Alumni news, in brief:

Mariela in the Desert (Mariela en el Desierto), by Karen Zacarías, opens in its world premiere on Feb. 6 at NYC's Repertorio Español’s Gramercy Arts Theater...

Emily Kaye Lazzaro's short Saving Deshawn is on the bill of Stone Soup Theatre's (Seattle) Double XX Fest this spring. And that's double X as in two X chromosomes, y'all, so get your minds out of the gutter...

Demonio at The Hunt's God of Carnage

Kate Snodgrass' Heideman Award-winning Haiku will be part of Goshen College's Winter One-Acts this weekend...

Molly Smith Metzler talked about South Coast Rep's production of Elemeno Pea with The Orange County Register...

Back by popular demand: More dates announced for Sinan Ünel's A Madperson's Chronicle of a Miserable Marriage at NYC's Stage Left Studio... 

Peggy's Properties by MJ Halberstadt will be part of StrangeDog's First Annual Beer Battered Play Festival this spring in NYC...

Here's the official announcement for Monica Bauer's My Occasion of Sin, which will bow Off-Broadway in March...

Read Donna Sorbello's article about director David Wheeler on the Actors' Equity Web site. Wheeler died earlier this month at the age of 86...

Behind the scenes at KCACTF Region 1...

They may not have won any awards this time around -- although it should be said that it's a huge honor to have work selected for regional competition, so congratulations, guys! -- but BPTers had a good time making friends at last week's KCACTF Region 1 competition at Fitchburg State University. Roving photog Kate shared a few pictures...

Colleen Hughes and Lesley University's Angel Nunez

Demonio gets "Smashed"

 

I’ve said it here before, and I’ll say it again: I’m a sucker for a fun marketing idea. And, you know, Demonio is obsessed with this show before it’s even started really, so of course he had to try it. Like, five times, because we deserve to live in a world where Mexican wrestlers pay homage to Lena Horne. It’s Friday, so Smash yourself.

A few things that have been on my mind this week

And if that title didn’t scare the bejesus* out of you and you kept reading, good for you! Here goes:

We will only be talking about this more, as the year (which is already flying by) goes on: The 2012 TCG National Conference is going to be in Beantown, y’all*. In less than 150 days! Read Teresa Eyring’s Weekly Update, which focuses on the event and ways she hopes Boston will “Model the Movement.”

I was thrilled to learn that Mike Daisey’s excellent, excellent show The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs will be returning to The Public next week. In the meantime, take a listen* to the adaptation of the monologue on NPR’s This American Life.

And, in case you missed it: As a follow-up to our [very un-scientific] look at feelings about tweet seats in Boston, playwright Jason Grote weighs in on the issue in this article from The Washington Post.

* Note the Southerness coming through in this post. Why here? Why now? No idea.

Support 'Deported'

Six weeks from tomorrow the curtain will go up at the Modern Theatre on Deported/a dream play, Joyce Van Dyke's new play about two women friends and the repercussions of the Armenian genocide. Opening night will mark the beginning of an exciting new phase of this play's journey, one that has unfolded through years of its unique development process…which you can read all about here.

This project needs your support. Here is how the Deported team describes its fundraising goals on its USA Projects page:

In an era of small-cast plays with two or three characters, this play has over 20 characters from different cultures, played by a cast of seven actors, plus seven dancers. Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, the producer, is a small non-profit theatre dedicated exclusively to the production of new plays. 

The cost of this non-profit production is $78,000, which is much more than Boston Playwrights’ Theatre's typical budget for a new play. We still need to raise additional funds. The artists have already raised over $17,000 for this production. Our USA goal is to raise the last $10,085 needed to meet the theatre's production costs. If we are lucky enough to raise more than $10,085, we will spend the additional funds on promotion and outreach to bring the play to the attention of the widest possible community.

Learn more about this amazing project on the play’s official Web site, a Q&A with playwright Joyce Van Dyke on this blog…and please consider making a donation via USA Projects. (And share this post with your friends!)

Alumni news, in brief:

Jackson Heights, 3 a.m., co-written by Les Hunter, is in its world premiere run at NYC’s Theatre 167 (produced in association with Queens Theatre) through Feb. 5. Tickets and more information here…

The Off-Broadway run of Zayd Dohrn’s Outside People – a co-production by NYC’s Naked Angels and the Vineyard Theatre – has been extended through Feb. 4…

Molly Smith Metzler – whose Elemeno Pea opens at South Coast Rep on Feb 3 – was featured in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. And, take a look at the set model here…

Monica Bauer’s short House Broken will be included in the Abingdon Theatre’s fundraiser The Denial Plays on Feb. 14…

New Voices @ New Rep Playwriting Fellow Emily Kaye Lazzaro declared Old Habits Die Hard on the New Rep blog…

Stick Fly media round up: Lydia Diamond in The Huffington Post, on The American Theatre Wing’s Working in the Theatre, and in conversation with David Dower on HowlRound’s Friday Phone Call…

Never too late

I had planned to post this on Monday. When I wasn’t able to, I was disappointed and just wasn’t going to put it up at all. But then I felt guilty about letting the week go by and decided that was the wrong attitude; truth is, the questions asked and ideas raised in these posts from other blogs are worth reading whether it’s MLK Jr. Day, Week…or any old time.

First, “Why Am I Afraid to Write African American Characters?” from HowlRound, by playwright and teacher Marshall Botvinick. Make sure you read the comments too – lots of interesting thoughts in there, including this from our own Monica Bauer: 

I grew up in a segregated city, in a Polish neighborhood. When I was 12 years old, the local Accordion Studio was turned, almost over night, into a Rock and Roll Studio, where neighborhood kids could learn to imitate bad top 40 bands. My first drum teacher was also the first black man I ever met, the late, great, Luigi Waites. I wondered how it was that Luigi got along so well with the Accordion Guy who owned the store. Thirty years later, that's turned into a play that Urban Stages will open this March, My Occasion of Sin. 

Alumni news, in brief:

Steve Barkhimer -- along with the rest of the cast of Superior Donuts at Lyric Stage -- got a shout-out in The Globe... 

A photo gallery from last week's opening of Zayd Dohrn's Outside People... 

Food Douche, a short play by Molly Smith Metzler, is included in The Urban Dictionary Plays, presented by NYC's Ars Nova Play Group at Ars Nova, Feb. 1-11...

Exactly the kind of thing that makes Google Alerts fun: Check out photographer Peter Sumner Walton Bellamy's blog, which includes creative portraits of Melinda Lopez and other playwrights...

Theresa Rebeck fan Demonio (at right, in front of the Seminar marquee) was thrilled when he learned he could download the pilot episode of one of his favorite BTM playwrights' new NBC series for free...and he thinks you should watch Smash too...

Tweet seats: Yay or nay?

In order to reach new audiences, theatres around the country are employing a range of social media tactics, among them "tweet seats" -- designated sections of the house reserved for patrons who want to tweet during the show. Locally, Lyric Stage is one theatre considering implementing such a section, and when our own Rick Park wrote this post for the One-Minute Play Festival blog last week (just the other day, John Greiner-Ferris weighed in as well), I began to wonder how we feel about this issue. I sent out an e-mail asking, How do you feel about the notion of designated "tweet seats" at live performances? Here's what some of us had to say:


Gregory Fletcher
@Fletcher10027
Perhaps for a specific production that had something to do with social networking or asked for up-to-the-minute comments, "tweet seats" might be a fun gimmick to fill some seats.  But if I'm watching a performance, the last thing I would want (as a playwright or audience member) is someone near me distracting me with movement and the light on their phone.  Despite the fact that I sometimes tweet, there's a time and place for tweeting like everything else.  And in a dark room, sitting with a tight group of people, all focused on a world we are observing or stepping into--this is not a place for tweeting.  

Off-Broadway debut for Bauer, with award-winning play at Urban Stages

Monica Bauer

My Occasion of Sin will mark Monica Bauer's off-Broadway debut with a production this spring at Urban Stages.

Here’s the official announcement:

Urban Stages is proud to announce its spring production of My Occasion of Sin by Monica Bauer – a play that was submitted during our 'Words By Women' Reading Series. 



1969. Omaha, Nebraska. Around town feet tap to new types of rhythms – to Soul, to Rock and Roll and, most of all, to Jazz! Mary and Vivian, two young girls from two different sides of town – the white side and the black side – vow to drink the jazz scene in for their own private reasons. Music seems to unite and uplift everyone around despite creed or color…that is, for a little while. Soon racial tensions grow louder than beats on a drum and the lives of the young girls are the first demolished. 



Previews begin March 16, with opening night set for March 21.

My Occasion of Sin received a workshop production at Omaha’s Shelterbelt Theatre last April. That production won two of Omaha’s Theatre Arts Guild Awards (one for outstanding script), and is currently nominated for an Omaha Arts and Entertainment Award (in the Best New Script category). The play was also was a finalist for The Abingdon Theatre’s (NYC) Christopher Brian Wolk Award in 2011.

Monica shared her account of My Occasion of Sin’s “meandering” journey to production with us here.

Congratulations on the next stop on the journey, Monica! Road trip!

Alumni news, in brief:

Zayd Dohrn and his wife Rachel

Zayd Dohrn's Outside People opens tomorrow night at NYC's Vineyard Theatre, in a co-production with Naked Angels. Check out the trailer...

This article from The Washington Post has a great quote from Karen Zacarías...

Walt McGough got some love from The Boston Globe...

Molly Smith Metzler is in rehearsal for the South Coast Repertory production of her Humana hit Elemeno Pea...

Werner Trieschmann shared a year-end recap of playwriting-related activities on his great-looking blog, and Anna Renée Hansen compared playwriting with open-heart surgery on the New Rep blog...

A look at some of what puts the oomph in OMPF

Demonio Rosa heads inside 

OMPFBOS: All the stuff (and more)

Boston Playwrights' Theatre | Jan. 7-9 | 8 p.m.

We hope you’re planning to join us this weekend for the first-ever Boston One-Minute Play Festival. Here’s a little information round-up, so that you’re ready for an exciting weekend.  

Tickets:

If you don’t have tickets yet, buy them now online or by calling (866) 811-4111.    

Live stream:

Tell your far-flung friends and fans that Monday night’s performance will be live streamed (and archived) on AVNPI/Arena Stage's New Play TV! http://www.livestream.com/newplay 

Part two of our Q&A with OMPF founder Dominic D'Andrea, in which we discuss things he's learned and what's unique about Boston

We're in the final stretch of preparations for the first-ever Boston One-Minute Play Festival, to be held at BPT this weekend -- January 7-9. Rehearsals are well underway, and directors, playwrights, and actors are offering their thoughts in the Twittersphere (feel free to join the conversation with #OMPFBOS). Proceeds from the event will support new plays in our community, and we hope you'll join us!

Today I offer part two of my Q&A with OMPF Founder Dominic D'Andrea. I feel like I've learned a lot as a festival participant, and I love what Dominic shares about the lessons he's learned along the way, in his five+ years working on this project...and the insights he's gained about Boston.  

And in case you missed it, here's part one. 


KAM: As you curate and organize One-Minute Play Festivals throughout the country, what do you learn about the communities involved? What have you learned about Boston? Are there themes, issues, styles, etc., that are unique to us?

DD: Wow, these are HUGE questions. I’ll attempt to frame this.

First, it’s important to note that OMPF does NOT tell writers what to write about. OMPF engages writers to create new work specifically for this festival, using a set of offerings: examine and create a relationship to the space of a minute; know what it is for yourself and don’t make an assumption about it; focus on creating a single theatrical moment; start from the smallest possible unit and work up. This unit can be a line, a word, an action, and image, but identifying something and building up to a minute to create meaning/consider the experience the writer is offering. It’s about the navigation of saying something in that space, while making it feel relaxed, considered, and have the opportunity to really land. Working this way as opposed to cramming a bunch of content in, which makes the experience about a clock racing down from 60 seconds. They can approach it any other way too, as long as it can be stages with four chairs lights up/down in under a minute, and provide clear emotional, visceral, or story content. All of this is to say: I give a lot of structural offerings, but never thematic. That’s up to the writer.

Stand in the place where you lived: restaurants, religion, wrestlers

The town where I grew up is known for the music it produces. (Yeah, yeah, college football also puts us on the map, and we’re proud of that too.) Many people I’ve known over the years have journeyed to Athens, Georgia to seek their musical fortunes – sort of an “If I can make it at the 40 Watt, I can make it anywhere” kind of thing, I suppose. I feel lucky to be the product of an environment that is supportive not just of music, but of the arts in general: This is the land of alligator-shaped dulcimers, entire stores devoted to handmade clothes, artfully-arranged detritus (a.k.a. yard art), and a bunch of other things that may or may not qualify as art in other regions. Like whirlygigs. And playing the saw (yeah, the tool). Truthfully, it’s a bit of a free-for-all, which can be encouraging: Sometimes I remind myself that if somebody can put a rusted-out boat motor topped with the head from a deer statue in their yard and call it art, then surely I can be brave enough to write a play.