About Me

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Matthew Freeman is a Brooklyn based playwright with a BFA from Emerson College. His plays include THE DEATH OF KING ARTHUR, REASONS FOR MOVING, THE GREAT ESCAPE, THE AMERICANS, THE WHITE SWALLOW, AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR, THE MOST WONDERFUL LOVE, WHEN IS A CLOCK, GLEE CLUB, THAT OLD SOFT SHOE and BRANDYWINE DISTILLERY FIRE. He served as Assistant Producer and Senior Writer for the live webcast from Times Square on New Year's Eve 2010-2012. As a freelance writer, he has contributed to Gamespy, Premiere, Complex Magazine, Maxim Online, and MTV Magazine. His plays have been published by Playscripts, Inc., New York Theatre Experience, and Samuel French.

Friday, October 23, 2009

There are lots and lots

...of cool pieces of writing about criticism right now.

Also, Theatre Ideas is back.

Gus at Flux is writing about core values.

And when's the last time you read a little of George Hunka's blog?

99seats has lots to say and you should poke around over there too. Here's a good place to start.

As for me, I'm in a creative and confusing time. My last production was the short run of Glee Club at the Antidepressant Festival, which was extremely popular with those who saw it. Right now, we're looking at bringing it back soon (you'll be the first to know!) with perhaps another couple of short plays or another one-act to make it a full evening. I've written a few shorts that I liked, called That Old Soft Shoe, Snaking Charming and The Dress You Should Wear. I'm working on second drafts of them, and figuring out if any of them work alongside Glee Club.

I finished my latest draft of Bluebeard (recommended to you by Gus here) several months ago, and I've been sending it out all over the place. We'll see where it lands.

Also, I've started rehearsals for The Exposition, which is being developed collaboratively with Michael Gardner and the great cast over at the Brick. The writing I've been doing for this is fun, jagged, associative, patchwork.

The fact is, my work is chaotic right now and I feel chaotic. Glee Club and The Exposition come from entirely different places. Bluebeard, too. As are the new plays, which are essentially political or social satires. I'm not working from a unified theory, not even within the individual pieces. I'm writing a lot and from lots of different impulses. It makes it impossible to talk about effectively for me, which is why I'm not writing much about it on the blog.

It also means that I'm in a phase where the trappings of production, the role of the critic and the idea of expressing my values as an artist are just not on my mind. I'm trying to work, and I find a lot of the rest, frankly, distracting. I'm sure I'll eventually throw my hat into some debate here or there.

But for now, I'm just writing.

That's the part I like best. Making stuff up.

1 comment:

Joshua James said...

Was there ever any doubt Theatre Ideas would never return?

Personally, I like reading quite a few theatre bloggers, but in thinking about it, I like their blogs because I like their writing ... so even when you (or Isaac, or Mac) blog about other things (let's say, politics, film, or whatnot), I enjoy the ride.

So for me, it's often about the writing more than the topic.