This year's MFA class creates 'Room to Live'...

 

Wow, these guys just don't stop: Hot off last month's Ground Floor New Play Series, this year’s MFA class – MJ Halberstadt, Rick Park, Michael S. Parsons,  and Jaclyn Villano – will present four new plays (each set in a living room) at Boston University's College of Fine Arts on June 7-10. Learn more about the Room to Live Plays, check out the poster art (by Joän Mejía), and make a donation on the project’s official Web site.

Anna Renée Hansen and Bridget Kathleen O'Leary talk about New Voices @ New Rep

Around the table (L-R): Colleen Hughes, Anna Renée Hansen, Emily Kaye Lazzaro,
James McLindon, and Bridget Kathleen O'Leary. (Photo: Dana S. Hansen)

C’mon, you didn’t think we’d let Anna Renée Hansen completely out of the clutches of Playwrights’ Perspective, did you? Today, the alum and New Voices @ New Rep fellow talks with New Repertory Theatre’s Associate Artistic Director Bridget Kathleen O’Leary about the inaugural year of the program (which, in addition to Anna, includes Colleen Hughes, Emily Kaye Lazzaro, and James McLindon) and the first annual Festival of New Voices on June 9 and 10.
 
For more information (including a schedule) visit the New Rep Web site, and you may RSVP for the readings on the event’s official Facebook page. 


ARH: I would venture to say that a big question for the BPT blog readers may be: Why New Voices @ New Rep Playwriting Fellows? Oh, and what IS IT? (You do the spiel so well...)

BKO: I studied directing at Boston University and during my time in the program I spent a lot of time at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. My exposure to Kate Snodgrass and the work the students were doing led me to pursuing working with companies that had an interest in new plays and development. I chose to intern at New Rep in my final semester because of their relationship with the National New Play Network and as luck would have it, I got hired at the end of the semester. My time at New Rep has allowed me to get to know a lot of writers and participate in a regional dialogue about how we approach new work as an industry, but also gave me the chance to ask writers what it was they were looking for. Surprisingly, “a production” was not the first thing. They mostly wanted support, conversation and guidance. Nobody else works in a vacuum in this business – yet playwrights are often left to write alone and hope they get enough right to be noticed. It’s not fair. 

Alumni news, in brief:

Ginger Lazarus was on the writing team for Malarkey Films' short Ourmageddon, part of The Boston 48 Hour Film Project. You can also read what Ginger has to say about the origin of her play The Embryos on the Fresh Ink Theatre blog...

Hot off the press: Molly Smith Metzler's Elemeno Pea in Humana Festival 2011: The Complete Plays...

Coming soon: This year's MFA class (MJ Halberstadt, Rick Park, Michael S. Parsons, and Jaclyn Villano) present their Room to Live Plays...

Also just around the corner, New Rep's first annual Festival of New Voices featuring the work of this year's New Voices @ New Rep Fellows: Anna Renée Hansen, Colleen Hughes, Emily Kaye Lazzaro, and frequent BTM contributor James McLindon...

Dan Hunter in The Edmonton Journal: "Creativity is a practice, not a gift"...

Holiday weekend plans? Remember:

Congratulations to Kirsten Greenidge and Kristin Baker!

Kirsten (right) with Cherise Boothe, who won for her performance
in Milk Like Sugar (Photo: Cherise Boothe)

In an amazing week full of major events and honors, more terrific news: Boston’s own Kirsten Greenidge (her play The Luck of the Irish recently closed at the Huntington after a successful run) won an Obie Award Monday night, for her off-Broadway debut Milk Like Sugar. The play was a co-production of Playwrights Horizons, Women’s Project, and the La Jolla Playhouse.

At the Norties!

Congratulations to all of last night’s award winners and nominees, but especially to Kate, who received the Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence. Here she is at the after party, with W. Jeffrey Hughes, Associate Dean of Boston University’s Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

BTM XIV: It's a wrap

 

Congratulations (and thank you!) to everyone involved with Boston Theater Marathon XIV! What an amazing day -- ten hours of theatre has never felt so fast!!! Team Gabromatis (I made that up just now) -- Patrick Gabridge, his daughter Kira, and I -- completed our second running full running by not running. You know what I mean. StageSource's Kristin Baker and Julie Hennrikus did too, as did the anniversary-celebrating Deirdre Girard. Who else out there saw every play?

Voices of BTM XIV: Gary Garrison

 

 

 

Not Capt. Picard...Gary Garrison

There’s a special place in heaven for people like Kate Snodgrass, who work tirelessly for the benefit of other playwrights. Kate’s been pushing this rock (the Boston Theater Marathon) up the hill for well over a decade, and it never ceases to amaze me that she does so without any real audible complaints or regrets. The work that it takes to get something like BTM up on its feet is nothing short of monumental, and she does the work from a place of great love and support for her fellow artists – and, I might add, to the necessary neglect of her own work as a playwright. Still, year after year, Marathon after Marathon, she’s there in our inboxes, strongly committed with an enthusiasm and passion for sharing stories that I just don’t see paralleled anywhere else in the country.

Congratulations Graduates...and one more lesson before you go

ZUCKERBERG: The Musical!

Voices of BTM XIV: Deirdre Girard

Deirdre Girard and Steve Faria

Love and Romance at the BTM…

Sunday, May 20, is my 30^th wedding anniversary and my husband and I will be spending the entire day at The Boston Theater Marathon. It might not sound romantic but I find something kind of quirkily cosmic in the fact that while we have both individually participated in past Marathons, this is the first time we are involved in the same year. My play Frickin’ Woodpecker, about two South Boston bus drivers who contemplate the mysteries of women, Yankees’ fans, and Muslims, will be produced by Underground Railway. I feel like I hit the BTM lottery with the intelligence of director Megan Sandberg-Zakian, and the hilarious but touching performances by actors Steve Barkhimer and Barlow Adamson. 

Voices of BTM XIV: Ronan Noone

Ronan Noone

Thoughts on the Boston Theater Marathon

I have two ten minute plays ready for both 2013 and 2014.
I can't say they will be accepted, but I anticipate the opportunity.  

As it stands,
I read and reread my submission throughout the year before I submit it.
I organize a cold reading of that play.
I excise words and I replace lines until it sounds like music.

It's all a little neurotic for a ten-minute play, isn't it?
Rakish playwrights sounding out character traits in their head,
looking into open space while imagining the blocking,
the mise en blah blah,
the audience reaction,
and gathering friends for mock performances
before being fully satisfied that the piece,
the play, is worthy of submission.

Alumni news, in brief:

Ginger Lazarus, Rick Park -- and a slew of BTM favorites including William Donnelly and Patrick Gabridge -- will ride the rails for this summer's installment of The Mill 6 Collaborative's The T Plays IV: Rush Hour...

John Grenier-Ferris and Peter M. Floyd are on the bill of Hovey Players' Hovey Summer Shorts in July...

Karen Zacarías' Jane of the Jungle (with music by Deborah Wicks La Puma) opens at South Coast Rep on May 25...

BTM not enough? If you need even more short plays in your life, take a listen to the newest additions to the Emerging America Festival's podcast collection, which includes site-specific playlets by Melinda Lopez, Ronan Noone, Kate Snodgrass, and Sinan Ünel...

Some of My Very Best Friends are Playwrights.

Kristin Baker, ticket in hand

I’m doing a marathon, and that’s why Alexa asked me to guest blog here. Which makes sense, sort of. Because it is a theater marathon, not a running one.

I am not a playwright. I mean, I’ve written some plays here and there as a part of being a theater generalist (I have also acted, directed, taught and administered.) But being a playwright, I think, is as much a way of seeing the world as it is an activity.

I remember the first time I realized playwrights were actual people you could know. I saw a play by Industrial Theater written by Bill Donnelly. I wasn’t too far out of undergrad where most of the playwrights I’d encounter were dead or foreign or shrouded in mystery. I went in with no knowledge of the play or the company (free ticket offer from StageSource: more about that later). The play was Apocalypso and it was Totally. Freaking. Awesome. Totally transformative. I was completely enthralled with this world, these characters, this dialog. Mind blown. 

BTM XIV running order announced!

 

12-1 PM

Preview of Coming Attractions by Andy Dolan, Merrimack Repertory Theatre

Saving Walter Cronkite by Cliff Blake, Simple Machine

Lycanthropy by Danny Sklar, Theatre on Fire

A Game of Chicken by Sean Walsh, Centastage

Nothing Personal by Tom Kee, Actors’ Shakespeare Project

The Comfort Station by Robert Brustein, American Repertory Theater

1-2 PM

Shrapnel by Yavni Bar-Yam, Nextdoor Theater Company

Love, Billy Bunny by Peter M. Floyd, Emerson Stage

The Flying Winter Princess by Mary Conroy, Stoneham Theatre

The Experiment by George Matry Masselam, laulapides Company

Storrow Drive by Jefferson Navicky, Playwrights’ Platform

BTM XIV: The Warm-Up Laps

It’s difficult to believe that BTM weekend is just a week away, isn’t it? Here’s a look at the three plays that will be featured in next Saturday’s Warm-Up Laps readings. Presented in association with the Boston Center for the Arts, each of these new works is supported by one of the BCA’s resident companies. The Warm-Up Laps are free and open to the public; seating is limited and based upon availability. 

Check ‘em out.

The Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts
527 Tremont Street, Boston

Saturday, May 19

That very night in Max’s room a forest grew…

I put this here in case you need someone to read this book to you this week.

Maurice Sendak, 1928-2012. Check out Terry Gross' moving interviews with Sendak on NPR over the years, too.

Voices of BTM XIV: Andrea Fleck Clardy

Andrea Fleck Clardy

Although I am old enough to have a grandchild taller than me, I only got around to writing plays fairly recently. So I still feel like a fledgling, thrilled with an adolescent euphoria when one of my plays is chosen for production.

I don’t altogether like writing plays. It’s hard to get started, tough to get the character’s voice clear in my head. What I love is the rewriting, getting the tone right bit by bit, finding the pace, hearing the characters say lines I did not consciously invent. A play that started out being about death and keeping secrets evolved into a play about the deepest sort of friendship.

This is the second time I’ve had a play selected for the Boston Theater Marathon. Between the first and the second times, I took a playwriting course taught by Kate Snodgrass, the CEO and Fairy Godmother of the BTM. She focused on subtext, the meaningful message that is never explicitly conveyed. So I’ve been pondering the subtext of the Boston Theater Marathon itself.

Alumni news, in brief...grrrl power edition:

Kate Snodgrass and Bruce Ward celebrate
closing weekend of Theresa Rebeck's Seminar

Melinda Lopez will direct Purple Hearts (by Merrill Meadow) as part of Munroe Center for the Arts' Monroe Saturday Nights 2012 season, on May 12...

Here's your chance to meet Leggo and Eggo, if you haven't already: The Embryos by Ginger Lazarus will have a staged reading at The Footlight Club on May 16, the first phase of the play's development cycle with Fresh Ink Theatre. Watch for a full production later this year...

Chasing George Washington, by Karen Zacarías (with music by Debbie Wicks La Puma), is part of Orlando Repertory Theatre's 2012-13 season...

Lydia Diamond is one of an exciting group of incoming Radcliffe Institute Fellows... 

Bone China by K. Alexa Mavromatis will be included in the second edition of the college text Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief (Bedford/St. Martin's); her Jinxed will be part of Silver Spring Stage's One-Act Festival in August...

Voices of BTM XIV: Grant MacDermott

Grant MacDermott

I still sort of can’t believe something I wrote is going to be produced. I also can’t believe I was asked to write about my own writing. The fact that anyone wants to hear what I have to say is incredible; whether it be fiction and spoken by others on stage, or in a blog and read at someone’s convenience. As someone who has always been an actor, the idea of using my own words can be incredibly foreign. And to be honest, scary. So forgive if I stumble. I can blame the playwright if I sound funny on stage when I’m in an acting role. But now, I’m the playwright. Wow.

Why am I here? The Boston Theater Marathon. Let me say this: I love the BTM. I love that it is an even playing ground. The biggest actors in Boston share the stage with someone who has perhaps never done a play in their lives. The biggest theater companies with giant budgets strip down to bare bones, and the smallest companies get to inhabit a beautiful technically advanced space that they otherwise never would be able to perform in. A first time playwright like me gets to have my words on a stage that has housed great writer’s words. We are all nothing because we are all everything. That is pretty cool. And it is so fleeting that everyone treats that day with utmost respect. It feels like a theater high holy day. For me anyway. But I’m a theater geek.

Don't miss tomorrow's "supermoon"

Read more

Voices of BTM XIV: Jack Neary

Jack Neary

I’m pretty sure I’ve been represented in all but one Boston Theater Marathon since the inception of the great enterprise. I don’t know what happened that year. I probably just misplaced Ellen Colton and Bobbie Steinbach’s phone numbers or something. In any case, the Marathon has been a springtime rite for me for almost all of its lifetime. For the past few years, my plays have had the honor of occupying the final slot of the day. I don’t know if this is because the plays are good or because Kate likes me to lock up after everyone leaves the building. I don’t mind locking up, but I do wish the party would break up a little earlier so I could get home at a decent hour.

I love participating in the Marathon for many reasons, not the least of which is the theatre-savvy audience sitting out there in those plush Calderwood seats, reacting knowledgably to my show biz themes. When a playwright can email Israel Horovitz to ask permission to use his name (multiple times) in a play, and then have the man himself sit in the audience and laugh at the jokes, that’s heaven. What a community to play to, he said, trying not to end a sentence with a preposition.

Alumni news, in brief:

Michael S. Parsons -- as though he isn't busy enough this week -- has a reading his play Fire Dance at NYC's Cherry Lane Theatre, part of its Tongues reading series...

Peter M. Floyd's Absence is a finalist in the Alliance Theatre Company's Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition...

Take a look behind the scenes at Werner Trieschmann's Mozart: Revealed, performed by the Fort Wayne Philharmonic last weekend... 

Can't Wait's production of Lydia Diamond's The Inside (adapted by Tasia A. Jones) opens this week...

We blog: Walt Mc Gough on Building vs. Excavation; Karen Zacarías on Outstanding New Plays (from DC Theatre Scene); Kira Obolensky (sister of Masha) on her new play and writing with the audience in mind (from Ten Thousand Things Theatre Company's blog, TTT Talks); and Catherine Trieschmann (cousin of Werner) on Parenting & Playwriting: Having It All on HowlRound...

A great reason to venture south of the border (to Rhode Island): This is the final weekend to catch Cliff Odle in Elemental Theatre Collective's Vacancy...

Coverage of the recent Armenian Genocide commemoration at the Massachusetts State House in The Armenian Mirror-Spectator and Armenian Weekly, at which Joyce Van Dyke was honored for Deported/a dream play. In case you missed it, watch it here...