God's Ear and Kauffman's Glasses

Anne Kauffman, who was a guest at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama during the 2010 New Works Series, has received the Alan Schneider Director Award from TCG. You can read more about her work here.

Who Wrote Jason Sebacher’s Play?

I was dealing with tons of text thrown at me at once, and some of it was very intimate. I would sit on my porch with a beer or glass of wine and go through it. 

— Jason Sebacher, Carnegie Mellon Dramatic Writing MFA Candidate, in an interview with The Faster Times about The Spring Awakening Project. You can go see the play through Monday.

Scenes from the JAW Festival

Photos from the workshop of A Maze, and one critic's thoughts, on the Portland Center Stage site. I am hat guy.

Oregon Cheddar

This week you ought to be in Portland, Oregon, where some of the most fabulous people in American theatre (as well as the present writer) can be found in the same building.

New experiences (continued)

Being identified in an online journal of Queens as one of "nine different writers from Iceland and Lebanon."

new words & works for the tiny stage

Tales of the unexpected SUNDAY ONLY

 

The Twenty-Five Cent  Opera of San Francisco
theater | performance | entertainments

Number Six
Sunday | July 25 | 7 PM | $7 suggested donation
Barbès | 376 9th Street | Brooklyn

this month new words & works for the tiny stage by
sara jeanne ASSELIN
normandy SHERWOOD
ariel STESS
joe WAECHTER

The Twenty-Five Cent Opera is brought to you by THE PLAYWRITING FIRM
of shulman delaney gassman kosmas & copp.
All proceeds go directly to ARTISTS.

http://www.barbesbrooklyn.com
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brooklyn-NY/THE-TWENTY-FIVE-CENT-OPERA-OF-SAN-FRANCISCO/479128025396

You had me at "lizard-like movement"

Mission Drift is a musical, told through a mixture of narrative storytelling, adventurous or violent transactions between characters, Elvis and lizard-like movement, and song, about Las Vegas.


 Go see it.

The playwright as first-round draft pick.

New experiences, 2010:
1. Successfully searching the restaurant supply stores in Chinatown for a sandwich board (for a play about Nazis).
2. Repeatedly driving past scary political billboards in Western Pennsylvania (while simultaneously producing a play about Nazis).
3. Seeing my name listed under New Acquisitions.

Bring a weasel and a pint of your own blood

Three tales based on the Apocrypha.
A festival curated by Mac Wellman.
What more needs to be said? If you aren't clicking through yet, you may be reading the wrong blog.

A play written over the internet, yet good.

In Which Direction Home?, eight of the member-directors have created new shows which will be brought from six different countries and are, according to their website, “inspired (more or less) by Homer’s epic poem.”

As producer Cathy Bencivenga says, “I hesitate to call them all plays."

[Jake] Witlen’s production has a text that was “wiki”-ed by 10 playwrights from around the world.*

— from the Brooklyn Rail article about The Internationalists' Which Direction Home? Festival, which starts July 21.

*Among them your faithful blogger.

Dan LeFranc vs. works of modest creativity, ambition, and temperament

via Adam's blog:

I’m not interested in imagination for imagination’s sake—I’m interested in the way it relates to our most visceral needs and desires. Imagination with blood, sweat, tears, heart, humor, and teeth. Not the whimsical variety. The Hamlet variety. The Fefu and Her Friends, Buried Child, Glass Menagerie variety.

Quite frankly, imagination of this kind is at a premium in the American theater. Works of powerful imaginative and visceral force are often dismissed in favor of the comfortable and familiar—works of modest creativity, ambition, and temperament.

The Deaths of Soho, Vegas, Earth, and the Ohio Theatre (OH NO)

Yes, a lot of death is being cooked up at the final edition of one of the great new work festivals, the Ice Factory, including the TEAM's Mission Drift, "created in the blazing fever of a Las Vegas June."

Actor, meet playwright.

For actors who are wondering how prepare auditions for new plays and looking to build relationships with new playwrights, Packawallop Productions offers a one-day workshop.

Anne Washburn and Qui Nguyen on fear

Garrett Neergaard, T. Ryder Smith, and something that may be a baby that may be delicious. 

Anne Washburn's Apparition, NYC 2005.

The deathless question of whether onstage violence can scare you. Also, is the movie Alien high art?(Spoiler: of course.)

Did you hear the one about the Polish actress?

The recession has given the movie studios a reason — or an excuse, depending on the perspective — to adjust in their favor how they employ screenwriters.

When screenwriters do get a shot at work, they are increasingly subject to "sweepstakes pitching," in which as many as a dozen are pitted against one another, with producers picking the one they like best.

Or writers are often paid only for the first draft of the script in "one-step deals," and no longer offered a fee for subsequent drafts, as in the past. Writers also are expected to produce elaborate outlines of the script before they are hired for the project, losing valuable time if they are not selected.

Los Angeles Times, 7/2/10

Dearest Procrastinators: there is some ticket availability for THE ZERO HOUR on July 7 and 9.

Grab tickets at 13p.org

Free American beer with the all-American Nazis.

Come celebrate the 4th of July with 13P!

Cold beer.

Hot girl-on-girl action.

God bless America.

Use code FOURTH13P for 2-for-1 tickets and a free American beer on 7/2 and 7/5 at 8PM.

Tickets: www.13P.org

13P's
THE ZERO HOUR
by MADELEINE GEORGE (P#10)
directed by ADAM GREENFIELD

"Four out of five stars"

– Time Out NY

"bold, thoughtful, and incredibly beautiful" 

– CurtainUp