Alumni news, in brief:

August Wilson

Cliff Odle is one of the producers (as well as director and actor in different installments) of The Emancipated Century: August Wilson's 10-Play Cycle, presented by The Trotter Institute and the Performing Arts Department of the University of Massachusetts. The series -- which wraps in January -- includes FREE readings of all ten plays in Wilson's Century Cycle and related events. Next up: The Piano Lesson on Sept. 23...

This fall, Anna Renée Hansen begins work on a PhD in Drama at the joint doctoral program at the University of California (UC) Irvine and UC San Diego. She will specialize in the consciousness of theatre, queer theatre, and Indian aesthetics...

Kate Snodgrass will emcee the Nora Theatre Company's A Night to Remember: A Tribute to Mimi Huntington on Sept. 23...

Here's the trailer for Jonathon Myers' latest project, the interactive radio drama Codename Cygnus...

Alumni news, in brief:

Kate Snodgrass will be on the "Playwrights Creating Opportunities" panel at next month's Dramatists Guild National Conference in Chicago...

Ronan Noone's The Second Girl will be one of the Vineyard Playhouse's Monday Night Specials (the theatre's summer reading series of new plays) on Aug. 5...

Argos Productions will ring in 2014 with a production of Walt McGough's The Haberdasher! A Tale of Derring-Do!...

Jonathon Myers' current interactive project, featured on Polygon...

We blog: John Kuntz on his "80s ladies"; things Colleen Hughes learned from the 1991 classic My Girl; Walt McGough on the immediacy at the heart of playwriting...

Alumni news, in brief:

Jaclyn Villano’s Unanswered, We Ride is at Seattle Rep tonight – part of the monthly reading series presented by the Northwest Playwrights Alliance…

Read this nice feature about Dan Hunter’s Legally Dead in The Boston Globe…

Check out John Greiner-Ferris’ recap of Hovey Players’ 24-Hour Play Festival…

Alumni news, in brief:

Ronan Noone’s The Atheist opens this week at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre in North London…

Genevieve Jessee performed her solo show It All Looks Hand-Me-Down (formerly Girl in, but not of, the 'Hood) at the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival last month...
 
We blog: Emily Kaye Lazzaro shows off her contribution to Fresh Ink’s recent fundraiser and [since more rough weather is on the way this week] opines about How to Utilize a Hurricane Day as a Writer; MJ Halberstadt contemplates What’s Math Got to do With It?; Colleen Hughes is participating in NaPlWriMo this November [Should you be doing that too?]; and John Greiner-Ferris on his recent stage turn at Roxbury Repertory Theater…

Jonathon Myers on Mass Digi and The Importance of Community…

Alumni news, in brief:

Cliff Odle is “equal parts cuddly and calculating” in the New Rep production of David Mamet’s Race…

“I never forgot what it’s like to be 10” – Karen Zacarías on playwriting, to the Orlando Sentinel. Her play Chasing George Washington (with music by Deborah Wicks La Puma) is onstage at Orlando Repertory Theatre until Nov. 18…

Leslie Dillen is opening the THEATERWORK (in Santa Fe, NM) season as Dorothea in Lee Blessing’s Eleemosynary…

Another kind of storytelling: Narrative designer Jonathon Myers talks to Gamasutra about adapting Games of Thrones: Ascent for Facebook…

Alumni news, in brief:

Not one, but two opportunities to celebrate the talents of Steve Barkhimer this week: On Sept. 13, Bark opens in Stoneham Theatre’s Lumberjacks in Love, and the following night his Blood Rose Rising: Immaterial Girl (which he co-wrote with Ben Evett) opens at Naga in Cambridge…

Melinda Lopez takes a bow this week in The Mother F**ker with the Hat at SpeakEasy Stage…

Hey, Game of Thrones fans: Here are some screen savers of the landscapes from Disruptor Beam’s social game Game of Thrones Ascent, for which own Jonathon Myers is narrative designer and writer…

Walt McGough’s Priscilla Dreams the Answer will soon be published by Playscripts…

Alumni news, in brief:

Melinda Lopez’s Becoming Cuba is one of four plays to be read as part of this weekend’s Summer Workshop at the Huntington. BTM vet Patrick Gabridge’s Flight also gets the workshop treatment in this artist-driven event. Read all about it here…

MJ Halberstadt’s w4m opens this week, part of Boston Actors’ Theatre’s Summer Play Festival 2012. The fest – which this year carries the theme “what locals are up to” – also includes shorts by BTM playwrights Patrick Gabridge, Jan Velco Soolman, Ellen Davis Sullivan…and R.D. Murphy (the man, the myth, the legend that is Bob Murphy)…

But back to MJ for a sec: His short play Peggy’s Properties is part of the first annual Sweet Tea Summer Reading Series (Tea in a Big Mug Productions) in NYC, which continues this weekend…

BPT alum playwright (and narrative designer!) Jonathon Myers will sit on a number of writing-related panels at next week’s IGDA Summit, the annual conference of the International Game Developers Association…

Alumni news, in brief:

The Change by Peter M. Floyd and Third Time’s a Charm by John Greiner-Ferris are part of Hovey Players’ Summer Shorts 2012, opening this weekend. Also on the bill are BTM vets Steven Bergman, Andrea Fleck Clardy, and Chris Lockheardt, among others…

Emily Kaye Lazzaro on the Fresh Ink blog…

Even before it crosses the pond, Monica Bauer’s Made for Each Other is a ScotsGay Magazine Editor’s Recommendation for the Fringe… Read all about the play on the Indie Theatre Now blog. The play opens in 59E59’s East to Edinburgh Festival this week…

Jinxed, by K. Alexa Mavromatis, is one of ten ten-minute plays selected for Short + Sweet Gold Coast (Queensland, AU) in August…

Read about Jonathon Myers’ current project…

Alumni news, in brief:

Face It -- a one-woman ten-minute film written by Karmo Sanders will be presented as part of the Vancouver Women in Film Festival next month (and she acts in it, too!)...

Karen Zacarías' Legacy of Light opens this week at Ohio's Denison University... 

The cast has been announced for Monica Bauer's My Occasion of Sin, opening next month at Urban Stages...

A glowing review for Molly Smith Metzler's Elemeno Pea, which closes at South Coast Rep on Feb. 26...

Read The Boston Globe's feature about Blood Rose Rising, co-created by Steve Barkhimer...and hear Bark discuss the series' premise here...

Nice feature about Joyce Van Dyke's Deported/a dream play in The Armenian Mirror-Spectator...

Check out how Jonathon Myers puts his MFA to work...

What do theatres need to do to save themselves? Colleen Hughes weighs in, in response to Brendan Kiley's post in The Stranger...

Alumni news, in brief:

El Demonio Rosa and Cha Cha Picante enjoy the preshow at Theatre on Fire's Mojo

Lydia Diamond's Stick Fly opens on Broadway in previews this Friday. Here's a look at the load-in. And, in case you missed it, the cast and creative team in conversation at WNYC's The Greene Space...

Hey, iAddicts: You can download and play a game produced and designed by Jonathon Myers! Check out Candescent for your iPhone or iPod...

Kate Snodgrass' Haiku was a winner for some North Carolina students... 

John Greiner-Ferris has McCraney envy (Don't we all?)...

Director Melanie Garber talks about Walt McGough's Priscilla Dreams the Answer on the Fresh Ink blog...

Only quiet snacks allowed at the theatre. Johnny, I couldn't agree with you more...

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…

What’s on your summer reading list, BPT? (part one)

Whether it’s for professional development, self-improvement, or purely for pleasure, summer is traditionally a great time to kick back and read. We asked BPTers to share the titles on their night stands with us (and, not surprisingly, there’s a lot of reading going on)…

Ginger Lazarus

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. I'm not a big sci-fi reader, but I'm enjoying this classic. I randomly decided that a character in the play I'm writing reads Heinlein, and then realized I should probably know what I am talking about. So far I'm gratified by my choice. As is my husband, the true sci-fi aficionado, who has happily lined up my next ten books or so. We'll see about that...this summer I'm also hoping to get to The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest and Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life.

Emily Kaye Lazzaro

This is hardly a unique opinion, but for me summer is a time for obsessive, easy-thinking novels. Crime novels, mysteries, romantic chick-lit, young adult fiction, that kind of thing. It's a Harry Potter, Twilight, Pillars of the Earth kind of time. So this summer I am going to read the last of the three Stieg Larsson crime novels (I just finished The Girl Who Played With Fire so now it's on to The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest). Then I'm going to go full YA with The Hunger Games. Put me in a beach house, on the front porch early in the morning, with a cup of coffee and a big, fun novel and I am happy as can be. Mind you, I'm also tempering this with the full body of work of Edward Albee, Peter Shaffer, and Wendy Wasserstein, so as not to let my brain go completely mushy. It's all a matter of balance.

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

Q&A with Jonathon Myers

We recently shared the news that Snovi, a short film co-written by Jonathon was screened at the Sarajevo Film Festival last summer. As a follow-up, we thought it would be fun for Jonathon to expand on this unique experience.



The writer hard at work

There's a lot of BU energy around this film (co-screenwriter John Bernstein is the director of BU's screenwriting program, and producer Claire Wasserman is a BU alum as well). How did you all initially connect?

To answer this question and the next is really to describe the process from my perspective while giving due credit to the leader of that process.  All of the connections in this project are through another BU alumnus: the director, Reshad Kulenovic.  As the director (and essentially the director of production) he has always been the center of the entire project.  Reshad was in the MFA program in Film Production and I was taking screenwriting courses with Professor John Bernstein after my MFA in Playwriting.  Reshad and I became friends who participated in the writer/director cliché of having deep philosophical conversations over coffee at the Espresso Royale near BU Central.  It was a good combination; his focus on imagery and cinematic qualities connected with my focus on character, dialogue and story.  My play Little Red Hen was an ACTF regional finalist that came out of workshop days with the CFA.  When it was produced at BPT by the Useless Theatre Company in January of 2008, Reshad saw it and liked it.  John Bernstein suggested to both of us that we start collaborating as a writer/director combo.

We decided to enter a competitive event that challenged us to fully produce a 5 minute digital movie in one week.  Unfortunately, our schedules were tight and despite a ready script and some pre-production we need to shoot in two locations and fully edit a cut in less than three days.  I had to take up some Director of Photography duties at times and we had to work together seamlessly.  At one point -- about 50 hours into the process -- when together we had a total of around 2-3 hours of sleep, we questioned the project and considered giving up.  Thankfully, we persevered and completed the project on time.  The result had some issues, as one would expect with that schedule.  The sound in particular was rough, and ultimately that final product feels a little like a student film with better than average visual execution.   But I think we gained some respect for each others’ work ethic after that.  We vowed to work on another project again in the future.

Due to these experiences, I appreciated Reshad’s directing and he appreciated my writing.  That mutual admiration kept us connected.  I was always looking to contribute my writing to his projects and like a good director he was always looking for the good stories and writing.  Over the next year Reshad and I worked on a few different stories and I wrote multiple screenplay drafts and revisions for these shorts, ranging from incomplete drafts of a few pages to grossly overwritten drafts at around 40-45 pages.  Overall, I easily put out several hundred pages of writing and rewriting.  (My experiences of rewriting at BPT served me well.)  John Bernstein was mentoring, so he was reading the drafts and providing feedback about what wasn’t working and what needed to be rewritten.

BPT alum co-written film premieres

Snovi, a short film co-written by BPT alum Jonathon Myers, premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival in July. You can read all about it here: www.snovifilm.com. Congrats, Jonathon!


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