly good! The spirit is fierce and totally committed, and what I found melodramatic in 1990 seems spot on after nearly 2 more decades of exposure to American greed and authoritarian violence. Pity and terror; pity and terror.

Here's an excerpt from a Jane Smiley essay in Slate c. 2004 explaining what Schekkan shows:

"Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states. There used to be a kind of hand-to-hand fight on the frontier called a "knock-down-drag-out," where any kind of gouging, biting, or maiming was considered fair. The ancestors of today's red-state voters used to stand around cheering and betting on these fights. When the forces of red and blue encountered one another head-on for the first time in Kansas Territory in 1856, the red forces from Missouri, who had been coveting Indian land across the Missouri River since 1820, entered Kansas and stole the territorial election. The red news media of the day made a practice of inflammatory lying—declaring that the blue folks had shot and killed red folks whom everyone knew were walking around. The worst civilian massacre in American history took place in Lawrence, Kan., in 1863—Quantrill's raid. The red forces, known then as the slave-power, pulled between 150 and 200 unarmed men from their beds on a Sunday morning and slaughtered them, many in front of their wives and children.* The error that progressives have consistently committed over the years is to underestimate the vitality of ignorance in America. Listen to what the red state citizens say about themselves, the songs they write, and the sermons they flock to. They know who they are—they are full of original sin and they have a taste for violence. The blue state citizens make the Rousseauvian mistake of thinking humans are essentially good, and so they never realize when they are about to be slugged from behind.

Here is how ignorance works: First, they put the fear of God into you—if you don't believe in the literal word of the Bible, you will burn in hell. Of course, the literal word of the Bible is tremendously contradictory, and so you must abdicate all critical thinking, and accept a simple but logical system of belief that is dangerous to question. A corollary to this point is that they make sure you understand that Satan resides in the toils and snares of complex thought and so it is best not try it.

Next, they tell you that you are the best of a bad lot (humans, that is) and that as bad as you are, if you stick with them, you are among the chosen. This is flattering and reassuring, and also encourages you to imagine the terrible fates of those you envy and resent. American politicians ALWAYS operate by a similar sort of flattery, and so Americans are never induced to question themselves. That's what happened to Jimmy Carter—he asked Americans to take responsibility for their profligate ways, and promptly lost to Ronald Reagan, who told them once again that they could do anything they wanted. The history of the last four years shows that red state types, above all, do not want to be told what to do—they prefer to be ignorant. As a result, they are virtually unteachable.

Third, and most important, when life grows difficult or fearsome, they (politicians, preachers, pundits) encourage you to cling to your ignorance with even more fervor. But by this time you don't need much encouragement—you've put all your eggs into the ignorance basket, and really, some kind of miraculous fruition (preferably accompanied by the torment of your enemies, and the ignorant always have plenty of enemies) is your only hope. If you are sufficiently ignorant, you won't even know how dangerous your policies are until they have destroyed you, and then you can always blame others."--JSmiley

In linking Schekkan's name to his Wikipedia reference I discovered that we share the same birthday, March 19th, and that he is an actor whose work I've seen on TV in Star Trek TNG. I didn't recognize him when I met him at Sundance-- but I did like him on sight.....GLH, Ares cusp Piscean.

BRENDAN at the Huntington/Calderwood

2007-10-11T23:57:00.000-07:00

Saw the preview of this tonight. I liked it more than any other Noone play I've seen. Of his trilogy, I liked The Blowin of Baile Gall best and The Gigolo Confessions of Baile Breag not at all, but there is no doubt that Noone has a distinctive voice. I suppose that being invited to see a preview means not talking about the play publicly till after press opening-- but surely it is OK to say it was a pleasure to sit through and that I'd recommend it? I particularly enjoyed the skillful performance in several roles by my old Sugan colleague Ciaran Crawford. We commiserated afterwards as I congratulated him in the lobby: neither of us has worked much since that excellent Irish theatre closed.

BRENDAN Press release
by Ronan Noone
Directed by Justin Waldman
Wimberly Theatre
Oct. 12 - Nov. 18, 2007

"Noone's plays are now the highlight
of any given theatre season!"
- The Boston Globe

A recent Irish immigrant, Brendan now calls Boston home. He misses his family, but works hard to fit-in in his adopted country, earn his American citizenship, and find love and meaning in his new life in this funny and touching premiere by acclaimed Boston writer Ronan Noone.

Born and raised in Ireland, Huntington Playwriting Fellow Ronan Noone is quickly becoming one of America's top young playwrights. His recent play The Atheist was part of the Huntington's 2006 Breaking Ground Festival, and premiered in both New York and London. His other works include the acclaimed trilogy The Lepers of Baile Baiste (National Playwriting Award), The Blowin of Baile Gall (Elliot Norton Award for Best New Play), and The Gigolo Confessions of Baile Breag.

Advance Article from The Boston Globe
In two plays at the Huntington, the Irish-born writer turns to America
By Louise Kennedy, Globe Staff | September 9, 2007
Justin Waldman sounds a bit incredulous, if delighted, as he contemplates the fall season at the Huntington Theatre Company. With good reason: Waldman, the Huntington's artistic associate, will be directing not one but two plays this fall, both by the award-winning Boston playwright Ronan Noone.

"It's a little Ronan Noone festival," Waldman says with a laugh. "It's kismet, I think."
Noone himself has a different word for the happy coincidence of seeing both "Brendan" and "The Atheist" on the same fall schedule: "It's my Xanax," he says - the ideal cure for any anxiety he may have felt after finishing the trilogy of Irish plays that put him on the theater map.
... the Huntington's Wimberly Theatre will have "The Atheist," Wednesday through Sept. 30, and "Brendan" from Oct. 12 through Nov. 17.
"It made more sense to do them on top of each other than spread out," Waldman says. "But they're such disparate plays. If you didn't have the title page, you would never guess that they're by the same guy. But they do have the same smarts."

Beginning Again with the Blog

2007-09-13T09:55:00.000-07:00

Long time no blog. Busy writing plays. I've had things to say during the hiatus, though, so I'll start filling in backwards from today. Today I am arguing with fellow playwrights about David Mamet's definition of the purpose of theatre and his own accomplishment as artist and critic:
David Mamet's idea of "delight" is very different from mine, and I suspect from many people's. He delights in cruelty, and sees drama as a kind of blood sport, like dog fighting, but with manipulative skill on display as well as courage and brute strength.

I don't like him or his plays, but I respect him and I attend his plays and read his essays to see what talent in service to the truth of the Dark Side can accomplish.

Mamet is not, as you suggest I imply, the nexus of evil. He is a talented artist who had a nightmare childhood and is making art from the materials his Muse supplies. It was bad enough when he was a Stoic: I revere Epititus. But now that Mamet rejoices in the cruelest aspects of the vengeful God of the ancient Hebrews, I can not contemplate his vision without a shudder. If I thought his version of the world was the whole truth and not a partial one, I would commit suicide. Better not to have been born into such a world.

Praise and Requests

2007-03-31T16:28:00.000-07:00

Hi there my name is brian i am a manchester and london based actor i just came across your website in an attempt to find a specific monologue, though it didnt have what i am looking for it was fun to go through and good to see another independant resource for monologues. just wanted to say thanks and keep up the good work
best regards brian

ps you wouldnt know where to find a monologue from a young american/english soldier in iraq speaking on conflict? im looking for a sort of 2-3 mins reply to a shrink to add to my catalogue.

I expect that I'll write one one day soon. After I've met and talked to such a person.
I just wrote a short play, "Rehabilitation", on the subject. But the wounded soldier is a female.

LMC wrote:
Having read several of your one act plays, I have now turned to some of your full length ones. I was wondering if I could get a full copy of "Amazons" and "No Secrets, No Lies." I greatly enjoy your writings! I especially appreciate how they force you to think. I read "Under Siege," and I am still thinking about it a lot. It definitely posed a challenge to my traditional mindset. Thank you for writing!

An Exchange with a Student

2007-03-29T16:37:00.000-07:00

Re your "few Questions..."
Dear J,
Thank you for the kind words about my writing.
The monologue from "Elegy" condenses several pages of dialogue into a single story. I'm sending you an attached copy of the script of the play-- but it is also on my Stagepage web site. There should be a live link to the play "Elegy" from the monologue. You can also see a video of my actor friend Robert Bonotto performing it on Stagepage -- he also performed it at a March Madness monologue Festival here in Boston, celebrating women playwrights who, like me, belong to the International Centre for Women Playwrights. Robert was very moving in the monologue: the audience was enthusiastic. Your interpretation would be different from his, of course. Each actor brings something different to a good monologue.
Conventional Behavior is on the site, too.
As long as these are simply class projects, this email will serve as official permission from me, the author/publisher, for you, Joey Ptashinski, to perform and/or direct these pieces of mine in a non-commercial setting.
If your school or organization undertakes a ticket-selling production, you will need a more formal contract, probably in the name of a teacher, coach or school administrator: an email version of the Dramatists Guild contract used by amateurs and educational institutions. It is still simple and cheap--- $5 to $50 per performance, depending on the length of the script and the price and number of tickets sold.

Mrs Horton,
Thank you for the copies, is there any way to get a publication for these items? Like in a book? from a company like Playscripts, Inc...and so on. It's just to use any of your work, it needs to be a published play.
I really love your work and would like to use these items, if I could. I would like to talk with you more on the one-act matter if these are published plays.

Thank you.
The Library of Congress Copyright Office considers me the publisher of the plays on Stagepage.info-- web publishing counts as published, even if the author does it him/her self. The plays you named are registered with the LCCO: Work of Performing Arts # PAu 2-738-647, under the title "Collected Plays 1975-2001 by Geralyn 'G.L.' Horton." My plays are nationally distributed-- internationally, even: anyone anywhere in the world who has a computer can read and download them. However, they are NOT commercially printed. I will at request laser-print and bind a play and mail it to a customer willing to pay for the labor, printing, and postage-- which is NOT cheap!-- but that is not my real business: I am leasing production rights. Free use of my web published short pieces for non-commercial and educational purposes is my advertising campaign.

There must be several different kinds of acting competitions/ leagues, with differing rules. I know that my pieces-- including the monologue and 2 plays you are interested in-- are used by schools. I get thank you emails from successful students who have won prizes or placement, and queries from teachers and judges who have heard and admired my work.

"Conventional Behavior" has had productions in high schools and colleges and at theatres and science fiction conventions. However, a school using the play in a competition is unlikely to perform before an audience that contains anyone who has seen a production of it. 40 productions in 20 years still means that only about 8000 people out of 300,000,000 have ever seen it.

I think it may even be illegal-- in "restraint of trade"-- for an organization to require that only scripts from certain publishers may be used.
I hope that you will share this information with the people who make the rules. I am far from the only playwright who publishes through a web site or with an on-demand publishing co-op. Digital publishing is niche publishing's future, and it is here now.

Playwrights Must be Driven Mad

2007-03-27T16:55:00.000-07:00

I just curated an author's play reading series in a library. I invited writers, told them to bring "5-15 minutes of something that is a good sample of your talent"'-- that will be appreciated by the kind of people who generally go to literary events at a branch library. We had an hour and 40 minutes, 6 pieces should take an hour leaving 40 minutes for tea and cookies and question-and-answer where the Library Ladies will get to know the authors and perhaps-- who knows?-- become advocates for the local talent to be produced by local theatres.
One writer-- whom I had never met, and included on someone's recommendation-- brought 6 actors and 40 minutes worth of scenes from her full length play. I'd scheduled myself last and had to cut the piece I was performing to about 3 minutes, and there was still no Q & A time.
What was this writer thinking? Why would she be so rude and burn her bridges with a "producer" -- however humble-- just so that an audience of fewer than 50 Library Ladies heard 40 rather than 15 minutes of her play????

Our lives of quiet desperation must drive us mad!

Buy Candy to Conquer Cancer?

2007-03-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

A well intentioned pitch from a church member to buy pink and white chocolate candies so a part of teh profits will go to breat cancer research: I do not respond positively.

May I say that I find this sort of thing repulsive? May I suggest that we disentangle Public Health/Care from advertising and advocacy and support it publicly by an allocation of a the reasonable portion of the GNP to be raised through progressive taxation, assigned where experts and ethicists predict it will do the greatest good for the greatest number, and treat everyone who suffers from illness or disability with dignity and compassion apart from where their particular ailment falls in the current ad biz popularity poll or the fund raiser's hit parade?

Pocast with Rachel Rubin Ladutke

2007-03-26T18:44:00.000-07:00

recorded while in NYC for the ICWP Women Playwrights Celebration at the Drama Book Shop. Up in G.L.Horton's Stage Page Pod Cast

Entertainment vs Something To Say?

2007-03-25T18:57:00.000-07:00

adding my 2 cents to a "why do we write" discussion....

We have no official creed here. I myself believe that I was called in childhood by the God of Playwrights and the shades of my dead colleagues to wrestle with the Great Questions-- most specifically "How Ought We to Live?"--- and communicate the results of my research in the field though the imitation of the actions of vivid truthful characters in dialogue that is beautiful-- theatrical poetry.

If I already know what I will say before I wrestle, then it probably isn't worth the effort. Somebody else has said it already-- that's how I know it. My repetition will be unearned, and in that respect less than truthful. Well, maybe some old truisms are worth repeating in a skit or 10 minute play, just to remind myself and anybody who sees it that we've been this way before and don't need to keep reliving our mistakes. But it's what I discover in the course of writing/wrighting that is uniquely valuable. That's the thing I am grateful to other writers for "putting me through" in their plays-- they went to a place no one's been before and emerged with the meaning of it, and now thanks to them I have, too.

I don't announce this, of course. The aspiration is so risible that it is no wonder that most of what I write is comedy. But narrative is a way-- perhaps the central way-- we perceive and understand, as well as entertain, ourselves and each other. When I sit in the theatre I want the people on the stage to tell me stories; but stories that reveal significance.

birthday blues

2007-03-19T23:18:00.000-07:00

All day dealing with the birthday blues. Doesn't help that my natal date is now also the date of the start of the invasion of Iraq. My husband and I made the local anti-war Vigil for an hour before I had to go to the annual IRNE awards presentation. David said that various MA town Vigils were featured on all 3 11 pm newscasts.
I didn't win Supporting actress at the IRNEs: "Talking To Terrorists" got none of the multiple awards it was nominated for, alas
But it was a good night for Women. Productions of Luce's The Women, Playwrights Platform's aluma Teresa Rebeck's Mauritius, and Ahren's Ragtime took home the lion's share of the prizes. Local actress/producer/director/playwright Jacqui Parker won Best New Play (small theatre) for her Dark As A Thousand Midnights --- and yes, Jacqui had a monologue in our ICWP program at the Boston Playwrights Theatre on March 8th.

Saturday- music, March Storm, Graves & The Goddess

2007-03-17T13:59:00.000-07:00

Saint Patrick's Day-- I forgot, but happened to dress in green anyway. The ice didn't quite make it impossble to get out of the house, so I went to the Newton Library's monthly Saturday sing, which opened with "When Irish Eyes are Smiling" and closed with selections from Brigadoon. Vowed to learn the middle part in the Mozart Alleluia-- if my high notes as as painful to others as to me, it's time to retire them.

Happy to read on line that Christians are finally mounting a significant anti-war presence. Hundreds arrested outside the White House last night.

Joined the Goddess-blogging at Firedoglake this afternoon.
On Robert Graves - a poet who claimed to be Muse/Goddess inspired and to have “channeled” his wonderful historical novels “I, Claudius” “King Jesus” and “Wife to Mr. Milton” — Graves also wrote a channeled novel of the future, a future which seems more plausible by the day: “Watch the Northwind Rise”. In it, anthropologists have set up a Goddess-Culture for the post-apocolypse remnant of humanity, but there is Trouble in Paradise. I love this work, which I read when a teen, and had hoped to live long enough for it to go out of copyright so that I could do a dramatization– preferably a musical one, since music and magic are themes. But with the recent extension of copyright long past the century mark I have lost hope: not only will I be dead before this out-of-print masterpiece can be revived and reworked, civilization will probably be dead too and unable to benefit from the prophetic poet’s vision.

ICWP Celebrations, Brighton Branch Boston Public Library

2007-03-15T15:40:00.000-07:00

ICWP Celebrates Women Playwrights
Thursday March 15th 7pm BRIGHTON BRANCH Boston Public Library

WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH STAGED PLAY READINGS

Kelly DuMar’s “Bird’s Egg, Blue” (Elizabeth T. Rose as Cin, H.W.Tilney as Tripp, drummers Dorothy Eagle & Geralyn Horton.) excerpt from the full length "Away Message"; about love and loss across two generations.

Monica Raymond's "Novices"; A twenty-first century take on The Taming of the Shrew: Kate (Alex Phillips) and Pete (Ian McCafferty), who've connected on-line, meet at Au Bon Pain. Kaycie Alanis directs.

Mary McCollough's "Bottom Lines"; Pooshee Pritchee intends to save her brother, Cash, from himself-- and save the family's good name. Pooshee's soon-to-be lawyer niece, Dee, tries to stop her. Featuring Elena Dodd and Chris Fadala, StreetFeet performers.

G.L.Horton's "Elegy"; urging an up-and-coming young woman virtuoso (Noel Armstrong) to resist the efforts of her husband and her friend Sandy (Alex Philips) to get her to relax and fiddle "just for fun" veteran violist (Robert Bonotto) passes on a hard-earned lesson from his late wife.

Deborah Valianti: excerpt from the Brighton playwright's "Too Many Willies"; a gender bending exploration of the nature and source of Art, and inspiration, and the effects of marketplace sensibilities on the Artist. Ms. Valianti plays Ronnie; Andy O’Kane, Jack; Emilie Davis, Betty- Ronnie’s sister- & Artemisia; Don Bravo, Narrator, Harry, & Tommy.

Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro: excerpt from "Martha Mitchell" (Geralyn Horton). The wife of Nixon's Attorney General- he went to jail, for Dirty Tricks such as covering up the Watergate break in- has her say.

Lisa Kron's Master Class, her "Well" at the Huntington

2007-03-14T14:42:00.000-07:00

On a theatre list, we discuss the "opportunity" advertised to playwrights to take Lisa Kron's Master Class at a luxury resort in Italy: cost $1700 for the week.
Someone asked who Lisa Kron is.
I reply: A writer recently much praised for "Well" which I will see at the Huntington Theatre in Boston tonight. She has 600,000 entries in Google -- don't you Google before you ask the list? I saw her earlier solo show about her family's annual outing to an amusement park: pretty good. Kron comes from a solo/performance art/standup background and was well known in those circles before venturing into more traditional stage territory.

One playwright was offended by the "master playwright" sell and called the opp description "pretentious". I jumped on his leftist bandwagon with:
Pretension's the least of it. This is class warfare. The idea that someone can pay $1500 plus airfare to go to a luxury resort in Italy and get artistic attention and approval not available to a writer who has to work for a living makes me want to spit nails. The fact that Ellen Stewart has given the La Mama imprimatur to this "opportunity" makes me weep. Sic transit....

I realize that I am an utter heretic in these matters.
Socrates is my model. Though poor and ugly, he accepted neither money nor sexual favors from his students. He was eager to learn from anyone who appeared to have knowledge, as long it was knowledge he could test. He taught his testing method to slaves and aristocrats, and treated them with equal respect and attention. He condemned the kind of teaching that encouraged students to use rhetorical tricks and craft to obtain advantage or "make the worse appear the better cause" -- marketing is a no-no! The pursuit of truth and and beauty-- kindness is a subset of beauty-- through the Examined Life is the goal of both art and science, and a sacred one, a calling from the God or one's inner Daemon. Money isn't a way of keeping score, or a neutral determinant of value. It is a distortion factor: it reinforces the tribe's natural bias in favor of that which confirms the prevailing comforting illusions.

Of course, this too is an illusion. The Socrates I imagine I know and love is a character in closet dramas by the aristocrat Plato, who had his own agenda.

Then I saw "Well". Did I like it? Yes. The author/narrator has excellent comic timing and although making fun of authorial pretensions was part of the piece's structure, I, like the rest of the audience, was inclined to like approve of the person behind the unreliable persona. I'm sure that if I were the sort of playwright who could afford to spend a week working with Kron in Italy, I would respect her and enjoy the experience. Not everyone reacted this way: my companion was very cranky, and kept muttering things like: "self-indulgent" "pandering" and "fraudulent". At its core, "Well" is Midwestern "nice" rather than NYC edgy or corrosive. (Another friend fell asleep.) But generally, the laughter and applause was enthusiastic, and comments from the audience on way out sounded grateful that they had been encouraged by nice rather than assaulted by nihilism. I like that too-- it's a weakness of mine, that I'm a Midwestern liberal do-gooder and I like nice. Like Kron's mother, I moved my family from a white suburb into an integrated neighborhood-- Boston's Mission Hill-- and sent into a voluntarily integrated school run by ldealists. Like the Kron family experiment, it didn't work out quite as hoped-- but we don't regret having done it. I like liberal Landford Wilson and even Republican A.R. Gurney, for goshsake. I'm grateful when comedy comes down on the "right" side of moral earnestness rather than sinking me up to the neck in satirical despair-- like, say, much of Durang. Do I think "Well" is a work of particular depth or importance? No. It does not fulfill its implicit contract of confrontation and catharsis. Its themes and metaphors do not coalesce into a coherent whole. And structurally it is a classic case of the passive autobiographical protagonist, and all the fun and games with meta-theatrical bells and whistles to disguise that do not compensate for it. The production itself is over-done, messily lavish, and intentionally disjunct in a way that seems designed to encourage you to give the actors extra credit for merely surviving it. I do give them extra credit-- I was just upset that the supporting actors were least convincing when playing "themselves". Perhaps that metaphor would work better if they were black clad puppet manipulators who took off their face coverings when turning "real" to chide the author?

On the other hand Louise Kennedy, the Globe's new first-stringer, really REALLY like the show. I'm glad that she did, and very glad that the Globe now has a critic who is not temperamentally averse to what is after all a very Woman Playwright type of show.

Quoting Kennedy's Globe review:
It is really tough to be smart and silly at the same time, but Lisa Kron magnificently succeeds. Her comedy "Well," now making its Boston debut at the Huntington Theatre Company, has moments goofy enough to make your sides ache -- and other moments intelligent enough to rearrange your understanding of the world.
"Well" comes to Boston fresh from Broadway, where performance artist Lisa Kron earned a best-actress Tony nomination in the role of "Lisa Kron," whom playwright Lisa Kron describes in the script as a "New York performance artist writing a play NOT about herself." Is that meta enough for you?
The wonderful news, though, is that unlike too many metatheatrical attempts to use performance to comment on itself, "Well" deploys its self-references, self-interruptions, and self-transformations with wisdom and grace. Kron the playwright, Kron the actress, and Kron the character all make delightful company, self-aware but never self-absorbed. So the play, while it's clearly autobiographical, is also clearly about more universal questions: what it means to be sick, what it means to be well, what families do to and for each other, and how sometimes in spite of ourselves we find a way to heal......"

More about gendered writing-- form

2007-03-14T13:43:00.000-07:00

are experiments in form a female trait?
Lyn Gardner - The Guardian
March 15, 2007 08:55 AM
The premieres last week of Alexandra Wood's debut play The Eleventh Capital at the Royal Court and Debbie Tucker Green's Generations at the Young Vic are a reminder - if it was needed - that it is women who are often in the forefront of experiments in form and style in British theatre. Over the last 20 years Caryl Churchill has proved herself a tireless seeker after new form and it seems that her creative, rumbustious successors are increasingly taking up the baton with enthusiasm and confidence too....Yet it still seems to be the case that when women experiment in form they
are more likely to be shot down by critics and told that they don't know how to
structure a play properly....
Back in the mid-1980s when both women theatre critics and playwrights were
in pretty short supply, accusations that women didn't know how to write proper
plays were commonplace. Jack Tinker dismissed Churchill's now-classic Cloud
Nine because of its "sloppy construction" while another male critic
complained: "The play, if I may use the term of a work that is almost totally innocent of any formal structure, may be about nothing at all." Reviewing Sarah
Daniels' Byrthrite at the Royal Court, Mark Lawson declared: "Ms Daniels has a
gift for provocative invective but she is a poor storyteller: perhaps linear
narrative is too phallic." Well perhaps it is. I've certainly heard it suggested that the well made play in Aristotelian mode corresponds closely to the male orgasm in the way it reaches its climax, release and post-coital conclusion. But maybe choosing not to write a traditionally structured play doesn't mean that you don't know how to write one, simply that you want to find different ways to tell your stories.....
Times fortunately have changed, and there is now an entire army of women
playwrights marching out there in the direction of the future who will not be
stopped by a bit of critical sniping. But when I hear people saying about
Green's Generations: "Oh, it's very interesting, but it's not really a play, is
it?" I know that we've still got a long way to go before women's experiments in
form are accepted without qualification.

I clinked the link to Rona Monro, whom I met in London after I played the juicy role of the mother in her wonderful "Bold Girls" at the Sugan Theatre. I liked Rona very much: don't know how I missed reading about this play of hers while it was happening.....

Murder, rehab, prison - Rona Munro rarely shirks the dark side. But she really wants to write a fluffy play, she tells Samantha Ellis

Thursday January 23, 2003
The Guardian

'I always have this dream that I'm going to write something very soft and happy, and it never seems to happen," says screen and stage writer Rona Munro. She certainly hasn't lived her dream with Iron, a play set in a grim women's prison where a murderess is reunited with her estranged daughter - the child of the man she killed. "Rarer than a unicorn" is how Munro's antiheroine describes herself; of the 70,000 people imprisoned in Britain today, 5,000 are lifers, but only 165 of those lifers are women.
When researching the play, which transfers this week from Edinburgh to London, Munro was struck by "the ordinariness of it. Lifers tend to have a prison routine. So when you visit, you're going into someone's room. It's like a bedsit. It's not like going into an iron-bars environment. The kind of conversations we had were very, very ordinary. We'd never talk about what they had done."

Martha in the news! (re: TPM's Marshall)

2007-03-14T12:48:00.000-07:00

But I don't know who wrote this-- it was a quote within a quote which I clipped, but them I went back to find the author to attribute, the comment had dropped off the blog somehow or I forgot where'd I'd found it.

Perhaps someone will inform me re: the author of this pithy Martha Mitchell reference:

..bloggers will realize how reckless their actions have been and will learn some valuable lessons from this episode. They need to learn how journalism really works and to understand what drives modern journalism you have to go all the way back to the Watergate scandal, which many bloggers are too young to remember.

After Richard Nixon was forced to resign the presidency because of the Watergate scandal, he told David Frost in an interview, "If it hadn't been for Martha Mitchell, there'd have been no Watergate." Martha Mitchell was the wife of Nixon's Attorney General John Mitchell. Before the Watergate scandal broke, she began calling reporters late at night and telling them that her husband was engaged in illegal activities. Reporters, of course, didn't believe anything she said and tried to help her by telling her husband what she was doing. He had her locked away and leaked a story to the press that she had a "drinking problem." The character of Martha Logan in the television series 24 is based on her so you can see why no one believed her and why she was so dangerous.

Although some blame for Watergate must also go to Mark Felt, the disgruntled FBI employee who has since been revealed as Woodward and Bernstein's source Deep Throat, it was Mitchell's indiscretions that first put the poisonous idea in the heads of reporters that our own government can't be trusted, which ultimately weakened our country. Just as people working for Gonzalez tried to stop U.S. attorneys from talking to reporters by threatening to release damaging information about them, John Mitchell tried to stop The Washington Post from writing about Watergate by warning, "[Post Publisher] Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that's published."

Regrettably, The Washington Post went ahead with the story anyway. In the wake of Watergate laws were passed limiting what the government could do. Because of these laws government officials were barred from using all of the resources necessary to protect our country. So Mitchell was partly responsible not only for damaging the credibility and the power of the U.S. government for years to come but possibly even 9/11. It has taken years of painstaking work by the Bush Administration to restore some of the credibility and power the government lost after Watergate through laws like the Patriot Act. If one delusional, alcoholic woman, who just happened to be right in this one instance, can do so much damage despite the concerted effort of many reporters not to believe her, think what damage an army of Martha Mitchells could do. To journalists that's what bloggers are--an army of Martha Mitchells.

The idea of an army of Martha Mitchells is terrifying to reporters. Sure, Josh Marshall and other bloggers happened to be right on this one story, just as Martha Mitchell turned out to be correct despite the fact that she was a delusional drunken gossip. But that shouldn't tempt the Jay Carneys of the world to pick up the phone the next time one of these Martha Mitchells calls and tries to put subversive ideas in their heads. I think Carney and other reporters realize the damage Watergate did to this country and they are trying to undo it by returning journalism back to where it was before Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein ruined it. Unfortunately, there is an army of Martha Mitchells out there constantly ringing up journalists in the middle of the night, waking them up when they are trying to sleep.

Question from a student about a monologue

2007-03-13T14:32:00.000-07:00

This morning I got an email Question from a student about a monologue:
On Mar 13, 2007, L K wrote:
Hi,-- about Eulogy--
I am planning on using this piece for theatrical
auditions in the very, near future. I chose this
piece because I can relate to the subject matter and
it is a very, dynamic piece. Can you tell me what
your inspiration was?

I replied:
It's a composite character, combining two women who talked to me in 2 different conversations with a few others present. The first was after a Memorial Service at my UU church, where I sat having tea with an acquaintance and a few strangers and the general topic was the multiple Eulogies we'd just heard. We agreed how moving it was when different friends and relatives revealed the depth of love inspired by someone-- someone that we who were at the table knew only slightly. A young woman said that sometimes there is a side of someone that only one family member knows: and that person may never reveal it. I remembered part of that story about that young woman's father when a few years later, when after a Creativity class another woman talked about being asked to speak at the funeral of her abusive father. I imagined myself in each woman's place, and then the two merged into a single voice and story. I'm sure that I added parts of my own experience with a distant & curmudgeonly -- but not overtly abusive or rejecting -- father to the mix. My own father had just died when I wrote it.
Does this help?

she wrote back to say that it did help -- though I'm not sure why. Isn't this how most writing happens???

Aristotle and Campbell don't always apply

2007-03-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

Advice from Jeff: "The women writers have to break through to the women who are stars and have them advocate their work. Don't go through agents if you can help it. If a star goes to a non-profit and says, "I want to do this play," the play will get done"

Re: Drama as a hero's Journey: Aristotle and Campbell don't always apply

Notice that even the Greeks and Shakespeare do not stick to the Aristotle and Campbell "hero's journey" model. Trojan Women? Seven Against Thebes? Hyppolytus? -- even Antigone.... Who's the hero of Julius Caesar? of Henry IV? Of Merchant of Venice? of Much Ado? Beatrice and Benedict are the comic subplot....

The Shakespearean large cast multi-generation upstairs/downstairs model is my ideal for a full length. Except that for me most of the "default characters" -- the ones whose gender is not part of the plot, like doctors, clerks, customer service people, bosses or underlings, family friends and relations-- these people who in
Shakespeare's day would be uniformly male and which result in a 9-1 male gender split in his large casts-- are generally female. Most of my plays split 3-2 female. This means of course that even if a company that specializes in large cast "classic" plays were willing to take the risk of mounting a modern one, they would have to go
outside the company to cast one of mine. There wouldn't be enough women members in such a company. Though there are more women in the acting profession than men, they are competing for fewer roles. My goal, to which I don't seem to be getting closer, is to become just barely enough of a name-recognition writer that universities and community theatres, which are always in need of plays with extra parts for women, will consider producing mine.

T D wrote on March 11: "If Geralyn's contention is true, that we can sniff out feminine writing by the use of "the" versus "a", how easy would it be to detect -- and reject -- a different way of telling a story, even if differences are in shades rather than complete tonal shifts?"

I reply: I never said that "we" can spot feminine writing by the use of "the" versus "a" -- that's what a computer program came up with, and only a computer can do it, and that with only about 90% accuracy. The rest of us, me included, can't usually tell whether something was written by a male or female-- we just make assumptions
based on the kind of story and the central characters. Our accuracy when under a pseudonym a man writes a "chick" story or a woman writes sci-fi or a mystery is around the chance level. We think we can tell, but really we can't!
The women-written plays from my writer's group that were rejected on a blind-read by the male critic panel all had juicy roles for women in them. As an actress, I'm aware: I've sat through the winners of a 10 minute play contest and noticed that an hour of performance can go by without a single role in any of them that a good actress would want to play. Whatever criteria the judges had in mind, they
certainly didn't include: "Would Meryl Streep agree to be in this piece?" For me, "Meryl Streep's in it" has always been reason enough to go see something.

A Piece of the Pie

2007-03-11T20:37:00.000-07:00

MF asks: "Is it wrong that significantly fewer women playwrights areproduced than men? Of course, it is. Is it better than it used to
be? As Jeff Sweet points out, yes it is and I think it's wrong to dismiss this simply because it isn't all we wish it would be."
I reply:
It all depends on what "it" and "used to be" means! Women are NOT a bigger % of the authors of produced plays NOW than they were in the early 1990s, and even the latest peak in the 1990s was a LOWER percentage of woman-written plays that those that were produced at the turn of the 19th century-- ie, in 1899-- or in the 1930s. This
is the 3rd time I have supplied this statistic. Nobody has disputed it. I assume that is because everybody "knows" that women have been moving steadily toward equality and that we should stop whining and just wait patiently for Progress to catch us up..... Except that what everybody knows, like "a rising tide lifts all boats" may not be true. Sometimes equality goes backwards-- and Times of War are
usually when people stop noticing that it is men who are doing all
the talking.

Jeff, you edited Burns-Mantle Best Plays. Surely you noticed that
the 1960-70 period when there were essentially none by women was a
drop-off, not a base line?

Central Square Celebrations -- ICWP/IWD

2007-03-10T21:23:00.000-08:00

I should report at length, but am too burnt out to do so. But here are some pictures taken by Cynthia Wands

Write Like a Man?

2007-03-10T20:24:00.000-08:00

You can check on line whether you write like a man or a woman. The statistically significant differences are very subtle: grammatical constructions, things like the ratios between uses of "the" and "a", but the scientists claim their analysis is accurate something like 87% of the time. You feed the computer program a few hundred words of prose or dialog... and it guesses the author's gender.
My men's monlogues are tagged as male-written by this computer program, my women's monologues as female-written. I send my plays and reviews out under my initials-- and nine out of 10 emails I get concerning them begin "Dear Mr. Horton".

There are some men who really do think (unconsciously?) that women have cooties, and that if a man is exposed to women's writing andlured into identifying with a woman, he'll catch cooties himself. These guys really did run things in the 1950s-- they sent all the women who had gained a toe hold in the theatre during the Depression
and while the men were off fighting WWII back to the kitchen (where they sat down and wrote novels and poems and short stories.) There aren't so many of these guys any more: but it only takes one on a committee or board or as AD to knock out every female finalist. The cootie sensor can be even more accurate than the computer's gender- sorter. My venerable writers' group has a long history of more or
less rough equality. Every so often the group's reading committee is accused of favoring te likable people over the talented , and one year the group invited a panel of "objective" experts-- 3 male critics -- to pick the 9 plays to be produced out of a finalist group of 20 one acts chosen by the committee. With astonishing accuracy, they eliminated all but one of the women! The discarded plays included my top 2
favorites. There are still more male writers than female on my personal list of favorite Great Dramatists, but that's because of all the 1000s of plays I read in the first 40 years of my life all but a couple dozen were written by men. By now, though, I have lost all patience with methods of story telling that reduce women to prizes,
perps, or plot devices. If there aren't 3 dimensional women characters who are capable of choosing and changing on stage, I'm not going to come back for the second act.

Marketing Monologues -- or giving them away

2007-03-09T13:17:00.000-08:00

The Brutal Statistic re: marketing a monologue
Someone asks, "Is the market for those really that big? How would one go about marketing a monologue?"

I reply: don't know about marketing. How much is a monologue worth to a student actor? They buy them by the book full.... 100 Best Monologues for Student Actors, cost about $10, or 10 cents per monologue. I've had some published in these collections. They pay $20 or $25 per, and may or may not send me a free copy. However, if you are giving them away yourself, there's a pretty good"market". I have posted over 200 of mine on my Stagepage.info web site, and I get approx. 1500 student actors per day reading them on the site during the school year. Hundreds of kids download my stuff to use, and several email me every week to thank me.
At this point in my writing life, this seems to be my bid for Literary Immortality. Some kid who memorizes my words for Speech Class will carry them forever in her heart--- just as I remember the poems I learned to recite aloud in eighth grade.

ICWP Monologues by Women at the BPT

2007-03-09T09:49:00.000-08:00

Last night at Boston Playwrights Theatre was great! Everyone was so proud and pleased. However, "everyone" wasn't as many as we'd hoped-- nearly full but no need to put out extra chairs. We had a record cold temperature, near zero, and cars and public transit were less than reliable. Our family's excellent old car-- it has 170,000 miles on it-- refused to start for the 1st time ever, and I arrived at the theatre just 1 hour before the performance, rather than the 2 hours early for set up that I'd promised. Everyone else was was late too, but all helpful and efficient and the shows ran like clockwork. We'd had to hire a young pro from Boston University to stage manage and run sound and lights, but she knew the theatre's equipment very well and worked magic, dimming and blacking out and picking up actors in a spot without any tech rehearsal! All the actors and playwrights made it in spite of the weather-- some just barely in time-- but I know that some of the audience stayed home due to the arctic conditions. My email is full of regrets. Amy Merrill's playwright husband, Robert Johnson, took pictures. He's going to send them to me and I'll add identifying captions and send them to the International Centre for Women Playwrights for the web page. I think everyone will be delighted to see the range of characters represented by these monologues-- the youngest was about 9 years, and the oldest-- well, old. The contrast in voices was just as vivid: rural, urban, New England, Southern... four included singing... and there were even a few Good Men! The actors were among Boston's best-- some of whom, like Richard McElvain, are among the best in the world, IMHO. Robert Bonotto did a heart-wrenching performance of the monologue from my play "Elegy", and Joan Faber sang a touching caberet version from the Dancing Princess song from "Lullaby": my lyrics, Bonotto's music. And some people came up to me-the-actress afterwards and told me I was brilliant in Rosanna Alfaro's "Martha" and "I didn't even recognize you!"-- which of course makes any little frustrations vanish. What is more satisfying than to feel that you are in good company and worthy of being there?

I am worried about Sat at Cambridge, though. This event was somehow cut out of the listings that have appeared-- maybe because it features a writing workshop as well as readings and had an open invitation to newcomers??? And people in the audience at the BPT did NOT pick up many of the flyers for the remaining events or-- except for a few-- take advantage of the Virtual Participants packets. So much for that brilliant idea! I will try to "sell" the monologue packets at the remaining events and bring leftovers with me to NYC for the ICWP Celebration at the Drama Book Shop on the 23rd. Anyway, I'm asking people who have friends in this area to please call them and urge them to show up in Cambridge this Saturday for the writing Workshop at 10 am and/or the shows at 11:45. We have good pieces, and good actors, and should have a Real Good Time if enough people show up to constitute a Workshop and an Audience. My feeling is you need at least a dozen for a good class and 3 dozen for a responsive audience, especially for comedy. Nobody wants to laugh alone.

Blog Against Sexism Day

2007-03-08T23:56:00.000-08:00

Every Dog Has His Day: What About Us?

Raina on playsandplaywrights posted: "I've been a member of this group for a couple of years, and I can't remember this being discussed, although I know it is old news. All studies show that women only write about 20% of the plays that are produced, and only direct about 20% of the plays that are produced, despite comprising 52% of playwriting MFA students, and 60% of the playgoing public. Since yesterday was Blog Against Sexism day, I thought I'd send my blog post to the group, and ask for commentary."

I replied: I discuss it all the time. I get quite shrill on the subject.
Really want to get depressed? It's now down to 16% women written
plays, after rising to 22% in the late 1990s. Which is still a
smaller % than the plays written by women that were produced in the
1890s! I didn't blog against sexism today-- unless you count the quick
description I put up around 11:30 pm on my Stageblog re: the
International Center for Women Playwrights International Women's Day
Celebration I co-produced at the Boston Playwrights
Theatre. Back in the Dark Ages, I was the only female in my
university play writing class. My (all male) English professors
taught their students that there had never been a good play written
by a woman, and my (all male) psychology professors assured me that
there never would be one. I swore then and there to do everything in
my power to make it very difficult for a professor to say such things
to my great-great-granddaughters. Or yours. People, male or female,
who share this goal might consider joining, on the ICWP web site.

I've got two more Celebrations I'm producing this coming week: at
Central Square Branch Library in Cambridge Saturday 10am-2pm, and at
the Brighton Branch of the Boston Public Library Thursday 7-9 pm.
You can read all about them on the ICWP web site. If you're near
Boston, come!

Boston missed the "boom" in women playwrights in the 1990s. Most
companies here went season after season without a single female
author featured. But this seems to be a breakthrough year. I just
checked this week's listings in the Boston Phoenix: 24 items under
"Theatre" 3 plays by women, 2 musicals with a woman writer. Two
others just closed. 5 or 7 out of 24 doesn't sound great; it's still
around 20% -- but it's a heck of a lot better than 5 or 10 years ago!

Massachusetts Mandatory "Health Plan"

2007-03-05T09:31:00.000-08:00

Did the legislators who drew up Massachusetts new health plan talk to ordinary people? People like the peripatetic adjuncts who teach most of the classes in the universities that pay their tenured professors upwards of $100,000? Or just to the well-compensated experts whose own jobs include generous benefits? A college degree is now required for many jobs that simply do not pay a living wage. Look around at who it is who makes $30,000 per year. People whose expensive education went to hone skills that are undervalued in the free market graduate with debt. As they work at jobs that pay barely enough to meet their current expenses they are slipping into poverty-- but they haven't slipped far enough to be caught by the safety net for the poor. This week the Stagesource "hotline" for Boston actors listed an employment opportunity for full time work as historical characters, interacting ad lib with the public and enacting scripted scenes with fellow actors-- for $7 per hour. The Newton Tab classified advertises a customer service job for a "detail oriented person with good computer skills" for $10 per hour, and a 32 hour per week receptionist job that requires "computer proficiency" for a salary in "the low $20s". 32 hours per week at a Day Job is about all a serious artist can work and still create on a professional (if mostly unpaid) level. I think Massachusetts may be about to exile many people I love and admire. I fear that there may even be suicides prompted by this mandate. I realize that the law was passed by the legislature with the best of intentions. But it will be devastating: to visual artists, free lance musicians and writers, dancers; To people who make charity and service to the community their first priority, who do political or social work with non-profits and in home day care; To teachers of the arts to individuals and in classes outside of the schools, adjunct college teachers and high school and elementary subs. To IT workers who built the "knowledge economy" of this state but have now been reduced to sporadic no-benefit temp jobs because they have been replaced by young workers or immigrants. These groups have made contributions to the community that far outweigh the compensation their skills and energy and talent and education can command. These people are likely to make around $30,000 per year in jobs that do not provide benefits but pay too much to qualify for health care subsidy under the new law. They've been getting along by living frugally. They taking very good care of their health and pray that they won't be felled by a major illness or run over by a truck. Most live with roommates or share a house or condo. The kind of comfortable apartment that I was able to rent for $40 a month when I moved to Boston in 1968 now costs $1500 per month, and is out of reach for a person making $30,000 per year. Now, they will be required to purchase health insurance at nearly $300 per month for an individual-- more than $500 if they have the bad luck to be 50 years old--with a $2000 deductible. $4000-$8000 per year! Up to 1/4 of their incomes! For COVERAGE, not care; and with no guarantee that the medical needs that may arise will in fact be covered. Fines for failure to buy in this year are small: a few hundred dollars-- but next year they will go up to one half of the insurance purchase price and in 2008 will be a full blown crisis for the presently uninsured and anyone who joins their ranks when Massachusetts businesses realize that they can cut costs by shifting their medical insurance obligations to the employee and the state. What will these people do? Where can they go? Their entire emotional and financial support network will be in the same situation. This mandate threatens to make lives that, while precarious, have had balance and dignity, simply impossible.

Coming: March 15th 7pm BRIGHTON BRANCH

2007-03-04T11:06:00.000-08:00

ICWP Celebration of Women Playwrights Thursday March 15th 7pm
BRIGHTON BRANCH 617-782-6032 Boston Public Library
40 Academy Hill Road, Brighton Free.

WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH STAGED PLAY READINGS

Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro: excerpt from her play "Martha Mitchell" about the wife of Nixon's Attorney General-- the only US AG to go to jail, for Dirty Tricks such as covering up the Watergate break in.

Kelly DuMar: excerpt from the full length "Away Message"; about love and loss across two generations.

G.L.Horton's "Elegy"; a veteran violist wants to pass on a hard-earned lesson to an up-and-coming young woman virtuoso.

Monica Raymond's "Novices"; A twenty-first century take on The Taming of the Shrew: Kate and Pete, who've connected on-line, meet in person at Au Bon Pain.

Mary McCollough's "Bottom Lines"; Pooshee Pritchee intends to save brother, Cash, from himself-- and save the family's good name. Pooshee's soon-to-be lawyer niece, Dee, tries to stop her.

Deborah Valianti: excerpt from the Brighton playwright's "Too Many Willies "; a gender bending exploration of the nature and source of Art, and inspiration, and the effects of marketplace sensibilities on the Artist.

TALKBACK and REFRESHMENTS to follow the readings.

Opening Night of ICWP Celebrations!

2007-03-03T23:13:00.000-08:00

Went wonderfully!
A full house-- the Ruth Nager Theatre had to bring out extra chairs.
Excellent acting; when moderating the director's panel Norah Hussey said that the script in hand no set no props performances were so effective that it reminded her that theatres often get smothered in design and tech. All that is really needed is "2 boards and a passion".
Lovely smoozing and Mutual Admiration.
Kelley Dumar is great! I nominate her for Secretary of State!
More when I get the info: they ran out of programs before I got one, so I'll have to see if I can get people to email me the text.

ICWP in the Globe (barely)

2007-03-02T22:39:00.000-08:00

A brief meention by Cathrine Foster in the Goble's Stages column today

Notes
The International Centre for Women Playwrights is sponsoring a series of events during Women's History Month. Tomorrow at 7 p.m., a "Celebration of Women's Voices" at Wellesley College will feature eight short plays by local women writers. On Thursday at 7 p.m., the Boston Playwrights' Theatre will host a "Celebration of Monologues by Women," featuring short monologues by 16 local writers. More events to come. . .

Boston playwright's play at the BCA

2007-03-01T23:44:00.000-08:00

very positive review of Boston playwright's play at the BCA:

Review By Terry Byrne, Globe Correspondent | March 2, 2007
Playwright Janet Kenney doesn't have time for idle chit chat.

Even as the characters in "More Than What," her collection of seven short plays, talk about a broken shelf, a selection of songs, or plantings at a grave site, something much deeper is going on. The beauty of Kenney's writing is that she can cut straight to the heart of the matter in just a few lines of dialogue. In each of her beautifully crafted one-acts, potent emotions of pain, loss, death, fear, joy, and wonder catch us by surprise, even when it should be obvious exactly where she's going.
"More Than What," receiving its world premiere with Centastage....

I saw the production Thursday night. Poignant moments, interesting relationships, good acting. It is made up of playlets, and I think the present structure is a compromise when the material deserves a more integrated full length form. The first scene/play is a gem, and the last one, which is very good, would probably be even better than it is if it some of the expositiory material in it appeared earlier. But it's a lovely piece, and I'm very glad it has been staged.

Dramatist Guild acts against submission fees

2007-03-01T12:59:00.000-08:00

Hooray, hooray, hooray!
as Gary says, "it’s a spirit issue: it’s demeaning"

Dramatist Guild Steps Up to the Plate!

FRom DG Newsletter!

As of today, the Guild will no longer publicize calls for
submissions that have a fee attached unless that fee is transparent
(where does the money go and to whom) in the description to the
reader. The subtext: it is not okay to charge a dramatist a fee to
supplement a theatre or producer’s production opportunity. YOUR ART
IS FEE ENOUGH!
I know all the arguments of why some theatres and producers
position that they must charge fees: “We couldn’t afford to produce
the event if we didn’t charge a fee. We have to hire readers. We
have to publicize the event. We have to pay the actors and
directors. We have to offer prize money . . .” I understand that,
but theatres and producers are doing that on the backs of people
that are more poor than they are! What?! On average, dramatists
spend ten dollars to submit a play or musical anywhere in this
country: printing, copying, postage, return postage, binders,
envelopes. If a theatre or producer tacks on an additional $10, $15
or $30 fee, one submission now costs anywhere from $20-50, with no
guarantees that anything will come of it. And yes, I know: there
are no guarantees for anyone in the theatre. But all too often this
feels like, “we’re not going to guarantee you anything, AND we’re
going to charge you for the privilege of that, AND you’ll probably
never hear from us, AND don’t expect any kind of critical reaction
to your material, AND don’t expect notification of who, in fact,
was chosen.” And if it’s not a money issue then it’s a spirit
issue: it’s demeaning enough to submit your work to theatres and
producers that you never hear from. To pay someone for their
silence is too much to ask anyone...... we will no longer list an opportunity that requires you pay a fee to be considered for inclusion.

Enough is enough.

Gary Garrison, DG

Books: the top 100

2007-03-01T12:49:00.000-08:00

I can scarcely believe this ranking! Six of the top 11 written by women. The Guardian opines that many of the most loved were introduced in school: but the only novel by a woman I was "taught" was "Mill On the Floss" in 11th grade-- and I figured that one slipped through because the author's name was "George". As a college English major 1958-66 (I took time out to have a baby) I wasn't assigned a single female novelist in survey courses. I was assigned the Orwell and Dickens.

Books you can't live without:
Thursday March 1, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

1 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
8 His Dark Materials Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations Charles Dickens
11 Little Women Louisa M Alcott

Globe's Louise Kennedy likes Orson Play, too.....

2007-02-27T21:04:00.000-08:00

STAGE REVIEW
When Orson met Larry: A tale about shadow of fame
By Louise Kennedy, Globe Staff | February 27, 2007
WATERTOWN -- "A play about Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier has a double trick to pull off. The first and more obvious one is to persuade us that we're really watching those famous actors. The second, trickier one is to make us forget the first trick entirely. Only then can we settle down and just watch the play.
Happily, the New Repertory Theatre production of "Orson's Shadow" succeeds on both counts. Steven Barkhimer and Tuck Milligan quickly establish themselves as Welles and Olivier, respectively, not so much by exact mimicry as by an assured sense of intonation, gesture, and presence. Then they draw us irresistibly into the deeper resonances of Austin Pendleton's fine, funny, and meditative play......(snip)
The women are just as successful as the men at evoking their famous characters; Debra Wise brings a magnificent subtlety to (Vivian) Leigh's unraveling, and Helen McElwain is just perky enough as the bright young Plowright. If Jason Marr seems a little too fresh-faced for Tynan, he nevertheless captures the critic's unique blend of enthusiasm and acid. Adam Soule's Sean, though a smaller part, lends another note of brash youth to counterpoint the aging lions who no longer quite believe their own roars."

Particulary pleased when actors I like as well as admire get raves in the Big Paper!

NYTimes pictures Playwright Heaven

2007-02-27T14:16:00.000-08:00

Care and Feeding of Plays and Playwrights

NYTimes article
By JESSE GREEN

I don't know how long it will be possible to read this before it disappears, but it is enough to make every aspiring playwright weep with envy.

Published: February 25, 2007 QUOTING EXCERPT:
"MONDAY Something felt very unusual about the first public reading, earlier this month, of Brooke Berman’s “Out of the Water.” It wasn’t just that the play was good; that sometimes happens. Nor was it so rare to find, even on a bitter Monday night in February, an enthusiastic audience of 40 and a top-notch cast of young theater names. But it seemed almost suspicious that a hip new play by a writer not widely known was being presented in a room with comfortable seats. Also, the heat worked. And what had become of the rats and pigeons that usually attended such readings? Who printed the nice programs? Why were the bathrooms so lovely?

Then there is a nice photo of them in their clean well-lighted place:
Members discuss a script at Ars Nova’s Play Group. From left, Mat Smart, Etan Frankel, Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch. The group focuses on emerging writers and scripts in development. “It’s like a pep rally with pizza and beer,” Ms. Mensch said.

One more paragraph of Fair Use:
"The answer to all of these questions was Ars Nova, the mighty little uptown-downtown theatrical venture on far West 54th Street, which was presenting “Out of the Water” as part of its Out Loud play-reading series. In a landscape defined by stately institutional behemoths and youthful but impoverished start-ups, Ars Nova has designed something new from the best elements of each."

sponsors, patrons

2007-02-26T21:35:00.000-08:00

Here's a tidbit:
"According to a survey of more than 200 Wall Street professionals who took home at least $2 million in cash from their 2006 bonuses, respondents are spending 11% of their payouts, on average, on watches and jewelry. For even the lowest-paid bankers in the survey, that's a bling budget of more than $200,000."

200k is the yearly operating budget of the bare bones but "professional" new-play-producing theatres in my area. Not the shortfall to be covered by donors, the entire budget. For what these 200 guys spend on bling, they could be major patrons, mini-Medicis -- pass out free tickets to every kid who takes part in a high school play and have 1000 playwrights weeping tears of joy as they watch their cloud-capped visions spring to life before a youthful audience.....

The bankers' charity budget averages 1/3 of their bling budget.....

MIT to bar rehearsals of non-MIT groups

2007-02-26T13:34:00.000-08:00

On the heels of the arrest of 2 student "hackers" casing an MIT building in the wee hours for one of the traditional pranks, comes news via the grapevine of a clash between MIT security and a small theatre company that was "borrowing" rehearsal space. This was in one of the areas where such activity has gone on for decades tolerated by the Powers That Be. No More-- MIT will be cracking down. Playwrights, directors, and actors are in distress, exchanging emails....

I haven't taken part in a "squatters" rehearsal at MIT for years--
but I've been in dozens of not-quite-kosher new play rehearsals there
over my long non-profit "career". Playwrights Platform's Festivals
in the 70s and 80s were quite dependent on lobby space and empty
classrooms, which some members who worked at MIT tipped us off
about. I've always loved MIT for its openness and hospitality to
homeless arts groups--- and to gamers and folk dancers and..... My
kids spent many happy days & nights playing there, and made lifelong
friends. When my first husband had a job with one of the Labs, I'd
hang out on the lawn or the student union and have fascinating
conversations with students and faculty from all over the world.
I worked for a while at Harvard. There I was constantly carded for
my employee ID, snubbed, patronized, turned down..... no starving
artist squatters allowed! No world famous professors chatting with
the help.

Please, everyone: be grateful and gracious to MIT-- for old times sake.

Orson's Shadow, Ken Tynan

2007-02-25T21:48:00.000-08:00

Just saw Austin Pendelton's ORSON'S SHADOW at the New Rep here in Boston -- Tynan's a character, and the narrator. I loved it! Mainly, I suppose because as an old theatre nut I'd read everything I could get my hands on about at least 3 of the 5 characters: they were round and rich to me before I came to their embodiments. Tynan was least interesting-- as is appropriate for a writer among stars of stage & screen, but pale compared to some of the anecdotes I'd read, and pale compared to the impression his prose made on me when we were both young. As Jeff Sweet says, Tynan "caught performance in print with a vividness and specificity few have matched." His descriptions of rehearsals and performances are more alive in my mind's eye than many I have sat through. I'm not sure what the effect of ORSON'S SHADOW would be on a general audience, or a young one. Certainly the New Rep audience was enthusiastic about the production

getting the word out about Women Playwrights

2007-02-25T20:38:00.000-08:00

I don't think we'll have trouble filling the seats in our 70-90 seat spaces-- not with 8-16 writers per event. But the Idea is to raise the profile of women writers in the community and among theatre people generally. It is high time that theatre subscribers -- the majority of whom are women!-- NOTICE when a theatre schedules a season of plays all written (and directed) by men, and says "Huh? Where are the women?" If they have heard of some good women writers, even if they haven't yet seen something of their work, they won't accept "There just aren't any talented enough" as an answer. they want evidence.
When I was in school, back in the Dark Ages, it was Common Knowledge that something biological in the female brain prevents a member of The Weaker Sex from writing a good play-- or painting a good picture, or being a General in the Army.
Getting women playwrights' names, words, imagined worlds "out there" where producers are aware that they exist and come in all varieties is my Worthy Cause.

capitalism, Grannies, political plays

2007-02-25T13:44:00.000-08:00

Business theory and practice has gone from "profit
from providing goods, services, and employment for the benefit of the
community" to "profit, period". ...Money laundering, outsourcing, fake "charities" that hire relatives
or politicians as staff & consultants, subcontractors who hire
illegal immigrants, bribes, biased science-for-hire, pyramid scheme
accounting... we've developed an economy that rewards and admires
Great Predators.

Where are the plays that address this?

No American who can afford the price of a theatre ticket wants to hear it! No actor, who lives on optimism, voice-overs, and table scraps, wants to perform agitprop. I'm getting too old and it's too bloody cold to do Street Theatre!
I've got a snappy little 10 minute play about the maternity wear chain that fires employees who get pregnant that I've been sending around. Guess where the theatre is that found the script on my web site and finally did the premiere? Uganda!
I am at work on a Raging Granny play -- Social Security can free a body to make a fuss. Probably why the Administration is determined to gut and cut SS.

On Feb 26, 2007, at 12:33 PM, Robert/Marjory lehan wrote:

GH: sounds like the outline of an upcoming Hortonwork. Bob L

Coming to Cambridge March 8th

2007-02-22T14:53:00.000-08:00

Celebration of Women’s Writing and Readings - Free.
Saturday March 10th 10:00 am-2pm. info 617-630-9704
Central Square Library, 45 Pearl Street, Cambridge, MA.

10:00 FREE WORKSHOP on WRITING FROM THE NEWS with Clauder Gold Medalist Monica Raymond & Geralyn Horton. Using news items & free wheeling free association to create scenes and monologues.

11:45 am STAGED READINGS of SHORT PLAYS
and scenes by local and ICWP women writers:
Debra Wise performing Faith in an excerpt from her play "States of Grace", about author Grace Paley.

Cynthia Wand’s "The American Woman": about Shakespeare scholar Delia Bacon; with Rena Baskin & David Rothauser.

Joyce Van Dyke's "Not My Real Mother": a legendary meeting between Tennessee Williams and Mother Teresa; with Robert Bonotto & G. Horton.

Lee Roscoe's "Mobile": a piece of art comes to life; with Sean David Bennett and Peter White. Monologue "Hunting Life": man and prey.

Monica Raymond's "The Biopsy": a sister’s reaction to a test for breast cancer. Directed by Victoria Marsh.

Rae Edelson's scene from "Surf Casting": older man, younger woman on Nantucket explore need and loss; with Ted Kazanoff & Rena Baskin.

TALKBACK and REFRESHMENTS to follow the readings. This event is a good opportunity for women who are interested in play writing but not connected with a group or theatre to come make connections. Men welcome.

ICWP Celebrations in Ohio March 2007

2007-02-22T09:55:00.000-08:00

Women Playwrights Readings in Ohio

Five short plays by women writers will be featured to mark International
Women's Day, March 8, at Gallery 202 in Westerville, Ohio. Organized by the
Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute of The Ohio
State University, all the playwrights are represented in the Institute's
archives. Dr. Alan Woods, the Institute's Director, Dr. Katherine Burkman,
Emerita Professor of English at Ohio State, and Dr. Beth Kattelman, the
Institute's Assistant Curator, will co-direct the readings.

All five plays look at women and their relationships. Toronto playwright
Shirley Barrie's Audience explores the appeal of experimental theatre
through a married couple's relationship, while Vicki Cheatwood, from
Garland , Texas , examines the end of a long-term relationship in her The
Last Time Cooper Took Midge Fishing. Salt Lake City writer Elaine Jarvik's
couple, in Dead Right, re-examine their marriage as the wife contemplates
how she might be presented in her obituary. And Gerry Sanseviero, a
playwright from New York City , presents sisters coping with age while
trying to get served before a Broadway matinee in Matinee Lunch. Katherine
Burkman, in Geraldine and Jacob, plays with a woman obsessed with gambling,
and what both enables and results from her passion with the slots.

The free staged reading starts at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 8th, at
Gallery 202, 38 N. State Street in Westerville . Marking International
Women's Day, the Columbus area reading is one of many staged readings
taking place internationally and recognized by the International Center for
Women Playwrights. International Women's Day dates back to 1909, and has
been celebrated on March 8th since 1919. It has been recognized by the
United Nations as a key support for the UN Charter's 1945 call for gender
equality as a fundamental right.

For more information on the readings, click the link or
contact the Lawrence and Lee Institute at 614/292-6614.
Additional information on Gallery 202 and its programs call 614-890-8202

And much material about the International Centre for Women Playwrights

Alan Woods
Director, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute
The Ohio State University
1430 Lincoln Tower
1800 Cannon Drive
Columbus, Ohio

Coming to Wellesley March 3rd

2007-02-21T15:06:00.000-08:00

I'll be acting with June Lewin in Gail Phaneuf's "New Tricks"

Celebration of Women's Voices Festival
Features Platform Members at Wellesley College,
March 3, 2007, 7 p.m.

Eight Playwrights' Platform members will have plays featured in the "Celebration of Women's Voices Festival," hosted by Wellesley Summer Theatre, in the Ruth Nagel Jones Theatre, March 3, 2007 at 7:00 p.m.

This evening of staged readings is part of the Internatonal Center for Women Playwrights', month-long presentation of Boston-area women's plays celebrating International Women's Day March 8. Featured playwrights include: Ludmilla Anselm (Three Friends), Marika Barnett (Chekhov and Pinter Take a Pause), Kelly DuMar (Clay), Hortense Gerardo (The Dress Rehearsal), Holly Jensen (an excerpt from Stripped), Gail Phaneuf (New Tricks), Regina Eliot Ramsay (The Perfect Stranger), and Phyllis Rittner (Breeding Season).

Following the plays, Nora Hussey, head of the theatre department at Wellesley College and Artistic Director of the Wellesley Summer Theatre, will moderate a panel discussion with Boston-area directors to discuss the plays and explore how the theatrical culture can be influenced to be more receptive to producing plays by women. Featured directors include: Michelle Aguillon (Hovey Players), Jerry Bisantz (Playwrights' Platform/Image Theater), Rose Carlson (Executive Director, Devanaughn Theatre), Lisa Rafferty (Freelance Director and Producer/MOMologues Productions) and Nancy Curran Willis (formerly with Gloucester Stage Company & Boston Theatre Works).

The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served from 7:00 until 7:30 when the readings begin. The Ruth Nagel Jones Theatre is on the lower level of Alumnae Hall and is wheelchair accessible. There is ample free parking in the Davis covered parking structure adjacent to the theatre. Reservations are not necessary.

Celebrations Coming Up! March is Women's Month

2007-02-20T15:10:00.000-08:00

Women Playwrights in the Spotlight during March 2007

OVERVIEW: The International Centre for Women Playwrights, (ICWP) dedicated to increasing the attention paid to women's lives and women's voices on stages across the world, is sponsoring a series of Celebrations in March during Women's History Month Along with play readings in New York City and Bucharest, there will be five ICWP sponsored Celebrations held in the Boston area between March 3 and March 15. The ICWP held a previous Woman Playwrights event here: Boston Her-Rah!2003. Currently only 16% of plays produced in the USA are written by women, though they now make up the majority of the students in play writing courses. Scripts in hand, women are knocking on stage doors everywhere!

PLAYWRIGHTS: Boston-area writers featured during March celebrations include: Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro, Ludmilla Anselm, Marika Barnett, Leslie Dillen, Kelly DuMar, Rae Edelson, Deborah Fortson, Beverly Scott Gidron, Kirsten Greenridge, Hortense Gerardo, Laura Harrington, Geralyn Horton, Holly Jensen, Ginger Lazarus, Amy Merrill, Jacqui Parker, Gail Phaneuf, Regina Eliot Ramsay, Monica Raymond, Phyllis Rittner, Lois Roach, Lee Roscoe, Joyce Van Dyke, Cynthia Wands, Debra Wise, Eliza Wyatt., et. al. This sampling only skims the surface of the local pool of dedicated writers.

CELEBRATIONS: The Five ICWP sponsored events are:

1) Saturday March 3 7:00 pm "Celebration of Women's Voices" Festival
Ruth Nagel Jones Theatre at Wellesley College. Free.

Wellesley Summer Theatre hosts eight short plays by local women writers who are members of http://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifPlaywrights' Platform. A get-acquainted reception at 7pm will be followed by staged readings at 7:30. At 9:15 Nora Hussey, head of the theatre department at Wellesley and Artistic Director of the WST, will moderate a panel discussion with Boston-area directors Michelle Aguillon, Jerry Bisantz, Rose Carlson, Lisa Rafferty, and Nancy Curran Willis.

CONTACT: Kelly DuMar
Web link Wellesley:
web link ICWP
web link

2) Thursday March 8, 7:00 pm, Celebration of Monologues by Women
Boston Playwrights' Theatre 949 Comm. Ave. Boston MA Free.

Joan Faber at the keyboard will provide a Musical Prologue as people gather; then MC Victoria Marsh will introduce some of Boston's best actors (e.g. Naheem Allah, Rena Baskin, Robert Bonotto, Nancy Carroll, Richard McElvain) and directors (e.g. Daniel Gidron, Ted Kazanoff, June Lewin) presenting 1-5 minute monologues by 16 local writers. This Celebration-- demonstrating the wealth of fresh material available to actors who reach out to use the work of their writing colleagues-- will be topped off by a post show Party.

CONTACTS: Rosanna Alfaro & Amy Merrill
Directions and Parking:

3) Saturday March 10, 10:00 am, WHM Celebration of Writing and Reading
Central Square Library, Pearl St. Cambridge, MA. Free.

A morning writers’ workshop on "Topical Theatre"-- using items clipped from the news, a dash of improvisation, and free wheeling free association-- will be followed at 11:30am by staged readings of short plays and scenes with a talkback. This event is a good opportunity for women who are interested in play writing but not connected with a group or theatre to come and make some connections.

CONTACT: Geralyn Horton

4) Saturday March 10, 6:00 pm, Women of Influence
Yamawaki Arts & Cultural Center, Lasell College, Newton MA , Inc. Free

"Women of Influence -- 23 artists consider the women who have shaped their lives", an interdisciplinary art event curated by Steve Fishcher, will open at 6 pm with a viewing of visual art and an artists' reception. The 7:30 production of "The Rosewater of Dona Felicidad" will be followed by a talkback with author and ICWP member Hortense Gerardo.

CONTACT: For more information and directions

5) Thursday March 15, 7 p.m. ICWP WHM Celebration of Women Playwrights
Brighton Branch, Boston Public Library. 40 Academy Hill Road, Brighton, MA. Free.

Readings of short plays and scenes by local women writers will be followed by a question and answer session with the authors and actors

CONTACTS: Library

PHOTOGRAPHS: Headshots of many of the writers whose work will be presented are available upon request. Above is a picture from Amy Merrill's reading at the previous ICWP event, Boston Her-Rah! 2003

Cutting plays down to Fit On Stage

2007-02-03T09:01:00.000-08:00

A playwright list member asks for suggestions about revising a sprawling play....
I say:
What can you do but cut 'em or double 'em? Or restructure so that
you attack and end at points that leave some stuff offstage. Do you
really need scenes 1, 3, & 5? Can you end with X's death and either
skip the funeral or just show Y's eulogy in a spotlight?

He replies: "You reminded me of my mentor Larry Menkin;"Tell only one story at a time"....I used to'hate'... that."

I continue:
In truth I'm arguing against my own preferences. All the plays I love
best have big casts, multiple protagonists, comic subplots and
interlocking themes. "One story at a time?" Boring! Unworthy of
the stage's unique capacity to embody more than one POV or to shift
empathy in an instant. I just saw my umpteenth production of
"Winter's Tale", this one by The Actors' Shakespeare Project in
Boston-- Now there's a mess of a script! I was talking with a critic
who was expatiating on how Shakespeare could have done it better if
only he had known what the movies have taught us about the use of
flashback. "Pooh!" quoth I. I love that play Just As It Is, and
feel sorry for anyone who has not seen a production that makes it
work in all its miraculous messiness. I laughed, I cried; and if
not perfect the production was miles above the 3-5 character essays
that our theaters can afford to premiere today.

But I've talked with fellow writers about fixing messes often enough
that I have the fixing tools sharpened and ready, even though many
times I'd rather consign my overly ambitious play to the drawer
rather than cut it to a tamed size and shape.

I'm Nominated!

2007-02-02T21:20:00.000-08:00

Playwrights' Platform News

Playwrights' Platform Member
Geralyn Horton
has been nominated for an
Independent Reviewers of New England Award!

Congratulations Geralyn!
(Results will be announced March 19, 2007)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS, DRAMA or COMEDY
Large :
Geneva Carr in RABBIT HOLE (Huntington)
Barbara Meek in THE CHERRY ORCHARD (Trinity Repertory Co)

Small:
Marina Re in HOLES (Wheelock Family Theatre)
Maureen Keiller in THE WOMEN (SpeakEasy)
Mary Klug in THE WOMEN and FIVE BY TENN (SpeakEasy)
Eve Kagan in TALKING TO TERRORISTS (Sugan)
Geralyn Horton in TALKING TO TERRORISTS (Sugan)

FROM ME: the Sugan production of TALKING TO TERRORISTS also was nominated for Best Supporting Actor- Daffyd Rees; Best Ensemble; Best Director- Carmel O'Reilly, and Best Drama.

THE 10th ANNIVERSARY IRNE AWARDSThe Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) is very pleased to host the 10th Anniversary Independent Reviewers of New England AWARDS in its CYCLORAMA on Monday March 19, 2007 at 8 P.M.

Rosanna Alfaro & I will be going to ICWP/NYC!

2007-01-31T07:56:00.000-08:00

Where I will perform an excerpt from Rosanna's "Martha Mitchell" Friday, March 23rd, at The Drama Bookshop (Arthur Seelen Theatre):

Here's the message:
On behalf of the N.Y. ICWP readings committee, I would like to thank you all for submitting your work for consideration in the ICWP Celebrates International Women's Day readings in New York City. We received 70 scripts from 30 member playwrights located in four different countries!
Every script we received was read blind (with no knowledge of the author's identity) and given careful attention by at least two readers (sometimes as many as five!)
Having received acceptances from all selected playwrights, we are now thrilled to announce the rosters!
Friday, March 9th, at The Dramatists Guild:

THE THERAPEUTIC HOUR by Guy Glass
WINDOWS by Judith Pratt
BLOOD SISTERS by Robin Rice Lichtig
SHORT-TERM AFFAIRS by Donna Spector
THE UNDERSTANDING by Rachel Rubin Ladutke
CALAMITY JANE SENDS A MESSAGE TO HER DAUGHTER by Carolyn Gage
THE MIRACULOUS DAY QUARTET by Mary Steelsmith
PIKE by Terri Febuary

Friday, March 23rd, at The Drama Bookshop (Arthur Seelen Theatre):

THE SOME OF ALL PARTS by Mrinalini Kamath
WHY D?YA MAKE ME WEAR THIS, JOE? by Vanda
CASUALTIES by Sandra Dempsey
HURRICANE IN A GLASS by Kimberly Pritchard
FLYING BLIND by Kathleen Warnock
OVERCHARGED BRICKS by Emily Cicchini
EVEN THE DIRT BLEEDS DOWN HERE by Carolyn Nur Wistrand
MARTHA MITCHELL by Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro

Readings will begin at 6:30 each evening, followed by a reception.

Please stay tuned for more details as they emerge. We hope to see you there!

Also, if anyone would like to offer help with publicity, organization, or other areas, please back-channel me. Thank you all for your enthusiasm and your support!

Rachel Rubin Ladutke

ICWP Celebrations in Boston March 2007

2007-01-26T20:07:00.000-08:00

original "call" to ICWP list with some timely updates....

The International Women's Day or Women's History Month ICWP Celebrations in Boston March 2007

These will be mainly networking events: a chance for women playwrights to introduce themselves and present an attractive sample of their work: Short pieces! So that we get a critical mass to interact and a sense of the abundance of talent and the wide range of subjects and styles women writers have to offer. The work will be self-selected and self-produced by the writers. I'm not jurying, except in so far as I am inviting the women who participated successfully in the 2003 Her-Rah to be part of 2007. This isn't an event for testing new material, but for showing off a bit of the best that you have to your colleagues and theatre professionals. We had a wonderful time together in 2003, getting to know and admire each others' work and sharing contacts. I'm trusting that the Muse will smile on our endeavors this time too.

VIRTUAL PARTICIPATION: Boston Playwrights Theatre is donating space for an event Thursday March 8th that will focus on monologues for actors to use for auditions. Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro, who organized for ICWP in 2003, has taken responsibility for this. Some of Boston's best actors and directors have signed on, and the Playwrights Theatre will promote the idea of actors and acting teachers going directly to local women playwrights to get fresh unpublished material. There will be a directors/coaches panel led by Victoria Marsh, discussing how to choose and use monologues, and a network and smooze reception. The Theatre only seats 75, but is legal for 90 with standees -- we're hoping to use the lobby/greenroom for an after-show party that will include more actors/directors/playwrights than will fit into the event, but that is still at the wish stage. VIRTUAL PARTICIPATION by ICWP writers for whom it is impractical to be present will work like this: You snail me a packet of 100 copies (single or double sided) of a page that includes your contact info, tiny bio, description of your monologues and their availability, and a sample or 2 from your monologues that give a sense of your work in this genre; OR you email me the same info, edited to fit onto a single side-- simple txt formatting, please-- I'm a mac user and MSWord has a nasty way of gumming up my word processor programs-- and I will print out 100 copies on my laser printer. However these playwright-advertising pages come to me, I will collate them into packets to be offered to the directors and lit mgrs and actors who take part in this BPT/ICWP event. Any packets that are not claimed at the BPT will be taken to later ICWP events and offered to people there. Advertise!

PHYSICAL PARTICIPATION: If you are an ICWP member and you have some Boston-area connections and can be here for one of the events, please consider participating! I wouldn't encourage anyone to do so who does not already have some connections... Boston does not generally welcome or nurture playwrights. We're working on that here: there is a StageSource committee charged with setting up something for Boston that is modeled on the great work of Chicago Dramatists. Local theatre directors and literary managers will be invited to this event. Chances are, though, that they will NOT come unless someone they know personally is directly involved. But if you have had a play done in this area before, or an area theatre has expressed interest in your work and said something like "If you have something done nearby where I can see it, invite me" and you think that your participation could be a real networking opportunity, then do come! We can't produce for you, but we will assist in any way we can. Maybe the Boston person who is interested your play will be willing to direct the scene or short one act, and provide actors.

So far, there are 6 committed venues for these events, follows:

Kelly Du Mar, a member of Board of Playwrights' Platform and also a veteran of ICWP's Boston Her-Rah 2003, is organizing readings co-sponsored by Boston Playwrights Platform centered on Metro West women for Saturday March 3rd at Wellesley College. It includes a panel on the Wide World of Women Writers. Nora Hussey, head of Theatre at Wellesley, brought a fully mounted production to the ICWP/WPI conference in Galway Ireland, and produces a high proportion of women's work at her theatre, mostly Irish or English. She is the main producer of Polly Teale's work in the US. She will be joined on the panel by directors Nancy Curran Willis, Rose Carlson, and Jerry Bisantz.

ICWP member Hortense Gerardo is featured in an event that will showcase her one act "The Rosewater of Dona Felicidad", an allegorical play based on Dr. Faustus and the fall of Allende circa 1973, which will be performed as a form of object-based theater-- aka puppetry. There's also a women-themed gallery art show -- at Lasell College in Newton. Newton Community Cable will cover it as News. It is Saturday March 10th, and will have a reception with refreshments.

ICWP has secured the Central Square Library in Cambridge for events March 8th 6-9pm
and Sat March -10th "matinee" 10:30 am-2pm.
These are events for which I am hoping for more participants. Central Sq. is a funky diverse location, nestled between Harvard and MIT. You can see the space-- it will seat 70-90-- with bad sight lines-- on the ICWP web site under "Events 2003 Her-Rah". Two of the participants from 2003 have indicated that they want slots in the Sat. "Matinee". I am trying to recruit a sane dependable person to run Central Sq. Thurs eve, because I'll be acting a monologue from Rosanna Alfaro's Martha Mitchell at BPT and can't be in 2 places... Actress Ann Carpenter, who is in the Charlestown Working Theatre's production of ICWP member Jamie Pachino's "Race", is getting two of the CWT actors to reprise a scene from "Race" at Central Sq., probably on Thurs. the 8th.

The Brighton (Boston) Public Library just called to request ICWP Women's History Month readings in their 70 seat performance space on Thursday March 15th 7-9 pm. I queried them-- the Platform used to have play readings there-- last month, but the head Librarian was on vacation. She's back, and very enthusiastic. So this space is open for plays and scenes, and so far I have only 20 minutes of scenes to put in it!

Guardian on SLP 365

2006-11-16T20:37:00.000-08:00

Guardian on SLP 365 entire article is at
Most of the article is stuff that's already been brought up, but the last few
paragraphs.....
QUOTE:
Metzgar and Parks have made the work as accessible as possible. The performance rights cost just $1 a play and all shows must be free to
the public, with most of the cost of mounting a production falling to the performers. The two appear to have tapped into a great need in US theatre: participants seem to value the collaborative aspect above anything else. "I've been working in theatre in San Francisco for 16 years and I'm discovering companies I hadn't heard of," says Lisa Steindler of Z Space.

But in spite of the group-hug dynamic, doubts about the artistic coherence of the whole project have crept in. With low or non- existent production budgets and truncated rehearsal times, there's no guarantee that every production will be as good as the next, or that it will be what Parks intended. "I'm still scared the plays will be badly directed," says Steindler.

Then there's the issue of how audiences will perceive the playwright's work. Parks is known as much for her postmodern approach to language (one play called 9-11 features two characters on stilts saying the German word "nein" 11 times), as she is for her caustic commentary on race, history and myth. As such, while she is often
extremely funny, Parks' work is hardly easy viewing - and the 365 plays, with their references to Chekhov, politics and the dramatist's previous work, are no exception.

Still, no matter how haphazardly the plays are staged and how baffled they leave their audiences, Parks' imprimatur gets them serious attention. "I would be a lot more suspicious of the project if a less gifted and important playwright were involved," says Alisa Solomon, arts journalism professor at Columbia University and former theatre critic for the Village Voice. Plus, there's something rather moving -
sacred even - about Parks' year-long play-writing quest. "I would sit down at my desk," she says, "raise my arms in the air, wiggle my fingers in a gesture I like to call 'tickling the balls of God', and ask myself, 'What is the play today?' And out something would come."

Rustling up a drama every 24 hours wasn't always easy. Parks frequently found herself writing in hotel rooms at 2am, and even penned one play in the security line at Heathrow. At times, the ideas just didn't flow. You can tell the playwright was having a bad day when you come across titles such as Going Through the Motions, Empty, and, most emphatically, This Is Shit. But she kept going. "There were days when I just wasn't feeling it. I'd question my motives, but I'd still do it anyway," she says. "Writing is a spiritual practice. It's only by sticking with it that you get to the good stuff."

SLP 365Days with the USA vs Home Truths

2006-11-15T19:53:00.000-08:00

On Nov 14, 2006, at 11:56 AM, F. A. asked re: my comments on SLP 365

A distraction from what?
So it's an unconventional way to do a play (or 365 of them). Does
that mean it's a"stunt?" I really believe theatres are involved because they think it's a cool project.

A distraction from our primary mission as a lab for R & D in human consciousness.

Sorry: for me "cool project" and "stunt" seem synonymous. I have seen and enjoyed local productions of some of Parks' plays, and read others. When she is in residence at MIT next year, I hope there will be public presentations that prompt dialogue with the community. But the 365 Project just doesn't seem urgent to me: Why this? Why here? Why now? I want "my" theatre to be original and intensely local-- a face to
face examination of our mutual lives. For Boston to matter in theatre, there must be Boston/Massachusetts matter, and some distinctive Boston/Massachusetts styles. When Red states use Massachusetts or Boston as labels for all that is wrong with America
-- liberalism, elitism, permissiveness, etc... they have an image of us. So do movies like The Departed, set among Southie mobsters, or a TV series like Boston Legal, which draws on the idea of Massachusetts as a place hospitable to intellectual argument and casual sex and hostile to corporations and hypocrisy. We should be holding up the mirror to ourselves, discovering for ourselves what is really here to
celebrate or satirize. What we express with local content within metaphorical structures then becomes "universal" because it serves for comparison. Set it next to "Chicago" theatre and "Irish" and "Jewish" and "Gay" theatre and we're all better able to figure out who we are and how we got that way.
What's peculiar to Boston? Well, our "Barney Frank" is a boogyman conservatives use to scare their constituents into giving money and turning out to vote-- to me Barney, my representative in Congress, is the democratic ideal: a person that I am so confident is devoted to the Common Good that when I discover that I disagree with him on an issue, I assume that I'd better reconsider. What's the local Barney Factor, that makes his public service both possible and fraught? How is it that Massachusetts, proportionally very Catholic, was the first state to legalize gay marriage and continues by a narrow margin to support it? When I moved to Boston in the late 60's, straight out of college, Massachusetts was represented by the first-- and for a long time the only-- African-American senator since Reconstruction: a
Republican. A few years later the bussing crisis revealed unplumbed depths of racist rage and Boston became a city notorious for bigotry. Last week Massachusetts, with a population only 10% black, elected an African-American Governor by a landslide. Where are the plays that chronicle this extraordinary and iconic journey? I have
no doubt that there are playwrights here who have begun work on some--- but where is the local theatre to develop and produce them? 150,000 demonstrators-- out of a population of 500,000-- converged on Boston Common to protest the Iraq war before it began. Why were we, as a community, uniquely right about what would happen if the US
invaded Iraq? Hare's "Stuff Happens" is running here now: sold out and about to be extended. Too bad we didn't produce a home-grown version in 2003, and send it out around the country-- certainly some of us were writing them. What's peculiar about Massachusetts? We have low church membership, yet the lowest divorce rate, and we're
less fat than every one but Oregonians: what is that all about? Like politics, theatre is local. The only way we can address the universal dramatically is by testing the particulars of experience through the "imitation of an action", and judge the consequences in the context of a community. Over time, when people have long term collegial relationships that amount to a continuing conversation, we will develop a common artistic vocabulary. We'll contest, correct, and encourage each other, and begin to be able to tell when we're telling the truth and when we're recycling fashionable crap. Then, maybe, Boston will have a "there" there, and have something to say to the country and the world.

Reaching Out to Conservatives

2006-11-14T20:34:00.000-08:00

How many other people, I wonder, got this message from Michael Moore?

Begin forwarded message:

From: "maillist@michaelmoore.com"
Date: November 14, 2006 7:36:20 AM EST
To: g.l.horton@mindspring.com
Subject: A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives
Reply-To: maillist@michaelmoore.com

A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives

November 14th, 2006

To My Conservative Brothers and Sisters,

I know you are dismayed and disheartened at the results of last week's election. You're worried that the country is heading toward a very bad place you don't want it to go. Your 12-year Republican Revolution has ended with so much yet to do, so many promises left unfulfilled. You are in a funk, and I understand.

Well, cheer up, my friends! Do not despair. I have good news for you. I, and the millions of others who are now in charge with our Democratic Congress, have a pledge we would like to make to you, a list of promises that we offer you because we value you as our fellow Americans. You deserve to know what we plan to do with our newfound power -- and, to be specific, what we will do to you and for you.

Thus, here is our Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives:

Dear Conservatives and Republicans,

I, and my fellow signatories, hereby make these promises to you:

1. We will always respect you for your conservative beliefs. We will never, ever, call you "unpatriotic" simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us.

2. We will let you marry whomever you want, even when some of us consider your behavior to be "different" or "immoral." Who you marry is none of our business. Love and be in love -- it's a wonderful gift.

3. We will not spend your grandchildren's money on our personal whims or to enrich our friends. It's your checkbook, too, and we will balance it for you.

4. When we soon bring our sons and daughters home from Iraq, we will bring your sons and daughters home, too. They deserve to live. We promise never to send your kids off to war based on either a mistake or a lie.

5. When we make America the last Western democracy to have universal health coverage, and all Americans are able to get help when they fall ill, we promise that you, too, will be able to see a doctor, regardless of your ability to pay. And when stem cell research delivers treatments and cures for diseases that affect you and your loved ones, we'll make sure those advances are available to you and your family, too.

6. Even though you have opposed environmental regulation, when we clean up our air and water, we, the Democratic majority, will let you, too, breathe the cleaner air and drink the purer water.

7. Should a mass murderer ever kill 3,000 people on our soil, we will devote every single resource to tracking him down and bringing him to justice. Immediately. We will protect you.

8. We will never stick our nose in your bedroom or your womb. What you do there as consenting adults is your business. We will continue to count your age from the moment you were born, not the moment you were conceived.

9. We will not take away your hunting guns. If you need an automatic weapon or a handgun to kill a bird or a deer, then you really aren't much of a hunter and you should, perhaps, pick up another sport. We will make our streets and schools as free as we can from these weapons and we will protect your children just as we would protect ours.

10. When we raise the minimum wage, we will pay you -- and your employees -- that new wage, too. When women are finally paid what men make, we will pay conservative women that wage, too.

11. We will respect your religious beliefs, even when you don't put those beliefs into practice. In fact, we will actively seek to promote your most radical religious beliefs ("Blessed are the poor," "Blessed are the peacemakers," "Love your enemies," "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God," and "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."). We will let people in other countries know that God doesn't just bless America, he blesses everyone. We will discourage religious intolerance and fanaticism -- starting with the fanaticism here at home, thus setting a good example for the rest of the world.

12. We will not tolerate politicians who are corrupt and who are bought and paid for by the rich. We will go after any elected leader who puts him or herself ahead of the people. And we promise you we will go after the corrupt politicians on our side FIRST. If we fail to do this, we need you to call us on it. Simply because we are in power does not give us the right to turn our heads the other way when our party goes astray. Please perform this important duty as the loyal opposition.

I promise all of the above to you because this is your country, too. You are every bit as American as we are. We are all in this together. We sink or swim as one. Thank you for your years of service to this country and for giving us the opportunity to see if we can make things a bit better for our 300 million fellow Americans -- and for the rest of the world.

Signed,

Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
(Click here to sign the pledge)
www.michaelmoore.com

P.S. Please feel free to pass this on.

political theatre, enlightenment

2006-11-06T19:17:00.000-08:00

Sunday I spent sitting being enlightened-- mostly in the dark. After a morning singing in the UU choir at a "Spirituality and Mental Health" service, I went to the Nora's matinee of A.R. Gurney's SCREENPLAY at Boston Playwrights Theatre. When Gurney taught at MIT he was active with the College Republicans, and on the advisory board of Playwrights Platform. I saw student and Concord Players productions of his early plays, and knew him slightly; he's Old Money from Buffalo, and chronicles the battered remnants of Noblesse Oblige. I've always liked his work-- a recurring thread has been uptight upright Republican males in love with or married to adventurous bleeding heart liberals. (Sylvia, Far East) Recently -- well, at our age, recently means the last decade or so-- Gurney has turned away from drawing figures of Republicans as Flawed vessels of classic Nobility to satirizing them as power-drunk hypocrites: not particularly successfully (The 4th Wall, Mrs. Farnsworth), but with intelligence and honesty. Now he's finally got it Right! SCREENPLAY is 70 minutes of liberating
laughter. Set in 2015, a few elections down in the Jeb Bush era, it parodies Casablanca and battles cynicism. One of the outrages in the SCREENPLAY plot is that the government has instituted Border Control in reverse, on the model of dictatorships elsewhere. Dissidents not shipped off to a gulag are on a vastly expanded "no fly" list to prevent them from saying or publishing abroad the facts and opinions censored in the USA. I got home to scan the Sunday news roundup and discovered that just such a "security" provision has been tucked undebated into law, ready to be applied when the regime deems it convenient! Holy Toledo! The play was
written and produced in NYC before this outrage, when it would have served as a warning-- would that it was produced on network TV, and seen by millions!

Sunday night I saw Zeitgeist's production of David Hare's STUFF HAPPENS at the BCA-- the Royal National's commission about the run- up to the Iraq war. You've probably heard of this play, but may wonder why it's worth seeing. "We"-- effete educated
Northeasterners-- know all this "stuff"-- unlike most of America, we were paying attention. But STUFF HAPPENS isn't journalism: its model is a Shakespeare history play, or a Greek tragedy. Ironic as it is, it isn't satire. It is the imitation of an action, an arc from decisions to consequence. My friend Rosanna Alfaro brought me the script from London, and I'd read it more than once-- no surprises. Still, I was left shaken and weeping. I'm grateful to David Miller for producing it, and a fine cast for making it work.

Artists and Politics

2006-11-05T19:30:00.000-08:00

I know 3 artists-- 2 playwrights and a painter-- who have taken this entire year off to work against corruption and for fair and verified voting. A year sacrificing "that one talent which is death to hide"!... I'm in awe of that commitment.

The mid-term Election this time seems to me a Last Chance to turn around the hell-in-a-handbasket course this Administration is embarked upon. I'm heading to the phone bank to make some Get Out the Vote calls!

ICWP Celebrations to Be in Boston March 2007

2006-11-02T18:40:00.000-08:00

I'm on the board of the International Centre for Women
Playwrights. In Nov 2003 I produced an area event called "Boston
Her-rah", showcasing about 30 local women playwrights. A committee
of about a dozen, of whom maybe half were/are loosely connected to
ICWP- (it's a cyber org: check out the web site. The Her-Rah event's
program and pictures are on it ) put together a week end of
performances and discussion. We invited women whose work we knew and
admired, and let them choose what 5-30 minute piece they wanted to
represent them. There were also panels and workshops, a reception,
and an open mic session --- Wheelock College and Central Square
Library donated the space. It was a great event! But did you even
hear about it? We had wonderful writers, directors, actors; but we
just weren't effective in generating publicity and attendance. People were happy it happened: but there wasn't enough of a response
by the community as a whole to encourage the women who worked on it
to be in a hurry to do more.
Now I'm supposed to produce another one: in conjunction with
International Women's Day, in March 2007. Ideally with one or more
guest playwrights from Abroad--- similar events will be taking place
in Edinburgh, Scotland and in, I think, Canada, Germany, and Romania,
and several others in the USA.
But I'm Not good at Production. I hate to make phone calls. I can't
organize schedules. I'm a natural pessimist, and spread worry and
gloom rather than cheer and optimism. Like the Little Red Hen, I'm about to go around clucking and squawking and ask:How about helping out? Or maybe taking over? I can work hard, and
heaven knows I am acquainted with 100s of talented people around
here (although I have trouble remembering their names and faces: if
it isn't part of a narrative, I forget...) Could I have some help to do this,
please? I know, I know, the boys should get a turn, too. But women
are starting from so far behind......"

What to Produce, and Why It Matters

2006-11-02T18:37:00.000-08:00

For Boston to matter in theatre, there must be Boston/Massachusetts
matter, and some distinctive Boston/Massachusetts styles. When Red
states use Massachusetts or Boston as labels for all that is wrong
with America -- liberalism, elitism, permissiveness, etc... they have
an image of us. So do movies like The Departed, set among Southie
mobsters, or a TV series like Boston Legal, which draws on the idea
of Massachusetts as place hospitable to intellectual argument and
hostile to corporations and bigots. We should be holding up the
mirror to ourselves, discovering for ourselves what is really here to
celebrate or satirize. Our "Barney Frank" is a boogyman conservatives
use to scare their constituents into giving money and turning out to
vote-- to me Barney, my representative, is the ideal: a person that I
am so confident is devoted to the Common Good that when I discover
that I disagree with him on an issue, I assume that I'd better
reconsider. What's the local Barney Factor, that makes his public
service possible? My city (Newton) has the lowest crime rate in the
country: where does that come from? Why have we, uniquely, been
right about what would happen if the US invaded Iraq? And why is the
rest of the country so eager to reject sound advice if it comes from
Massachusetts? This latest Kerry joke flap is another instance of
Massachusettsophobia. We have low church membership, and the lowest
divorce rate, and we're less fat than every one but Oregonians: what
is that all about? Like politics, theatre is local. The only way we
can address the universal dramatically is by testing the particulars
of experience through the "imitation of an action", and judge the
consequences in the context of a community. Over time, when people
have long term collegial relationships that amount to a continuing
conversation, we will develop a common artistic vocabulary. We'll
contest, correct, and encourage each other, and begin to be able to
tell when we're telling the truth and when we're recycling
fashionable crap. Then, maybe, Boston will have a "there" there, and
be on the map.

Boston snubbed by 365Days/365Plays?

2006-10-31T18:57:00.000-08:00

The locals are all upset because Boston wasn't picked as one of the A-list cities in which Susan Lori Parks 365Days/365Play will be done. Big article in the New Yorker.
I read the NYer article. There was nothing in it to help me understand why staging 365 first draft fragments all over the country is a good idea, no matter how talented the writer. Not that first drafts and fragments aren't interesting-- I've heard 100s, probably 1000s, at Playwrights Platform and Write On and in
individual readings with colleagues. There we come together for a purpose: to help the writer discover what moves us-the-audience so that s/he can re-shape an individual vision so that it speaks to and for a community. I suppose that a coming together of theatres all over the US in a single project has value as bonding for the
participants, and it is a publicity "hook" for the theatres involved. But there is not much in anything I've read so far that supplies a compelling reason for doing these particular pieces at this moment in time-- and nothing at all to suggest that they are "necessary" to Boston in particular. Getting "on that list" would
only confirm position of Boston as a lagging follower of NYC trend-setters.

In the NYer Als calls Parks "that rarest of birds, the black female
playwright". But they aren't that rare: of the 1930-40 cohort
immediately before my own, plays by Childress, Hansbery, and Kennedy
have entered the repertoire: I have seen a play by each within the
last 5 years. I have not seen any recent productions of plays by
white American women born between 1930 and 1940-- though some of that
generation are still alive and still writing. There were 4000 women
writing plays in America in 1900-1930: the America into which
Childress, Hansbery, and Kennedy were born. Almost all those plays and
writers have disappeared, but they left a legacy which the civil rights movement of the 50's and 60's empowered women of color to claim on behalf of silenced people.

We have talent HERE! How about organizing a city-wide festival for
our quintuple threat actor-director-playwright-producer-teacher
Jacqui Parker???

good new playwrights? -- Guardian Opines

2006-10-30T18:46:00.000-08:00

Guardian Unlimited: Arts Blog - theatre
Where are all the good new playwrights?
Lyn Gardner
October 30, 2006 04:46 PM

A decade ago this week British theatre was enjoying its greatest flowering of new\ writing since the Jacobeans. Mark Ravenhill had just opened at the Royal Court Upstairs at the Ambassadors, just one of an abundance of new plays written by emerging talents.... A decade on, all those writers are going strong, but where are the emerging talents of today? My guess is that they are clogged up somewhere in
Britain's burgeoning playwrighting schemes unable to find their way out. Over the last few years many theatres have put in place extensive play development programmes,yet despite these schemes there has been a tailing off in good new plays by great new writers since the heady days of the mid-90s.
While many new writing theatres and companies have seen an upturn in the number of plays they receive and generate through such schemes -in some cases more than 3,000 scripts a year - from where I'm sitting it often doesn't feel as if there has been a similar upturn in quality. Perhaps - perish the thought - all that play development schemes do is to encourage not particularly talented people to write more and more plays. The danger here is that genuine talent will be missed because with so many plays in development it gets increasingly hard to see the wood for the trees.
Theatres have always worked closely with writers. Very few plays - whether by new or established writers - pop through the letterbox in perfect shape. The relationship between writer and literary manager has historically been a crucial one. But in the past the plays that were developed were being developed to a purpose: the staging of that play. The meetings, the drafts, the workshop and the rehearsed reading were all part of a process that was leading towards production, not an end in themselves.
Over the last 10 years a new play development culture - based on American models - has taken root in British theatres and it is now so firmly embedded that it has become an industry in itself. These schemes are not always hungry for new talent and there is little evidence that they are producing better plays. Those who have jobs in this growing industry have a vested interest in the schemes continued growth, as do the theatres who have squeezed money from public or private sources to fund such schemes often in the name of access. But, if playwrighting schemes worked, every new play you saw would be outstanding. They are not.
Theatres are understandably keen to broaden their pool of writers. Most theatres still see a 30/70 ratio of women to male writers, and black and Asian writers are woefully under-represented. Access is important, but what's the point of providing access to schemes to develop plays but not to the stages themselves? It's like teaching people to swim but then denying them access to swimming pools. There is something cockeyed about a theatre culture that has put so many structures in place to develop plays and so few to stage them. The opportunities to get work staged--and it is only when a play is in front of an audience that a playwright really learns how their play works - are simply not keeping pace as the pool of writers.
Theatres know this, and yet still they hang onto plays trying to keep their options open. Play development should be about enabling writers, not tying up their talent in a queue of unproduced plays. It is often a mirage, a substitute for real action and commitment by a theatre to a writer and his or her play. It provides the theatres with an opportunity to tick all the right funding boxes while offering playwrights very little at all - except misplaced hope......
If playwrighting development programmes really worked wouldn't we be seeing
more emerging talent than we did a decade ago when such schemes were rare?

Interesting comments posted in the blog...

Underpaid? Join the downwardly mobile caste

2006-10-18T22:06:00.000-07:00

Playwrights are underpaid????
I just saw almost exactly the same complaint on FLX, A freelance writers bulletin board, about the $1 word rate which hasn't changed (at top mags) in 25 years...
When I began reviewing in small weeklies 20 years ago, the going rate was $50 per. When I stopped after 15 years, the weeklies were paying $15 per review. Now they're stopped running reviews at all, and most small theatres are only being reviewed by web sites or blogs-- which pay zilch.
When just out of college I taught acting/improv for kids in after school programs in this area, I was paid $10-$12 per class, and 3-4 classes per week paid the rent on my 2 bedroom apartment. The same apartment now rents for more than $1000 per month, and the same kinds of kids' classes still advertise for acting/improv teachers and pay them $10-$12 per class.
My friend who teaches as an adjunct at a local college makes less per section today than I was paid for a similar job in 1986.
My "computer guy" husband is unemployed. The only offer he's had in the last 6 months is for a low-level operations job of the sort that he worked 25 years ago-- at a lower rate of pay than the skill set commanded back then. Not lower when adjusted for inflation-- the job that paid $16 in 1985 is paying $12.70 now.

It's not a just writers' problem. The entire lower level of the intellectual work force has been radically devalued --in a single generation.

Going Bonkers

2006-10-17T21:59:00.000-07:00

Today, instead of working on the libretto, I composed a rant on Hillary and sent it to a polical blog:

I have no enthusiasm for Mrs. Clinton. I cannot help but hold her personally responsible for the triumph of the right-wing conspiracy and the present distress and disgrace of this nation. Whether considered from the POV of principle or of pragmatism, it was Hillary's patriotic duty as First Lady to protect the office of the presidency and the constitution her husband took the oath to serve. She wasn't able to persuade Bill either to abstain from hanky-pank during his term of office or to conduct his affairs with a discreet, mature, and loyal mistress. Everyone--except Bill, apparently--knew that his enemies were poised to take him and the Democratic party down if he slipped from the straight and narrow. If she could not avoid this predictable train wreck, how can we trust her to steer the nation?
Once Bill was caught, there were two courses open to true patriots: her husband must resign and apologize, or-- better-- make the ultimate sacrifice: quickly court assassination or a fatal accident. A martyred president, killed while trying to serve in spite of the harassment of a gang of power-mad hypocrites, would have been followed by a successful Gore presidency, with moderates or even liberals appointed to the Supreme Court. Republicans in congress would have served as watchdogs against Democratic corruption, instead going on a spree of greed, warmongering, and corruption. As a tragic widow Hilary might well have been appointed Vice President, and after her excellent service in that position (or as senator) she could easily have won the 2008 election. Our beloved country would have been spared the impotent last years of the Clinton administration and whole Bush II disaster-- a disaster which may well spell the end of not only the America we know and love, but of the habitable planet itself. Mrs. Clinton and her husband chose to hang on to the office and put the country though the humiliating ordeal of impeachment, to the detriment of everything we elected Bill Clinton to preserve and protect. For the good of the nation, she must step aside and throw her support to the Democratic candidate who best represents the values she might once have represented herself.

I may be going bonkers