No bugs in the 'Stick Fly' marketing strategy

Okay, I admit it: I’m a sucker for a fun marketing idea. How much do I love this? A lot!

Alumni news, in brief:

Snovi, a short film with a screenplay co-written by Jonathon Myers, won the ‘Best Experimental’ category at the 15^th Annual Rhode Island Film Festival…

Karmo Sanders' musical Gold Rush Girls will hit the stage at Cyrano’s Theatre Company in Anchorage, Alaska next summer…

Steven Barkhimer will direct The Merry Wives of Windsor at Actors’ Shakespeare Project this season…

The award-winning musical Ferdinand the Bull, with a book by Karen Zacarías, runs at The RoseTheater (home to the Omaha Theater Company) in September…

John Kuntz will appear in Robert Brustein’s Mortal Terror next month, right here at BPT…

Why New Plays are Important (and FUN): Shifting to an Actor's Perspective

Maureen Keiller in The Little Dog Laughed (photo: Mike Lovett)

When I first met the divine Maureen Keiller, she was playing a seductive polar bear, and from that moment on I knew I wanted her to act in my plays! Like, ALL of them. I was lucky enough to get her as the bitchy, morally challenged Dr. Platt in my play, Memorial, but I have also seen her play all sorts of other interesting roles while reading at BPT. Currently, our local gem is in rehearsals for Big River at Lyric Stage, and she will also be starring in the musical comedy, Pulp, with Georgia Lyman and Michelle Clunie for the Provincetown Cares benefit this October, benefiting women with chronic health issues. She is one busy diva! We are lucky enough to bring her in as a regular presence here at BPT, and I had a chance to chat with her about what it's like as an actor approaching new plays.

Anna Pattison: You get an email from Kate saying, "Maureen, would love for you to come in and read tomorrow." Your response?

Maureen Keiller: If I can possibly do it, I do it. I would do anything for Kate Snodgrass. I would catch a grenade for her. I would throw myself in front of a train for her. She is so passionate about nurturing fledgling playwrights and it is completely contagious.

Deadlines, writing groups, The Mean Muse...EKL and KAM aren't done yet

What started as a conversation to discuss Gorilla Tango Theatre’s 4x2 – where Emily Kaye Lazzaro and I both have plays (and which closes tonight) – evolved (or, uh, devolved) into a wide-ranging discussion of our writing lives that concludes here…

EKL: Do you blog to get away from your troublesome plays or do you have other techniques? How about deadlines? I find those to be very helpful, too. But mostly nobody gives me deadlines so I have to make them up. Whatever works!

Carole Lombard

KAM: Right – whatever it takes! I find the ways alums (and others!) integrate playwriting into their lives endlessly fascinating and inspiring. And putting it all in one place – archiving our activity here – from the tiniest ten-minute plays to future Broadway hits (adding “Broadway” as a label for Stick Fly was an awesome moment in the history of the blog, btw) just feels great. The collective energy of it, you know? There’s been such a positive response to the blog, too. I think people enjoy it. People who know me ask about the blog in the same breath as they ask about my plays – which I don’t mind one bit, for the record. I consider Playwrights’ Perspective an important part of my work.

But anyway, deadlines. I live with someone I refer to as “The Mean Muse.” Think, for just a moment about what a muse is like – the type – coming out of Central Casting. What do you envision? My version would look like Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey. She’d wear a bias-cut satin evening gown, and lean on a piano sipping a bottomless cocktail…and yet never get too sloppy to spout inspiring witticisms. If things got dull, she’d invite Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence to stop by to liven things up – you get the idea. Okay, well, The Mean Muse is not like that at all. The Mean Muse says things like, “Are you going to write or what?” and “Put up or shut up” or, when I was in school, “Kate is going to be so mad.” A different kind of muse would probably prove derailing; she’d enjoy the gin-infused craziness and Noel at the piano in the small hours. But The Mean Muse doesn’t really go for bullshit like that.

Alumni news, in brief:

John Shea’s Junkie, produced by Argos Productions, opens this Thursday, August 25, right here at BPT…

Ginger Lazarus’ The Embyos will be part of Rhombus Playwrights’ fall reading series, at BPT in September…

The Book Club Play by Karen Zacarías opens at D.C.’s Arena Stage in October…

Michael Chernus has joined the cast of Molly Smith Metzler’s Close Up Space, which opens at Manhattan Theatre Club in December…

K. Alexa Mavromatis’ ten-minute play ‘Jinxed’ (a 2011 Heideman Award finalist) will be included in the forthcoming Smith & Kraus anthology 2012: The Best 10-Minute Plays…

The Inside Scoop on John Shea's JUNKIE, Opening Next Week!

With BPT Alum, John Shea's new play, Junkie, opening next week, I was excited to ask him a few questions about his new piece and what it's been like gearing up for the production.

Anna Pattison: Can you tell us a little bit about your creation and development process of Junkie? How has the rehearsal process shaped the play?

John Shea: I started writing Junkie, as a long monologue, maybe three or four pages, just to prove I could. My style usually consists of clipped, short sentences creating a staccato rhythm…Reading the works of other playwrights, I always admired the speeches and soliloquies…so I decided to write a monologue, possibly with the idea of it being in some shorts festival somewhere…anyway, the Stanford Calderwood Fund for New American Plays commissioned a work while I was with the Huntington and I decided to elaborate on Junkie, a piece I felt would easily lend itself to a longer work. Once I started, the character took over and I wrote a first draft in about 4 weeks…the quickest I’ve ever finished a piece, and with some expert cutting by director Brett Marks, it really hasn’t changed much since that first draft. What Brett has done is to focus more on the intimate moments, allowing actor Sean Cote to get at the emotion. I was surprised, as I’ve watched it progress, how moving it is…Brett and Sean have found a way to make the alien world (alien to most of us I think,) of addiction and rehab, human and accessible. And thank you Deirdre Benson for keeping us all on track…

Play by Bauer 'TAGged' as outstanding new script

Monica Bauer's My Occasion of Sin won two Theatre Arts Guild Awards, announced at the annual awards banquet on August 7th. The TAG awards are presented each year honoring theater produced in Omaha, Nebraska.

From the TAG Web site: "With over 35 theatre and production companies in the metro area and with more than 250 productions mounted each season, the TAG Awards allow lovers of the live theatre art form to salute the artists who give so much of themselves in entertaining us throughout the season. And for the artists themselves, recognition by peers and theatre lovers alike is a treasured honor."

My Occasion of Sin was honored for Outstanding New Script; and actress Bailey Newman won the Youth Actress Award for her performance as Mary Margaret Irzandowsky. The play was produced in April by the Shelterbelt Theatre, directed by Roxanne Wach.

Monica wrote a guest post for Playwrights' Perspective this spring, about the meandering road to this production.

Congratulations, Monica! Outstanding!

Alumni news, in brief:

Deirdre Girard’s The Christina Experiment will be part of the offerings at Newburyport’s Firehouse Center for the Arts this fall... [Actors: Auditions will be held on August 28 (1-3 p.m.) and 29 (7-9 p.m.). Call 978-499-9931 for an audition appointment. No monologue necessary. Headshot and resume requested. Actors will be asked to read from the script. Electronic script available: contact caron@firehouse.org Wed. thru Friday. Sides will be provided upon arrival.]

Melinda Lopez is featured in the reading of Rajiv Joseph’s Animals Out of Paper at Gloucester Stage Company tonight…

Werner Trieschmann’s ‘The Absolute Most Cliched Elevator Play in the History of the Entire Universe’ is included in the new Playscripts anthology Random Acts of Comedy…

Lydia Diamond and the team of the Broadway-bound Stick Fly were honored on Martha’s Vineyard yesterday…

Emily Kaye Lazzaro and Katherine Alexa Mavromatis talk about plays in the Windy City, things with ‘carrot’ in the title, and pies

Emily Kaye Lazzaro and I have something in common…aside from both being a little twisted. We have plays opening tonight in 4x2, at Gorilla Tango Theatre in Chicago. So we decided to talk about it.

               

KAM: Hey, we both have plays in this thing! Actually, you have two plays: ‘Crickets’ (which I loved at BTM13, btw) and ‘Saving DeShawn, or The Carrot Play.’ What’s that one about? Are we talking about “The King of Carrot Flowers” again?

EKL: I wish we were still talking about “The King of Carrot Flowers” but sadly, no. ‘Saving DeShawn’ is my experiment with writing about race as a middle-class white woman. More middle-class white women need to be opening the discussion about institutionalized racial inequality in America! Just kidding. But seriously, I started writing it because I was thinking a lot about the disparity I see in my own neighborhood and all around Boston and I figured I might as well start a discussion the only way I know how. And then I tried to subvert it. So combine Michelle Obama’s vegetable thing with ‘The Wire’ and throw in some jokes and a switcheroo and you pretty much have ‘Saving DeShawn, or The Carrot Play’.

KAM: That sounds amazing! I love it already! It sounds like environment was really the genesis point of ‘DeShawn’. We associate so many playwrights with specific settings – the places almost become characters themselves. Is location often the source of inspiration for you?

EKL: Absolutely. ‘Crickets’ was heavily inspired by location as well. It takes place at a summer cabin on Labor Day. So the cabin and the time of year are both really significant. But I’m inspired by all different things. ‘DeShawn’ came from me thinking a lot about my neighborhood and Boston and America and human relationships and… pretty much everything. I guess one thing doesn’t inspire me more than another.

Alumni news, in brief:

Anna Renée Pattison has served this summer as an assistant teaching artist for Underground Railway Theater’s Youth Underground, which has its final presentation this week (August 10 and 11) – a staged reading of Money Matters, an original play created to illustrate the emotions and experiences that people have around money. Admission is FREE, but call (617) 576-9278 x210 to reserve tickets ahead of time…

Emily Kaye Lazzaro and K. Alexa Mavromatis have plays opening in Chicago this week, as part of Gorilla Tango Theatre’s 4x2, a collection of short plays and one-acts that examine relationships between men and women…

Alums John Greiner-Ferris, Jess Martin and Richard Snee will all have work in Mill 6’s third incarnation of The T Plays this weekend, as will Rick Park, who starts the playwriting program at BU this fall…

Colleen Hughes and Emily Kaye Lazzaro are off to Playwrights’ Commons’ Freedom Art retreat in Rockhouse Mountain, New Hampshire! Follow the adventures of the entire group of theatre artists on Twitter @PwritesCom and here…

Playwright's best friends?

Alumni news, in brief:

Washington D.C.-based Nu Sass Productions won Best Comedy (TheaterMania.com's Pick of the Fringe Awards) at the 2011 Capital Fringe Festival for its production of Walt McGough’s Priscilla Dreams the Answer...

Karen Zacarías’ Legacy of Light opened last weekend at Mad Cow Theatre in Orlando, Florida...

Molly Smith Metzler’s play Carve received a staged reading at Chautauqua Theater Company’s New Play Workshop Festival last week...

Casting for Lydia Diamond’s Broadway-bound production of Stick Fly is underway: Open calls are being held this week in NYC...