Playwrights Foundation Blog

Making Space for New Plays with Michael Mitnick

2012-02-22T10:37:00.004-08:00

After a rousing start to our Rough Reading Series in 2012with Claire Chafee’s powerful Full/Selfin January, we look ahead to the next play and playwright in ourseries. Michael Mitnick’s Spacebar: a Broadway Play by Kyle Sugarman.

Michael’s play, reading February 27^th at Stanfordand 28^th in SF, is a wildly unpredictable, no-holds-barredplay-within-a-play about a precocious teenager out to make his Broadway debutas a playwright against all odds. We recently sat down with Michael to ask himabout his play, his road to playwriting, and the scores he has to settle withthe American Theatre scene.

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To start off, Michael, what brought you to playwriting?

Like so many… I started by acting in school plays. I beganto compose too (based on forced piano lessons) which resulted in some trulyawful musicals I put on with my friends. It was fun, though, and from thoseexperiences I started writing dialogue, notating music, and experimenting withplot and character.

I did my undergrad at Harvard and throughout college I wrotecomic sketches and musicals, which were put on by the Hasty Pudding and The Lampoon – aplace designed to turn nice students into angry alcoholics.

My lowest grade at Harvard wasin Advanced Playwriting, and that really encouraged me to keep going.

After graduation I toyed with the idea of writing TV and didthe BMI musical workshop. I saw the Yale Drama deadline was approaching, so Iapplied, submitting a play with very large margins that will never see thelight of day – it took place in a barbershop and audience members were to bebrought up onstage and given haircuts while the story played out.

What was the initial inspiration for your new play Spacebar:a Broadway Play by Kyle Sugarman?

The play began as a prompt from the head of Yale playwritingprogram, Paula Vogel. I was assigned to respond to Love’s Labour’s Lost. I couldn’t think of anything, so I looked in afolder I keep on my computer labeled “Ideas” and found a one-liner I wrote lordknows when – “Spacebar – a play not about the space key on the computerkeyboard but about a bar in outer space.” Obviously I was incredibly desperateso I used that joke for the play-within-the-play.

The first draft’s structure was one big cover letter to theentity of Broadway and we got to see almost the entire play-within-the-play,with Kyle’s commentary throughout of why it was the best play ever written.Quickly I found I was much more interested in Kyle’s life – in that veryteenage desire to be taken seriously, to be heard, and to settle scores. So,the scenes from his real life were written and then expanded while Kyle’s playscenes were drastically reduced. Then, the second act took shape as a kind ofmelding of his inner and outer worlds.

The character of Kyle in Spacebar has a lot of pointed things to say about thestate of American theatre. What do you think of the current landscape?

I read amazing plays by friends and go to lots of readingsand yet these plays will never be produced. It’s maddening. I wish theatreswould take more chances with brave new plays. Too many plays feel likemouthpieces for regurgitating New York Times above-the-fold articles. Thisisn’t to say that timely plays are a bad thing, but I find that a good story isalways timely. Through the specificity of the writing, the universal isachieved. Six Degrees of Separation is amasterpiece that feels immediate and relevant every time I read it yet JohnGuare didn’t sit down to write about race or class or art. He sat down andwrote a story. Or maybe he wrote it standing up.

Next, theatre tickets must cost the same as a movie ticket.Some theatres have good initiatives going and I wish more would join. A fewyears back I heard Gregory Mosher speak about this issue and it was eyeopening. If you’re going to a play and bringing a date, it isn’t a turn on tosay, “Hey, let’s go stand in the TKTS line for 40 minutes, buy 65 dollar ‘discounted’tickets and then sit quietly facing the same direction for 2 hours.” The priceof the ticket has to be two digits to the left of the decimal and the firstdigit needs to be a 1 or a 2. Theatres need to start at the ticket price andfigure everything else out from there.

Would you suggest aspiring playwrights attend a graduateprogram?

I think Playwriting MFAs are only valuable if the particularprogram offers full or nearly full financial support. There is no reason to gointo debt in playwriting grad programs. Tuition money is better spentsupporting the practical beginning of a writing career. Move to a theatre town,work in a lit office, join a writer’s group, and write a ton.

Yale itself was good because they had generous scholarships.I had wonderful teachers who gave me feedback that made me a better writer. Icould also put on my plays within the school. The place was a combination of anextended fellowship and a mini-theatre company. Most importantly, I graduatedwith a short stack of scripts which I could show people when I reenteredhumanity.

You can’t be taught to write a play, but you can be guidedand made aware of things you’re doing unconsciously. We can’t control luck ortalent, but we can control ambition. The most important thing for a playwrightis simply to write a lot and read a lot. Long term, your writing will getbetter while other aspiring people will give up, creating more opportunitiesfor you.

And lastly, Michael, is there a scene or moment from Spacebar you are really excited to get before a liveaudience?

I can’t say there’s a single moment, but I’m thrilled thatThe Playwrights Foundation is supporting my play and the fact that audienceswill show up and see something I wrote absolutely floors me. I never get overthat feeling. Hopefully I’ve written something that’s worth their time.

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For more information on Michael or his play Spacebar: aBroadway Play by Kyle Sugarman or to getticket information please Click Here

Tiny Little Bad Boys: One-Minute Musings by Chris Chen

2011-12-12T14:12:00.000-08:00

Some thoughts I had while writing my tiny little bad boys for the SF One-Minute Play Festival…

Here is perhaps our most famous short play, in its entirety: Beckett’s Breath:

CURTAIN :
1. Faint light on stage littered with miscellaneous rubbish. Hold about five seconds. 2. Faint brief cry and immediately inspiration and slow increase of light together reaching maximum together in about ten seconds. Silence and hold about five seconds. 3. Expiration and slow decrease of light together reaching minimum together (light as in 1) in about ten seconds and immediately cry as before. Silence and hold about 5 seconds.

And so in the end, Beckett’s views on life can be boiled down to one simple, yet endlessly huge idea (at least in my take on the piece): You’re born, you breathe in the garbage of life, you’re snuffed out. This is arguably a central notion running through Beckett’s entire oeuvre, and in a career marked by endlessly stripping down word counts to their barest essentials (he started as a novelist), he finally managed to strip away words and run-times all together.

Yet in less than a minute (around 35 seconds to be exact) he conveys volumes, and the visceral impact of making me feel as though I am breathing in garbage has a lasting effect. I can feel the toxicity, and in less than a minute a window begins to open on all the unhealthy aspects of my life. I begin to see things in terms of pollution: my bad eating habits pollute my body; my neuroses pollute my soul; my endless hours on the internet pollute my mind. Although Beckett probably didn’t intend his plays to be motivational allegories, these sudden revelations are cathartic. Because in this particular play, run-time is part of the thematic conceit: from a cosmic perspective, a single person’s life-span registers as less than a minute, so we’d be well advised not to fill our few precious seconds on earth with poison. It is a terrifying call to action.

If the goal of the playwright is to capture some essence of life, some essential Truth- with a capital T- then surely the nature of this Truth is timeless. And if this is the case, then the play, given its finite run time, can be seen as a symbolic representation, a tip of the iceberg of the endlessly expansive and endlessly expanding aspects of this Truth. So the experience of a profound play doesn’t stop when the lights come up, or even begin when the lights first go down. The experience of the play has already commenced from the time each audience member began experiencing life: accumulating their histories, forging their mind-frames, and developing their methods of processing. The audience provides the substance and meaning that fill out the symbolic actions that play out before them. And after the audience is moved and shaped by the mingling of their and the artists’ perspectives, they will carry this experience with them as they move on with their lives- from the discussion in the car ride home to the memories in their subconscious for years and decades and even generations to come. So in the end, the play is part of a continuum. It is not an isolated event.

Looking at a play from this perspective, what is the difference between a run-time of one-minute and a run-time of a hundred and twenty minutes? Relative to the span our Lives- with a capital L- there is no difference. Consider a Rembrandt painting, which is a frozen moment in time but captures multitudes that expand in time on all sides, from the history of the painted figure on one side to the emotion you carry forth into the future on the other. You may look at the painting for five seconds and tap into the timelessness that is its lineage, or it may take you half an hour to get there. Or maybe it takes exactly one minute. So I am a fan of one minute plays. Or the idea of any work of art that questions the normal boxes of time we put things in. Because the Essence- with a capital E- of what we are circling around as artists is so much bigger than any box can hold.

-Chris Chen

The Second Annual SF One-Minute Play Festival, in partnership with Playwrights Foundation at Thick House is Sat Dec 17th at 8 PM, and Sun Dec 18th at 2PM and 7PM. 60 Plays. 30+ Playwrights. 20+ Actors. 1 Minute. Tickets are $18 dollars online and available here.

Jessica Heidt in a Box

2011-11-21T10:31:00.001-08:00

By, Caitlyn Tella

Today we zone in on Jessica Heidt, new play director extraordinaire, and the woman at the helm of Geetha's Girl in a Box Rough Reading. Jessica built a career on her passion for new and experimental theater, directing and producing countless readings, workshops, and theatrical events throughout the Bay. I spoke with her briefly about the world of possibility--that is, the world of new plays--and here are the words from our conversation:

Can you talk a littleabout the story of Girl in a Box?

Yes. The story begins with an event that happens in childhood. There are mysterious circumstances around thedisappearance of Sally, Ava’s best friend, when they are about 10 yearsold. The rest of the play follows alifetime, as we try to return to this event from childhood and figure out whathappened. Ava, played by LaurenEnglish, ages throughout the story, and the other two actresses play multiplecharacters that lead us from scene to scene as the years progress.

The Lily's Revenge by Taylor Mac at Magic Theatre

I love when actorsplay multiple characters in one play. Is there an element of fantasy in thisstory?

Yeah, I think in many ways there are, whether it’s fantasyor dream. There are definitelymoments of suspended reality.

Miriam Wolodarski in her show Lavinia at Climate Theatre

Your theater company,Climate Theater, creates a space for experimental performance, and as adirector you often work on original plays. Could you talk about what draws you to producing anddirecting new work?

It’s the sense of possibility, with all of these different types of work. With new plays in general, I love working with writers, and I love being able to help someone realize their vision. As a director and producer in these settings, I can add my own sense oftheatricality and story and character, and be part ofthe burst of these new projects. I find that incredibly exciting. It’s great to have a playwright in the room, like Lauren said, to be able to wrestle big questions.

Orestes 2.0 by Charles Mee at USF

As a producer at Climate, I was able to work with such awide range of artists—I had composers, people from physical theater, at onepoint I had a filmmaker—who I loved and respected. I was really excited by the work they were creating, butthey didn’t necessarily have a space to do it, so that’s what I was able togive them. And at the same time,because many of the artists I was nurturing were part of a residency programthey all got to know each other and they inspired each other’s work. A lot of timesthey became collaborators, and that was so much fun to watch grow.

Danielle Levin, Patrick Alparone and Michelle Maxson

Man of Rock by Daniel Heath at Climate Theatre

Do you ever beginyour process by gathering your favorite artists, say a video artist, choreographer,and actors, and basically start from scratch that way? Or is it necessary to have an idea andthen gather people?

As of now, in general, the projects have been one person’sidea and then other people enter as they bring their own collaborators. But I’ve always wanted to do whatyou’re talking about. Maybe the nextone!

Could beinteresting. Could be a lot ofwork.

(Laughs) And somuch fun.

Summer Shapiro (resident artist at Climate) in her show, In the Boudoir

All photos from Jessica or Jessica's website: www.jessicaheidt.com

Don't miss out on Girl in a Box! It's going to be amazing. If you prefer the Peninsula, you can catch it next Monday, November 28 at Stanford or if San Francisco is more convenient, come Tuesday, November 29 to the Thick House in Potrero Hill. This reading, like all of our Rough Readings is FREE with a suggested $10 donation. Bring a friend, your significant other, your OK Cupid date, or enjoy an evening of theater in solitude (paradox?). More info here.

Lauren English in a Box: Digging into the new play process from the actor's perspective

2011-11-11T18:38:00.001-08:00

By Caitlyn Tella, PF Volunteer
At PF we develop new plays. So, what does that mean, anyway? What's the difference between nurturing a new work and producing a full-on show? Here, I will look into these questions by interviewing the artists behind our next Rough Reading, Girl in a Box, written by resident playwright Geetha Reddy and directed by Jessica Heidt. First up is a look into the actor's experience, through the eyes of Lauren English, who will be playing "Ava" in the reading.

Lauren English

From her days at NYU Grad Acting to her recent performance in Claire Chafee’s Why We Have a Body at the Magic, local actress Lauren English has often worked directly with playwrights on their scripts. As an actress myself, I’ve never had this opportunity, so I wanted to get some insight on what it's like to perform in a staged reading. Here is some of the wisdom Lauren shared with me:

IT’S NOT REALLY ABOUT YOU J

"Doing a staged reading requires you to extend a sensibility outside of yourself, because what you’re ultimately doing is giving the play the best reading possible so that the playwright and the producers and the director can hear it. I always feel like it’s my job to do the best reading of the play that I can so that the playwright can continue to work on it."

ACTOR-PROOFing

"In rehearsal for a staged reading my role is to point out the things that aren’t actor-proof. For example, a good actor can make a bad line work, but I don’t feel like that ultimately serves a reading or workshop of a play because what you want to do is make it actor-proof. The lines must be so clear and succinct that an inexperienced actor could encounter a line and know what to do with it. As an actor, you don’t want to try to save the play by interpretation."

I SEE A VOICE

"The last play I did where the playwright was in the room was Why We Have a Body and the most exciting thing is getting to hear the playwright’s voice in the room. You have the chance to ask, “I’m not really understanding this section of the play—why does she make this decision?” Most of the time, and certainly with Claire Chafee—she would go into the storytelling mode and talk about these characters as if they were real people. All of a sudden this mystery becomes a totally specific reality, and that’s thrilling. There’s something super exciting about having the person who created this character tell you about her. It can really make your work more specific."

BATTLING THE TIME CRUNCH

"It’s important to spend as much time as possible with the script before rehearsals start. Read the script and identify any major questions that you have about the story, so that you can come to rehearsal and say, “Okay, I know we don’t have much time but I just want to make sure I’m clear—in the second act she does this, she makes these choices, is that what I’m feeling here?” In that regard you’re at least being as clear as you possibly can, story-wise.

Lauren and Baby Eva in Reborning by, Zayd Dohrn at SF Playhouse. Photo: Jessica Palopoli

It is a bit tricky because time is always so limited with these processes—you want to feel like you can stop to ask questions, but you also want to be aware of keeping your mouth shut because you can spend up to two hours talking about one scene. You have to get through the play and ultimately it’s about the play and not about your individual part—you have to be aware of both. It’s hard."

USE YOUR INSTINCTS!

"Some actors are really best when they have time to process the play, time to go through all the emotions and everything that’s going on. And other actors (like me!), usually find that the first instinct is the right choice. It’s important in these readings to go in and make decisions, but also be open to what the director’s going to say."

LET GO OF EGO

"Honestly, the best attitude to have in a staged reading or a workshop of a new play is the willingness to try anything, willingness to let go of your own ideas, willingness to let go of your ego. It’s not just about the actor, and yet it is—you obviously can’t do a staged reading without actors. But it’s really important that you be willing to put your own ideas and feelings aside to honor the process of developing a script."

AND LASTLY,

"It’s an insanely gratifying experience to be a part of something as it’s being formed."

You can catch Lauren's performance in Geetha Reddy's new play Girl in a Box on Monday, November 28 at Stanford or on Tuesday, November 29 at the Thick House in San Francisco. Readings are FREE with a suggested $10 donation. Bring a friend and join the fun! More info here.

Look out for our next interview with director Jessica Heidt here on the PF blog!

Accepting My Voice

2011-08-13T10:56:00.000-07:00

by Thais Harris

Really good incentive. That’s what I need when I start thinking that my voice is not clear enough, clever enough, brilliant enough. Good incentive, attention, and inspiration – that is what I got from Bill Cain’s class at the Playwrights Foundation. These things are bound to get me off my butt (well, actually, on my butt) writing. That someone outside of my head might just get a glimpse of what’s going on in there, and say “that’s great, I get it, now make it more accessible, and immediate.” That someone so much further along than me can hold my hands and say “one, two, three” and lift me up from the ground, keeping me suspended for just a minute while I realize I can step down on my own two feet. This is keeping me writing. This is bubbling in the middle of my heart, reminding me that I am a worthy messenger.

Four days were not enough, but they were enough to have a big impact. Eleven writers came together to learn from Bill Cain how to fulfill the sacred duty of finding their own voices. Our own voices. Bill is one of the most talented writers I know, as well as a Jesuit Priest, a 6th and 7th grade teacher, and a self-proclaimed anger instigator (though with his sweet demeanor this is hard to fathom). He listened patiently, thought about work outside of the class, held the space for us to share it, researched companion pieces, and offered honest criticism and insight.

There were those of us who already had a clear picture of their next play in mind, or were already pretty confident in their style. And there were also those of us, yours truly included, who had a notion of a theme, but felt a long way away from developing it into a truthful, gripping, piece of theatre. There’s certainly much more work to be done, but in the course of four days - by visiting the Bible, Shakespeare, Cinderella, and sharing our work out loud - we were able to walk out with a tangible dramatic question, a clear outline, and a chart of our beautiful, imperfect, unique sound.

We practiced performance and collaboration by singing;
We explored the world of theatre by reading, discussing, and comparing our favorite plays;
We looked beyond the 10 commandments and found the small print that says we have a responsibility to find our voice,
We accepted we don’t have to ask permission, and that it is up to us to realize that what we are doing is great;
And we trusted – each other with our stories, and ourselves with the ability to tell them.

The dedication with which Bill guided us was moving, and the huge steps people took in their work were inspiring. When he posed the questions “Do you think that what you have to say is worth saying; can you say it; and can it be received?” We couldn’t help but bring our most honest voice forward. And now I can’t help but write.
Aug. 1, 2011

Thais Harris
Graphic & Web Design
thais@thaisharris.com <mailto:thais@thaisharris.com>
www.thaisharris.com <http://www.thaisharris.com> <http://www.thaisharris.com>

The Retreat

2011-07-27T21:13:00.000-07:00

by Chinaka Hodge

It was sort of like the greatest summer camp, ever.

Here are the facts: Last week, in Danville CA, seven playwrights, seven dramaturgs, seven directors and a handful of Playwrights Foundation representatives went on a retreat. The retreat was in preparation for the 34th Annual Bay Area Playwrights Festival (BAPF). My newest work 700th & Int'l is going up in this festival. As a participating playwright I was required to attend the retreat. I rolled my eyes a little and mentally prepared myself.

If you're anything like me, when you hear the word "retreat" you think of time wasting team building exercises, mediocre food and a whole lot of feigning interest in half-baked motivational speeches. But the BAPF retreat couldn't have been further from that. I sort of think that next time they do this getaway they should just call it "awesome, much needed, distraction free, writing time for television addicted playwrights like yourself, Chinaka". Or "an outstanding gathering of some of the nations brightest and most inspiring theater makers that will certainly make you cry with their brilliant plays, Chinaka".

Okay, fine. Those names don't really roll off the tongue or fly from the fingertips, but those names are more accurate, I believe. Begrudgingly, however, and in the spirit of brevity, I'll concede the name. We went on a "RETREAT".

The core of this time away was having the opportunity to hear every playwright in the festival read their works aloud. In my decade or so making work for the stage, never have I undertaken such a feat. To read every word of my short script meant roughly an hour of speaking aloud. I have to admit that I was daunted by the idea of sharing my (then) unfinished script with a room full of people I'd never met. I decided to grow a pair relatively quickly, though. Once Clarence Coo, the first playwright to share, rocked every notion I had about the way language could and should work on stage, I was hooked. I was hooked on the language alone. Lauren Gunderson's command of the norms and linguistic brilliance of the southern twang in Rock Creek: Southern Gothic; Amelia Roper's refined simplicity with Hong Kong Dinosaur's dialogue; and the phonological specificity of Dan Dietz's Home Below Zero was enough to make me wish the retreat and festival were both twice as long. As the days went on, I wanted more and more to stay. To stay, and to write. And to think and to cry. And to listen. To have my soul gently swayed by the words of others. To pull the pencil from behind my ear and to jot another note on how to become a better writer, as demonstrated by my peers. I talked to my boyfriend on the second night away. He asked me how it was and I replied that it was the greatest summer camp, ever.

(In the interest of total disclosure, I had the East Bay's best cookie in the cafeteria of the retreat site, and the promise of consuming more was probably enough to keep me there for a week or so. There were also Red Vines, and if you know me, you know I have a weakness for the lanyard-like confection).

But like all fantastic summer camp experiences, we packed up our pillows and knapsacks and headed down the hill. Down the hill and back towards the sparkling city across The Bay. We're gearing up for the two-week festival. If you've read this blog post this far, I bet you're a fan of theater and words and probably of run-on sentences. If you like any of that, you should come to see these shows. Check out my little diddy 700th & Int'l at BASH! if you have time. MAKE TIME to see the works of all of the other playwrights. I promise that the 34th Annual Bay Area Playwrights Festival is the best yet, and I wouldn't want you to miss out. I look forward to seeing you jaw dropped and inspired, as I was.

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For more info on Chinaka's play 700th & Int'l and the BASH section of this year's Annual Bay Area Playwrights Festival visit playwrightsfoundation.org

Interview with Kate E. Ryan

2011-07-21T14:10:00.000-07:00

Kate E. Ryan’s Science is Close [click here] is one of the two plays featured in BASH! (Bay Area SHorts) for this year’s Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Kate is a Bay Area transplant from New York and has worked on numerous plays including an adaptation of Sophocles' Women of Trachis. Science is Close represents the second in a trilogy of plays Kate has written about the character Dot. We at the offices of Playwrights Foundation had a chance to catch up with Kate during the hustle and bustle of the Festival.

Could you briefly explain the genesis of your play Science is Close?

I began Science is Close in the fall of 2009, when I was living in Brooklyn. I was Co-Chair of Soho Rep’s Writer-Director Lab for several years and that job included the opportunity to write a new play in the Lab each year. For the ’09-’10 cycle I realized I wanted to continue the story of this elderly woman named Dot who is the main character in my play Dot – a work I had been developing for several years prior.

I also wanted to try to break out of some habits in my writing that I wasn’t happy with. I wanted to try to limit the amount of characters I could put into a play, and also stretch myself in terms of tone, humor and honesty. In Dot some of the characters are a little bit outsized and I wanted to work with characters that the audience could empathize with in a closer way.

Content-wise, my husband had been reading some material by Ray Kurzweil about “the future” and we had a conversation about life expansion -- the potential of healthcare technology to advance to the point that we could live to be, say, 150. I felt daunted by the idea of having to re-shape a vision of my lifespan. Then I heard an episode of This American Life called “Mistakes Were Made” about the early years of cryonics, and I started reading more about cryonics. I thought it would be interesting to have Dot as an elderly person who has lived a very eventful life grappling with the notion that she could have more life – if she wants it. It’s basically a play about whether she wants it – or not – and whether it’s okay for her to want it – or not.

How has this experience with the festival and Playwrights Foundation been? Honestly.

This experience has been wonderful so far. I’m excited to see all the readings in the next couple of weeks. I’m excited to have a work presented in the Bay Area for the first time. I’m excited to be one of the local writers in the Festival. As much as I miss my community of theatre makers in New York (I just moved to San Francisco last fall), I was really ready to break out of the NYC theatre world and move to a new place. This move has been freeing in terms of imagining what my writing could be and who my audiences could be. The Playwrights Foundation is an amazing organization that has been supportive of me right from the start – and for that I feel extremely lucky.

I’m also loving the Bay Area in general. I think there’s a calmness here, a baseline of contentedness in the population that does not exist in New York (the stereotype of the harried, wheels-churning New Yorker holds some truth). Now that I don’t have that rush of city life I’m able to focus more on the tasks at hand. In my writing life, I don’t feel as distracted.

The great August Wilson said many times before he died that the theatre must belong to the playwright to survive. Do you think this is true?

It depends on what kind of theatre you’re talking about. I’m a playwright who often incorporates music and movement into my plays. Theatre can be linear narratives about characters who are specific, with whom audiences can empathize, in which we watch a protagonist change in some way… or it can be Elevator Repair Service’s adaptation of a modernist novel, or it can be Young Jean Lee’s bold work (that she directs) that doesn’t tell any kind of traditional story. The kind of theatre that audience members expect to see when they pay $40-$140 per ticket might need to belong to the playwright in order to align with a common sense of what theatre is, but I think the most exciting performances – the ones that express a new way of seeing -- come from visionaries whose work may or may not be focused on an original text that they’ve created. They are often working against something in the theatre that they feel is causing the theatre to die.

Audiences are smart. They experience fractured narratives daily just by going online and they watch television shows that play daringly with form. In order for theatre to survive it has to be in the hands of theatre artists of any discipline who are keyed into what will rattle audience members’ brains now.

And lastly, what do you hope to do next in your life in the theatre?

I want to keep discovering forms for the kinds of stories I want to tell.

The artists who are actively engaged in the world -- in pop culture, technology, literature, current events – tend to make response-worthy work. So in my next life in the theatre I hope to continue to be engaged in life outside the theatre.

I look forward to getting to know more about the Bay Area theatre world. I look forward to shedding some of my New Yorkiness (I lived there for 14 years) that is negative and holding on to that which is positive. I look forward to staying close with my NYC theatre community while building a network here. I want to continue to be involved with new play development for other writers.

The Playlist

2011-07-15T17:04:00.000-07:00

by Jackie Sibblies Drury

Jackie Sibblies Drury is one of the seven playwrights in this year's 34th Annual Bay Area Playwrights Festival with her play We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South-West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915 (click here)

Right now I’m obsessed with dance parties.

And dance party playlists.

I’ve spent the last several weeks at the MacDowell colony (www.macdowellcolony.org) in Peterborough, NH, a beautiful natural environment where artist of different disciplines work in the woods, in solitude, pondering, indulging creative whims, steeped in transcendentalism. From time to time they also have kick-ass dance parties. Why?

· You are alone-ish in the woods;

· On good days you want to celebrate;

· On bad days you want to punch the air, rhythmically, in frustration;

· People who like to make art tend to be young of heart; and

· People who are young of heart tend to like to dance.

As I’ve danced through various playlists in various spaces garnished by various iphone/pod/pads, I keep finding myself drawn to the moments between the songs.

And I’ve been thinking about theater and performance and plays.

In thinking about the moments between the songs, and thinking about what I could possibly write for this blog, I went through one of my playlists[1] and snipped up the beginnings and ends of any songs that iTunes let me,[2] deleting the middles, creating a stream of beginnings and endings, a series of transitions, a series of introductions, a series of goodbyes. I let the songs end as they do on the tracks, as they do during dance parties without DJs.

The result is above.

I am of a generation that takes play lists really, really seriously.

The mixtape was the love letter of its time, but now the playlist has taken over, even though it doesn’t really serve the same purpose. You don’t give your friend a playlist and hope she’ll become your girlfriend. You invite your friend and all of her friends to a house party and you play your playlist that starts with fast songs and moves toward slow songs during which, you hope, your friend will make out with you.

Dance party playlists are different. The point isn’t to make out, or chill out, or provide the right kind of innocuous background to support dinner conversation, or to comfort you when your boyfriend moves to Japan, or to commemorate that one spring when it rained a lot and you made a lot of eggplant.

The point of a dance party playlist is to inspire a group of individuals to be drawn into something larger, and to feel so moved by this that they actually move, repeatedly.

Of course, this is theater.

Please know that this is all a very, very, very smart and complex metaphor that works on many, many, many levels.

The songs have beginnings and ends in and of themselves, but in the group those meld and create interstices, varied edges that blend in unforeseen ways. Did James Brown end his recording of “Sex Machine, Part 1” anticipating my desire to make a playlist where it fades into Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough?”

Perhaps so.

But probably not.

And do those songs go together? Do they overlap too much? Are they too similar? Not similar enough? Also, both of those songs are kind of long – will people get tired of listening to them? Dancing to them? Will people get tired of dancing in general? Will they get tired of life? Will this combination of songs make my fellow dancers contemplate their own mortality? And would it help if I got some glow sticks?[3]

There is nothing, NOTHING worse that clearing a dance floor.

There is NOTHING worse than listening to the next song fade in, watching all of those beautiful people who had been movin’ and shaking, let their arms grow limp and let their eyes cloud as they shrug and go off to get some air or a beer or, THE WORST, their bag as they head out the door.

The moments between the songs are tense.

Remember that this is a metaphor for theater.

I tried to figure out the difference between the repetition that eases you into a song – the repetition that allows for recognition – versus the repetition that dwindles to silence.

I thought about how it is different recognizing an intro than it is listening to it.

I thought about how a fading repetition can sometimes let you savor a really great bout of dancing, but how it can also create awkwardness as everyone stops dancing and regains awareness of how stupid they look or how sweaty they are as they wait for the next track.

I thought about how similar or dissimilar the beginning of a song can be from its end.

I thought about the ends of songs – how even the most conventional pop songs[4] end in completely different ways. How every song seems to have a different amount of space left at the end of a track – or, should I say, a different amount of time.

I listened to the difference between the songs that end with a careless cut-off and the songs that end with a purposefully abrupt scratch.

I thought about the different silences.[5]

I thought about how long a silence had to be before it felt dead rather than alive, and if that was a factor of time at all.

And of course I thought about theater.

[1] Titled “Can’t Fight the Funk” – a misnomer, since there is no funk is available to be fought on this playlist.

[2] Hey iTunes, what’s up with all of the not-authorized songs? I’m not a criminal.

[3] Note: glow sticks are always a good idea. Seriously. They are awesome, they’ve always been awesome, and we will use them as currency after the Rapture because they are awesome.

[4] That is to say, the best pop songs

[5] Like a Pinter Pause vs. a Beckett Pause I told you this was about theater.

On Being Fabulous: Theatre and Gay People

2011-07-08T13:02:00.000-07:00

by Clarence Coo

A fiction writer asked me recently, “What is it with theatre and gay people?” She had noticed a correlation and was curious. She had meant no malice, as one were casually asking, “What is it with summertime and lightning bugs?” or “What is it with growing old and getting chronic back pain?” Of course there are gay people who read and write novels, and gay people who watch and produce film. But the writer posing the question wanted to know… just what is it exactly with gay people being into theatre?

Alas, despite being a gay person in the theatre myself, I didn’t have an answer.

A few days later, a bill legalizing same-sex marriage was passed in New York and I attended the celebratory Pride march in Manhattan that weekend. We cheered for legislators who had voted for the bill. We cheered for couples who had waited decades for this moment. We cheered for costumes and floats of extraordinary engineering. Then above the noise of the crowd, I heard a fellow bystander exclaim a word of approval that, for reasons now lost to the history of etymology, is commonly used among gay people. The word was “fabulous.”

And there amid the joyous theatricality of the parade, I began to think about the word "fabulous" and wondered if that is what connects gay people to theatre. “Fabulous” in its normal usage indicates a high level of praise. But it is a praise of a complex flavor, as it is related to the verb “fabulate” (from the Latin fabula or fable). To "fabulate" is to concoct a lie so believable that it seduces like a good story. To be "fabulous" is to have the power of myth.

That is theatre: actors speaking words that are not true that become true only because the audience has chosen to believe. For gay people who've had to lie or censor themselves through their childhood, the theatre can be a protective retreat and a powerful release. It is a space in which a stunted reality can fully bloom.

With the fabulous in mind, I went home and began rereading plays that commented on and were shaped by gayness. These were also the plays that formed my very understanding of what theatre could do. The first one I chose off my bookshelf was Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, a play first produced in 1991 in the Bay Area. Its subtitle A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is explicit about the homosexual flights of fancy contained within.

And there, among the very first scenes of the play, the word “fabulous” is spoken by one of the characters, followed by a reference to theatre: “Fabulous. Best thing on Broadway.” It’s Roy Cohn expressing his opinion of the musical Cats. And towards the end of the play, adopting the same word that had praised dancing Jellicle felines, an incantation is intoned summoning the unimaginable future, one that incorporates gay people into the national consciousness: "the Messenger comes, trailing orbs of light, fabulous, incipient."

When an Angel finally crashes through the ceiling, whether lowered by visible wires, or wheeled in on a ladder by stagehands, or simply directed to walk across a high platform, the audience is already believing in the power of the fabulous.

The second play I reread was also set in 1980s New York, in a city unprepared for and ravaged by the AIDS epidemic. But Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart is a different kind of play, not a fantasia at all. The adjective in the title, “normal,” insists on the dignity of the everyday and the universal. While Kushner's play revels in fantasy as an escape, Kramer's naturalism grounds itself in the harsh facts, statistics and evidence of a society’s failures. The word “fabulous” isn't uttered at all in the play.

However, I was struck in my rereading by how Kramer closes his play with an act in a hospital room that was, at the time of the play’s premiere in 1985, preposterous. It was an act equally fantastic as an angel crashing through the ceiling. And though the first time I read the play was a decade past its initial production, I remember how my chest almost burst from yearning as my adolescent imagination lacked the capacity to conceive that such an act could ever be ordinary. The Normal Heart ends with a gay wedding.

So I think to my own play and ask myself the question that all writers must wrestle with: is my work fabulous?

Beautiful Province (Belle Province) is about two characters unable to deal with the messiness of sexuality who retreat, through language, into a world of their own creation. They convince themselves they are speaking French to each other, though the words coming out of their mouths are in English. They travel by car across highways but pretend they are journeying backwards into time, back to when North America was still a New World and bare as a blank stage. The play is their shared hallucination.

Of course, all theatre is a shared hallucination. In it all things are possible and that is why it's fabulous.

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Beautiful Province (Belle Province) by Clarence Coo is part of the 34th Annual Bay Area Playwrights Festival. For more on this play and others in the festival visit http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p=238#province

I'm A Stranger Here Myself

2011-07-01T17:16:00.000-07:00

Australian Amelia Roper on her life as an international playwright and her play, Hong Kong Dinosaur, coming to the Bay Area Playwrights Festival in July.

Lately, I noticed, I have been writing plays about houses. Not kitchen sink dramas, necessarily. Naturalism is not my thing. The style and content vary but always some sort of house. And some sort of fight for the house. Because a house is rarely big enough for everybody.

I don’t have a house. I rent an apartment in Connecticut. Writing space is more important to me than a bedroom, so I have a wonderful office and sleep on a single bed in my closet. People think I’m mad. I love it. I spend months away. (Someone I have never met is living there now. She seems nice. I bought fire insurance.) I have boxes at my parent’s farm in Australia that I really should have labeled. Today I have a suitcase and I like my suitcase. Perhaps my suitcase is my house. I will live out of it for two and a half months this trip. It has clothes for four countries (summer and winter) and my computer. Perhaps my computer is my house. And actually I am quite happy. Traveling. Learning. I’m a citizen of the world! I don’t need to own a house! I thought I did, but enough of that. So why all the plays?

Do I miss Australia?

Do I miss my mum?

Do I want to settle down and have chickens?

No. Well yes. And maybe ducks. One day. But this goes way back. Before the traveling. Before America. Before applying to the Yale School of Drama because I liked the pretty pictures on the website. Hong Kong Dinosaur is my third house play. I started it in 2009, in Melbourne, as a response to the theatre I was seeing in my city and how white it was, how masculine, how conservative and overwhelmingly (though of course not entirely) boring. It seemed such a missed opportunity! We got enough of all that from our TV, news and government, didn’t we? People came to the theatre for something else, didn’t they? Why else would they leave more convenient locations, like, for example, their own house? Houses have plenty of movies these days and you can eat pizza. Oh, and also I wanted to write roles for my actor friends who were sick of playing foreign exchange students and prostitutes. I wanted a play that didn’t call Hello Kitty backpacks and pigtails multiculturalism. Not that I was seeing any of this on stage. It seemed even the advertisements on TV were more progressive than the theatre.

So where did this boring Australia come from, and why are we holding on to it? I had a look around, and I came up with some thoughts.

In Australia our soldiers are called ANZACs. It stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The First World War was the first time the ANZAC name was used, and the first time Australia participated on the world stage as its own country. We ditched the tight English dress uniform and designed our own based on practicality and comfort (of course we did) and a nation was born.

The image of a young white man in a distinctive slouch hat was an important part of my primary school education. ANZAC Day is even more popular today.

Now I’m not for a moment suggesting it shouldn’t be popular or shouldn’t be taught. Or even that it is boring (given the horror of it, that would just be rude). It’s the myth I want to examine. Because despite the shortage of troops and two (failed) attempts at introducing a compulsory draft, the Australian military required all soldiers to be of significant European decent. If the world was going to see what we were made of, it was going to be white and male. So what sort of nation was born exactly? And what sort do we celebrate in that iconic image?

It is a big play, this one. Big in the sense of scope and ideas and chaos. It jumps time periods and countries. Even the cast is big for me – six actors. Three men, three women. Three white actors, three Asian actors and a great range of ages and accents.

But at the very centre of it?

Yes.

A little suburban house.

It is a house owned in the early twentieth century by a family of Irish immigrants, and in the early twenty-first century by a newly married couple, Sam & Zoe O’Lachlan. Sam has lived in the same sleepy suburb his whole life but Zoe, having recently given up the cultural capital of Hong Kong for daily cups of tea with her crackpot, somewhat racist mother-in-law, is less than impressed.

I’m excited to bring this play to California. As a play written for a very specific time and city it does seem to translate surprisingly well. Will Eno wasn’t surprised. He was my mentor last year for a workshop in New York City. I said something like “Do you think people will get it?” and he smiled and said something about me not being as smart as he thought I was (for even questioning it – this was his point). Now there is a writer who understands the universal importance of everyday things like houses.

I’ve never been on the west coast before. I’ve heard the food is good. Victoria and California have a similar gold rush history and as a result of that rush, similar migration patterns. (Which probably also explains the food. I’ve heard it is almost as good as Melbourne. Is this true?) California popped up regularly in my original Hong Kong research. I’ve also read accounts of Chinese gold diggers leaving Australia and heading for the USA in the hope of better treatment. I wonder if they found it.

On the Australian goldfields Chinese men were not allowed to bring their families. They were charged extra for land to dig and often sectioned off completely. They were frequently victims of beatings and murder and by the end of the 19^th century, most had returned home. To China. Assuming China was home, after all those years. Australia had a preference for English and Irish migrants. A policy we would later call the White Australia Policy. Yes this was its official name and it stayed in place until the 1970s. Some will say it can still be found (unofficially) in Australia’s immigration laws today.

I was in Hong Kong a few weeks ago. It is hot in Hong Kong this time of year. Tropical hot. People move out of their apartments early in the morning and set up cardboard box cubicles under the relative cool of the many covered walkways. They bring computers and games and food and fans. The boxes are flattened and then sat on. Cardboard walls are built to delineate one’s area from one’s neighbours. There were some general rules. No setting up your box in the fancy shopping centre, or in the way of traffic. Stay in your own box. And keep your kids under control. It was not unlike an Australian beach in summer with our rows of small sun tents.

Hong Kong has a turbulent history and really it was the colonial connection that got me interested in the first place. It’s not China and it’s not England. And what will happen to Hong Kong when it is handed back to China in 2047? No one is entirely sure. And for those who own houses there? Owning anything in any country requires a few basics. For example, hoping another country doesn’t sail on in and take it. Luckily that’s never happened in my country.

Oh.

But that was years ago, more than two hundred years. And my primary school was too busy teaching me about ANZACs. And then I grew up and learned that my ancestors stole. And I don’t mean the loaf of bread that got us deported as convicts. (Actually, to be honest, we’re quite proud of that.) I mean the land under our houses. What to do with that information?

And then there is the weather. And the earthquakes. And the floods and the fires. There are the millions of people around the world in refugee camps and offshore processing schemes (Australia, I love you, but you make me so sad sometimes). They don’t show us graphic images of people dying on TV, but they do show us houses being destroyed. And viewers around the world watch in horror, because we all know exactly what it means.

Living in Melbourne, the lucky ones, safe from all that, there was something else happening to my generation. Most of us grew up assuming we would own houses one day. Our parents did. Get married. Buy a house. Have children. All of us, gay or straight, still expected something a little like that. We would stay in the suburbs we liked – the shabby, cool, arty suburbs, and we would buy our own little place. Perhaps we would have to fix it up a bit, or move a little further out, but it would be ours. There would be vegetable gardens and chickens. Yes, we were mostly artists but not all of us, actually, and other jobs could always be found.

Wages are high in Australia.

However.

Soon those little brick houses in our favourite shabby suburbs started selling for over a million dollars. Renters were also affected. Share houses doubled in price. Friends who wanted children stopped waiting until they owned houses. Many moved to country towns, which, by the way, are getting mighty pricey themselves. Others were lucky enough to have parents who could help them but the next generation of Aussie kids will learn a different lesson. Home ownership is no longer a given.

In Hong Kong Dinosaur, when Zoe learns that her husband has lied to her and (plot spoiler) her mother-in-law owns most of their house, she questions whether she will ever be happy in Australia. But is it the house or the lie that hurts the most? And does either matter when suddenly you find dinosaur bones in your backyard? A Diplodocus! The Prime Minister wants that Diplodocus. She wants to give it a patriotic name and put it on display. Sam & Zoe’s little house must be destroyed. For the good of the nation. Of course.

2010 and I am an international student in America. It is two years since the Global Financial Crisis and... well. You know this story better than I do. People are walking from their homes. The poor have never been safe in this country but now, suddenly, there are so many kinds of poor. I write She Rode Horses Like the Stock Exchange. A dark comedy about housing foreclosures in New England. Recently I did a workshop of this play in Moscow. Again I am surprised Russians care about Connecticut and again I am reminded of Will Eno’s wry smile.

Theatres make the best kind of houses.

It is easy to believe in everything but permanency in the theatre.

So come and see a play about a house. It’s called Hong Kong Dinosaur. It’s unlike any house play you’ve ever seen, but also kind of the same. It’s foreign, but you’ll still understand it. It’s on at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, directed by the brilliant Desdemona Chiang. The cast is astounding. The festival is a triumph of story telling in the middle of a mean, economically challenged world. And it runs under two hours. So if you have a house, it will probably still be there when you get back.

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Hong Kong Dinosaur by Amelia Roper is part of the 34th Annual Bay Area Playwrights Festival. For more on this play and the others that are part of the festival, please visit playwrightsfoundation.org for more details.

The Barebones Start of Some Thoughts about Trust and Intimacy and What Music Does/Can Do in a Play

2011-06-24T07:53:00.000-07:00

by Dan Dietz

I’ve written a number of plays that utilize live music in some way. A Tennessee fairy tale with a Tom Waits-esque singing angel. An American history play featuring a live rockabilly band. An adaptation of AGAMEMNON set in post-Katrina New Orleans, complete with a Chorus that moans the blues (CLEMENTINE IN THE LOWER NINE, set to premiere at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto this October). But my latest play, HOME BELOW ZERO, takes a much more subdued tack, at least stylistically. It’s my first attempt to utilize music—in this case, heavy metal—in a primarily realistic (if somewhat heightened) drama.

Which has got me thinking: why music? What does it do that I like so much? And what about this time will be different from my previous uses of live music onstage?

Coming of age in Austin

I spent a huge chunk of my adult life living in Austin, Texas. It’s a city so saturated with musicians and bands that music pretty much becomes part of every resident’s DNA. It’s in the air you breathe. Its value is inherent and obvious. Like a dip in Barton Springs’ freezing waters on a hundred-plus degree day, or a trip to the taco truck on South First Street for lunch.

As a young playwright coming of age in that town, I was one of many experimenting with how you could add live music to a play without making it a “musical.” I was a member of Salvage Vanguard Theater, one of whose founders was in a garage punk band called Superfecta. The company started off by doing plays in a rock club called the Electric Lounge. They had to have the entire set struck in time for the first band to go on at 10pm.

Which is a long way of saying, we knew musicians. And since gigs could be hard to get in a town chock-full of bands, we were often lucky enough to have stellar players weaving their music into our onstage action. We got to see how the music could leaven a moment with irony, or cut to the emotional heart of a scene by repeating a simple chord.

And we weren’t the only ones doing it. The Rude Mechs (now famous for their collaboratively-created shows), Refraction Arts, even theatre artists at St. Edward’s University were bringing live bands into their shows.

But putting live music in a show begs the question: What does music do well in a play? So let’s write a section called:

Brief Detour: What Does Music Do Well?

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to work on a collaboratively-created musical with some unbelievably talented artists at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto. In one of our early meetings, the composers (and librettist/book writer Kait Kerrigan) spoke at length about what music and musicals do well. Here’s part of the list they came up with:

MUSIC IS GOOD AT:

1. Telling you what to feel.

2. Giving you a sense of a larger world or community.

3. Serving as a vehicle for emotional honesty.

4. Slowing down or speeding up time.

5. Activating transitions.

They also spoke about Source Songs and Montages, but I won’t get into all that here.

When I look at this list, though, what I really see is: Trust.

Look at all the ways your audience trusts you when you put music onstage. They trust you with their emotions. They trust you to help them build the world of the story that’s being told inside their imaginations. They trust you to carry them through time and transitions and on to the next important thing they need to see and experience and wonder about.

Because make no mistake, trust is what’s involved. Creating and receiving music is a deeply personal transaction. Music by its very nature bypasses the logical centers of the brain to stimulate way more primitive parts of your subconscious. This is (my faux-sciencey yet still I think very true explanation of) why going to see a bad band is an almost literally painful experience. Why Muzak makes some people want to tear their hair out. And why a single note placed just right can make my Dad—not an emotional guy—start blinking away tears.

So basically (and assuming they’re not just sitting there with a massive emotional wall up for some reason), each of these human beings watching your show lets you (through your music) into their hearts and minds in a way that circumvents their well-honed ability to use language and logical thought to shut you out.

Kind of unbelievable how intimate this all is.

Which segues me to…

How does all this relate to HOME BELOW ZERO? Or does it?

A big part of what I’m exploring in this play is the intimacy that people experience when music binds them together. The trust that music promotes and requires.

I’m using music in two different ways as it stands right now. One is realistic: Khaled really does play the guitar. And not in some Brechtian, presentational, let’s pop out of the narrative to address the audience directly kind of way. He actually plays in the Real World of the play.

The other is non-realistic: music exists in what is currently the Coma World of the play. It is music created by instruments that aren’t there. It’s the music of memory, music that is connected to a particular character’s sense of identity (an identity that’s kind of split).

But I’ve tried to find moments where music could intersect with the action in other ways. For instance, I gave Khaled what felt like a manifesto (what I call his “Tabaghdada speech”). Originally, I conceived this moment as occurring while he plays a throbbing heavy metal riff. Then I decided to take the music out, and see if the speech still retains the same swaggering energy without the sound. That’s the great thing about BAPF—I get to test that theory out in practice.

Then there’s another scene in which music brings two characters into an intimate moment of connection—but the music is on headphones, so the audience never gets to actually hear it. Another experiment—we’ll see how it plays.

But the point is, these characters need music to express themselves. It comes out of a deep desire to have a part of themselves heard. And since some of these characters have a difficult time expressing their emotions through language, the music offers a way of talking about what they feel—without having to talk about what they feel.

So I’m hoping that maybe the music in HOME BELOW ZERO will say things that monologues can’t. And maybe the absence of music will say things, too. Maybe these characters need to do numbers 1 through 5 above in their lives as much as I might want to do them in my plays. Maybe in a world falling down around their ears, it’s the only tool they really have.

We’ll find out.

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You can catch the Bay Area Playwrights Festival reading of Dan's play HOME BELOW ZERO - with a live musician - on Friday July 22 at 8pm and Sunday July 31 at 4pm. For more information on Dan's play and the 34th Annual Bay Area Playwrights Festival visit playwrightsfoundation.org

Tragedy and the Common Playwright

2011-06-13T13:51:00.000-07:00

by Lauren Gunderson

I need to ask Arthur Miller a question.

The play I’m working on this summer with Bay Area Playwrights Festival needs his help. The end isn’t working. It hasn’t been working. Why is it not working? The first 2 acts are strong enough to build some rolling momentum, to launch major questions, to define this very special world, to flood this world with the possible, the impossible, the serious, the ridiculous, the human, the musical, the horrible. But after all that the climax isn’t climaxing, isn’t real, isn’t earned, isn’t satisfying. Why? I don’t know. I’m stuck. So I ask Arthur Miller. We talk about tragedy.*

He says that the greatest playwrights have “a fierce moral sensibility. It’s unquenchable. They are burning with some anger with the way the world is."

“Yes,” I say. “Theatre artists know we need that truthful ferocity for theatre to be relevant, prophetic, important - “

“That’s nice. I don’t have a lot of time,” he says.

“Right. Sorry.” I say.

“Are you writing a tragedy?” he says.

“I thought I was writing a drama. I mean it’s still funny, but only because the tension is so high, but now I’m thinking – ”

“Are you. Writing a tragedy?” he says and looks directly at me over his glasses rim.

”Yes, sir. Yes, I think I am."

“Ok. Then your hero must suffer.”

“Weeeell - she’s not really that kind of person and I don’t think this is that kind of play for - “

“The greatest truths we know have come out of people’s suffering. The problem is not to undo suffering, or to wipe it off the face of the earth, but to make it inform our lives."

I nod. Right. Yes. The heroine of my play is a fuck up, a rebel, a very tarnished sheep in her very polished southern family. Her suffering is of an outcast, a reject that turns to the outlandish for a freedom she thinks she can handle. But then how do I reconcile her with her stepmother - who is the real force to be reckoned with in the play? How do I get those two opposite women in a place to understand the depth of each other’s needs? That’s my ending - and that’s where the end keeps stalling."

“Are you done thinking?”

“Yep. Sorry, Arthur Miller.”

“The quality in such plays that does shake us, however, derives from the underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what or who we are in this world. Among us today this fear is as strong, and perhaps stronger, than it ever was. In fact, it is the common man who knows this fear best."

That is what Johnnie wants most - respect. More than respect though - which can be done in faraway silence - she wants active support, community, family. She wants real understanding. And - whoa - so does her stepmother. They are both outcasts in their respective societies. Ok, this is good.

“As a general rule, to which there may be exceptions unknown to me, I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing - his sense of personal dignity."

Lay down her life? Literally? Her life? I mean... the heroine of this play, Johnnie, is a young Southern punky white girl that does not “belong” in her family, in her house, in her small conservative world. If she is the tragic hero, then she has to be willing to risk an ultimate fate. If Johnnie can truly connect to her stepmother, a powerful African-American woman who definitely does not understand Johnnie at all and has her own massive bag of injustices to deal with, she must present her ultimate vulnerability. And if Sugar, Johnnie’s stepmom, can come to accept Johnnie it will only be by seeing the edge off of which Johnnie is capable of jumping. But do I have to actually make her jump? Is this the moment when I recall my grad school training and the meaning of “action”?

“The discovery of the moral law, which is what the enlightenment of tragedy consists of, is not the discovery of some abstract or metaphysical quantity."

“So that’s a yes to action?”

“If all our miseries, our indignities, are born and bred within our minds, then all action, let alone the heroic action, is obviously impossible.”

“So that is a yes. Jesus. I have to kill her? Oh crap, Arthur Miller, can we talk about this?”

“No.”

“But Johnnie is the character that fought for freedom, for individuality! She’s the cool one!”

“Which is not to say that tragedy must preach revolution. The Greeks could probe the very heavenly origin of their ways and return to confirm the rightness of laws. And Job could face God in anger, demanding his right and end in submission.”

Right, Arthur Miller. Freedom may be what you want but not what you need. I think about a discussion I have with students about the earned endings of their plays - these endings generally circle around the worst possible thing that could happen to their heroes. Comedy or tragedy - the worst thing either makes us laugh or makes us think; makes us pity or understand. Sometimes the worst thing is the thing the hero asked for. Either way it pushes the hero to his/her ultimate abilities. Which makes me think that Sugar might be the hero of this play...

“But for a moment everything is in suspension, nothing is accepted, and in this stretching and tearing apart of the cosmos, in the very action of so doing, the character gains “size,” the tragic stature which is spuriously attached to the royal or the high born in our minds. The commonest of men may take on that stature to the extent of his willingness to throw all he has into the contest, the battle to secure his rightful place in his world.”

”This is getting deep, Arthur Miller. I don’t want everyone to die.”

“I almost hesitate to claim that in truth tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and that its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker’s brightest opinions of the human animal.”

“Ok, good. ’Cause I’m generally sunny. I like hopeful endings. I like a play that points us toward betterment. Is that ok?”

“Yes.”

“Awesome.”

“The possibility of victory must be there in tragedy.”

Exactly. Huh. What would victory be for Johnnie? For Sugar? Ok I have a lot to think about. I haven’t decided on this killing-the-hero thing yet.

“I tend to like it.”

“I know you do. Oh god. Do you want something to drink or something? I’ve been such a bad host.”

“No. I’ve actually gotta go.”

“I don’t mean to keep you. Thank you so much for coming.”

“It is time, I think, that we who are without kings, took up this bright thread of our history and followed it to the only place it can possible lead in our time - the heart and spirit of the average man.”

“Or woman.”

“Thanks again.”

“You’re welcome.”

”Do you know where you’re going?”

“Yes, I do.”

(Arthur Miller walks out of the door. Lauren makes fresh coffee and starts typing. )

You can catch Lauren’s play Rock Creek: Southern Gothic at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival on Sunday, July 24^th at 4pm and Saturday, July 30^th at 8pm. Click here for more information! [LINK to HOMEPAGE http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org]

Spotlight: Kimberly Burke; or How I Learned to Love White Snakeskin Cowboy Boots

2011-05-10T16:56:00.000-07:00

This seasons final reading is upon us. The author of our last piece? One Minnesota-born Massachusetts-based playwright, Kimberly Burke, known for her deeply political plays. We had a chance to get in some interview questions with Ms. Burke about her life, and her play Miss Tibet.

PF:

According to your bio on the PF website, your inspiration for Miss Tibet was your time actually seeing the pageant on which the play is based. Can you explain a little bit about how you ended up there?

KB:

About 5 years ago, I was taking my final workshop in the UT-Austin MFA Playwriting program, and the instructor (and awesome playwright) Alice Tuan gave me an assignment: write a monologue spoken by an Asian character that takes place in 1960. I started researching the Tibetan uprising of 1959, and through the magic of Google stumbled across the website for the Miss Tibet Beauty Pageant. I was instantly drawn to the controversy – an external beauty pageant in a culture that typically prizes internal beauty, a swimsuit competition in a mountain-based culture that typically doesn’t swim, an event denounced by the Prime Minister of the Tibetan Government in Exile that takes place just down the street from the Dalai Lama’s compound? I immediately emailed the pageant director, explained that I was a playwright who wanted to write about the pageant, and asked, “If I can get myself to Dharamsala, will you give me unfettered access to the contestants and backstage?” He said yes, if I brought him a pair of white snakeskin cowboy boots. With that I was off to India, boots in tow.

Often when I tell that story I’m met with disbelief, like, wait, you just saw this website and emailed this guy and flew to India? And I’m like, well, yeah, wouldn’t you?

PF:

Would you say that most of your plays have political undertones?

KB:

Oh boy, I just started about five different responses to that question…but for the sake of expediency I’ll say that only a couple of my plays deal with Politics: Miss Tibet, and Taboo, a play for teenage actors that’s published by Playscripts, Inc. Taboo was my response to the PATRIOT Act, though you’d never know it from reading it. It does deal very openly with power and control wielded by a governing body, but it’s set in a high school so it remains several steps removed from its real-world underpinnings. Miss Tibet is the first script I’ve written that deals with a current, factual political situation.

I think the challenge of writing about politics is being mindful that there are multiple sides to any conflict, and while it's impossible to give equal shrift to every opinion, there is absolutely no room to be preachy or condescending. My goal with Miss Tibet is to provide an engaging story that has the potential to encourage discussion, not to espouse an agenda. Because when it comes down to it, I feel as an audience member I’m smart enough to draw my own conclusions, so the least I can do is show the audience the same respect I expect when I’m in their seat.

PF:

I've always heard that the best way to keep your creative juices is to keep creating. You're in a popular band (Shearwater), do you feel that it helps your writing or has no effect?

KB:

Funny, I see my role in Shearwater as pretty similar to what I do as a playwright. I’m the bassist, so I’m part of the rhythm section; I help drive the songs, and provide a sort of bridge between the drums and the more melodic instruments. As a playwright, my role is to lay down the basic track, the words, and leave room for the director, actors, and designers layer their vision on top of it. So there’s that; and I do think a lot about the rhythm of the language in my dialogue. As far as stoking creative fires, I will say it’s pretty fun to set down a scene I’m frustrated with and pick up an instrument; same creativity, different outlet.

PF:

In terms of the Tibetan plight, how do you feel there can be resolve?

KB:

Hey, I thought this was for a blog! What happened to the softballs??

PF:

Hey, all's fair in love and... blogging....?

KB:

IMTUTATQO*, compromise is often necessary in resolving conflict. It strikes me that His Holiness the Dalai Lama has made concessions to the Chinese government with the “middle way” approach, but those concessions have not been reciprocated. It also strikes me that without accurate media coverage in China, people both inside and outside the country don’t have the facts, so the Chinese government is not held accountable for its actions. And it’s difficult to rally people to pressure the government one way or the other when there’s an information blackout. Given all that, I have no answers, but I do think attempting to disseminate information about the plight of Tibetans through the media and the arts can’t hurt.

In this case, I was given the unusual opportunity to meet these women, both from Tibet and from the diaspora, who could speak quite eloquently about their situation. So I did what little I could – I wrote this play, and attempted to bring their voices to a slightly larger audience. It’s not much, but like I said, it can’t hurt.

*In my totally-unqualified-to-answer-this-question opinion

PF:

Any final words?

KB:

After weeks typing away at rewrites in my living room, I can’t wait to hear the script read by actors, with a director, and an audience! Writing is such a solitary thing--good thing theater isn’t.

Check out Kim Burke THIS MONTH at both of our staged readings in the Bay Area: One at Stanford University, and one at the Thick House in San Francisco's lovely Potrero Hill district. Click here for more info!

Voyage Of A Laptop - Playwrighting and Exploring

2011-03-15T14:18:00.000-07:00

NOW FOR A SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM LAUREN GUNDERSON:

I always wanted to be some kind of explorer – astronaut, marine biologist, Indiana Jones. That last one was literal – after seeing *Indiana Jones and The Whatever It Was* for the 13th time in a row in 4th grade I asked my mom if I could officially change my name to Indiana. Applying her excellent social foresight, my mom refused.

You now hear the Indiana Jones theme

And though I berate myself for spending too much time in front of a computer – as a writer I think I might have achieved a version of my original goal. The point is now obvious I’m sure– playwrights are explorers of the human and theatrical landscape. We are surveyors, voyagers, pioneers of the grand and small corners of risk and feeling. The most brittle heartbreak, the
glossiest sex, the richest triumph, the seediest betrayal – we seek that out! Get all that in a play and that’s drama gold rush.

Not to mention the undiscovered country of theatrical innovation – bold dramatic structures, twisting poetry, transformative space and time through design and music - the myth-making stuff.

And how many times have you hit a rewriting moment and felt like a burnt out sea captain in a tempest. I have.

I am particularly aware of the strange business of exploring the human largess as I bounce from one play to another vastly different play in the span of one week.

My new play EXIT, PURSUED BY A BEAR launched its rolling world premiere in Atlanta at Synchronicity Theatre last Friday (which was first read at Playwrights Foundation last year!). The following Tuesday I start rehearsals for my *other* new play SILENT SKY premiering at South Coast Rep (also their commission) April 8th.

BEAR is a raucous revenge comedy about a North Georgia woman triumphing over abuse with the help of her simply ridiculous friends. And there is a bear. And Jimmy Carter. And some karaoke. To write this play the explorer in me wore a camo jacket, daisy dukes, bright red Converse high-tops, and shouldered a bedazzled dart gun (in case that bear got some crazy eyes).

Read More:

On the other hand (which might as well be someone *else’s* hand it’s so far away from the first hand) is SILENT SKY – a true story of early 20th century American astronomer Henrietta Leavitt who’s mathematical discovery in 1912 allowed us to measure the universe for the first time in human history. There are no bears. There *are* some suffragettes. My explorer outfit for this one definitely included polished leather lace-up boots (with little heels), jodhpurs, a high collared lacey shirt, a big-ass Teddy Roosevelt hat, and a shiny refractor telescope. Or a spacesuit.

Those two worlds boast forcefully different terrain. One is a steamy country of outlaws and wild animals. The other is a perfectly intricate garden maze that may or may not lead to epic but quiet cosmological truth.

The wonder of all this is that it’s our job to thoroughly explore all of these landscapes – not always at the same time. But we get to go where our characters go, with them, before them (though sometimes they seem to find their way without us). That is a fabulous job.

It certainly helps to *actually* visit some cool places and learn a few new things in your writer’s life. I never think more clearly than when I’m traveling. But my instinct is always to put the new things I witness/experience in a play.

It’s only in a play that I get to the heart of it – the beating, breathing, scared, lusty, curious, imperfect, angry, ambitious, art-sculpted human heart that is created, abstracted, essentialized, and delivered forth through theatre.

Because it’s seems that even the barest *actual* landscape can host the richest terrain of human life. Perhaps characters *are* their own environment…

For me the writing of plays is this – adventure through creation. It takes skill and tools and a crew (actors, directors, designers, dramaturgs) to navigate and to know.

All that and I haven’t left my desk.

Onwards!

Lauren Gunderson
PLAY MATH: A Secret Guide To Dramatic Structure

Monday Evenings (8 classes) 7-10pm

- April 4 - May 23
- Regular Price: $375
- *40% Early Bird Discount: $225 *

The Role of the Artist: Reflecting on Chisa Hutchinson's "The Subject"

2011-02-24T11:51:00.000-08:00

The thing I love about live theatre that you just don't get from film is a pure, unadulterated connection with the piece and the actors. The best thing about a new play like we have at our ROUGH Readings is the ability to have that connection, then talk to the playwright and learn their intention, and get a whole new level of connection as questions are raised.

This seems a little late as the reading of Chisa's The Subject happened last month (Jan 24, and 25) but its had some time to sit in my mind and ferment a bit, especially since I sat onstage reading the stage directions through a two long days of rehearsal and two public readings. The play centers around Phil Waterhouse, a famed documentarian who learns the effect of being an objective eye.

You see, it was during rehearsal on that Sunday night, that Chisa asked the cast a question to help them understand it more, and I have to say that it's something that has truly stuck with me. She explained that the play was partially inspired by the story of the late South African photojournalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, Kevin Carter. If you don't know his name, I'm sure you've seen his work. You see, the reason he won the Pulitzer is because of a photo he took of a toddler in Sudan - you've probably seen it. A small child, completely emaciated, struggling to stand, and a vulture looming close in the background. This haunting image has been used countless times since it was shot in March, 1993. While the fate of the child is unknown, we do know that Carter suffered at the hands of the vulture. Not physically, no, but just months after winning the Pulitzer, he took his own life, citing the haunting images he immortalized as a reason for the act.

Chisa asked the actors one of the most important questions I've ever heard in my life, and I wish I had asked myself: "What is our duty as artists?"

Mind = Blown.

(MUCH more after the jump)
How could I have never thought of something like this before?! My mind was blown. Now, I've gotten some good advice from various artists and art forms before. "Measure your life in love" from RENT; British folk singer Frank Turner once said "Life is about love, last minutes, and lost evenings; about fire in our belies and furtive little feelings, and the aching amplitudes that set our needles all a-flickering, and help us with remembering that the only thing that's left to do is live." What about the timeless Toy Story (so what, I'm still a kid) saying, "To infinity, and beyond"? I've even gotten personal advice from DC based actor, Ian Peakes, on the subject of getting jobs as an young actor, "accept everything... except heroin on a switchblade." Although... I'm still trying to remember how that was relevant.

But none of these made me think this much. Where do we draw lines? I know as a playwright the things I try to say with my words. I write them very specifically and know what I want to get a point across. Chisa mentioned that people will often criticize the third party observer - the documentary filmmaker, or the photojournalist who just observe, report, and otherwise do nothing about it. And that's true that people will say "why didn't you do anything?!" But we have to then think about what the critics are doing. They aren't there taking pictures, writing plays, songs, movies, paintings, or stories about this. Maybe that's the way the artist does something about it. We tell the world what's going on. People have had enough of those on the streets yelling in your face saying "buy this," or "support us." Maybe the artist has found the best medium, and it's our way.

Then again, on the critics side of things, is that enough? Should the artist become directly involved - get our hands dirty? It seems like, in the situation of Phil sometimes it isn't always an option. We have to remain subjective. A third party. An eye, and a voice, but never an actual being.

Personally, I feel as artists, we are exactly that - the conduit from which the world learns about itself. Photojournalists, graffiti artists, and playwrights are all one in the same. Let me clarify. My best friend is a photographer. She's quite good at it, and it going to school for it currently, but she doesn't think her photos are anything special. She also happens to be going through a period of self-actualization and great change right now (think a butterfly, only mentally), so as I'm there for her like any friend, I suggest things that I think may help her. One of my many gems include the suggestion that she 1. starts to carry her camera everywhere, because what's a photographer that isn't ready for spontaneous art; 2. start seeing things as art, rather than assignments - she has gotten too caught up in school, and rather than finding the assignment in the photos she has, she goes looking for the assignment; and 3. say something through her photos - something about her, her beliefs, and her stances. Hey, maybe these seem like no-brainers to you, but some people need reminders that art isn't just scribbling on the wall.

Which brings me to why I said graffiti artists. I'm not saying I know anyone who writes graffiti, or that I've done it myself, but I'm not saying I don't know, or haven't done it. Vague, and confusing, isn't it? That's the point, sometimes. Graffiti is the most basic form of anarchy. "Bombs," those scribbled names on the sides of buildings, are just that - bombs to the establishment. It's discord. It's saying "there's something wrong with this system, and we are here to put even the smallest wrench in the cogs of your machine, even if it only stops it for a split second." Sometimes they say something like an inspirational saying, or image, but sometimes it's just a name of the artist. The point of that is to spread your name (which usually has a deeper political meaning than perceived) all over and to tell 'the machine' that "I'm in every major city, and I'm spreading my word. And you have to clean it up."

Which brings me to the spray-can that I use for my graffiti - my keyboard, and the wall on which I use to tear down the machine with which I disagree - my pages. The playwright should tell something about the world. Even in absurdist, surrealist, expressionist, melodramatic, or dadaist plays should something be said, even if it can't be seen without tearing the story apart like a giant onion. I can find as much political or social weight in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, and even Oklahoma! as I do Churchill's Drunk Enough to Say I Love You, or Camus' Caligula, which are rich in meaning.

Art has meaning, always, no matter how the interpreter sees it. It's the artists weapon; the artists voice; the artists change. It's how we plan on changing the world.

I open it to you, the few readers we have, and those who stumble our way: what is the duty of the artist?

-Vinny, the intern.... The Vintern.

Chisa Hutchinson's The Subject was produced as part of our ROUGH Reading series at Stanford University and The Thick House, January 24 and 25 (respectively). Our next ROUGH Reading is Jason Grote's Darwin's Challenge, March 7 & 8. Click here to learn more. Come watch, listen, and more importantly THINK.

The New Play Sector Talked (and talked, and talked, and talked) in the Capital

2011-02-18T15:40:00.000-08:00

I represented Playwrights Foundation at the New Play Convening last month at Arena Stage’s new Mead Center for American Theatre, and hosted by new play raconteur, the Bay Area’s own David Dower, who was the founder of the Z Space Studio, and is now the Associate Artistic Director of Arena Stage, and architect of the American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage. It was an incredibly full four days, with a very diverse (everyone hates that overused, undermeaningful word) so I’ll give this a try instead: … a powerfully eclectic range of people from very different aesthetic/ geographic/gender/age/cultural /ethnic identities; representing all sizes of producing theaters, many geographic centers, individual playwrights, ensemble theater makers, presenters, festivals, and yes, new play development labs and organizations, like Playwrights Foundation. And we did a lot of talking together. And a lot of listening. And those many conversations were a part of a national dialogue, all recorded, twittered and live streamed across the country. But all that listening and talking led us somewhere – somewhere that is intangible, and very hard to talk about succinctly. Nonetheless, the momentum of this event will, I believe, succeed in pushing the national agenda about the practices of developing and producing new work and the learning about ourselves and our (un)common work, forward.

Not everyone who deserved to be in this circle got to be, and I feel a responsibility to keep writing about it, to share my experience and bring your thoughts and words into the dialogue. If you were in the third circle, on twitter or live stream video, or, if you weren’t, and you want to tell me your thoughts, please respond to my posts here on Playwrights Foundation’s Blogspot.

It seems fitting that we met up in DC where our elected reps are right now fighting tooth and nail to keep the NEA from becoming irrelevant. The NEA (a relatively tiny agency) plays a critical role in upholding our nation’s value for the arts, and its meaning to We, The People in a Democracy. If you haven’t expressed your opinion about cutting the NEA yet, please take this opportunity to do so! I did it in 5 minutes yesterday, and yeah, I felt that glow of citizenship wash over me. No, really, it is extremely important for us to speak up! Do it NOW, and then finish reading this. Okay, so...

Online there is a rich debate raging about NEA Chairman Rocco Landsman’s controversial and frank discussion on the issue of supply and demand in the American theater. You can read lots of interesting commentary on these links Diane Ragsdale and Arena Stage Blog and NEA Blog and I suggest you do. Need I say: these are some awesomely challenging times for us. The danger, I think, is to become self-congratulatory against the firestorm of anti-intellectual, anti-culture backlash. To imagine that our relevancy to the majority is a shared value is myopic. But in the face of a real and present danger to lose faith is not an option, because, as cultural workers, as the planters and sowers of cultural seedlings, we are damn sure we are relevant but are challenged by issues of solvency.

One of my favorite quotes from the New Play Convening was from Diane Ragsdale, who herself was quoting a professor: “A model is the representation of your beliefs about causality.” Think about it. I don't know about you, but here at PF, we are constantly questioning our beliefs about our outcomes, and by inference our models of development. We are constantly making, deconstructing and redesigning our 'model(s)' (for organizational structure, staff roles, governance, and... programs for play and playwright advancement). I love the notion that at the heart of all those developing models is belief about impact, a belief about what we mean to cause and how.

So we new play makers are stuck here between blind passionate belief and the requirement to quantify our impact. Believing in our work, believing it actually does make a difference, in so many ways, as we so claim, believing in art as a transformative experience of beauty is absolutely essential to making the work – and yet, (and yet), we must become experts in making the case for its relevancy, and become savvy in the business of solvency.

Of course, as a theater professional that has not been my strong suit, believe you me, but learning those skills has been Playwrights Foundation's saving grace.

So, for me, sitting together with colleagues, new and old friends, and talking about our shared passion and our shared responsibility for carrying this work forward, that is, making new theater possible, was exhilarating and inspirational. I did cry a few times, and laughed a lot. Mostly, I listened, actively, heartfully, thoughtfully. It turns out that listening was itself the springboard.You too can listen in: it's all available at #newplaytv.

Here's to: carrying the flame of passion, the innocence of blind belief, and the wicked ass savvy of financial know-how.

Stay in touch with us!

Warmly,

Amy Mueller
Artistic Director

A Loss For Words

2011-02-17T11:30:00.000-08:00

Recently I've found myself in a bit of a pickle. The Bay Area is filled with its surprises, and I'm sure many cities I could have chosen would have their own particular pitfalls. Having recently had my laptop burglarized ...burglarized? Burgled sounds funnier. Let's go with burgled. Having recently had my laptop burgled from my bedroom, and with my roommates unable to explain how it happened (or that their story is incredibly filled with holes) I've discovered a few things. Isn't that funny? In the absence of some things, you gain others - in this case, knowledge.

#1 Suspect

First things first, I have to make it known that this laptop I used for writing. That means many papers from college, resumes, photos, select readings, music, movies, and even my plays that I was working on are all now missing, as well. Kaput. Finito. Gone. ...This happened about three weeks ago, and even now I realize that it also had my headshots on there, so there goes any chance of me becoming a famous actor while I'm out here... looks like I'll just have to be spotted on the street and told "hey, kid, you got what it takes!"

Hogwash.

(More after the jump)

Anyway, to the point. My plays. My screenplays. All gone. I think. I thought, anyway. Fortunately, it's been so long since I've written a screenplay that they're all backed up, back in New Jersey. My plays though... they were all done recently. Some thief is stealing my GENIUS unfinished first drafts and is going to make MILLIONS. Fortunately, I have good friends whom I trust, and I send PDF files of my most recent additions, and ask for opinions along the way. I got my two half-way done drafts back and only needed to copy and paste them into my program and adjust the formatting when I got a computer. This same friend also happened to have an old laptop lying around that could just about handle my usage... save for the 35 gigs of music I lost with my Macbook. Damn you burglars.

For that time, though, where I didn't know just how it was going to be, I was devastated. I thought I'd never be able to write again, especially not if I had those stories still bouncing in my head. I was at a loss for words, for quite some time. But if I'd learned anything from my Zen Buddhist teachings, to not let it get to me. The world moves on.

It's s valuable part of writing, and as an artist in general. You don't learn about the world reading about it in books, and you don't grow as an artist staying in one place. I can't say I think things happen for a reason, but I know that them happening has given reason to do more. Now, I have more to write about because of the ideas I have spawned from my experiences here, and while I look for internships and apprenticeships around the country (after this one ends, of course), I am excited to see how my art grows and evolves. Someone said to me recently that they never really had an imagination growing up, and that's why she isn't very artistic.

Everyone has an imagination, and everyone has art, and everyone has words. It's just a matter of finding the conduit. I filled the void when I didn't have the ability to write my plays (which, by the way you don't need software for, I was being incredibly stubborn) by writing songs, painting, and drawing. Now that I feel comfortable to give my plays some more work, I feel like my characters will have much more to say this time around.

People will try to take them from you, without even realizing it, but you always have your words. Remember that, world.

-Vinny

Vinny is an intern at Playwrights Foundation. If you'd like to find your conduit and explore your words, sign up for Anthony Clarvoe's "FULL TILT TO THE FINISH LINE, Writing a Successful Full Length Play." The class runs from March 2 to May 11, 2011!

What Lurks in a Playwright's mind? Mega Piranha.

2011-02-02T16:53:00.000-08:00

When PF Resident Playwright, Julia Jarcho, was asked what her favorite mythical beast was, she had this to say:

At the moment, I've got to say Mega Piranha.

BUM BUM BUMMMMM

According to a scientist (Tiffany), this organism has a very simple program:
eating as much as possible, so as to grow infinitely large.
Mega Piranha doesn't, as far as I can tell,

experience performance anxiety or social anxiety;
it doesn't think about its career path,

which is almost a shame because its career is
(at press time) going remarkably well.

It's on the verge of taking over the ocean. How many of us can say that?
Mega Piranha gets the job done, and looks great doing it.
A cute TV anchorwoman is about to feel its wrath.
Wrath?
Actually, I doubt it; the emotional modalities of Mega Piranha are way off our two-bit human spectrum.

BurbleburbleburbleburbleKHRRRAAAAAAARKH!

They're approaching from the east. Stay tuned.

Julia Jarcho has been a Resident Playwright at Playwrights Foundation since 2008. A brand new piece by Julia will be produced by New York City Players next Fall - keep up with Julia and other Resident Playwrights on our website!

Kafka Finds a Good Margarita in the Second Act

2011-01-24T08:44:00.000-08:00

We've invited Jeff Seeman, currently taking Anthony Clarvoe’s playwriting class, to write a little something about trying to write a full-length play in ten weeks:

There’s just one more meeting left in the fall session of Anthony Clarvoe’s ten-week playwriting class and people are already clamoring to sign up for the next session. It’s been a fascinating ride over the past few months, spending Wednesday evenings in a roomful of fellow writers—feeding off each other’s enthusiasm, supporting each other’s creativity, and occasionally spilling coffee on each other’s scripts.

I started the class back in November with a clear idea of what I wanted to write—a musical version of Spider-Man with a huge cast, a bloated budget, overblown special effects, and a strained relationship with OSHA. Imagine my surprise during the first week when Anthony pointed out someone was already doing that. Who knew?

Quickly shifting gears, I settled on my other idea, an Ionesco-Goes-To-Work-At-A-High-Tech-Company tragicomedy, which Anthony dubbed “Kafkasoft.” We all spent the first few weeks of class exploring fundamental questions about our respective plays: What’s the play really about? Who’s the protagonist? Does the play fit into a genre? What will the structure be? What are the story and character arcs? Did anyone bring snacks? Are you going to eat that?

After a few sessions, the writing began in earnest, with Anthony firmly but gently nudging us all towards fulfilling our playwriting goals. Part critic, part coach, part Jewish mother, Anthony shared with us his wisdom and enthusiasm for the writing process. Drawing on examples from Shakespeare to J. K. Rowling, he somehow managed to impart his ample expertise without ever becoming dogmatic.

By the time we came back from the holiday break, two of us were working from complete drafts of our plays and several others were close behind. Then came the next round of questions: Does the play work as a whole? Does it hold up in Act II? Does it fulfill the promises made in Act I? Have you tried the margaritas at that place across the street? Are they any good?

Like a skilled dramaturg, Anthony then asked insightful, provocative questions about our respective works-in-progress. As someone who used to live in L.A. and wrote screenplays for several years, I was delighted to receive such useful feedback. (In the movie industry, most of the notes writers receive are more along the lines of, “Hey, that movie with the elephant did great box office last weekend. Can you stick an elephant in the second act?”)

As the class comes to a close, I’m now immersed in rewriting. Then I’m off to my next project, a comedy about two mismatched roommates, one neat and the other sloppy, who are separated from their wives. No one’s done that, right?

Jeff Seeman is a writer, director, producer, and author of two novels, Political Science and Guns and Butter. He likes cheese.

Guess what? If you are jealous and want to try to write a full-length play of your own, Anthony has a new section beginning March 2nd on Wednesday evenings. A possible East Bay section on Monday evenings is also in the works – more details soon! Please visit our New Play Institute page on our website for more info!

Rajiv Joseph gets "Gruesome"

2011-01-18T13:20:00.000-08:00

It's quite the start of a year for Playwrights Foundation alumnus, Rajiv Joseph. Now we all know about his Broadway debut and Pulitzer finalist Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, but we cannot forget his other works! Currently running at the Second Stage Theatre, also in lovely New York City, is Gruesome Playground Injuries, a play where two lovers compare their lives in the form of their physical scars. Playbill.com has the scoop:

Courtesy of Second Stage Theatre
In the case of Gruesome Playground Injuries, now playing at New York City's Second Stage Theatre, Joseph came up with the title before the story had taken shape. "I was having drinks with an old friend of mine," recalls the playwright, who recently had Gruesome produced at Houston's Alley Theatre and at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, DC. "He was telling me stories about the many bizarre mishaps that have left scars all over his body, and I realized that if you were like him, you could mark the chapters of your life with injuries. As soon as he got up to get us more drinks, I took out a piece of paper and wrote down the title of the play."

Read the rest, get to know the playwright, and go out and see Gruesome Playground Injuries before it leaves, if you're in the area! Don't forget Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo opens in March with Robin Williams in the eponymous role, and will be THE play to see this year.

New Year, New Plan by Marisela Treviño Orta

2011-01-06T11:12:00.000-08:00

Meet our Resident Playwright Marisela Treviño Orta as she attempts to declare Victory in the New Year!

“Without a plan, there’s no attack. With no attack, no victory.”—Ack Ack, One Crazy Summer

George (Joel Murray), Ack Ack (Curtis Armstrong) and Hoops (John Cusack) dive for cover under artillery fire in One Crazy Summer.

That’s what popped into my head yesterday. Just a little bit of 80’s movie trivia and levity, exactly the kind of inspiration I needed to keep my resolution to write my 2011 plan. What plan, you ask?

Well, it’s a new year. And along with breaking in my new calendar, this year I’ve decided to write a 2011 plan for my playwriting career.

That’s right, a plan.

I got the idea from recent Theatre Bay Area article “The Titan Award” by Dale Albright. Two of the actors featured in the piece mentioned writing career plans each year to help them map out their goals.

That got me thinking.

At my day job we write a yearly work plan (a very extensive one) that includes goals, activities and measures. What if, this year, I write out my own personal work plan. I mean, I’ve made plans before, or rather lists of goals and lists of places I’d like to send my work to. But a work plan would be one document that I could use throughout the year to guide my progress in various writing projects and help me keep tabs on deadlines (both personal and for competitions).

Here’s what my playwriting plan includes: 1) writing goals and 2) professional/business goals.

The writing goals. That’s easy enough. I have several plays all in various states of development. I have one play that’s ready for me to start sending out, one play that I need to finish some rewrites on, another that needs a second draft, one that needs to be finished, and an idea begging to be written.

My plan will help me juggle all these plays. I’ll set specific timelines for when I’ll work on each play in order to make the progress I’ve outlined for myself this year.

Here are a few of my writing goals:

Blog at least three times a week
Finish American Triage rewrites by January 14^th
Finish second draft of Heart Shaped Nebula by end of January
Finish first draft of Wolf at the Door by end of April

Then there are the professional/business goals. These include sending work out to theatres, submitting plays to competitions and festivals, going to see plays, reading plays. Here are a few of my professional/business goals:

See at least two plays a month
Submit to Ashland’s New Plays Festival—deadline January 15^th
Send Woman on Fire out to multiple theatres—deadline February 15^th
Send Survivor’s Guilt to Humana’s 10 Minute Play Festival—deadline November

I’ve already finished a first draft of my playwriting plan, complete with goals outlined for each month so that I’m continually writing, learning and putting my work out there. And since this plan is written down, I’ll be able to track how I’m doing throughout 2011.

Ack Ack is right. Having a plan gives you a clear sense for how to move forward, how to attack your work. And victory? She is mine.

2010-12-16T13:43:00.000-08:00

Our friends over at the New York One-Minute Play Festival blog have given us and our playwrights a little bit more press, and we're seeing double.

First, they talk to Garret Groenveld. Garret, one of Playwrights Foundation's resident playwrights, recently was a finalist for the Global Age Project with his work The Serving Class. Not only a playwright, Garret reflects on the First Annual One-Minute Play Festival with a little bit of his background in poetry:

And here’s a case for poetry. Critiques often say, “The writing was poetic.” When it’s not, it might be elegant, it might be labored or it might even be full of flourish, but not poetic. It’s poetic when it transports, when the unexpected is achieved through a combination of language, metaphor and spatial relation on the page/with the audience.

And then goes on to show his frustration with it:

I also argue against poetry. Just say it, already and get over yourself!

Read the rest of his interview HERE.

The other mention we have is with Bay Area Playwright Festival and ROUGH Readings alum, Geetha Reddy. She gets out all of her frustration, but telling the New York One-Minute Play Festival blog just how difficult it is to be a writer sometimes:

Here is what happens when your director sends you this email:
“Love your one minute play! Can you cut 30 seconds?”

First a Tantrum:
No. No I can’t. How can you ask me that!

See her hilarious account over at the NYOMPF blog.
Thanks for the New York One-Minute Play Festival for posting these, yet again, and DO NOT FORGET! This weekend: Saturday, 18 December, and Sunday the 19th are the FIRST EVER... FIRST ANNUAL San Francisco One-Minute Play Festival. Tickets are ALMOST sold out, so don't forget to grab yours here!

USArtists Announces Fellows of 2010 (And We're Proud!)

2010-12-14T15:37:00.000-08:00

Every year the United States Artists awards millions of dollars to artists of all kinds, from Architects and Designers to those involved in Theatre Arts. This year $2.5 million was awarded to these 50 different artists. Why do we at Playwrights Foundation care so much? Aside from it being quite the feat for ANY artist to achieve, one that should be applauded and recognized anyway, Playwrights Foundation is proud to announce that not one, but TWO alumni are recipients of this years USA Fellowship!

Rajiv Joseph, writer of the Pulitzer Prize nominated Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo finds himself at the receiving end of the highly esteemed $50,000 USA Fellowship. And to think, Tiger was just a cub in our ROUGH Reading Series, back in 2006. The LA Times talks about just how big of a deal this prize is:

Joseph and 49 other artists -- including four from Southern California -- were announced Tuesday as this year’s USA fellows. The $2.5 million in combined annual fellowships, first awarded in 2006, dwarfs all of the nation’s annual arts prizes except the MacArthur Fellowship, which currently antes up nearly $4 million a year for artists. MacArthur fellows get $100,000 a year for five years, and artists typically account for about a third of the 25 or so winners of the annual MacArthur “genius grants.” (source)

Wait, didn't we say there were two? Yes! Also from the 2006 ROUGH Readings comes fellow 2010 USArtists... fellow... is Brighde Mullins, who also received the Pinter Review Gold Medal for her work, Fire Eater about the Irish potato famine.

Congratulations to Rajiv, Brighde, and all of the other awarded artists, you all deserve it!

Read more about United States Artists over at their website, and see what other artists have been awarded!

Steve Yockey and the One-Minute-Play-Extravaganza

2010-12-14T13:00:00.000-08:00

A recent face in Playwrights Foundation history has managed to go under our radar with talking to the New York One-Minute Play Festival blog, so we at PF apologize for not running this story sooner! Steve Yockey, who recently had his new play, Wolves, read in our ROUGH Readings series discusses his involvement in both the First Annual LA and First Annual SF One-Minute Play Festivals.

I immediately thought the timing was going to be the hardest part. And it’s been a fun challenge to get my head around the time & production restrictions. But the comment that struck me most in the big explanation e-mail we all received was, “Also, while comedic plays are always a big hit, plays that tackle more serious themes are encouraged too!”

Check out what he has to say over at the NY One-Minute Play Festival blog!

Don't forget that Saturday Saturday Saturday! AND SUNDAY! Is the FIRST EVER San Francisco One-Minute Play Festival (December 18, and 19 at 8PM, and 7PM respectively). Never before seen one-minute plays will be flying through the stage of the Thick House like a whirlwind of theatre, blowing minds instead of wind! Don't forget to reserve your tickets over at Brownpapertickets.com!

More Press from The NY One-Minute Play Festival Blog!

2010-12-07T14:51:00.000-08:00

Playwrights Foundation resident playwright, Marisela Treviño Orta talks to our friends on the East Coast, The New York One-Minute Play Festival blog about her role in next weeks FIRST Annual San Francisco One-Minute Play Festival. She recalls her difficulty finding the right subject about which to write:

When I was first asked to submit plays to this festival I originally thought of digging up one of my prose poems. The last prose poem I wrote had been a special request of sorts. Fellow Bay Area playwright Aaron Loeb had asked several of us who were coming to celebrate his wife’s birthday to write short plays for her.
Like really short.
Like one-page short.
I opted to write a poem inspired by one of my works-in-progress because I felt sure I just couldn’t write a play that short.
Guess the joke’s on me ‘cause then I was asked to participate in this one minute play festival.
At first I looked through my poems to try and find something I could adapt into a play, even looked at the poem I had written for Kathy, but nothing seemed to fit…nothing felt…right.
I’m big on intuition when it comes to playwriting, that’s because I became a playwright quite by accident. Everything I’ve learned has been on the ground, so to speak. And it seems to me that the fewer pages you have, the more precise your writing needs to be. There’s no wiggle room here. Full lengths have lots of space to explore, ten minute plays hit the ground running establishing relationships and backstory quickly and one minute plays…well…they seem to be moments.

At least mine were.

Read the rest over at The New York One-Minute Play Festival Blog.

Come see Marisela, tons of other playwrights, and their one-minute plays NEXT WEEKEND (December 18 and 19, 2010) here in San Francisco! Tickets are selling quick, so click here to purchase yours!

PF Alumni Get the Star Treatment!

2010-12-02T16:55:00.000-08:00

Two recent veterans of our humble theatrical organization have recently received quite the star treatment.

First up, we need to congratulate past ROUGH Readings playwright, Rajiv Joseph for his Pulitzer Prize finalist play, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, for getting its BROADWAY Premiere! Oscar winner Robin Williams returns to Broadway, this time not for his unique brand of stand-up comedy, but as the eponymous character of "Tiger," with Tony nominee Moisés Kaufman directing. The curtain goes up for previews March 11, 2011, and tickets are on sale now! Playbill.com has the scoop:

"Rajiv Joseph's ferocious comedy…follows the intertwined lives of a tiger (Williams), two American marines and an Iraqi gardener as they roam the streets of Baghdad in search of friendship, redemption and a toilet seat made of gold."

Another Playwrights Foundation vet's star is rising. Marcus Gardley, of various ROUGH Readings, and Bay Area Playwrights festivals of yesteryear has received enormous praise for his play Every Tongue Confess at The Arena Stage in DC, from The Washingtonian, having been awarded 3.5 out of a possible 4 stars:

Something is rotten in the state of Alabama in Marcus Gardley’s new play at Arena Stage, Every Tongue Confess—particularly in Boligee. The town is suffering through a litany of strange events—the temperature is 103 and rising, hailstones are falling and melting into the arid ground, and a string of churches have been set on fire. To make matters worse, ghosts seem to be lurking...

Every Tongue Confess only runs until January 2. THAT'S ONLY ANOTHER MONTH! Theatre-goers in these areas, do NOT sleep on these two plays, believe me. Even Playwrights Foundation Artistic Director, Amy Mueller made it out for Every Tongue Confess, so it's worth the country-wide flight, and while you're there, make sure to book a flight and tickets for Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, as well.

Write on, playwrights!

Festival Alum Reflects on Writing One-Minute-Plays

2010-12-02T13:48:00.000-08:00

Bay Area Playwrights Festival alum, and all-around cool lady, Erin Bregman, shares her thoughts on writing for the FIRST ANNUAL SAN FRANCISCO ONE-MINUTE PLAY FESTIVAL (December 18th & 19th at the Thick House, in Potrero Hill) with the NY One-Minute Play Festival Blog:

Six weeks ago I opened the longest, most exciting email I had ever received from someone I didn’t know–it was Dominic D. soliciting writers for the 1^st annual San Francisco One-Minute Play Festival. (Actually, that’s only a half truth. The email was partially authored by the beloved Jill MacLean of the Playwrights Foundation, but we’ll let that particular detail slide for the sake of superlative.) Like any responsible person would do after receiving an emailed request from a total stranger, I wrote back immediately and accepted his proposition.

Read the rest over at their blog: “Writing a one-minute play wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be.”

Come see Erin, and our whole plethora of plays, playwrights, and actors December 18 and 19 at the Thick House: 1695 18th St, between Carolina and Arkansas. Tickets are $15: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/137981

A New Face at Playwrights Foundation

2010-11-19T12:34:00.000-08:00

Hello to the internet world. A bit of forewarning: this post is less theatre, more vain ramblings of a twenty-something, given the power of THE BLOG! ...If that didn't make sense (and I'm sorry if it did) then let me explain. My name is Vinny, I'm the new Artistic Producing Intern here at PF. What does an "Artistic Producing Intern" do, you ask? Well that means I do pretty much anything and everything I am needed for. Yes, of course it's vague! I'm an intern! No one really knows what we do. One of my jobs (in between my acting as a work-horse, and lackey [I kid, I kid]) is to be a cool and hip new voice to the social networking world. That isn't to say that this place wasn't doing well on its own, but I will certainly not complain to having a job that includes checking up on Facebook and Blogspot throughout the day.

This is me! Oddly, it's hard to find a photo of me smiling.

So let me tell you a bit about myself, and my background. I'm a recent college grad, holding degrees in both Theatre Arts and Communication from Monmouth University in lovely West Long Branch, New Jersey, just down the street from the Atlantic Ocean. Waaaaait, a second. New Jersey? That's right. Someone from the Jersey Shore... named Vinny; do go on! Well, since you asked: I come from a typical Italian-American nuclear family. I have two brothers, two parents, a dog, and huge family gatherings every holiday. Anyway! After graduating, I did what many who leave the educational setting wondering what I'm doing with my life, and when my academic mentor sent me a link to an internship across the country, I jumped at the chance and applied. Being an aspiring playwright, this seemed like the perfect opportunity. After a few phone calls, and a Skype interview I landed myself a new internship half-way around the world.

I've been here for two weeks, and I'm still trying to find my footing, but the Bay Area has certainly been very welcoming for this 22-year-old vegan, and I couldn't be happier with the area, the theatre scene, and my internship. I look forward to keeping all of you theatergoers in the loop about the goings on here for the next year, so here's to new beginnings, new friends, and trying to not get lost on the MUNI!

-Vinny

Special Event! Book reading and signing with playwright/author Brooke Berman!

2010-10-12T13:52:00.000-07:00

Join us this Sunday, Oct 17th at 3:00PM in the Union Square Borders in SF for a special glimpse into Brooke's new memoir No Place Like Home, A Memoir in 39 Apartments. Here is a taste of what you'll hear on Sunday...

From 600 BERGEN ST, BROOKLYN, NY

By April 1, 1991, I have moved to Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, to live in a house with Anya, my friend from Dance Theater Workshop. A real house! A

duplex! I hire a “Man with Van” whose number has been

posted on the bulletin board at the Screen Actors Guild.

The Man with Van is in his fifties, and he looks like

someone’s dad except that he’s wearing a beret. We have

only five boxes to carry, plus the purple board and two milk crates that make up my “desk” and the extra milk crate, aka my“dresser.” During the

drive, when I mention that I’m an aspiring actress and that

I’ve begun writing, he gives me advice on dialogue. At this point, I have no idea that I

will wind up a playwright, and I think his advice is a strange

gift, but I take it nonetheless. He tells me to listen in to

conversations and write them down— every day. He says,

go to public places, take a notebook, and write down what

people say verbatim. It is quite a gift for an hour and a half’s move to Brooklyn.

By the time we hit Flatbush Avenue, I have ammunition

for a career that I don’t yet know is in my future.

The house on Bergen is spacious— a relief after East

Village walk- ups. My room is upstairs, next to the kitchen

and bathroom, while the other bedrooms (and thus roommates)

are on the main floor. The room is furnished with

a twin bed and a dresser. It has an enormous closet. I am

subletting from a Village Voice writer who will, years later,

disappear on Mount Rainier in a surreal accident— he goes

bird- watching and never comes back! But in 1991 the writer is

on a fellowship in Mississippi. He has left Anya, who lives

in the big room downstairs, in charge of finding the right

subletter, and Anya insists that person is me.

Anya can do anything with a glue gun and some glitter. And most of her

friends live in the neighborhood, so weekends in Brooklyn

are always full of activity. Plus, Anya has been initiating me into the subculture

of Lower East Side dance and performance art since I was

in college. She takes me to Veselka, a Ukrainian diner on

Ninth Street where the artists hang out eating the most

amazing poppy- seed cake ever, and to symposiums and

workshops at Movement Resarch and parties full of the most interesting new people— and now, she initiates me into Brooklyn.

My mother is horrified. “Brooklyn” makes her think of gangsters and old Russian

Jews on the boardwalk— A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Coney

Island, Radio Days. She insists that this is retrograde motion,

not understanding how gentrified parts of Brooklyn have

become, or how many young people are claiming these

neighborhoods. If she only knew. If I only kept the lease. If

only there were a lease.

www.brookeberman.net

You can also hear a reading of Brooke's new play My New Best Friend, Or, Six Degrees of Sevrin Stein on Monday, Oct 18th at 7:30PM (Stanford University) and on Tuesday, Oct. 19th at 7:00PM (Thick House, SF) in our Rough Readings Series. For more information about these readings please go to

www.playwrightsfoundation.org

I Am My Own Mentor, A True Story

2010-10-08T16:21:00.000-07:00

ANTHONY CLARVOE, PLAYWRIGHT - JEDI

So there I was, a hopeful young and aspiring Bay Area theater person, yearning to know how to write plays that people would want to put on and come see.

To have a career doing that, this was my dream. Playwrights were my heroes. I’d studied the hero’s journey. I’d seen STAR WARS a bunch of times. Where was my Obi-Wan? Who would be my Yoda? I went looking for mentors.

My thesis advisor said, “Have you considered modelling?”

That famous playwright, the cowboy one, said, (insert charming drawl here) “You look too young to be writin’ a thesis ‘bout anything.”

That famous drama critic, the Theatre of the Absurd one, said, (insert Germanic accent here) “I don’t see how a play on ziss topic could possibly be interesting.”

My boss said, “You sure are putting a lot of stock in this whole Mentor thing.”

So I had to figure it out for myself. And I guess I did. I Am My Own Mentor. But it took many years, and many miles, and much trial and error.

I left the Bay Area a Promising Young Playwright. Now I’m back, and I’ve been getting a lovely, gratifying welcome. As if I were some kind of wily old veteran. The Playwrights Foundation has suggested I might like to teach some classes, talk to some newer writers, be a, what would you call it?

Well, all I’ve got to say is (insert Alec Guinness accent here):

“Obi-Wan? Now, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. Long time.”

Yours truly,

Anthony Clarvoe

Anthony's Class Training for the Marathon, Or, Full Tilt to the Finish Line, Writing a Successful Full-Length Play takes place at Playwrights Foundation's New Play Insitute Nov. 3-Jan 26. Early Bird Discount through October 15. Class is filling quickly! Click here for more information and to register!

Prudence and Pepper: Act Two

2010-10-04T19:28:00.000-07:00

The dramatic conclusion of Prudence and Pepper...

ACT TWO:
The curtain rises to reveal a FOREST at night.
PRUDENCE CONSTANCE SORROWFUL is squatting by a heap of sticks, trying to light a fire.
PEPPER THØRRSSTEINSSØN stands apart, engaged in a paperback novel.
PEPPER turns the pages faster and faster.
PRUDENCE grabs the novel, throws in on the heap of sticks.
The sticks and novel burst into flame.
PRUDENCE and PEPPER jump back as a SMALL BOY in a sailor suit descends on a perch.
The boy sings all of Mariah Carey's "Someday," complete with vocal acrobatics. PEPPER and PRUDENCE pretend, unsuccessfully, not to notice the BOY.
When his song is over, the BOY hops off his perch and walks expectantly up to PRUDENCE.
She does a tightly choreographed dance with the BOY to a refrain of ‘Someday’.
The trees light up like disco balls.
The forest swirls in on itself.
PRUDENCE and the BOY dance into the twinkling lights and disappear leaving PEPPER
alone. He hums and hums and hums and hums and hums as the lights fade.

*****************************************************************************************
Dive into the bizarre! Julia & Brian's workshop STRANGE DAYS, STRANGE PLAYS begins October 16th. For more info & to register, visit:
http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p=224

Prudence and Pepper: Act One

2010-09-26T19:46:00.000-07:00

Julia Jarcho and Brian Thorstenson's class STRANGE DAYS, STRANGE PLAYS will be held six Saturdays starting October 16th. To kickstart the creative juices, they have co-written a Blog Drama in Two Acts. Act One appears here - stay tuned for Act Two later this week!

A Play in Two Acts

By Brian Thorstenson and Julia Jarcho

Act One.

The curtain rises on a sinister grotto. Lithe, shadowy FIGURES scurry around. Are they waiters? Probably.

PEPPER THØRRSSTEINSSØN sits at a table, heads in his hands. An enormous, inedible SCONE on a plate before him. From time to time he raises his head and eyes the scone, then drops back into his original posture.

After this has been going on for a while, PRUDENCE CONSTANCE SORROWFUL enters hurriedly, hat and coat askew. She drops into the chair opposite PEPPER.

PRUDENCE: Well?

(Without looking up, PEPPER nudges the scone towards her. She picks it up, examines it, and replaces it on the plate.)

I've told you, I don't engage with pastry. Pepper, for God's sake look at me. It wasn't easy to get away, I can tell you. What's the [she pronounes it, badly, in French:] catastrophe?

PEPPER (raising his head and looking at Prudence for the first time): Why the hat? Another new hairdo gone awry?

PRUDENCE: Tick tick tick. I don't have time for your obfuscation.

PEPPER: More like we don't have time.

(He carefully looks around. No one. Then he takes the napkin from his lap, carefully unfolds it, and covers the scone.)

Put on your sunglasses.

(PRUDENCE does. PEPPER pulls an envelope out of his pocket and hands it to PRUDENCE)

I've already unsealed it.

(PRUDENCE pauses, holds the letter aloft.)

PRUDENCE: So you still don't...

PEPPER: No.

PRUDENCE: And I'm some sort of...

PEPPER: Pandora.

PRUDENCE: --Cassandra, Angora... --Hare?

PEPPER (losing patience): Tortoise.

PRUDENCE (voluptuously, toying with the letter): Hmmmmmm. What's in it...

(Pause.)

... For me?

(PEPPER strikes the table with his fist. The scurrying FIGURES stop dead in their tracks and conspire in a foreign tongue.)

Don't cause a commotion!

(In a raised voice:)

I was ooonly kidding.

(Things go back to normal. PRUDENCE takes the letter from the envelope. PRUDENCE reads:)

Dear Pru. Hmm. Familiar

(The enormous scone starts vibrating)

PEPPER: Oh no.

(From the scone a barrage of news stories start being broadcast)

PRUDENCE: Server? Server, we're finished with this.

(No response from THEM, whoever they are. To PEPPER:)

Ten years in fine dining and you can't bus a table?

PEPPER: Seven tours in the shotput nationals and YOU can't--

(PRUDENCE hurls the scone offstage. It continues to broadcast faintly from afar.

PRUDENCE crumples the letter and hurls it after the scone. She rises to go.)

Wait.

PRUDENCE: Make it good.

PEPPER: It's ... it's ... it's been a strange day and ... I ...

PRUDENCE: Now, now, now, now.

PEPPER: I think there's been an attempt.

(PRUDENCE freezes in an attitude of horror. PEPPER looks beseechingly skywards. The OTHERS imitate them and giggle. Curtain falls: End of Act One.)

To read more about Brian & Julia's class, visit: http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p=224

Inspiration, Deadlines & Candy Corn: Musings by Erin Bregman

2010-09-22T15:43:00.000-07:00

After a weekend up in the California foothills, PF asked one of our Resident Playwrights, Erin Bregman, to write some thoughts about her writer's retreat. This is a sweet response, pun intended.
**********************************************************************
When asked the dreaded question what inspires you to write?’, I immediately
pull out my ready-made, slightly scrappy retort: Deadlines. But if the
latest (and first!) Resident Playwrights Retreat reminded me of anything,
it’s that my oldest writing companion is not plain old last minute panic. It
is last minute panic infused with a faithful yet unpredictable
companion--Sugar.

My relationship with writing on Sugar began in college, when my
writing-on-a-deadline routine started with a quick trip to the corner store
where I would purchase a small bag of jelly bellies. Thus armed, I would
return to my room and write, popping a jelly belly every time I got stuck. I
got stuck often. The test was, could I finish the assignment before the bag
was empty, or would I be left feeling sick on Sugar without having produced
anything worthwhile?

As my Productivity to Sugar-sick ratio dropped, I all but abandoned the
routine, replacing the jelly bellies with popcorn, then cereal, then tea. On
the occasions when we did tackle a project again together, Sugar and I were
always either one of two things: wildly successful, or absolute failures.

So it was that I sat myself down in front of a large bowl of candy corn at
the latest (and first!) Resident Playwrights Retreat with more than a little
trepidation. Now, I know candy corn is perceived as an untouchable to many
food-consuming people out there, but for some reason I find it irresistible.
I opened my notebook, and popped a candy corn. Sugar and I were back.

The thing about writing on Sugar is that it facilitates, at its best,
writing quickly and without over-thinking. Such a strategy can either write
your play for you in record time, or write you straight off a cliff. Sixty
minutes into my candy corn frenzy, I saw the cliff. From about 10,000 feet
below. It was abundantly clear I had gone in the wrong direction with this
draft, and would have to start over. That seemed like a lot of work for the
moment, so instead I grabbed another candy corn, stood up, and went to ask
the wise Jonathan Spector for advice.

My candy corn experience at the latest (and first!) Resident Playwrights
Retreat may have felt like a complete failure in the moment, but looking
back I would have to call it a huge success. In a mere sixty minutes I
scrapped an entire draft, and made the not so easy decision to go back to
the beginning and start over. The result? I now have a vastly improved,
completely re-worked play that is one giant step closer to being finished.
Thanks, Sugar. I owe you one.

***************************************************************
Erin Bregman's play TVA KAMILA premiered at the 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival this past summer. To read more about Erin, and about our Resident Playwrights, visit: http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p=72

LAUNCH PAD BAPF 33!

2010-07-21T17:06:00.000-07:00

Two Weekends. Eight Plays. Limitless Imagination!

Welcome to the Bay Area Playwrights Festival – a full throttle jettison into the new play universe.

Every summer – counting 33 this year - 70+ artists gather to breathe stardust and substance into eight stellar new plays, offering their insights and talents to extraordinary playwrights who go on to illuminate the future of American theater.

We believe in the power of a living theater to stir hearts, awaken minds and unfurl the majestic beauty of hope – springing alive when we least expect it. A story has no bounds, the world can be changed, if only we can imagine it. Perhaps this is why we come together this weekend, to listen to our own stories in our own time and reflect on what lies before us.

Experience all the Festival has to offer: eight new plays, Playwrights’ TalkBack, Theater in One World Symposium & Playwriting Workshop with Marcus Gardley, crosstalk in the lobby or at the Festival bar!

Consider taking a playwright to lunch, and if you are so moved, support our festival and make a donation to Playwrights Foundation. Enjoy!

---- Amy Mueller, Artistic Director

Meet your 2010 Festival Playwrights, Week 6: Introducing Yussef El Guindi!

2010-07-03T14:35:00.000-07:00

Each week we will be posting an interview with one of the playwrights featured in this year's 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. We are thrilled to be working with Yussef El Guindi to develop his new play Three Wolves and a Lamb. " Funny, sexy, and irreverent ", this exciting production explores the love and the tension between a Palestinian and Jewish married couple as they face a series of personal revelations while planning a children's peace camp. Come see it at Thick House at 8 pm on Saturday, July 24 and Saturday, July 31 at 4pm.

1. How long have you been writing for the theatre? What was the creative spark that led you to become a playwright?

My failure as an actor was my main push into becoming a playwright. None of the graduate schools for acting accepted me. I’d applied to one graduating playwriting program (Carnegie Mellon University) as a back up plan since I also dabbled in writing (being an English Lit major). When CMU accepted me into their program, my first thought was, “oh crap, now what do I do?”

I never really thought of myself as a playwright until I stopped all thoughts of acting some time in the latter part of the nineties.

2. What inspired the creation of your play Three Wolves and a Lamb? Tell us a little about the process of writing this piece.

The inspiration, truthfully, stemmed from a back ache. I had lain down to meditate, hoping a little deep breathing and relaxation would help with the pain. Within a few minutes of relaxation, the first line of the play came: “God damn. There are so many pork products in this fridge, you'd think there were a couple of Christians living here.” I jumped up (in pain) and started writing the play.

This play came in a rush. A rush for me is two months. Most plays for me take nine months to a year to complete (I’m that slow)....I had for a while been wanting to write an all out politically inflected comedy. My other pieces of late had been somewhat dour, so I was looking to have fun. I’m not sure why I thought wading into the Palestinian/ Israeli imbroglio might be fun, but some little imp in my imagination must have thought so.

Early on I worried that I would have to go into, and itemize, the history and grievances of this conflict. I didn’t want to do that and start splitting the audiences into “for” and “against”. Thankfully, I think I found a way to address what needed to be addressed without wading in into specifics. That can wait for another play. (Though I do glance by some issues.)

3. What do you hope to discover, improve, or change in your play during the festival process?

The main discovery to be had in a festival process is of course, does the play work? And with a comedy, that will become apparent pretty early on. I’m sure I will be making many adjustments, changes, as I hear the play in front of an audience. I will hear what lands, what needs cutting, what I can expand on, etc. Where do I lose the audience? How can I fix those moments, etc.

4. After the 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, what’s next for you?

Immediately after the festival, in mid-August, I am workshopping another play called Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World with ACT theater and the Icicle Theater Festival. Hopefully it will be a nice hot summer of creativity and rewriting.

5. Desert Island Top Five Plays, go!

Well, lets see...off the top of my head:

Edward Albee: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Eugene O'Neill: Long Day's Journey into Night
Eugene O'Neill: Mourning Becomes Electra
Tennessee Williams: Suddenly, Last Summer / Clifford Odets: Waiting for Lefty (two one-acts count as one play, yes?)
Shelagh Delaney: A Taste of Honey

For more information on Yussef El Guindi and the play, and to see a Festival Calendar of Events, please visit our website: http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/
The 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival takes place JULY 23 - AUGUST 1, 2010 at the Thick House in Potrero Hill, SF.

Meet your 2010 Festival Playwrights, week five! Meet local playwright Elizabeth Gjelten!

2010-06-24T16:28:00.000-07:00

Each week we will be sharing an interview with a playwright featured in this year's 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. PF sat down with SF-based playwright Elizabeth Gjelten, who will be developing her play Hunter’s Point in the Festival on Saturday, July 24 and Saturday, July 31.

1.   How long have you been writing for the theatre? What was the creative spark that led you to become a playwright?

I started as a solo writer and performer about 20 years ago. After years of writing poetry in my room, it was the love of being on stage that got me going -- until I didn't need that impetus anymore, and found myself wanting to sit back and watch actors make discoveries in the words that came through me.

2.   What inspired the creation of your play, Hunter's Point? Tell us a little about the process of writing this piece.

First it was a voice that came to me in some freewriting. I knew who she was as soon as she appeared, but it took several tries and dead-ends before I found the form for her story. The play also came from my feelings of helplessness and guilt in the face of a loved one who lived on the streets for many years, as well as my own struggles with my unruly mind.

3.   What do you hope to discover, improve, or change in your play during the festival process?
I'm mostly hoping to work with some structural questions I have about the play -- I want to simplify and pare it down.

4.   After the 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, what’s next for you?

See this puppy into production next spring. And work on two other plays that have been germinating and growing.

5.   Desert Island Top Five Plays, go!

Gertrude Stein, Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights
Brecht, Mother Courage
Suzan Lori-Parks, Death of the Last Black Man...
Caryl Churchill, Far Away
Tony Kushner, Angels In America

For more information on Elizabeth Gjelten and Hunter’s Point, and to see a Festival Calendar of Events, please visit our website: http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/

The 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival takes place JULY 23 - AUGUST 1, 2010 at the Thick House in Potrero Hill, SF.

Meet Your 2010 Festival Playwrights, Week Four! Hello, SHEILA CALLAGHAN

2010-06-18T02:50:00.000-07:00

Each week we will be sharing an interview with a playwright featured in this year's 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. We're thrilled to invite back Sheila Callaghan, whose play Lascivious Something finished its run in New York on June 6th. This summer, we present her new play Port Out, Starboard Home.

1. How long have you been writing for the theatre? What was the creative spark that led you to become a playwright?

Been writing plays for 15 years. There was no spark for me really-- I loved making theatre and loved writing, and couldn't see a future without both in my life.

2. What inspired the creation of your play Port Out, Starboard Home? Tell us a little about the process of writing this piece.

foolsFURY went on a three day cruise and brought back material for me! I've been sculpting text based on their experiences and improv sessions with the gang since then.

3. What do you hope to discover, improve, or change in your play during the festival process?

I hope to have a text in decent shape and a cohesive performance vocabulary for when we go into production in the fall.

4. After the 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, what’s next for you?

I'm still in the writer's room for my TV show, so I'm going back to that.

5. Desert Island Top Five Plays, go!

Erik Ehn, Beginner
Edward Albee, The Zoo Story
Caryl Churchill, Mad Forest
Suzan Lori-Parks, Imperceptibilities of the Third Kingdom
Sam Beckett, Waiting For Godot

For more information on Sheila Callaghan and the play, and to see a Festival Calendar of Events, please visit our website: http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/
The 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival takes place JULY 23 - AUGUST 1, 2010 at the Thick House in Potrero Hill, SF.

Meet Our 2010 Festival Playwrights, Week Three!: Say hello to....Cory Hinkle

2010-06-10T02:43:00.000-07:00

Cory Hinkle, a Brown MFA graduate, is the author of Ciper, Little Eyes, Phosphorescence, and SadGrrl13. We were blown away by the In the Rough reading The Killing of Michael X, a New Film by Celia Wallace, and are thrilled to be developing this exciting piece even further in the Festival this summer.

1. How long have you been writing for the theatre? What was the creative spark that led you to become a playwright?

I’ve been writing for about 9 years. At first I wanted to be an actor, but I hated the actor’s life (I liked acting, but not headshots, auditions and all the other stuff). While I spent a couple of years becoming disillusioned with all that, I was writing a scene or a monologue here and there, but didn’t take it seriously until I finished my first full-length. As soon as I finished that first play, I knew it was what I wanted to do – even before I heard it aloud. For me, the creative spark has always been people – the way they talk, interact and why they do what they do and I think my acting background still comes through in my writing – in terms of the language and the richness of the characters.

2. What inspired the creation of your play, The Killing of Michael X: A New Film by Celia Wallace? Tell us a little about the process of writing this piece.

I wanted to explore the subject of grief and what it means to lose someone close to you, but I didn’t want to deal directly with my own personal experience, which would have been too difficult. So, the character of Celia Wallace came to me. She’s a young Midwestern girl obsessed with the loss of her brother and in love with the movies he shared with her before he died. I’ve always been a movie fanatic. When I was a teenager I did my own survey of old movies with my own brother – we watched noirs and French New Wave and the great American films from the seventies. That personal experience was the real inspiration for the character.

The play came to me quickly. I wrote the first half at MacDowell in about two weeks and I finished it six months later in two more weeks. The main character and her experience really popped for me, probably because of the emotional connection I have to her.

3. What do you hope to discover, improve, or change in your play during the festival process?

The play is at different times fantasy, a film and a dream. Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of all three, so I want to make sure I clarify all of that. Also, I want to keep working on the end. It’s always that way though, isn’t it? Either the end or the beginning needs more work.

4. After the 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, what’s next for you?

A week after BAPF I’m going up to Northern Minnesota to the Tofte Lake Center to create a new show with a group of collaborators. We received a grant from the Jerome foundation to create a new theater piece based on the real-life story of the kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa. It’s going to be a fantastic process building a play from the very beginning with everyone in the room – director (Jeremy Wilhelm), two writers and three of the best actors in the Twin Cities.

And this coming season, my play Little Eyes will be produced in a Workhaus Collective production at the Guthrie Theater’s Dowling Studio. We’ve assembled a great cast of actors some of whom have been workshopping the play at the Playwrights’ Center for a couple of years now, so that’s very exciting.

5. Desert Island Top Five Plays, go!

Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, American Notes, Godot, Aunt Dan and Lemon.

For more information on Cory Hinkle and the play, and to see a Festival Calendar of Events, please visit our website: www.playwrightsfoundation.org

The 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival takes place JULY 23 - AUGUST 1, 2010 at the Thick House in Potrero Hill, SF.

Meet Our 2010 Festival Playwrights, Week Two!: JEANNE DRENNAN

2010-06-03T10:22:00.001-07:00

We're thrilled to welcome to San Francisco this summer Pittsburgh-based playwright Jeanne Drennan, whose play Atlas of Longing will be developed as part of the 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. More about Jeanne...

1. How long have you been writing for the theatre? What was the creative spark that led you to become a playwright?

I've been doing this for about twenty years, if we don't count the plays written, produced, and directed by me for the neighborhood when I was about 10 or 11. An 8th-grade production of "HMS Pinafore," which I saw sitting on my father's shoulders when I was about 4, first drew me to the theatre. I can still see Little Buttercup's yellow gown and bonnet. But there's no one "creative spark" for me, just a need to tap into the stories in my head.

2. What inspired the creation of your play, Atlas of Longing. Tell us a little about the process of writing this piece.

The immediate impulse came from a border crossing, a return to the US from Canada. The play ultimately took a very different trajectory and I'm not sure why. Characters and lines of development come to me largely unbidden and I have to pursue them, but I know they owe their existence to my being somewhat addicted to "The Economist," which has opened up new worlds for me. Ultimately, I'm sure I'll get back to that border crossing, but it will be a different play.

3. What do you hope to discover, improve, or change in your play during the festival process?

I'm always hoping for that "Aha!" moment when the silver bullet that will make everything come right in the play presents itself. In reality, discoveries tend to be small but sometimes far-reaching. What they'll be, I don't know yet, but I'm hoping for lots of them.

4. After the 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, what’s next for you?

Composer David Berlin and I are aimed toward a workshop this fall of our new musical, "Dear Boy." Everyone should please say a prayer that the funding comes through.

5. Desert Island Top Five Plays, go!

In no particular order:

Chekhov, "The Cherry Orchard"
August Wilson, "Joe Turner's Come and Gone"
Tom Stoppard, "Arcadia"
Caryl Churchill, "Mad Forest"
Shakespeare, "King Lear"

Bio:
Jeanne Drennan is inordinately happy to be in the Bay Area working on Atlas of Longing. Other full-length plays include Asparagus, Limoges, Medea at Athens, Wrong Side Out, 12 Dogs, and Waxworks, mostly produced and/or developed in the east. Besides Atlas, current projects include a chamber musical with composer David Berlin, called Dear Boy, and the more embryonic Left Luggage which she recently spent time researching in central Europe. She has been the grateful recipient of seven fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts in support of her writing and also has a sideline in teaching and dramaturgy for young playwrights through City Theatre in Pittsburgh, her adopted hometown.

For more information on Jeanne Drennan and to see a Festival Calendar of Events, please visit our website: www.playwrightsfoundation.org

The 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival takes place JULY 23 - AUGUST 1, 2010 at the Thick House in Potrero Hill, SF.

Meet Our Festival Playwrights: J.C. Lee

2010-05-27T13:11:00.000-07:00

J.C. Lee's new play Pookie Goes Grenading will be developed as part of the BASH (Bay Area SHorts) program in the 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Read more about this prolific young playwright...

1. How long have you been writing for the theatre? What was the creative spark that led you to become a playwright?

At 17 I was a freshman in college and my roommate (a surly, awesome dude) brought home a flier calling for new plays. I'd always been a writer and he posed a pretty straightforward question: "yo, you always writin' shit an' you always doin' theatre; why don' you juss write theatre?" I'd never ever thought about writing theatre before because, truth be told, up until that very moment, I didn't even realize you could write theatre. That night I wrote a one-act play called The Sleepover that wound up getting produced that spring. Ever since then I've been a playwright. Thanks, surly roommate.

2. What inspired the creation of your play, Pookie Goes Grenading? Tell us a little about the process of writing this piece.

I've been lucky enough to be surrounded by incredible actors for as long as I can remember. One of them was auditioning for the Bay Area Generals and needed a monologue. I love writing monologues; it's like getting to write the best part of a play without having to do all the hard work of contextualizing it within a dramatic framework that justifies it. So I wrote her one (and coincidentally, that audition landed her a role in the Sleepwalkers Theatre production of my play This World Is Good in August 2010). It went over really well so I thought "what the hell?" and just ran with it. I'd never written anything as outrageous as Pookie before and really wanted to test myself . Plus my husband Adrian, who serves as resident dramaturge in our home, is always nagging me to write a comedy. So I did. Well...we'll see if I did.

3. What do you hope to discover, improve, or change in your play during the festival process?

Ultimately I want this play production ready. That's always my goal in development. I'm lucky enough to have come from a school of thought that recognized the importance and pragmatism of the theatrical form - all developmental roads should lead to production - thus that's always in the forefront of the rewriting I do. At a more nitty gritty level, I'm interested in developing and clarifying character spines and choices, ensuring that the comedy of the piece doesn't mean the characters are sketches instead of people. I never know what that means in terms of discovery, which is why it's so fun to be a playwright.

4. After the 2010 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, what’s next for you?

Sleepwalkers Theatre in San Francisco is producing a trilogy of my plays called This World and After which opens in August with the first play in the trilogy This World Is Good and rolls on all 2010-2011 with Into the Clear Blue Sky (which was a Bay Area Playwrights Festival finalist in 2009) and The Nature Line: all the plays deal with the end of the world, comic books and dorky joy. That project will be keeping me pretty busy all year. I'm also constantly blogging and spitting out new plays. I'll be spending plenty of time dancing, snuggling my cat and exploring various bars throughout the Bay Area. Also, I just found out (like a few minutes ago) that I'll be heading to Juilliard for graduate school in 2010-11!

5. Desert Island Top Five Plays, go!

In no particular order: King Lear, Hamlet, Angels in America, The Piano Lesson & The Pillowman though to be totally honest, if I was stuck on a desert island, I'd much prefer trading plays for hot island boys, an abundant food source and a mosquito net.

JC Lee is a playwright and director whose work has been seen throughout the country. Originally from New York City, he is the former founding Artistic Director of the Omicron Theatre Project and a former faculty member at the Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Performing Arts. His plays have been seen at The Williamstown...

For more information on J.C. Lee and to see the rest of the festival lineup, please visit our website.

Interview with a Playwright: Aaron Loeb

2010-05-06T12:05:00.000-07:00

Abraham Lincoln's Big Gay Dance Party was a smashing success last year in San Francisco, and will premiere off-broadway at the Acorn Theatre on July 27th. Meet the mad-cap creator of this hilarious play, Aaron Loeb.

Where do you most often find inspiration?
Watching and reading theater most often provides me visual inspiration – ways to accomplish theatrical moments, for instance. But my primary inspiration comes from people – conversations with friends about their passions, the news, watching people be irritating in public spaces...

What one tip can you offer aspiring playwrights?
Writing is solitary, but writers are not. Theater is a collaborative form and to get produced requires a whole long line of people saying “yes.” An aspiring playwright should be out there getting to know their future collaborators, making friends, being helpful and useful. Volunteer for your local theaters. If you have the resources, donate. Be a patron – go see plays. You should know the people in your theater community. Because when you have the script that is ready for production, it’s those same people who are going to have to say “yes” to get it onto the stage – despite the fact that all economic incentive in the theater is for them to say “no.”

And then, when you do get that production, be grateful! Listen to your collaborators and thank them for working with you. No one is obliged to produce your work, no one working on it is making enough money, and any theater producing a new play – even if it’s their entire mission to do so – is taking a risk producing your play in particular. Thank them.

How did you get your start in playwriting? Where and when was this seed planted?
My sister is an actor and I grew up watching her. I knew I wanted to make theater too, And for a long time, I was certain I would be an actor as well. When I was 14 a couple vital things happened – my high school hired a local artist named Jeff Glassman to come and work with the students to write that year’s Fall Play. We wrote it as a group (it was a collection of short scenes) and I was bitten. Then later that year, my high school gave an award to one of its famous graduates, Tina Howe. I think she had just been nominated for a Tony for Coastal Disturbances. She came to our school to speak about playwriting and I had the opportunity to perform a scene I’d written for her. It was thrilling and she was very encouraging (though I’m sure the scene was ghastly). I knew then I wanted to be a playwright. Years later, I ended up studying with Tina at NYU in the Dramatic Writing Program.

What was your most embarrassing high school moment?
Good grief, there are so many. I’m a chronic foot-in-mouth person, primarily because my family subscribes to the sacred belief: “anything for a laugh.” I have more stories than I can recall of saying something I thought would be funny only to have it deeply offend someone. The most embarrassing, though, was that rare case where I did nothing wrong and involves a love letter being read aloud in the student lounge. It went beyond the “embarrassing moment you laugh at years later” to the “embarrassing moment that gives you a painful appreciation of human cruelty.”

Beckett or Stoppard? One word only please.
Brecht.

Aaron Loeb has had plays produced in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Ft. Worth, San Jose, Connecticut, Virginia Beach and Atlanta. He was won two “Best New Play” awards from the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle for his plays, First Person Shooter and Abraham Lincoln’s Big, Gay Dance Party, and seven Emerging Playwright Awards from PlayGround. His 10-minute plays have been...

To Read More, Visit our Website

Interview with a Playwright: Eugenie Chan

2010-04-30T12:20:00.000-07:00

1. Where do you most often find inspiration?

In everyday actions -- the small rituals we do over and over again, like making a cup of tea, buying groceries at the same produce store, having the same conversation with the same person. Seeing what happens when these daily activities are broken.

2. What one tip can you offer aspiring playwrights?

Get connected. Work, volunteer, get involved at the theater or organization where they're making the kind of theater you love.

3. How did you get your start in playwriting? Where and when was this seed planted?

In the 5th grade. I wrote a play about Hermes and his brother Apollo herding cows and made our teacher the cow. I thought that was so great and empowering.

4. What was your most embarrassing high school moment?

Um, I'm still in high school, kinda sorta. I teach. Often in high school. So, as a grown up dork, everyday I'm probably embarrassing myself.

5. Beckett or Stoppard? One word only please.

Beckett.

Eugenie Chan's plays Bone to Pick and Diadem will premiere at the Cutting Ball theater on May 21st, to learn more about Ms. Chan and her work, visit our website.

Interview with a Playwright: Dominic Orlando

2010-04-22T16:18:00.000-07:00

1) Where do you most often find inspiration?

I'm not sure I understand the question. In his gorgeous unfinished novel, Tulip, Dashiell Hammet has the title character, an ex-con, pestering his old friend, a writer, to take up his life story. "It's a great story--I'll let you have it". His friend responds: "the problem is having too many ideas, not too few".

As for what keep me going: coffee, toast, intelligent/enthusiastic response to the work.

2) What one tip can you offer aspiring playwrights?

Artistically: Keep writing and don't let anyone tell you what a play is supposed to look like.
Professionally: Go to grad school.

3) How did you get your start in playwriting? Where and when was this seed planted?

I wrote, directed and performed in my first play, Lieutenant Rockstone and Golds and The Case of The Missing Stones in 5th Grade instead of handing in a science report. We got the day off to perform the piece for the entire school. It was the day off that sold me.

4) What was your most embarrassing high school moment?

My Father picked me up from a party and I puked all over him and the car. I told him I had eaten too many potato chips.

5) Beckett or Stoppard? One word only please.

Stupidquestion.

Mr. Orlando will be a teaching his immensely popular 'New Play Bootcamp' course this May at the Playwrights Foundation. Get a first draft done in a matter of weeks! Visit website below for details:

http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p=215

Interview with a Playwright: Tanya Shaffer

2010-04-15T16:13:00.000-07:00

1) Where do you most often find inspiration?
The inspiration for most of my major projects has come from international travel. For me, the richness of entering into another culture is fascinating because it shows me alternatives to even the most basic ways of viewing the world which we take for granted. It shakes up my worldview and puts everything in perspective. Within that framework, the inspiration comes from individuals I’ve met in my travels and the dynamics of the relationships that have sprung up between us.
Apart from travel, I’ve drawn inspiration from my own relationships and from political/historical figures and events which I find inspiring. I work very slowly, so it takes a long time for an idea to germinate. I am currently working on a piece inspired by the life of the Buddha, which percolated in my head for about five years before I actually started working on it. With a subject as big as that, it took a long time to figure out what perspective I could bring to it that would be uniquely my own.

2) What one tip can you offer aspiring playwrights?
Write rather than thinking about writing. Find groups of people, ideally fellow writers, whom you can go to regularly for feedback and support. Form relationships with local theatre companies to the greatest extent possible. And produce your work. If no one will produce it for you, figure out how to produce it yourself, even if it’s on a shoestring, even if it’s just a few performances. Plays need to be performed. You learn so much by getting things up on their feet, and learning that you can produce your own work is tremendously empowering.

3) How did you get your start in playwriting? Where and when was this seed planted?
My parents took me to see a lot of theatre when I was growing up. I acted in my first show when I was eight, and pretty much didn’t stop for the next twenty-five years. I also wrote regularly in my journal since early childhood. At age nine, I wrote in my journal, “I want to be an actor and a writer on the side.” It wasn’t until my last year of college, though, that I started putting theatre and writing together, initially in the form of a solo show. I toured my first solo show for a couple of years right out of college. Then I went on a trip to Central America, and when I started to write a solo show about it I quickly discovered that it didn’t want to be a solo show – it wanted to be a multi-actor play. Now that I’m a mom of two young kids I don’t act much anymore, and the writing has taken center stage, career-wise. I find that very satisfying.

4)What was your most embarrassing high school moment?
I swear to you I don’t remember.

5)Beckett or Stoppard? One word only please.
Stoppard.

Tanya Shaffer's [Incoming Resident 09/10] plays and original solo performances include Baby Taj, Let My Enemy Live Long!, Brigadista, Miss America’s Daughters, and The People in the Park. Her work has been produced by TheatreWorks...

To read more about Tanya, visit the PF website at
http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p=72#Tanya

Interview with a Playwright: Peter Sinn Nachtrieb

2010-04-08T14:27:00.000-07:00

1) Where do you most often find inspiration?

From cardiovascular exercise, from actors, from news, from pop culture, from sleepless nights, from music, from non fiction reading, from public transit, from past experiences, and often in the time between when I get in bed and when I go to sleep.

2) What one tip can you offer aspiring playwrights?

Be willing to look at your writing as a separate entity from yourself. Thus when making the big cuts and changes that you must make it won't feel like you're cutting your leg off. It's much easier when you think you're cutting the leg off your child.

3) How did you get your start in playwriting? Where and when was this seed planted?

From a combined love for theatre and comedy. I started as an actor in plays and musicals as well as being a fan of comedy records, Monty Python, Douglas Adams, etc.. Sketch comedy was my first real writing for stage, then solo performances, then a one act, then short and full length plays when i started wanting to write parts that i would not be particularly good at performing.

4) What was your most embarrassing high school moment?

Performing a scene from David Mamet's "Edmond" at school assembly. The one where he strangles the waitress.

5) Beckett or Stoppard? One word only please.

Yes.

Peter Sinn Nachtrieb is a San Francisco-based playwright whose works include boom (TCG's most produced play 2009-10), T.I.C. (Trenchcoat In Common) , Hunter Gatherers (2007 ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award, 2007 Will Glickman Prize), Colorado, and Multiplex. His work has been seen off-Broadway and...

Visit our website for more information on Peter and all of our Resident Playwrights.

http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p=72#Peter

Interview with a Playwright: Christopher Chen

2010-04-02T13:12:00.000-07:00

Where do you most often find inspiration?

Thinking about death.

What one tip can you offer aspiring playwrights?

Go deep,deep,deep inside yourself. It's fun!

How did you get your start in playwriting? Where and when was this seed planted?

I initially entered college as a music composition major. Then I wanted to switch to English literature. Then to film. Then I stumbled upon theater which combined all these impulses nicely. I took acting, playwriting, and directing classes at Berkeley and joined an Asian American theater group. I really wanted to direct something so instead of looking for something that would fit my aesthetic, I decided it would be easier to write something on my own. I accompanied my first writing/directing debut on cello.

What was your most embarrassing high school moment?

It's all blocked out.

Beckett or Stoppard? One word only please.

Beckett

Christopher Chen [Incoming Resident 09/10] is a native San Franciscan. His play Into the Numbers premiered at the Beijing Fringe Festival in September 2009 (translated into Chinese), and won second place in the 2008 Belarus Free Theatre International Contest of Modern Dramaturgy (translated into Russian)…

Visit our website for more information on Chris Chen, and all of our Resident Playwrights.

http://www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p=72#Christopher

Playwrights Foundation Interview: Brian Thorstenson

2010-03-13T10:26:00.001-08:00

Hello, This week’s playwright is Brian Thorstenson. Enjoy.

Question: Where do you most often find inspiration?

Brian: Most often? Characters out in the world, people I see and hear during the day. Next would be stories I've read, mostly in the paper. They all act as some kind of trigger to get me thinking about a play.

Question: What one tip can you offer aspiring playwrights?

Brian: Keep developing your writing practice. That will get you through the ups and downs of working in the theater.

Question: How did you get your start in playwriting? Where and when was this seed planted?

Brian: I started out as an actor, but got tired of the kind of parts I was doing so I wrote a play for myself. I only realized much later that I had been wanting to write for a very long time.

Question: What was your most embarrassing high school moment?

Brian: Oh god, there were so many starting with horrible haircuts and bad outfits. Maybe dropping my lunch tray in the middle of the cafeteria at the height of lunch and it clanging and clattering to the floor.

Question: Beckett or Stoppard? One word only please.

Brian: Unimaginable.

To learn more about Brian Thorstenson, and the rest of our Resident Playwrights, visit the page below:
www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p72"

Interview with a Playwright: Garret Groenveld

2010-03-12T17:35:00.000-08:00

Where do you most often find inspiration?
A: I take inspiration from my whole full life: the odd shape of someone's head on the bus, an emotional article in a trashy magazine, notes in public bathrooms or something one of my large extended family says in an off-handed way. Most of the time, it's just the sound.

What one tip can you offer aspiring playwrights?
A: Don't be afraid to risk sentiment (let your characters be emotional), but avoid sentimentality (unearned emotion) through chosing specific details.

How did you get your start in playwriting?
A: I won a contest in 8th grade as part of International Day with a short play about Napoleon and Josephine.

Where and when was this seed planted?
A: I really fell in love with it when I had my first play preformed as part of PlayGround (in the very second Monday night, when it was still on Saturdays) when the Dean of the English Department, who was sitting next to me, gasped at one of my lines.

What was your most embarrassing high school moment?
A: When I fell asleep in French class and the teacher called on me. I didn't know what to say, and I didn't know what the French swearwords were, and my classmate whispered to me the answer that I repeated: "Merde." "Merde," indeed.

Beckett or Stoppard? One word only please.
A: Guare.

To learn more about Garret Groenveld, visit our Resident Playwright Page at:
www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p72"

INTERVIEW WITH A PLAYWRIGHT: this week, featuring Erin Bregman

2010-03-04T17:13:00.000-08:00

Hi PF Fans,
We’re going to showcase our Resident Playwrights every Thursday. Today’s subject: Erin Bregman.

Question:
Where do you most often find inspiration?

Erin:
Everywhere! That is part of the problem. Living in San Francisco it's impossible to not encounter pieces of stories everywhere you turn. Sometimes it's a conversation you overhear. Sometimes it's a song. Sometimes it's reading something and wondering what it would be like to live in that place, experiencing those things. Most moments of inspiration for me never find their way into plays, but in some ways that's almost better--then the process becomes a huge sieve of inspired ideas, with only the best of the best finding their way through.

Question:
What one tip can you offer aspiring playwrights?

Erin:
Find people you like and respect, who like and respect you. Then make theater together. Now. Don't wait for permission (or money).

Question:
How did you get your start in playwriting? Where and when was this seed planted?

Erin:
Well, my family tells me I wrote a Thanksgiving play when I was seven, and made my younger cousin curl up on a table to play the Turkey, but since I don't really remember that, I might say 5th grade. A friend and I "adapted" (a/k/a copied almost verbatim) a book into a play that our class then put on for the other upper grades. Though that was my first play, I would probably say the real playwriting seed was planted while doing backyard summer theater in Santa Cruz in middle school. Thirteen of us spent a month writing, rehearsing, and putting on a play directed by an amazing woman named Stephanie Golino. That's where it really got going. And then I attended CSSSA (California State Summer School for the Arts) and took a dramatic writing class there. That was the summer before I was applying for colleges, and I liked the class so much I decided to go to school in a place that offered playwriting courses (though I never officially studied theater). This, totally coincidentally, landed me at UC Santa Barbara while Naomi Iizuka was there and I got lucky enough to take class with her for three years. That was definitely the point of no return.

Question:
What was your most embarrassing high school moment?

Erin:
Besides all of it?

Question:
Beckett or Stoppard? One word only please.

Erin:
Beckett

To read more about Erin, click here: www.playwrightsfoundation.org/index.php?p72"

"What the @$%&?"- Provactive Play Rocks Stanford

2010-02-25T15:35:00.001-08:00

“Is theatre still relevant?” This question seems to come up constantly whenever theatre artists gather, be it at a bar after rehearsal, or Starbucks before- we always question whether this art form which we dedicate our lives to still matters in the 21^st century. I’ve pondered this question over many a beer or coffee, with many fellow artists- and the answer always seems to be elusive. Just a few nights ago, I was reminded of why I continue to work in theatre, and the amazing power this art form still possesses.

I was fortunate enough to be the Stage Manager for our In the Rough reading of Trista Baldwin’s strikingly modern new play American Sexy. The piece finds four college students on a road trip to Sin City, who take an unexpected, and ultimately devastating detour to the Grand Canyon. The vividly drawn characters brought to mind many people I went to college with: Lexi- the intellectually vacant and over-sexed party girl, Jessica- the aimless young woman whose only aspiration is a wealthy marriage, Darren- the unimpressed ladies’ man, and Andy- the sexually (and socially) frustrated outcast.

At the first rehearsal, Trista spoke of the inspiration for the piece, which came from her own experiences as an educator and the students she met in that atmosphere. Her play examines the sexual debasement of modern America; the female characters often refer to each other as “slut,” “ho,” and casually engage in graphic sexual conduct onstage with the men and each other. “Sexting,” the act of sending pornographic photos/videos of oneself or others, is a major element of the piece. Lexi and Jessica’s lack of respect for themselves, and the resulting lack of respect given them by the male characters is highly disturbing, and very realistic in today’s world.

On Monday evening we presented this reading at Stanford University to an audience of Professors, PhD candidates, and other highly intelligent friends of the university. This audience was of an older generation, far removed from these characters and the world of this play. I had the opportunity to watch the audience from the stage, as I was reading the stage directions. These people were absolutely appalled by this material. With each casual sexual reference, and pornographic stage direction their jaws dropped further and some of them simply shook their heads in disbelief. What disturbed them seemed not to be the graphic nature of the material itself, but the fact that it was based on truth.

The post-play discussion that followed was the most in-depth and longest discussion I’ve ever witnessed at similar events. Our audience was provoked by this play, they were riled up, and they spoke passionately about the topics of the piece. They even went as far as to argue whether this had a place on the stage, saying the material was “in the toilet.” Fearless, Trista dove into the issues at hand, asking whether the material pushed the audience away. David Goldman, of the Stanford Center for New Plays observed that the play was Brechtian in some ways- and seemed to push the audience away intentionally so that they might judge the characters from a distance.

The reactions to the play were across the board, ranging from acceptance of this as an accurate depiction of modern American youth to downright denial that this is where our society is, and where it is going. Late in the discussion, when asked what reaction she desired from this piece, Trista looked at the group smiling and said, “I’m loving all of this.”

This reading reminded me of why the Playwrights Foundation does the work that we do, and how relevant and immediate theatre can still be. The conclusions that the audience took away from this piece were varied, but they left the reading engaged and in some cases, enraged by the play. This is what theatre should be, and is often not- engaging, enraging, primal, vital, immediate and important.

-Kirk Johnson

Institute Coordinator

Asst. to the Producer

9th Annual Bay One Acts: A Don't Miss Set of Plays

2010-02-22T13:24:00.000-08:00

The Playwrights Foundation is proud to be a producing partner, along with Three Wise Monkeys for the 9th Annual Bay One Acts (BOA) Festival. The Festival runs February 18 to March 13, 2010 at Boxcar Theater.

This year’s festival focuses on the theme of "building community," between and across small theatre companies and theatre artists devoted to cultivating new theatrical work. In the spirit of community building, 3WM presents a symposium on new play development and the short play form with festival playwrights, directors and producers featured on the panel on March 6 at 4 pm at Boxcar Theatre. Additionally, BOA features two full-festival days: March 7 at 3pm (Program 1) and 7pm (Program 2) and March 13 at 4 pm (Program 2) and 8pm (Program 1).

Program 1: Opens February 18

Generic Play by Edward Luhn
Query by Ben Fisher
Reading with Friends by Crish Barth
Altered Landscape by William Bivins
The Philadelphian by Sam Leichter

Program 2: Opens February 25

Three Little Words by Tim Bauer
The Great Double Check by Megan Cohen
Housebroken by Stuart Bousel
Nothing Works by Daniel Heath
The Life and Death of Joshua Zweig by Lauren Yee

For more info, visit www.threewisemonkeys.org.

The Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2010

2010-02-22T12:46:00.000-08:00

The Playwrights Foundation is so excited to announce that the dates for the 33rd Annual Bay Area Playwrights Festival have been set—July 23 through August 1, 2010.

The Festival will be held at the Thick House in San Francisco.

Details of the full season will be announced in April! Be sure to check back on the BAPF page on our website for details. You can also follow us on Playwrights Foundation Facebook Page or Twitter to be kept up-to-date.

The 'PlayWright' Stuff: Year-End Angels Needed

2009-12-19T08:52:00.000-08:00

Thank you so much to everyone for your enthusiasm, participation and support in 2009! More than 100 of you joined our Angels Needed Campaign this summer, and, as a result, we continued to build our reach and impact to make new stories and new voices heard.

Through our programs in 2009:

28 new plays received a hand toward completion
10 resident playwrights crafted new works in our studios
Nearly 500 plays were read and reviewed
2 highly successful co-productions and 2 producing partnerships forged deep connections with audiences
6 young writers worked alongside expert mentors
Over 100 students practiced the nuts and bolts of their craft
More than 120 artists were hired to support the build.

With the support of many hands we have almost finished the job! But we still must raise another $35,000 by December 31st to bring it on home. As the year draws to a close, please consider a year-end gift to Playwrights Foundation and 'Wright' the future of theater!

We really do need your financial support to continue to build new voices and new stories. A donation of only $40 from each of you, right now, would get us to our goal! If you have already contributed to our campaign, we thank you. If you haven’t, or wish to increase your gift, please consider making a tax-deductible year-end gift online by clicking here or by calling (415) 626-2176. You're also welcome to mail in a check!

Playwrights Foundation
1616 16th Street, Suite 350
San Francisco, CA 94103

We thank you again for your continued support and wish you an inspired, creative and powerful new year ahead!

Musical Reading of New Marcus Gardley Play

2009-12-17T08:56:00.000-08:00

Join Us December 19 for This Open-Process Reading

Please join us for a musical reading of ...and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi directed by Amy Mueller. This brilliant new work by Gardley is set on the banks of the Mississippi River and woven through with music and magic. ...and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi promises to become the signature play of America’s most prolific contemporary writer—born and raised right here in the Bay Area! Come check it out this in-process work as we prepare for the first professional production in partnership with The Cutting Ball Theater.

Details
Saturday, December 19, 2009, 1pm
The Cutting Ball Theater
277 Taylor Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

Click here for directions.

This is event is free to the public, but reservations are recommended. To make your reservation, contact Amy at amy@cuttingball.com.

Visit Us and Chat!

2009-11-16T17:33:00.000-08:00

Chat with us -- tell us, ask us, tell us your thoughts.

We loved Goldie, Max & Milk by Karen Hartman -- the other night at ACT. Was so funny and moving! A truly wonderous night -- even at music stands the play carries you into this crazy real world, the uncontrolable, unschedulable, unpredicatble one that YOU live, for real.
Carrie Paff rocked so bad as Max and the entire cast -- along with Jonathan Moscone directing -- were wonderous! Thank you to Dena Martinez, Carrie Paff, Jeri Lynn Cohen, Ryan Tasker and Kate Jopson for your guts!

If you missed, be aware -- these readings are wonderful magic: see 100 Planes by Lila Rose Kaplan on Dec 15 @ Shotgun!

Interview with BAPF Playwright Lauren Yee

2009-07-09T00:08:00.000-07:00

PF: Can you talk a little about the inspiration for Our Peculiar Institution and your process in writing it?

Lauren Yee: I wanted to write a play about minstrelsy, and I spent a month at the American Antiquarian Society in Massachusetts actually researching source material from 19^th century minstrel shows. The play, ultimately, is not a minstrel show, but it springs out of a close investigation of the time period where minstrelsy was an acceptable and, honestly, extremely popular form of entertainment. What I tried to do was mine that mindset in a 21^st century context and in doing so, I began to question the reductionist attitude towards morality that exists nowadays. It’s universally acceptable to say that slavery was bad and people should be free; yet, we continue to see a world where these antiquated, morally objectionable practices live on in subtler forms.

For me, revision is always a significant part of the writing process, since so much of what the play is most centrally “about” usually becomes clear by my second or third crack at the play. When I write, I will typically come up with far more material than I need, and a majority of my time will be spent culling this material, rewriting scenes, and filling in holes.

For Our Peculiar Institution, I basically followed this path, but also started with several elements I knew I wanted to include and then figured out different ways to make these pieces logically fit. Music—one song in particular--was one element that I was hoping to fit in, and a minstrel archetypal character was another.

PF: Some of us saw your play Ching Chong Chinaman at Impact last fall or may be familiar with some of your other work. Where do you feel this play fits with your work. How is it different from other plays you’ve written? What were some of the challenges of this piece?

LY: A sense of heightened realism runs throughout my work and often this translates into something lighter and comedic, as with Ching Chong Chinaman. While significantly more realistic and linear in its structure than some of my other work, Our Peculiar Institution also draws from this vein of lightness, which I like to think of it as “cheerfulness in the face of absurdity.”

Obviously, though, one of the challenges of writing this particular piece is my unfamiliarity with many different aspects of the play—geography, time period. In putting characters into absurd, unlikely situations, you have to grapple with balancing a rather off-kilter tone with chronological and geographic accuracy. Also, in my Asian American-themed work, I have a certain surefootedness that I didn’t have here, delving into issues that were specifically about the relationships between African Americans and whites, then and now. The wisdom is that you write about what you know, and for me, the challenge was finding something I could relate to within the story I wanted to tell.

PF: Given that you’ve grown up in the Bay Area theatre community and have recently begun to experience (and have success!) in other cities and other theatre communities, how would you characterize the Bay Area theatre scene? What do you feel it has done for you as an artist?

LY: The closeness of the Bay Area theater community is something that has always appealed to me. It’s more manageable, and as much as we bemoan the lack of X available to us here, it’s a place that has a little bit of everything.

Still, logistically, just the way that the Bay Area is laid out often makes it difficult to foster the kind of energy that you need for a healthy theater community. You don’t have a single transportation system like New York, where you can get from one side of the Bay to the other for two dollars, and that hinders the actors and the audiences from getting to where they want to be. I also think we in the Bay Area have a slight complex about being so far from New York—note how excited Bay Area folk are when a show transfers to New York.

Also, as someone who frequently writes for actors of color, I get anxious sometimes wondering whether I will be able to get the right people I need for my plays and whether that will ultimately interfere with productions.

PF: You’ve got a lot of new things coming up. What are you excited about and what’s next for you?

LY: In 2010, Ching Chong Chinaman gets two more productions, at New York’s Pan Asian Rep and Seattle’s SIS Productions, so it’ll be fun to see still more interpretations of the play.

And I’ll be heading to San Diego in the fall to start my MFA in playwriting at UCSD. It’s a tiny program (with one or two people in a class every year) with the resources to keep me busy and also help me build the body of work I need to move onto the next step in my career.

But I expect I’ll be in the Bay Area pretty frequently; it’s hard to stay away.