Category: playwriting
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Originally posted on writing.performance: At The Summit, a public conversation with prominent DC theatres’ artistic directors convened by Washington Post theatre critic Peter Marks, Ryan Rilette tried to explain why it was more difficult for prominent theatres to stage women playwrights than to stage their male peers. Part of his reply–that there were fewer…
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心想事成 (Xīn xiǎng shì chéng / All wishes come true) to all my Chinese friends (and may you have good wishes). Happy new year.
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Originally posted on San Francisco Theater Pub: Marissa Skudlarek gives us her longest blog ever, because she’s got a lot to think about. As Allison Page noted here last week, self-producing is a hot topic among theater-makers right now. On Facebook, the group “The Official Playwrights of Facebook” frequently plays host to conversations about best…
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Originally posted on Bitter Gertrude: Because what says “HAPPY NEW YEAR” better than a judgmental listicle? One thing I want to say right at the start is that this is a list borne out of my own personal experience. These are things I personally see early-career playwrights do over and over and over. I also expect…
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Originally posted on Bitter Gertrude: This guy. While I could write plenty about nonsense like Asian actors being asked to do “the accent” in their audition for “Prostitute #3” and “Kung Fu Master Criminal,” or Black actors being asked for a more “urban” accent or audition piece, I’m actually heading in the opposite direction. There’s…
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Recently, while I was sitting in on a rehearsal, a director asked me, “Why sound?” My immediate response: “Because it is like acting, but without being looked at.” “Good answer.” he said thoughtfully, and the matter was dropped. At least, it had appeared to be dropped. Yet my own mind continued to mull over my…
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I’ve made a post on my other blog, The Lark’s Nest, about sex on stage. Explicit content/NSFW.
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Originally posted on The Panda Chronicles: Am I not a panda? What is in a name? A panda by any other name would smell as…well, they would probably be just the tiniest bit whiffy, if you know what I mean…. Every once in a while, the pandas come to aid someone who has a project,…
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Originally posted on The Panda Chronicles: Greetings panda fans! I hope you have recovered from the exciting conclusion of Mr. Wu’s most recent adventure, Bears in the Air! If you missed this exciting series, check in on Friday’s post for links to the entire series. Today, we have a exciting, new episode of This Olde Den,…
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Originally posted on Ars Marginal: One of the things that always seems to trip people up when it comes to analyzing marginalized identities in stories is the difference between a story that has fucked up shit in it versus a story that says fucked up shit. This is a very important distinction that everybody analyzing…
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I want to share a guilty secret. All of my plays – my full-length plays, anyway – are about me. That’s probably not unusual; if my plays didn’t include part of me, they’d probably be pretty lifeless.
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Originally posted on The Panda Chronicles: Well, here it is, Friday at last and I completely forgot to have something ready to speed you to your weekend, with dreams of pandas dancing in your brain. What was I thinking? To be honest, the cold that wouldn’t die is still making my head a little fuzzier…
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Originally posted on wax and wane: I’d like to take this time to ponder something that might offend some of you, while others will applaud from their seats. I’m stuck on what has developed into the inevitability of the standing ovation. A standing “o” used to be special; reserved for the outstanding performance. This once…
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When playwrights go to theatre, we presumably go to enjoy ourselves. We may be thrilled, bored, surprised, offended, delighted, so many possible reactions. When playwrights are called on to give feedback on other playwrights’ work, we suddenly become scientists, detectives, housekeepers. Scientist, detective, and housekeeper are honorable professions. Nevertheless, I believe the practice of bringing…
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In the January/February 2013 issue of Theatre Bay Area, Melissa Hillman, artistic director of the kick-ass Impact Theatre in Berkeley, writes about color-blind and/or non-traditional casting. This blog post is not so much a response to that article, “In the Land of the ‘Color Blind’”, as my continuation of the discussion. And continue it must.
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Originally posted on Endless Rewrites: Pretty much everyone in the theatrical community, barring perhaps those lucky tech people whose expertise lends itself to more consistent work, works under the shadow of improbability. If fifty actors show up to auditions for a play, and the play has one male character, each actor has a 1/50 chance…
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Originally posted on The Panda Chronicles: For some reason, the share buttons did not show up on the last post (AND I forgot my daily Kickstarter link!) so here is a repeat of the cartoon I included with the reblog from Exit, Pursued by a Lark) sorry if you are getting this twice. After all,…
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Not sure whether I can really call it richer, although it was fun. I was actually shooting for “So bad it’s good.” Some of them are probably “So bad it’s bad,” but such is the life of first drafts. Yes, I wrote 31 short plays! 28 riffs on Shakespeare as performed by pandas and other…
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More importantly, am I? The 31 days of August may reveal this as I take part in the 31 Plays 31 Days challenge to write…aw, you guessed it, 31 plays in 31 days.
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Thirty-two years ago, a group of playwrights was formed. They got together, presumably on a regular basis, to read scenes from plays they had written and occassionally to hear or see an entire play read. According to the earliest PCSF history page, the first play to be read was The Jury by Harry Hattyar. Thirty-two…
Exit, Pursued by a Lark 