On the Ground Floor with...Peter Floyd

Playwright Peter Floyd

On May 1-4, work by this year’s MFA class – Peter Floyd, John Greiner-Ferris, and Heather Houston -- will be featured in our annual Ground Floor New Play Series, along with Reginald Edmund’s Southbridge. Southbridge was the winner of the 2011 Southern Playwrights’ Competition, and is part of the Sister City Playwrights Exchange.

 

But first, we celebrate these exciting writers on the blog by offering an inside look at them and their plays.

All four readings are free – reserve your seat and get additional information here.

Tell us a little about your thesis play.

Absence revolves around the character of Helen Bastion, an iron-willed, indomitable woman who finds herself suffering from memory loss. As she struggles to retain control over her own mind, she finds herself having to answer the question of selfhood: Is she still the same person she's always been if she can no longer remember her past?

What makes you passionate about this idea?

I have a personal stake in this play. My mother is suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. Writing this has been something of an attempt for me to explore what the world must be like for someone whose very sense of reality is in flux, a way to understand what my mother is experiencing. (I hasten to add that while they are suffering from the same affliction, the character of Helen is not in any way based on my mother; their personalities are markedly different.)

On the Ground Floor With...John Greiner-Ferris

Playwright John Greiner-Ferris

On May 1-4, work by this year’s MFA class – Peter Floyd, John Greiner-Ferris, and Heather Houston -- will be featured in our annual Ground Floor New Play Series, along with Reginald Edmund’s Southbridge. Southbridge was the winner of the 2011 Southern Playwrights’ Competition, and is part of the Sister City Playwrights Exchange.

 

But first, we celebrate these exciting writers on the blog by offering an inside look at them and their plays.

All four readings are free – reserve your seat and get additional information here.

Tell us a little about your thesis play.

Highland Center, Indiana is a story about a man who is searching for his identity and his real father. That sounds awfully boring when I write that. Maybe it will sound more interesting when I say that it contains all my favorite things to write about: guns, whiskey, incest, betrayal, death, rape, dysfunctional families, and mole traps. Highland Center, Indiana is a very real place. You can look it up on Google Maps. (Shakespeare never could have said that even about Denmark.) My mother was born and raised there, I spent many days there. My mother’s name was Alice Anne and my father’s was JP. I had an Uncle Henry. To know exactly which are the autobiographical elements and which are pure fantasy, you’ll have to come to the reading. Even then you might not be able to figure it out.

What makes you passionate about this idea?

It is said that all writers have a bone they pick, and I think identity is my bone. Identity is a very real American issue. It’s a classic American story to hear that someone would leave their current home and life and start a new life, fabricating an entirely new life and persona somewhere else, completely divorced from their past life. Think Gatsby. But then there are those who do the opposite. They reach into and search their past to learn their true selves. The first way is smoke and mirrors, like advertising, the business Billy works in. The other way is more arduous, and it’s the way Hank chooses.

Myers’ ‘Snovi’ nominated for Student Oscar – see it tonight!

BIG congratulations to alum Jonathon Myers and the team behind the short film Snovi (which also includes director Reshad Kulenovic and producer Claire Wasserman, who are BU alums; and co-writer John Bernstein, director of BU's screenwriting program) -- the film has been nominated for a Student Academy Award in the Narrative category! The Student Academy Awards is an annual competition for college and university filmmakers. 

Snovi has been an official selection of the Tallinn Film Festival 2010, Cinequest Film Festival 2011, and The European Independent Film Festival (ECU) 2011. The film was also included in the Sarajevo Film Festival last summer, and Jonathon gave Playwrights’ Perspective an inside look at the film and its creation.

But the best news (for us, anyway) is that tonight we have the opportunity to see this acclaimed film for ourselves, in Room B05 of the Communications Building, 640 Commonwealth Ave. The event includes a post-screening discussion, and begins at 6:30 p.m. 

For more about this inspiring project, follow Team Snovi on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/snovifilm

On the Ground Floor With...Reginald Edmund

On May 1-4, work by this year’s MFA class – Peter Floyd, John Greiner-Ferris, and Heather Houston -- will be featured in our annual Ground Floor New Play Series, along with Reginald Edmund’s Southbridge.

All four readings are free – reserve your seat and get additional information here.

Southbridge was the winner of the 2011 Southern Playwrights’ Competition, and comes to BPT as part of the Sister City Playwrights Exchange. The mission of Sister City is to swap talented, under-recognized playwrights in several regions of the USA and in Canada and England. In the past six years, fourteen swaps involving significant Play Labs in Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, London, Minneapolis, New York, and San Francisco helped emerging playwrights find connections, develop material and discover how their unique voices resonate in a new region.

Playwright Reginald Edmund

Southbridge is the second part of playwright Reginald Edmund’s The City of The Bayou series: A white widow is assaulted, and an angry mob is at the jail house door, screaming. "Lynch him!" The only way to untangle the truth about the events is for the accused, Christopher C. Davis, to look into the events that have lead him to a tree stump in Athens, Ohio in the year 1881.

About the playwright:

Reginald Edmund is a 2009-2010, 2010-2011 Many Voices Fellow playwright originally from Houston, Texas, where he was Artistic Director for the Silver House Theatre, as well as the founder and producer for the Silver House Playwrights Festival and the Houston Urban Theatre Series. Reggie was the inaugural recipient of the Kennedy Center Fellowship at Soul Mountain Retreat, as well as the 2009 National Runner-up for the Lorraine Hansberry and Rosa Parks Playwriting Awards.

The nine play series he is working on is titled The City of The Bayou Collection, and includes Redemption of Allah Black, Juneteenth Street, Southbridge, Last Cadillac, The Ordained Smile of Saint Sadie May Jenkins, Blood Moon, and White America. The plays have been developed at Karamu House Theatre, County Playhouse Theatre, Ensemble Theatre of Houston, the Playwrights' Center, Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre Company and the Mid-American Theater Conference. He received his BFA in Theatre-Performance from Texas Southern University, and his MFA in playwriting at Ohio University under the guidance of Charles Smith.

Watch Lydia Diamond's fabulous IRNE acceptance speech!

On the Ground Floor With...Heather Houston

Playwright Heather Houston

On May 1-4, work by this year’s MFA class – Peter Floyd, John Greiner-Ferris, and Heather Houston -- will be featured in our annual Ground Floor New Play Series, along with Reginald Edmund’s Southbridge. Southbridge was the winner of the 2011 Southern Playwrights’ Competition, and is part of the Sister City Playwrights Exchange.

But first, we celebrate these exciting writers on the blog by offering an inside look at them and their plays.

All four readings are free – reserve your seat and get additional information here.

Tell us a little about your thesis play.

My play, Supergravity and the Eleventh Dimension was sparked by two separate ideas that sort of crashed into each other, scattering shrapnel everywhere, shrapnel which I then tried to direct at my characters.  One idea was that of isolation, seclusion for four characters at a cabin.  The other idea was that of M theory in physics (which isn't really my idea at all, of course).  I started thinking about loss, and how each person deals with it differently, which seemed to play right into physics and relativity... and at that point I started confusing myself, and so I thought I should write a play about it.  What resulted were Dan, Fred, Leslie, and Tom (a theoretical physicist), four friends who deal with the loss of their friend, Carmen, by visiting her cabin, which then becomes a space where time and memory are twisted.

What makes you passionate about this idea?

I'm struck again and again by the human impulse to fight for explanations for loss, and how each explanation is so different, so personal.  Also, of course, I'm excited by any opportunity to totally geek out over concepts which completely blow my mind, like black holes and superstring theory.

IRNE congrats to Lopez, Diamond, everyone!

Congratulations to Melinda Lopez (From Orchids to Octopi, Best Play -- Small Theatre, Underground Railway Theatre), Lydia Diamond (Stick Fly, Best Play -- Large Theatre, Huntington Theatre Company), and all of last night’s IRNE Award winners and nominees!

David Fichter's amazing mural for From Orchids to Octopi

True collaboration: Yo-Yo Ma and Lil Buck

Kate found this. Director Spike Jonze posted this on the Opening Ceremony blog, and had this to say:

The other day, I was lucky enough to be at an event to bring the arts back into schools and got to see an amazing collaboration between Yo-Yo Ma and a young dancer in LA, Lil Buck. Someone who knows Yo-Yo Ma had seen Lil Buck on YouTube and put them together. The dancing is Lil Buck's own creation and unlike anything I've seen. Hope you enjoy. --Spike Jonze

Critic Ed Siegel says BPT's Volcano production "is a great tribute to Lipsky"

On WBUR 90.9fm, theatre critic Ed Siegel reviewed both the late Jon Lipsky's Walking the Volcano here at BPT and Stephen Karam's Sons of the Prophet at The Huntington. Below is an excerpt, but you can read the rest or listen to the broadcast.

"Boston Playwrights’ Theatre is currently staging 'Walking the Volcano' by Jon Lipsky, who passed away last month.

"'Walking the Volcano' is a very smart stitching together of eight 10-minute plays he wrote for the Boston Theater Marathon (which is coming up next month, also at Boston Playwrights’ Theater). Four actors play a variety of lovers, or in one case a father and daughter, who are debating whether to be stuck in the middle or live life in the fast lane. The play’s title refers to living along the edge, literally walking along a narrow ridge where one has to balance ecstasy versus security.

"The production is a great tribute to Lipsky, who was an old editor of mine and also gave me a painful lesson or two at the poker table before I became a theater critic. As the older couple, Paula Langton and Gabriel Kuttner are particularly moving, maybe because their life choices mirror those of a geezer like me a little closer. And the last playlet, with a woman dying of cancer, hits really close to home because of the playwright’s death.

"Lipsky would have been proud of the support that both the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre and the Huntington Theatre Company continue to give to his craft."

Happy Earth Day!

While we obsess over our writing, our craft, our facebooks, twitters, and blogs, (and I realize this is being a little self-effacing since, well, I'm writing on a blog while on facebook...) let's take a step back to thank Mother Earth...diva style with Bette Midler (I have a BIT of a Divine Miss M fetish) and Robin Williams from 20 years ago...it's kind of like a whacked out 10-minute play. Enjoy!

New Noises: Massachusetts Young Playwrights' Project and Festival

Two weeks ago 45 Boston actors and directors had an incredible two days at Boston Playwrights' Theatre.  I had the good luck to be amongst them.   And so did ten area high schools...

Descriptions by Alessandra Haley, Weston High School
 (Jacob Strautmann and Heather Houston)l

Here's how the program works: 

Every year Kate Snodgrass hooks local playwrights (many of whom are our alumni) with area high schools for the New Noises: Massachusetts Young Playwrights' Project.  The playwright visits the classroom to teach playwriting, supplementing what the students are already learning, and then she follows up with the development of those plays over email.  Finally, the plays are chosen by the classroom teacher and submitted for the two-day festival.  

The Festival goes like this: 

Over two days (it will be expanding to three next year!),  half of the students who had a play submitted will have their plays read on the fly by professional actors and discussed among the 60 students sharing the experience.  The other students (about ten a day) have their works blocked, rehearsed, and discussed by Boston directors and actors.  Those plays are then performed for the larger crowd.   The students get their hands on stagecraft, some of them for the first time, and nearly all of them have their first  theatre experience from the playwright's perspective.  (Cue our blog's intro music.)

Play by Shea featured in The Somerville News

John Shea’s The Painter, which is playing at Unity Church in Somerville through May 1, is featured in The Somerville News. Read the story here.

When an Irish-American painter and his African-American employer come face-to-face in a battle of wills, the result is a crime that will change both of them forever. Was it anger? Madness? Or something deeper?

Tickets and additional information: http://www.playsbyshea.com/

Walking the Volcano - A Message from Kate Snodgrass

It is our great pleasure to bring Jon Lipsky’s Walking the Volcano alive with this wonderful cast and crew.  This is Boston Playwrights’ Theatre's first collaboration with Boston Center for American Performance, but I hope not our last.  And we had the honor of working with Prof. Jon Lipsky in 2007 when he directed Leslie Epstein’s King of the Jews for us at Studio 210 on Huntington Avenue.  It was that production, along with his direction of Stan Strickland’s Coming Up for Air, which won him the prestigious Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Direction.  The award was well-deserved, but Jon was not “just” a director.  He was a Renaissance man of the Theatre—a director, teacher (I never saw him act, but he did everything else, so why not?), and, most of all, an innovative playwright.  

I hope you were lucky enough to see his beautiful Living in Exile at the Actors’ Shakespeare Project just last month.  It was a masterful retelling of The Iliad and profoundly moving in its understanding of the human condition.  In fact, the first production I saw in Boston when I came here in 1987, not knowing anyone in the Theatre, was Jon’s Dreaming with an AIDS Patient, performed in the basement of a little church in Boston’s South End.  I still carry images from that production in my head, and I remember being moved by its heart-wrenching compassion and its deceptively simple theatricality.  

Most particularly, I am honored that both our companies, having such a strong connection to Jon, can produce Walking the Volcano here in Boston.  These short plays were written for and appeared in our Boston Theater Marathons.  (Can you guess which one was the first?)  I know that these scenes were written as separate stories in themselves, but I can’t help but feel a connection with and between these characters; I think you’ll see it, too.  These are intelligent, complex, ultimately forgiving people who are passionate about loving and living life to the fullest--just like Jon himself.  And his work lives on.  

Kate Snodgrass

Artistic Director, Boston Playwrights' Theatre

Guest blog: Alum Colleen Hughes responds to 'The Millennials Project'

I recently read Michael Kaiser’s Huffington Post article “The Millennials Project,” in which he claims that those of us under 30 are culturally illiterate and in need of some remedial training in “high art” (or, more specifically, what he defines as high art).

First off, I don’t consider myself a Millennial. I’m 29, and I often feel like those of us born in the late 70s and early 80s are in sort of a subgenerational gap. But that is a topic for a whole other blog post. I am, however, still “under 30” and take offense to several of Kaiser’s key points.

He begins by saying that “we in the arts face a major problem” about young people who have little to no exposure to theatre. “We”? Apparently “we in the arts” doesn’t include young people, and all the amazingly talented up-and-coming theatre artists I know and went to school with just don’t exist. He claims that young people have no interest in seeing “our” performances or visiting “our” art galleries—and maybe that’s a major part of the problem. He views theatrical performances, indeed any “higher art,” as an “ours,” as belonging to a select group of individuals privileged enough to be “in the arts.” The original point of regional theatre was that it was just that—theatre for the region, for and belonging to the community. It would speak to and address issues that were important to its community. Theatre is not just for the select few who know who Verdi is, yet Kaiser seems intent on creating a divide between the makers of theatre and its audience. And he feels that it must be the audience’s problem for not appreciating the theatrical gift he is bestowing upon them. He never considers that maybe the problem, or at least part of it, is with the theatre itself.

Opps so great I wanna keep 'em to myself

The Huntington Theatre Company is now accepting applications for its Playwriting Fellows program. Huntington Playwriting Fellows are awarded two-year residencies during which they receive a modest stipend from the theatre, participate in a writers’ collective with the artistic staff, attend Huntington productions and events, and are eligible for readings and support through the Breaking Ground reading series. The Fellows program is supported by the Stanford Calderwood Fund for New American Plays. Read more about the program, and apply here. 

Also, help Playwrights’ Commons get going with a bang by applying for its Freedom Art Theatre Retreat. This exciting group -- founded by BU professor Ilana Brownstein, who also created the Huntington Playwriting Fellows program -- just launched its Web site, which features information about this opportunity. Art in the woods! Check it out.

MCC budget update

From the Massachusetts Cultural Council Web site, an update:

The Massachusetts House Committee on Ways & Means proposed a budget that would cut funding for the arts, humanities, and sciences by $1.65 million, or 18 percent.

Thanks to your advocacy, more than a quarter of the Massachusetts House of Representatives signed on to an amendment to stop further cuts to state funding for the arts, humanities, and sciences through the MCC.

What you can do now:

Contact your Massachusetts House Representative before April 25:

    * Urge him/her to support Amendment # 417 and stop the cuts to arts and cultural funding through the MCC!

Mud-luscious

Okay, okay, I know it's not a play or a playwright, but since our founder is a poet, can I just celebrate spring by posting this here? And, is there a better word than 'mud-luscious'?! If there is, tell me what it is. No, wait...don't.

[in Just-] 
by e. e. cummings

in Just-
spring          when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles          far          and wee

Playwrights' Commons: A New Development Organization Launches in Boston

Another exciting opportunity for playwrights in Boston! Ilana Brownstein, professor of theatre at BU, former dramaturg at the Huntington Theatre, and, in general, a champion for playwrights and new plays, has launched a new development organization to service New England playwrights. It's called Playwrights' Commons. Another development opportunity? It's more than that. Personally, as a playwright, I think one of the cool things about it is that it's focused on the development of the playwright (the person) in new creative ways, not a development opportunity that seeks to "fix" our "broken" plays.

Here's the mission statement: "Playwrights’ Commons is a nascent playwright development (not play development) organization whose mission is to strengthen the Boston-area theatre ecology through innovative laboratories, workshops, collaborative opportunities, and fiscal sponsorships of emerging artists. Playwrights’ Commons seeks to provide dramaturgical support to writers at all stages of their careers, with a special focus on deepening the opportunities for artists who hope to put down professional roots in Boston and surrounding cities." Check out the website for more details AND, for information on how to apply for the Freedom Art Theatre Retreat this summer. Follow Playwrights Commons on Twitter @PwritesCom and on Facebook.

Openings for Bauer and Shea

Hello, Omaha! Monica Bauer’s play My Occasion of Sin opens tonight at the Shelterbelt Theatre. 

My Occasion of Sin is inspired in part by real events that happened during the 1969 Omaha race riots. George, a South Omaha music store owner, tries to evolve with the rock & roll trend. Luigi, a North Omaha jazz drummer, longs to restore the Dreamland Ballroom to its former glory. Mary Margaret, a 16-year-old South Omaha girl, stages her own revolution -- in music. Vivian, a 14-year-old North Omaha girl, struggles to understand the events swirling around her, and to find her own voice.

House Ways & Means Budget Proposes Another Significant Cut to Arts & Cultural Funding

From the Mass Cultural Council Web site yesterday -- budget cuts would mean an 18% cut to MCC funding.

(Boston, MA) - The House Ways & Means Committee today released a proposed state budget for the coming fiscal year that would significantly cut support for the arts, humanities, and sciences through the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC).

The House panel recommends $7.5 million for MCC for fiscal year 2012. That would cut $1.65 million, or 18 percent, from the agency's current budget. If enacted, this budget would represent a cumulative cut of 41 percent to MCC's budget since 2009.

The Governor's proposed budget had cut cultural funding by $700,000; the House Ways & Means version represents a cut of nearly $1 million on top of that.

LBD in NYC: Update

As reported in this space last fall, our very own Ronan Noone’s Little Black Dress (which debuted at BPT last season) will open Off-Broadway at The Exchange next month. The production is helmed by The Exchange’s Artistic Director Ari Edleson, who also directed the production here. The play is beginning to get some press, including this blurb from Theatermania and a longer article on OffBroadwayWorld.com.

Ronan has promised to keep us all in the loop as the play nears opening, and had this to say: Tuesday [April 5] was the first day of rehearsal and due to all sorts of madness I couldn't be there so I was Skyped in. I strained to hear a third of the play before the Skype blew up and I got to hear the rest of the play through iPhone on speaker. Regardless of the ingenuity on board here, I could tell the changes I made to the piece didn't work. In truth, I sensed they wouldn't work. All along the way I found the play pushing back at my attempts to clean it up.

Ronan has been very candid about LBD's wild -- and fascinating (if you're not the playwright living through it!) development history; I, for one, can’t wait to see the next step in the evolution of this terrific play.

Get tickets here.

Why are female characters underrepresented onstage? Take a quick survey.

Regis College and the Dramatists Guild are conducting a study looking into why female characters are underrepresented in contemporary plays in the English language, and are asking playwrights to complete a short survey.

The deadline is April 30.

Click here to participate.

Dumpster diving

Had Jon Savage elected not to apply a uniform coat of black paint to his set, his design would not just draw attention away from Jon Lipsky’s play Walking the Volcano, it would have upstaged it altogether.  His set, a collage of structural items: table legs, corner braces, broken parts of machinery, combined with bits and pieces of molding, picture frames, stair rails, handgrips, scraps of leather, some engraved, some not, items ranging in size from entire newel posts to empty cigarette cartons.  Had he left them in their natural state, as they had been when he and his team plucked them from many attics and antique dealers, junkyards, even dumpsters they visited, and attached to the three planked walls—wood salvaged from a previous set no less—had he left it all untreated, his design would have been visual a treat for the eyes, as provocative, interesting, and imaginary as any art installation worthy of an exhibit at the ICA.   But in theater, subtlety becomes the virtue; as they say in the business, the play’s the thing!


Marc Olivere
Scenic Builder, Walking the Volcano

Arts Advocacy Day wrap-up

From the Theatre Communications Group Web site:

Every year TCG’s government programs staff and a group of member theatre leaders attend Arts Advocacy Day in Washington, D.C. This year marked the 24th annual gathering presented by Americans for the Arts, co-sponsored by TCG and other arts organizations. Arts Advocacy Day gathers and empowers a broad cross section of America’s cultural leaders. Hundreds of grassroots advocates participate and underscore the importance of developing strong public policies and appropriating increased funding for the arts.

On April 4, Kevin Spacey kicked off Arts Advocacy Day by delivering the 24th Annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy. Arts advocacy training workshops were the focus of the events on that day. There were legislative issue briefings on NEA appropriations, arts education funding, charitable tax incentives, improving the visa process for international artists, funding for cultural exchange and protecting performing arts technology that utilizes White Spaces.

MetLife/TCG A-ha! Program: Think It, Do It Applications Now Available

The MetLife/TCG A-ha! Program is for TCG member theatres only and supports creative thinking and action in two ways: Think It grants ($25,000) give theatre professionals the time and space for research and development; Do It grants ($50,000) support the implementation and testing of new ideas. Online Registration and Application Postmark Deadline is May 2, 2011. More information here.