Local band films video of an original song in our Odyssey stage!

They had me at ‘hello’...

...literally. On Monday, I walked into the studio classroom where our workshop was to take place, and there it was on the white board:

An anagram of my crazy name – brilliant. In an instant I could tell these were my kind of folks. My peeps.

The Massachusetts Young Playwrights' Project brings together playwrights and student writers, and this year I am mentoring twelve of Allan Reeder’s high school students at Walnut Hill School in Natick. The students (many of whom have never written a play before) will write their own 10-minute plays over the next month or so. I’ll visit the school a couple of times -- when we will read and discuss their work together -- and keep in touch with them via e-mail as they revise their work.

Walnut Hill is one of a dozen or so schools in the Boston metro participating in the program, which culminates in the New Noises Festival at BPT in April. Read more details about this innovative program here.

I had a terrific time learning a bit about everyone and having a first listen to the students’ work, and I think they enjoyed it too: A few of them have e-mailed me already with new ideas and revisions of their plays! Watch this space for more on my adventures at Lawn Nut Ill! (Okay, yeah, maybe I can help them with their plays a little, and they can give me a serious education on anagram creation…)

More soon.

Works by alums Lazarus, Odle upcoming at Another Country

October by Ginger Lazarus and Our Girl in Trenton by Cliff Odle will be featured in Another Country's Points of View: 5 Playwrights Tell Love Like They See It. The festival also includes work by Rick Park, Alison Potoma, Lyralen Kaye, and Mark Harvey Levine.

Points of View: 5 Playwrights Tell Love Like They See It
February 3-5 at 8 p.m., Saturday matinee at 3 p.m.

Boston Playwrights' Theatre
$17 general admission

Get tickets

Winter Quiet

Things are a little quiet at the theatre right now. Not quiet in the sense that Marc isn’t hammering away on something in the shop, or quiet in the sense that Jake isn’t playing his music, or quiet in the sense that I’m not talking endlessly about something or other. Quiet in the sense that classes haven’t started yet, quiet in the sense that there aren’t a hundred people buzzing around, quiet in the sense that the industry that is Boston Playwrights’ Theatre is at rest if only for the moment.

This will change…quickly. The students will be back next week, preparations for our upcoming show will be in full swing, production meetings, rehearsals, visiting theatres, playwrights, actors, students, everything will be pushing through the winter snow on a head-on course towards the spring.

While some quiet around here is definitely appreciated, I like it a lot more when the cogs are turning and the theatres are filled with actors emoting, sets being moved and audiences shuffling in and out. That’s when the theatre feels like a theatre. I’ll enjoy the winter quiet for now, but I’m looking forward to the spring ahead.