|
|
June 2009
Updated 6/3: Events & Posters from Productions pages.
April 2009
There's a few things on the horizon. First up is a reading of my play THE AMERICAN DREAM REVISITED on Thursday, April 16 at the Arthur Seelen Theater at the Drama Book Shop. Manhattan Oracles, a writers group that I am a member of, is having an evening of short plays at 7:00 PM that night, and mine will be one of four plays being read that night.
A little further ahead is something I'm really looking forward to. I'm going to be a featured artist at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, Alaska. The conference runs from June 13 - 20, and I'll be there with Arlene Hutton, Kia Corthron, John DiFusco and Marshall Mason among others. Arlene Hutton and I are writing a new play together, and we'll be teaching a class together at the conference.
Later in the summer, I'm thinking about going back to the Southampton Writers Conference at Stony Brook's campus in Southampton, New York. I took Marsha Norman's "Writing the Musical Book" workshop last summer, and I recommend the whole program highly. That may depend on schedule, as I've been approached about another teaching possibility as well.
And in amidst all that, I'm still moving forward on the new musical with composer Michael Ogborn, which is going well, and writing a new piece for the Winter Harbor Theatre Company's next show. (I may need a vacation.)
March 2009
I recently took part in a roundtable interview/discussion called "Balancing Acts: Surviving and Thriving in the Theater," with Robin Rothstein, David Hilder and Melanie Armer. The interview was recorded for a podcast by Martin Denton's NYTheatre.com, and can be found here: Balancing Acts.
February 2009
I've been very busy of late - working on a commission for a new musical with composer Michael Ogborn, and we're making some great progress on that show.
I've also finished a first draft of a new play that I co-wrote with my friend (and terrific playwright) Arlene Hutton. The new play was entirely improvisationally and by email over the course of four months. Arlene and I did not talk about the characters or situations or plot, but just started writing - virtually a line at a time. She would write a line of dialogue as one character, and I would respond as another. And we just kept going until we had four characters, five scenes and a hundred pages of a pretty off-the-wall comedy. Of course, now comes the hard part: Taking those raw impulses - and sometimes conflicting pieces of information - and honing them into a full fledged work. But that's part of the fun too.
December 2008
theAtrainpLAys!
The A train takes a detour to Los Angeles as our first transcontinental version of theAtrainplays pulls into the station. Six of our writers gathered on a cold, cold December 8th to get on the famed A train and write six brand new short plays in the time it took to ride to Far Rockaway and back to Manhattan.
We then emailed those fresh plays to a company of actors and directors who were gathered 3,000 miles away in Los Angeles. Those actors will spend the night memorizing and tomorrow afternoon rehearsing, and Tuesday night, December 9th, those six plays will be performed - fully produced and off book in LA. It's our 24th volume of theAtrainplays or theAtrainpLAys, Vol. 1, if you prefer.
And you can see them:
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
7:30pm - 9:00pm
Great Hall in Plummer Park
7377 Santa Monica Blvd. (between N. Fuller and N. Vista)
West Hollywood, CA
Fall 2008
The summer was a busy one! From the return of theAtrainplays in June, to the Southampton Writers Conference workshop on writing musicals with Pulizter Prize winner Marsha Norman in July. The conference was amazing, both for workshop itself - which was truly electrifying - and because of all the great people I met - writers of all kinds. And I'm busy applying all the secrets of writing musicals to the commission I'm working on with composer Michael Ogborn.
And then at the end of August I got the news that Dramatists Play Service, publisher of my plays MONTHS ON END, SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN and LIFE IS SHORT, will be publishing a collection of twelve short plays and monologues of mine called CHOOSING SIDES! With the presidential conventions here, the timing of the announcement is apt, since most of these are politically themed works. Half of the pieces in CHOOSING SIDES were written for the Letters to... series produced by Winter Harbor Theater Company.
|
|
|
|
