Alumni news, in brief:

At The How and the Why

In case you missed it, BU’s own Ilana Brownstein curated a week’s worth of posts for Howlround’s City Series on Beantown. Offerings included this interview (conducted by dramaturg Jessie Baxter) with Lydia Diamond, Melinda Lopez, and Kate Snodgrass... (Also check out Bridget O’Leary’s Q&A with Barry and Larry. Love them.)

Brian Tuttle’s Foreverendia hits the stage at Chicago’s Black Ship Co. after Thanksgiving, and runs through December…

Karmo Sanders tells The Dramatist (the journal of the Dramatists Guild of America) what membership means to her in its centennial issue. Turn to page 18...

Voltaire and Frederick: A Life in Letters (featuring John Kuntz) is a Boston Globe Critics' Pick, but if you don’t have tickets already, you’re out of luck – the Nov. 1 performance is sold out...

Lydia Diamond’s new play Smart People will receive an unstaged reading at the McCarterLabFall Festival this weekend, Nov. 2…

Can I just say THANK YOU?!

I’m seriously loving that more and more organizations are making video of conference sessions easily available online, like the Dramatists Guild (via Newplay TV) did last month. Theatre Communications Group sent out a press release last week, outlining the contents of its online archive of video from its annual conference, held in Los Angeles in June. (This year’s TCG event was record-breaking attendance-wise, and kicked off the organization’s 50th anniversary…and Beantown will host TCG next year, so tune in and take notes, people!) Playwrights' Commons posted several wrap-ups of the recent conference of the Literary Managers & Dramaturgs of the Americas on its blog, as well as its #LMDA11 tweet stream.

These organizations (and others, of course) offer theatre artists support – legal advice, advocacy, grants, fellowships, publications – on so many different levels that it seems almost endless, and this is one more way they’re looking out for us. So, thanks DG and PwritesCom! Thanks TCG, for putting these archives at the fingertips of folks who perhaps couldn’t afford to attend; for making them available to those who did attend, and who want to share their favorite sessions with friends and followers; and for granting access to the many of us who simply fight the daily battle of the over-scheduled life and can’t be everywhere all at once.

It’s wonderful to know this information is online for everyone. Now I just need the time to watch, read, and process it all!  ;)

Alum Emily Kaye Lazzaro: an experience of the first-ever Dramatists Guild Conference

You guys! I got back on Sunday from the first annual Dramatists Guild Conference. It was really great! Well, it was mostly great. Turns out conferences as a whole are very weird things. Also, I’m really shy, so it took me the majority of the conference to come out of my shell and make some friends. But then I did make friends! So that was great. Great great great. Here’s the thing about playwrights: we’re all so crazy to even be pursuing this as a profession that whenever we meet another person who is also stupidly doing this it’s like finding a kindred spirit. It’s such a weird, niche thing to do. I saw that this was really true when I got home and had dinner with a bunch of (non-theatre) friends and tried to tell them that I talked to Doug Wright! And David Ives sat next to me at the bar! And Christopher Durang sat on the couch next to me to wait for his taxi! And nobody cared. My friends, I mean. Just because, if you didn’t see I Am My Own Wife then you don’t know how moving and thrilling and imaginative it was. And if you were never an actor then you were never in All In The Timing in school. And you might never have read anything by Durang. Because most people don’t read or see those plays. We’re making art for a very small (some would say elite) group of people. Uh oh! Sad face alert! This is the part of the recap where I tell you about the theme that kept popping up at the conference: theatre is hard and nobody likes it! Haha. No, it’s not hard. It’s fun. And lots of people like it. But the economics are all wrong. It’s too expensive and playwrights don’t get any money, ever.

An interview with a local playwright and an update on the DG Conference

Local playwright and Huntington Fellow, Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro, who has a production in the forthcoming Huntington season, recently garnered some recognition when she was interviewed by Adam Szymkowicz. Read more about Rosanna, her upcoming projects, and her experience as a Huntington Fellow.

Also, an update on the Dramatists' Guild Conference: In

addition to watching it life, 2AM Theatre will be live-blogging during the conference. If you don't know about this online community already, learn more about 2AM Theatre and follow #2AMt on twitter.

Thanks to Ilana Brownstein for the updates. Get more updates like these by joining the Facebook group, Boston & New English Playwrights.

DG to live stream events from national conference this week

Great news for those of us unable to travel to the Dramatists Guild’s national conference in Fairfax, VA later this week: The Guild will be live streaming select events, according to an e-blast sent out yesterday. Here are the details:

 

New Play TV Live Streaming Directions

In partnership with Arena Stage, the Guild is pleased to announce that a select number of events at this year's conference in Fairfax will be videotaped for live streaming on the web. For those unable to join us, follow the instructions below to view events either in real time or after the fact, by searching the archive of NewPlay TV channel offerings.

Go to the #NEWPLAY TV channel’s webpage to watch the events live – no login necessary

http://livestream.com/newplay

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.