Maria Goyanes will eventually rule the world.

...but for now, this.

The clock is ticking.

 

"Ambitious and sprawling... A work to savor" — Backstage

 13P's The Zero Hour

through July 10 only

Fourth of July special:

for performances on 7/2 & 7/5
Use code FOURTH13P
for 2-for-1 tickets & a FREE American beer

Tickets at 13p.org

30 Gay Plays in 60 Straight Minutes

For New York Pride, The Neo-Futurists' weekly show Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind will be transformed into Too Much Pride Makes the Baby Go Gay! Tonight and tomorrow only at 10:30 p.m. Proceeds will combat legislation in Uganda that threatens to make homosexuality punishable by imprisonment or death. Click here for tickets.

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Playwright

Here's a belated link to Michael Golamco's June 11 guest blog for The New York Times, which relates his work to burritos, pork buns, and video games. Michael was a guest in the professional advancement roundtable I assembled at New Dramatists last month for the CMU Dramatic Writing class of 2010.

Love, Hitler, Martha Stewart, and virtuoso performances. Now playing.

Use code FRIEND13P
at www.13P.org

for 2-FOR-1 TICKETS
through Friday 6/25 only

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

Featuring
HANNAH CABELL* and ANGELA GOETHALS*

Sets MIMI LIEN
Lights BEN KATO
Costumes SYDNEY MARESCA
Sound ASA WEMBER

Production Stage Manager SUNNEVA STAPLETON*
Casting Director KELLY GILLESPIE
Press Representative BLAKE ZIDELL
Associate Producer PRESTON COPLEY
Producer RACHEL KARPF

* Member, Actors’ Equity Association
 
June 22 – July 10
Walkerspace
46 Walker Street (between Broadway and Church)

June 22–25, 27–30, July 1–2, 5–10
All performances at 8PM

FOR TICKETS and MORE INFO:
www.13P.org

An idea that could have gone either way

Lee Blessing's When We Go Upon The Sea shows us George W. Bush, in a hotel room in The Hague, on the night before he is going to be tried for war crimes. It's a very beautiful play. It's on in New York until July 3.

My Kind of Title

THE OCTOROON: AN ADAPTATION OF THE OCTOROON BASED ON THE OCTOROON

(Also, Travis York is in it. So you should probably go.)

Theatre is a dangerous place. As is the organic foods store.

Clubbed Thumb Summerworks presents
The Small by Anne Washburn
directed by Les Waters
original music by Dave Malloy
With Gideon Banner, Maria Dizzia, Matthew Maher, Dave Malloy, and Susie Pourfar
Sets by Louisa Thompson
Associate Set Designer Chris Morris
Lights by Jane Cox
Costumes by Kirche Leigh Zeile
Sound by Bray Poor

June 20 – 26, 2010
Buy Tickets Now Before They Are All Gone

How to be Brett Neveu

Via Adam's blog. I admire Brett's work and his seriousness; all the more so because I knew him before he was serious.

Q:  What advice do you have for playwrights just starting out?

A:  Self produce. That's pretty much how I started. In the back of a bar with a suitcase full of puppets or working with an actor friend using a slide projector for lights and then playing to three or four people. I didn't wait until somebody would eventually produce a full-length play. I wrote something small. Something shoe-string producible and did it myself. Then I saw shows at theatres (as well as sent out press releases) and invited folks to come.

So, I guess to distill my advice: do shows and see shows and let people know you exist. Make an audience and meet a community. Do both and do good.

Bill C. Davis, The Sex King

Playbill (that's Playbill) reports: "A by-invitation-only reading of the new Bill C. Davis play The Sex King will be presented June 21 at The Clurman Theatre (Theatre Row). Directed by Jonathan Silverstein (The Temperamentals, I Never Sang For My Father), the reading will feature the talents of David Morse and Julia Stiles. A production of the new work is planned for next season."

Davis, the third playwright (and fourth artist) from Poughkeepsie to appear on this blog, has led workshops at Carnegie Mellon University, and headed the CMU Dramatic Writing workshop during the Spring 2009 semester.

Bill C. Davis reading to feature David Morse and Julia Stiles

If you're near the London Bridge tube stop,

go see this.

Robert Kaplowitz!

Fela! takes Best Sound Design of a Musical

Why Arena Stage Withdrew from the NEA New Play Development Program

NPDP: Questions and Answers in #Newplay Land by David Dower

The relationship between a container and what’s inside.

The Brooklyn Rail's interviews are always great, but this one is particularly so because the online formatting melds the interview and the quoted dialogue from the play together, so on first reading it seems that the interviewer is suddenly asking Madeleine "How'd it go with Hitler today?"

The Brooklyn Rail: The Shipwrecked Experiments of Madeleine George

Win a date with Mac Wellman (or: a portrait of you, your pet, or your lover by Erin Courtney)

This is my second favorite annual benefit. If you are hesitating, go The Flanks' page on Facebook and listen to their Warren Zevon cover. —S.D.

This Thursday, June 10
6:30-9:30
join us
for the annual Bring a Weasel and a Pint of Your Own Blood Festival Benefit
at
Lolita Bar
 
266 Broome Street
Admission is $20 (includes 2 free drinks and a wondrous show!)
 
You will be entertained with:
Sweet serenading from Karinne Keithley
Laughter and head bobbing by Lumberob
Jump and jiving with The Flanks
And some Super Special Mystery Performers!
 
Furthermore, legendary emcee Matt Korahais will auction off these fabulous prizes:

THEATER TICKETS!

New York Theater Workshop ~ The Vineyard ~ PS122 ~ Soho Rep ~ Ontological-Hysteric Incubator ~ Partial Comfort Productions ~ 13P's THE ZERO HOUR by Madeleine George ~ Pass to the Ice Factory at the Ohio Theater ~ and more

AND MORE STUFF!

A coffee date with the damnable scribbler Mac Wellman ~ 80 Dramatists Playscripts ~ A car trip to Fairway or Ikea with celebrity chauffeur Richard Toth ~ A Portrait of you, your pet, or your lover by Erin Courtney


Q: What is BRING A WEASEL AND A PINT OF YOUR OWN BLOOD ?

A: It is a festival of plays: adaptations written by current and former students of Mac Wellman at the Brooklyn College MFA playwriting program. This year's festival will take place in late July 2010 at the East 13th Street Theater, featuring adaptations by alums Corina Copp, Ben Gassman, and Kobun Koluza of stories from The Apocrypha

Directors include Meghan Finn and Julia Jarcho.
Produced by Sara J. Asselin, Ariel Stess, Caitlin Brubacher, LaShea Delaney and Alexandra Collier.
Each year, the Weasel benefit goes a long way toward making the festival possible. Note: If you'd like to contribute but are unable to attend, please contact any of the people listed above or e-mail LaShea Delaney at bringaweasel@gmail.com

Previous Weasel playwright/producers include: Bianca Bagatourian, Erin Courtney, Susan Dunlap, Trish Harnetiaux, Laura Jones-Katz, Karinne Keithley, Sibyl Kempson, Matt Korahais, Kristen Kosmas, Kate Ryan, Valerie Work, Richard Toth, Normandy Sherwood, Scott Adkins.

New award: 50K to the playwright and 100K to the first production

In addition to being one of the country's largest grants for new work, The Laurents / Hatcher Foundation Award is the first major award for playwriting to be named in honor of a gay couple: Tony Award winning playwright and director Arthur Laurents and his partner of 52 years, Tom Hatcher.

(spelling of "playwriting" corrected from the press release)

Hope! Change! Blah!

Tonight only! 

Little Theatre

Vol X, No. 10

HOPE! CHANGE! BLAH
Written by Ben Gassman
Directed by Caitlin Brubacher
With Eliza Bent and John Anthony Russo

SYMPOSIUM ON SLIPPAGE THROUGH TIME'S COARSE GRASP (EXCERPT)
Written and performed by Laylage Courie

CROSSING THE COW FIELD OR AN ODE TO INERTIA
Written by Valerie Work
Directed by Meghan Finn
With Joe Gregori and Neil Hellegers

Three songs from THE UNFORTUNATE SQUIRREL
Text and lyrics by Sonya Sobieski
Music composed by Alden Terry
Performed by Andrew Cassese

SUMMER PJs
Created and performed by Beth Kurkjian

Monday, June 7, 2010 —  8:00 pm @ the new Dixon Place
161A Chrystie btw. Delancey & Rivington (F/V 2nd Ave; 6 Bleecker; JMZ Bowery)

Tickets $15.00 @ the door or online (https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/171/1270164600000/prm/)
but just $12.00 with a printout of this message

1st come, 1st served, no reservations

In which old Dot and the weird kid from the neighborhood become friends.

Kate E. Ryan's astonishing play Dot starts tonight at Clubbed Thumb Summerworks. Characteristically killer Thumb pedigree:

Dot by Kate E. Ryan
directed by Anne Kauffman
original music by Mike Iveson
With David Brooks, Kate Hopkins, Birgit Huppuch, Ed Jewett, Lynne McCollough, and Mary Shultz
Sets by Jason Simms
Lights by Garin Marschall
Costumes by Olivera Gajic
Sound by Jessica Paz

June 6 – 12, 2010

Divorce as an act of passive resistance, etc.

"I've approached a time in my life as a person, as playwright, and as a citizen where I needed to fuse my personal feelings about marriage with my political ones." (via Adam, via Crystal. This is why you should stay in theatre! You get to meet nice people who will let you steal posts from them.)

Young Jean Lee is invited to all tomorrow's parties

Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson curate the Sydney Opera House festival Vivid Live

YJL's The Shipment in Vivid Live

It's getting later and later.

 

 Buy tickets for 13P's The Zero Hour

Cincinnati: hipper than one thought.

the iconic chili of Cincinnati (a "4-way")

the iconic photography of Lee Miller (Portrait of Space, 1937)

I just returned from a weekend in Cincinnati, where Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park announced that it remains committed to the bracing work of  Carson Kreitzer. Next season it will present her new play Behind the Eye, concerning Lee Miller.

Wikipedia tells me that Lee Miller was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, which the cognoscenti know is a sure sign of greatness.

Heartbreakingly lonely spots of light

At the Chocolate Factory, Andrew Dinwiddie (whom you may remember) is performing the text of an old Jimmy Swaggart record.

Helen Shaw (who can actually write a sentence, which is a charming quality in a critic) says: "Lighting designer Chloë Brown occasionally leaves Dinwiddie in heartbreakingly lonely spots of light; we want to rescue him. And when director Jeff Larson and sound designer Jon Moniaci pipe in the subaqueous sound of an audience murmuring in congregational agreement, it’s terrifying to sense how close we are to nodding along ourselves."

Andrew Dinwiddie - Get Mad at Sin! a Message to the Young People of Today by Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart as Preached at the First Assembly of God in Van Buren, Arkansas

A couch for playwrights

An opportunity — deadline extended to June 7. Fighting the good fight, possibly. ("Fellows work one-on-one with our artistic director and staff," eh?)

But who could resist "Prime real estate on The Realm couch"?

The Playwrights Realm Writing Fellows Program