BPT alum co-written film premieres

Snovi, a short film co-written by BPT alum Jonathon Myers, premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival in July. You can read all about it here: www.snovifilm.com. Congrats, Jonathon!


Alums, share your news with us.

It’s been very surreal

It’s been very surreal.

Building a production in a space that once was the classroom. Theory becomes practice. The place of inspiration and debate is now the playing field...the construction site. I miss my classmates. Their voices rattle on my brain. I turn hoping to see them. No such luck. I’m on my own now. Unfamiliar territory.

Coincidence reveals itself. Chloe’s physician’s name is Dr. Patel (the same as Betty-the character she plays.) Alice spent twelve years in Catholic School but is miraculously free of the life determining guilt that accompanies so many years of indoctrination. She must have been absent the day the nuns secretly injected that strand of DNA. And turns out Jessica has an interesting and remarkably appropriate background in wine…a product of some plan “B” training she explored years ago.

Last night, on my drive in, my ears were pricked by a song that I naively presumed was Pink Floyd’s, “The Wall.” Right band. Right album. Not quite the title track. It was even better than I had hoped. The song’s title (I learned ex post facto) was: “Mother.” The lyrics that nearly drove me into the breakdown lane of Route Two couldn’t have been any more in concert with my protagonist’s story…and her struggle with her mother.

Momma's gonna make all of your nightmares come true

Momma's gonna help build the wall

Mother, do you think she's good enough for me?

Mother, do you think she's dangerous to me?

Momma's gonna check out all your girlfriends for you

Momma won't let anyone dirty get through

Coincidence and inspiration abound.

Have to use it. -- Michael Towers

This is not staged

Just noticed this at work. Playwrights have binder clips everywhere. -- Alexa

Look around

Thank goodness for Lourey’s last post—lest we be subjected to another entry from Jake about watching the paint dry in the hallway.

Yes, September is the month on the BPT calendar that is the most hectic. Trying to get the brochure out the door, sign up new and returning subscribers…Marc is perpetually covered in sawdust.

This will be the start of my fifth season with BPT and while I’d like to say that I am continually amazed that we pull it off each year, I can’t. We do pull it off. It is through the hard work of the staff, the playwrights, the actors, directors, designers, students, alumni, donors, patrons and the entire theatre community that we are able to pull it off each and every year.

So even when it may seem like we have “too much to do and not enough people to do it,” I sit back, relax for a minute, look around, and get back to work. -- Mike

"I don't understand the dynamic in the office right now..."

As Mike puts it, "There is too much to do and not enough people to do it!" Yup. Welcome to September.

It's meaningful to me that the Earth came into being in an explosion of light. Before that there was, what? A wind in the void? August breezes whistling through our vacation-emptied skulls? Beginnings are possible because of a collision of ideas, circumstances, and environmental forces. Right now I feel full of potential. I also feel full of fear and humility. How will I ever rise to the challenge of being student, employee, writer, pastor, spouse? It all feels foreign and unachievable. Still, I know from beginnings and endings pass that I will succeed or fail in each of these goals. I will be late, and inattentive, and surly. And I will begin again. As we do.

This year we are going to participate in the impossible launch of five new ideas. Off they will go, into the void, after all of the work we've done. And so will we, to some degree. We are always pursuing the next impossible goal.

Before we fling ourselves into the new world of our potential, then, let me say... I love it here. Specifically here. I am grateful for an office like this, a theater like this, colleagues and friends like these. Thanks for all of the hard work we are about to do together. Good job. -- Lourey

There's a new coat of paint in the hallway (thank you, Patrick and Marc), and our senior workstudy Ashley is showing our new admin intern Adrien paperwork road--

We're working on a discount for BPT ticket holders with our new neighbors at Blue State Coffee - a great idea for a company. Check them out the next time you're by the theatre -- even more caffeinated playwrights this semester!

Also, Mike sent out our first press release for 5 Down 1 Across. You can find it here. -- Jake

This time of year

It is this time of year that I like my job the best. Desks and file cabinets are cleaned out for a year's worth of making new plays; Marc is buying enough lumber for a season of new sets; Kate is setting production meetings, hiring casts and in-class actors; and the new graduate students are meeting their professors.

The old saw that theatre is a collaborative art rings true again. There is a the hum of things about to be done at BPT. No. More than a sound. It's palpable.

This will be a great year of new plays, but I'm also looking forward to the re-commitment to our vocations the university calendar allows all of us here - the renewal of Fall.

Celebrate it. Go see a new play this season.
--Jake