Thanks for stopping by the booth

If you've come to see our production of Steven Barkhimer's Windowmen (which runs one more weekend!), you've encountered these friendly faces in the ticket booth: current MFA playwrights Abbey Fenbert (L) and Stephanie Brownell (R). Last weekend they told me they plan to collaborate on a play about their box office experience...Window Women! (Or should it be Windowwomen?)

Good one, guys. Start writing!

On the Ground Floor with...Michael S. Parsons

Michael S. Parsons

On April 29-May 3, work by this year’s MFA class – MJ Halberstadt (May 1), Michael S. Parsons (May 3), Rick Park (April 29), and Jaclyn Villano (May 2) – will be featured in our annual Ground Floor New Play Series, along with BPT Visiting Professor Richard Schotter’s The Sussman Variations (April 30). We celebrate these exciting writers on the blog by offering an inside look at them and their plays!

All five readings are free and begin at 7 p.m. – reserve your seat and get additional information.

KAM: Tell us a little about Sumner Falls.

MSP: At its heart, Sumner Falls is about a family in crisis. Melanie Sumner is a Deputy Sheriff in a small Cape Cod town that bears the family name. Her husband has given up his dreams, her father-in-law is proud yet damaged, and an uncle, a convicted murderer, returns from prison to shake up the family tree and bring the past to light. And then the weird stuff starts happening.

On the Ground Floor with...Jaclyn Villano

Jaclyn Villano

On April 29-May 3, work by this year’s MFA class – MJ Halberstadt (May 1), Michael S. Parsons (May 3), Rick Park (April 29), and Jaclyn Villano (May 2) – will be featured in our annual Ground Floor New Play Series, along with BPT Visiting Professor Richard Schotter’s The Sussman Variations (April 30). We celebrate these exciting writers on the blog by offering an inside look at them and their plays!

All five readings are free and begin at 7 p.m. – reserve your seat and get additional information.

 

KAM: Tell us a little about The Company We Keep.

JV: The premise of The Company We Keep is simple: upon moving to the same city, four longtime friends reunite for lunch. Of course, nothing stays simple or goes as planned. Everyone is guarding secrets, and before the main course is served, the group is rocked by betrayal and transgressions. The friendly lunch devolves into a ruthless, high-stakes struggle for power among the four friends. Things get ugly. Really ugly. I’m considering the tagline: This is not your mother’s luncheon. 

On the Ground Floor with...MJ Halberstadt

The Mayor of BPT (Photo: Ze Laing Photography)

On April 29-May 3, work by this year’s MFA class – MJ Halberstadt (May 1), Michael S. Parsons (May 3), Rick Park (April 29), and Jaclyn Villano (May 2) – will be featured in our annual Ground Floor New Play Series, along with BPT Visiting Professor Richard Schotter’s The Sussman Variations (April 30). We celebrate these exciting writers on the blog by offering an inside look at them and their plays!

All five readings are free and begin at 7 p.m. – reserve your seat and get additional information.


KAM: Tell us a little about And Then Came Tuesday.

MJH: I consider And Then Came Tuesday to be a comic tragedy -- it's light and funny but its structure suggests Greek tragedy. The plot centers around Peggy Babcock, who has hosted her weekly book club every Tuesday for as long as anyone in Rockville Centre can remember. She entices the book club with an array of delicious cakes, a view of her gorgeous garden, and news of a former book club member mysteriously filing for divorce within a week after the wedding. Despite Peggy's husband Bobby's warnings, the women begin an effort to dig up the truth about the 'newlyfleds,' recruiting the Peggy's spoiled daughter and the local hairstylist. The search becomes a race to uncover the truth when the book club begins suspecting that Peggy's efforts to dig up secrets are meant to protect a dirty secret or two of her own. I began writing the play last summer, and have been workshopping it on and off in both Ronan and Melinda's classes.

On the Ground Floor with...Rick Park

Rick Park

On April 29-May 3, work by this year’s MFA class – MJ Halberstadt (May 1), Michael S. Parsons (May 3), Rick Park (April 29), and Jaclyn Villano (May 2) – will be featured in our annual Ground Floor New Play Series, along with BPT Visiting Professor Richard Schotter’s The Sussman Variations (April 30). We celebrate these exciting writers on the blog by offering an inside look at them and their plays! 

All five readings are free and begin at 7 p.m. – reserve your seat and get additional information.

KAM: Tell us a little about Gay Guy/Fat Girl.

RP: GG/FG is about two best friends in high school in the mid-80s: Josie and Stewart. Josie is the fat girl and Stewart is the gay boy. At their prom, they pinky swear with each other that if, when they are 40, they are not married, they will marry each other. Flash forward to today. Josie and Stewart meet up again after 25 years and rekindle their friendship, which gradually starts to take on a romantic bent, much to the dismay of Lux, Josie's co-worker and roommate, and Maxie, Stewart's "drag illusionist" best friend. Not to give anything away, let it suffice to say that the show includes several raunchy musical theatre numbers, an apparition of Marie Osmond and a taste of the 80s as we see what happens when friendships are threatened and frightening prospects of an uncertain and unchartered romance shake up our foursome! 

On the Ground Floor with...Peter Floyd

Playwright Peter Floyd

On May 1-4, work by this year’s MFA class – Peter Floyd, John Greiner-Ferris, and Heather Houston -- will be featured in our annual Ground Floor New Play Series, along with Reginald Edmund’s Southbridge. Southbridge was the winner of the 2011 Southern Playwrights’ Competition, and is part of the Sister City Playwrights Exchange.

 

But first, we celebrate these exciting writers on the blog by offering an inside look at them and their plays.

All four readings are free – reserve your seat and get additional information here.

Tell us a little about your thesis play.

Absence revolves around the character of Helen Bastion, an iron-willed, indomitable woman who finds herself suffering from memory loss. As she struggles to retain control over her own mind, she finds herself having to answer the question of selfhood: Is she still the same person she's always been if she can no longer remember her past?

What makes you passionate about this idea?

I have a personal stake in this play. My mother is suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. Writing this has been something of an attempt for me to explore what the world must be like for someone whose very sense of reality is in flux, a way to understand what my mother is experiencing. (I hasten to add that while they are suffering from the same affliction, the character of Helen is not in any way based on my mother; their personalities are markedly different.)

On the Ground Floor With...John Greiner-Ferris

Playwright John Greiner-Ferris

On May 1-4, work by this year’s MFA class – Peter Floyd, John Greiner-Ferris, and Heather Houston -- will be featured in our annual Ground Floor New Play Series, along with Reginald Edmund’s Southbridge. Southbridge was the winner of the 2011 Southern Playwrights’ Competition, and is part of the Sister City Playwrights Exchange.

 

But first, we celebrate these exciting writers on the blog by offering an inside look at them and their plays.

All four readings are free – reserve your seat and get additional information here.

Tell us a little about your thesis play.

Highland Center, Indiana is a story about a man who is searching for his identity and his real father. That sounds awfully boring when I write that. Maybe it will sound more interesting when I say that it contains all my favorite things to write about: guns, whiskey, incest, betrayal, death, rape, dysfunctional families, and mole traps. Highland Center, Indiana is a very real place. You can look it up on Google Maps. (Shakespeare never could have said that even about Denmark.) My mother was born and raised there, I spent many days there. My mother’s name was Alice Anne and my father’s was JP. I had an Uncle Henry. To know exactly which are the autobiographical elements and which are pure fantasy, you’ll have to come to the reading. Even then you might not be able to figure it out.

What makes you passionate about this idea?

It is said that all writers have a bone they pick, and I think identity is my bone. Identity is a very real American issue. It’s a classic American story to hear that someone would leave their current home and life and start a new life, fabricating an entirely new life and persona somewhere else, completely divorced from their past life. Think Gatsby. But then there are those who do the opposite. They reach into and search their past to learn their true selves. The first way is smoke and mirrors, like advertising, the business Billy works in. The other way is more arduous, and it’s the way Hank chooses.

On the Ground Floor With...Heather Houston

Playwright Heather Houston

On May 1-4, work by this year’s MFA class – Peter Floyd, John Greiner-Ferris, and Heather Houston -- will be featured in our annual Ground Floor New Play Series, along with Reginald Edmund’s Southbridge. Southbridge was the winner of the 2011 Southern Playwrights’ Competition, and is part of the Sister City Playwrights Exchange.

But first, we celebrate these exciting writers on the blog by offering an inside look at them and their plays.

All four readings are free – reserve your seat and get additional information here.

Tell us a little about your thesis play.

My play, Supergravity and the Eleventh Dimension was sparked by two separate ideas that sort of crashed into each other, scattering shrapnel everywhere, shrapnel which I then tried to direct at my characters.  One idea was that of isolation, seclusion for four characters at a cabin.  The other idea was that of M theory in physics (which isn't really my idea at all, of course).  I started thinking about loss, and how each person deals with it differently, which seemed to play right into physics and relativity... and at that point I started confusing myself, and so I thought I should write a play about it.  What resulted were Dan, Fred, Leslie, and Tom (a theoretical physicist), four friends who deal with the loss of their friend, Carmen, by visiting her cabin, which then becomes a space where time and memory are twisted.

What makes you passionate about this idea?

I'm struck again and again by the human impulse to fight for explanations for loss, and how each explanation is so different, so personal.  Also, of course, I'm excited by any opportunity to totally geek out over concepts which completely blow my mind, like black holes and superstring theory.

The First Year Out

Anyone who goes through an intensive Creative Writing workshop knows the feeling of directionlessness after the final class.  How will I keep writing?  Do I have to make a living, too?  I asked Walt McGough (who received his diploma three days ago) what the first year out has been for him. 

 

Walt: I would wager that the only near-universal feeling for playwrights leaving a writing program is one of complete, abject panic. Questions start swarming as soon as you step outside of BPT's walls (or at least they did for me): "What do I do now?" "Should I start something new, or keep editing?" "How am I supposed to write plays without a weekly deadline imposed on me?" In short: "How do I stay inspired?" 

 

BU's program is a pressure cooker of good writing and great ideas, where you spend a large portion of your week sitting in a room with smart people and talking about making the art that you love. That can really spoil a guy, which made it easy to feel adrift once I was out on my own. And, yeah. A bit of panic ensued. But it got better! So much better.

And the way it got better, weirdly enough, was not writing. Not immediately, at least. Cast out into a strange and frightening world, I found that I couldn't even start thinking about writing without first establishing what I was writing for. I mean, The Art, obviously, I guess, but I needed something more concrete to un-block myself. So I researched and found new reasons. I started by just asking people I knew if they knew any festivals/contests/workshop opportunities I should be trying for, or any theatres around town I should be paying attention to. Then I went to the Dramatists Guild's reference site and pulled a few things that looked interesting. Then I started looking around Boston, and seeing what companies were in the neighborhood that I should be paying attention to. Then I laid that info all that out, put it in some kind of order, and soon I had a big honking spreadsheet full of submission information, selection criteria, and most importantly, deadlines. Beautiful, beautiful deadlines. Spaced regularly enough to keep me working. Some of the submissions involve re-tooling stuff I have left over from class, but the ones that I like most are the ones that force me to write new stuff. Because doing that reminds me that I can write new stuff, even when I'm not in school, and that's an exciting and necessary reminder. I still have good days and bad days, and it's not like I'm churning out manuscripts by the dozen every morning, but I'm still moving forward, and plugging away.

And in the meantime, I'm just recently figuring out the last piece of the puzzle: support networks. Turns out, all those smart people I got to talk to every week at BU? They didn't just disappear. They're still around. Most of them, anyway, and they're still all excited about theatre and it's still fun to talk to them about it and even share work sometimes. I also lucked into a job with SpeakEasy Stage Company, which means that I get to spend my day working in the business side of things, and get a better feel for the Boston theatre landscape. And then, also, I got engaged right after school ended, and that's been pretty fantastic all the way through.

So, yes. Blind, abject panic. But then it gets better. And it keeps getting better. And with any luck, it will continue to keep getting better. Just as long as I keep writing, and building, and continuing all of the great grand enjoyable work that I got started under the watchful eye of dear ol' BPT.

A New Play to Benefit Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Every year around this time in Provincetown, women come together to celebrate Women's Week and Breast Cancer Awareness Month. For the past 3 years, filmmaker Lynn D'Angona has organized a fundraiser event during Women's Week, promoting Women's Health Services as part of the charity she started, Provincetown Cares. The event includes a female driven play reading and a live auction, all for the sake of--as Michelle Clunie, star of Showtime's Queer as Folk puts it-- "kicking the shit out of breast cancer." Michelle Clunie has starred in each of these play readings, and will be acting again in the reading this year of Anna Renée Pattison's new play, Memorial, inspired by actual events that took place at Memorial Medical Center during Hurricane Katrina.
In previous years, the fabulous Maureen Keiller has starred in Provincetown Cares' staged readings, and recounts a memorable event at the auction last year--convincing Michelle Clunie and Georgia Lyman to lock lips: "The crowd went nuts!" Maureen recalls. And of course, it was for charity after all...

(Maureen Keiller, Michelle Clunie, Georgia Lyman; photo courtesy of Maureen Keiller)

The playwright of this year's Provincetown Cares event, Anna Renée Pattison, was part of the MFA Playwriting Program at BPT this past year, and developed Memorial primarily in a workshop taken with Melinda Lopez. An earlier draft of the play was presented last April as part of the Ground Floor Reading Series at BPT.


You can catch this year's Provincetown Cares event: Memorial, and an auction (where anything is possible) at the ArtHouse in Provincetown- Saturday, October 16th at 2pm and 6pm. Tickets are available at www.provincetowncares.com. The proceeds will benefit both local and national organizations committed to research, education and treatment services for women in our communities.


Alums, share your news with us.

3 Questions with Kate (on the MFA at BPT)

Less public than our productions but no less harrowing to our playwrights are our weekly workshops -- our classes taught (often on the set of our current shows) by playwrights Kate Snodgrass, Richard Schotter, Melinda Lopez and Ronan Noone.  And if you didn't know it:  Boston Playwrights' Theatre is Boston University's Playwriting MFA program.  I asked Kate Snodgrass a couple questions about her experience as a teacher of playwriting.   

Jake:  Can you give an example of something you experienced as a student in workshop that you try to avoid in your classrooms now?  Are you successful?

Kate: In a fiction workshop I was attending, the teacher laughed at one of the student's stories.  I don't laugh at any serious stab at playwriting--it's hard enough to write as it is.  And yes, I'm successful because I remember that student's face.

J: What play or playwright do you most often recommend new playwrights read?  Why?  

K: We're all different writers who gravitate to different rhythms, tones, worlds, and there's room for everyone in the theatre.  I wait until I understand what might encourage a particular student, and then I suggest a specific play or playwright s/he might gravitate toward.  There are playwrights with whom I think we ALL must be familiar, but...that's a different question.  (Okay.  Shakespeare, Buchner, Chekhov, O'Neill, Wilder, Beckett, Pinter, Churchill, Stoppard, LePage.  And some others.)

J: What is the most difficult lesson to teach a playwright?  

K: A point of view encompassing the three-dimensional space.