More eBooks about theater

I'm liking the eBook trend. This time, it's a book by Terry Schreiber called Producing on a Short Shoelace, published as an eBook by NYTE. Certainly seems like a no-brainer for any small theater producer to pick up.

Three kinds of impossible...

Over on the Coyote Commission Blog, Kyle Ancowitz (my long-time collaborator and one of the artistic directors of Blue Coyote Theater Group) writes a post about "three kinds of impossible" things in plays.

Quote:

"As a producer, I'll admit that I often read plays with a wary eye towards impossible ideas.  By impossible, I mean ideas that are either simply unstageable with our budget or that contribute needlessly to downtown theater’s reputation for being pretentious and/or incomprehensible. Come to think of it, let’s say there are three categories of impossible:

 

• BORING AND IMPOSSIBLE: Car chases. Climactic gunfights. Enormous country-style breakfasts.
• INTRIGUING BUT IMPOSSIBLE: Thermonuclear explosions.  Singing alien plants.  Journeys to the Heaviside Layer.
• TOTALLY BANANAS AND IMPOSSIBLE: Characters vomiting mythological creatures. Giant thumbs that bleed abstraction. Talking Jewish lobsters.

Does my resistance to unconventional ideas such as these represent a failure of imagination?  Or am I just doing my job?  I want to explore this idea with our commission playwrights:  Won’t you please tell us about a time when your "challenging" and "unconventional" experiment never made it to the stage because some director or producer shut you down?  What happened next?  And who was right?"

In a giving mood? Give to your favorite theater company

It's that time of year again. I've made a bit of an annual tradition out of suggesting that you, dear reader, make a charitable donation to the small theater company or even individual artist of your choice. I certainly hope that other bloggers and tweeters will post their own year-end lists of companies to support, as well.

You can support many of your favorite playwrights by just buying their books. (Hint. Also, maybe you'd like to try here or here or  here or here. Heck, don't forget about this.)

Most of all, your favorite small theaters need you more than ever right now. Day jobs are scarce. Funding is dry. Audiences are careful with a dollar. A $50 donation to public radio is a terrific idea, and it means a lot to them. But a $50 donation to the company that just did that cool new play in a black box up the street? It's exponentially more important, more useful, and it will be put immediately to use paying for the work you love.

Here's a few examples of companies that I think would benefit from even a small donation. $25, $50, $100. Whatever you can give. Stretch this year, maybe. Give more than you did last year. But give.

• Blue Coyote Theater Group
• The Brick Theater
• The Incubator Arts Project
• Nosedive Productions
• The Amoralists

First draft of new play

Completed the first draft of my new play "Why We Left Brooklyn" this weekend. Always a good feeling.

Turkey Day

I hope you all have a lovely holiday.

Plug!

Monday plug!

Purchase The Americans for Kindle or Nook! Only $1.99!

Question

With the change to the design of the blog, the blogroll has been dropped off. Is that something you'd like put back on the site? Or do you tend to view the site through a portal like Google Reader and not see the blogroll anyhow? I'm not sure if it's something that is still good manners/necessary/expected or not, at this point.

The Occult in Modern Art - tonight

My wife, Pam, (whose awesome blog is called Phantasmaphile and should be read religiously) is presenting a lecture tonight (Friday) at Observatory called The Occult In Modern Art 101. You really must be there. It shall be smashing, informative, and inspirational.

Check out the event, and all the kick-ass events at Observatory, here.

Also

Game of Thrones! It does this thing where its just so incredibly boring that I wonder why I keep reading, and then it's good for a minute, and then it's incredibly boring again.

Please, book, please. Uncle.

Sorry for the radio silence

I've been traveling for work.

I am sending good thoughts to those in the Occupy Movement.

To me, if you have a problem with people sleeping in public parks, maybe you should be battling poverty, not the impoverished.

No, Sarah Wharton...

...you're the wonderful one!

Read all about what acting is like here.

Writing a play is like reposting an old post

I was paging through some older posts and found this one from last year, which I liked quite a bit. Here it is again.

Writing a play is like...

Juggling

I'm having a fine time writing my newest play, but it's come with a fun problem I'm not quite used to. It has extended scenes where there are many characters on stage, at basically a Brooklyn dinner party. I'm not a big fan, in instances like these, of the "everyone is just talking at once" thing. I feel like I'm trying to write a very traditional play in a lot of ways. Still, though, that requires a little sleight of hand in places, and a lot of juggling. I'll be trucking along with a little scene or progression of beats, when I realize someone hasn't spoken for quite a while. Then, of course, I have to go figure out where the heck Dawn went while Jason and Michelle were going on about moving to Columbus.

When I write a play, one of the biggest challenges for me is keeping in balance the desire to speak with instinct and spontaneity; and organizing the entrances, exits, order of speakers, fitting the pieces together. It's sort of like trying to finish a jigsaw puzzle with all the force you can muster.

Things I am absolutely not doing instead of writing

- Reading the third book of Game of Thrones
- Playing Uncharted 3
- Playing Batman: Arkham City
- Watching Fringe

That would be the behavior of a child, not a grown up with a job and things to do. I wouldn't behave that way.