August 27, 2009

Fences - Community Event

SAVE THE DATE -- Monday, September 14

AUGUST WILSON'S LEGACY: A NEW GENERATION OF PLAYWRIGHTS
Join the Huntington Theatre Company for a free community event at Roxbury Community College celebrating the legacy of August Wilson and looking ahead to an exciting new generation of playwrights.

Monday, September 14 at 7:30pm
Roxbury Community College
Mainstage at the Media Arts Building
1234 Columbus Avenue, Roxbury
FREE

Hosted by Karen Holmes Ward of WCVB-TV Channel 5, the event will feature a talk with Kenny Leon, director of the Huntington's upcoming productions of Fences and Stick Fly, a panel discussion with Leon, Lydia R. Diamond, Melinda Lopez, Diego Arciniegas, Summer Williams, Kirstin Greenidge, and live performances of scenes from Wilson's work.

RSVP to 617 266-7900 x1045 or online here

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Fences by August Wilson, directed by Kenny Leon, at the Huntington Theatre Company's mainstage - Boston University Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115. Buy tickets online or call our box office at 617 266-0800. Box Office locations and hours click here.

August 25, 2009

Fences - Video & Podcasts

Our first podcast! Posted over at huntington.org - director Kenny Leon about what it mean to him to direct fences. We'll have more to come as the season winds up.

There's also some great video with August Wilson from some of our previous seasons and a slide show from the NY Times at the same page. Enjoy !

What do you think? Comment here

Fences by August Wilson, directed by Kenny Leon, at the Huntington Theatre Company's mainstage - Boston University Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115. Buy tickets online or call our box office at 617 266-0800. Box Office locations and hours click here.

August 19, 2009

Catching Up

I've been back 8 days now - and still feel rested! It was a great break and I really, really, really loved the change of pace.

Things are starting to get busy around here with the subscription campaign in full force, most of the production staff back from their summer gigs working on the shows, and rehearsals for Fences just began yesterday. Single tickets go on sale tomorrow.

I've got lots to tell you about so I'll dish it out in small servings.

I would like, first of all, to welcome Lisa Timmel to the blog. Lisa is our Director of New Work, and she joined us here at the Huntington this past spring to help us keep our new play development programs moving forward. She gave us several interesting blog posts during this summer's Breaking Ground festival and I'm looking for hearing from Lisa here on a regular basis.

Ms. Timmel recently served as the interim dramaturg and advisor to the Emerging Writers Group at the Public Theater. She has developed work by Adam Bock, Jason Grote, Sarah Ruhl, Francine Volpe, Sheila Callaghan, Steven Sater/Duncan Sheik and Tanya Barfield among others.

Previous positions include artistic producer at Carole Shorenstein Hayes Productions and director of new play development at Playwrights Horizons. Notable productions developed at Playwrights include I Am My Own Wife, Grey Gardens, Small Tragedy, and The Pain and The Itch.

Trained in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism at Columbia University (MFA), she has worked with various theater companies and developmental organizations including Sundance Theater Institute (White Oak), New Dramatists, Actors Theatre of Louisville, National Actors Theatre, INTAR, Classic Stage Company, and New Georges.

Lisa served as an adjunct professor of dramatic literature at NYU and as the staff dramaturg at The Juilliard School. Ms. Timmel holds a BA in English Literature from Kenyon College.

Welcome Lisa!

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August 17, 2009

Fences Casting Announced

THE CAST

John Beasley leads the cast in the role of Troy and makes his Huntington debut. He previously performed the role in The Kennedy Center’s August Wilson’s 20th Century, at the New American Theatre, and at the John Beasley Theatre, of which he is the founder. Other regional credits include August Wilson’s Two Trains Running (Goodman Theatre, dir. Lloyd Richards), Jitney (Alliance Theatre, dir. Kenny Leon), and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (JBT). He has starred in over 35 films including Rudy and The Apostle and appeared on television for four years on the WB’s “Everwood.”

Brandon J. Dirden plays the role of Lyons, Troy’s son from a previous marriage. On Broadway, he appeared in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival production of Prelude to a Kiss; Off Broadway, he appeared in The First Breeze of Summer (Signature Theatre).





Crystal Fox returns to the Huntington having previously appeared in Blues for an Alabama Sky in 1997 to play Rose, Troy’s wife. Fox’s credits include Gem of the Ocean at Seattle Repertory Theatre; A Raisin in the Sun, Comedy of Errors, and The Piano Lesson at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival; Seven Guitars and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom at the Alliance Theatre; and the film Driving Miss Daisy.

Eugene Lee plays Jim Bono, Troy’s friend and fellow garbage collector. Mr. Lee previously appeared at the Huntington in Radio Golf and Gem of the Ocean. His regional credits include August Wilson’s 20th Century at The Kennedy Center; August Wilson’s Two Trains Running at Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre; and Home, Sons, and Fathers of Sons with the Negro Ensemble Theatre, of which he was a member.


Warner Miller plays Cory, Troy and Rose’s son. He recently appeared in The Old Globe’s premiere of Since Africa. Other credits include August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Syracuse Stage) and The Piano Lesson (Geva Theatre and Indiana Repertory Theatre).


Bill Nunn plays Gabriel, Troy’s brother. Mr. Nunn’s many credits include A Raisin in the Sun on Broadway, August Wilson’s 20th Century at The Kennedy Center, and the Spider-Man films.




PRODUCTION ARTISTS
The creative team for Fences includes scenic designer Marjorie Bradley Kellogg (Any Given Day, On Borrowed Time, Lucifer’s Child, and many more on Broadway); costume designer Mariann Verheyen (many Huntington credits, most recently Present Laughter; Peter Pan on Broadway); lighting designer Ann Wrightson (Blues for an Alabama Sky, A Raisin in the Sun, and Scenes from the Mississippi Delta for the Huntington; the Broadway (Tony Award nomination), London, and national tour productions of August: Osage County); and sound designer Ben Emerson (The Miracle at Naples, What the Butler Saw, and many others for the Huntington; Independent Reviewers of New England Award for The Seafarer for SpeakEasy Stage Company). Composer Dwight C. Andrews (From the Mississippi Delta for the Huntington; six Broadway productions of August Wilson plays) contributes original music. Production stage manager is Leslie Sears; stage manager is Vanessa Coakley.

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Fences by August Wilson, directed by Kenny Leon, at the Huntington Theatre Company's mainstage - Boston University Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115. Buy tickets online or call our box office at 617 266-0800. Box Office locations and hours click here.

Fences Announced

Here's the skinny from the Fences press release:

The Huntington Theatre Company opens its 28th season – a season of American stories -- with August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Fences, the sixth chapter of his groundbreaking ten-play cycle about the 20th century African-American experience. Kenny Leon (Radio Golf, Gem of the Ocean, A Raisin in the Sun), acclaimed director and Wilson’s final collaborator before his death, returns to the Huntington to helm the production, which stars John Beasley (Two Trains Running, Jitney, “Everwood”).

“The Huntington provided August with an artistic home throughout his career,” says Artistic Director Peter DuBois. “Fences is one of only two plays from his magnificent opus that we have not yet produced. This fall we take one step closer to completing his cycle with one of his greatest. Kenny has been such an important part of the Huntington’s special relationship with August and his work. I am thrilled to welcome him back.”

Playwright August Wilson was the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, a Tony Award, an Olivier Award, and eight Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for the ten chapters of his groundbreaking decade-by-decade exploration of the heritage and experience of African-Americans in the 20th century. The Huntington played an integral part in Wilson’s play development process, producing eight of his ten works before transferring them to New York: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone-1910s (1986), The Piano Lesson-1930s (1987), Two Trains Running-1960s (1990), Seven Guitars-1940s (1995), Jitney-1970s (1998), King Hedley II-1980s (2000), Gem of the Ocean-1900s (2004), and Radio Golf-1990s (2006). Wilson died in 2005, just after completing Radio Golf, his final chapter.

Director Kenny Leon was Wilson’s final collaborator and has directed all ten of Wilson’s plays. His relationship with the Huntington began in 1993 when he helmed From the Mississippi Delta. Other productions for the Huntington include A Raisin in the Sun with Esther Rolle (1995) and Blues for an Alabama Sky (1997) with Tony Award winner Phylicia Rashad. For the Huntington and then on Broadway, he directed Gem of the Ocean with Rashad (2004) and Radio Golf (2006). In 2008, he served as Artistic Director of August Wilson’s 20th Century at The Kennedy Center, a six-week festival staging readings of the works with sets, costumes, and lighting. Leon is the founding artistic director of True Colors Theatre Company in Atlanta and served as artistic director and associate artistic director of Alliance Theatre. He directed the 2004 Tony Award-winning Broadway revival and the Emmy Award-nominated television film of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun starring Sean Combs, Rashad, and Audra McDonald.

Fences was a seminal work in Leon’s development as a theatre artist. “I saw Fence
s, and it was the first time I felt like my grandmother’s and mother’s rhythms were onstage. It was so powerful – I’d never heard them before.” Leon is looking forward to revisiting the play. “This will be my fourth time, and it can be hard to direct a play more than once because after a while you feel you’ve exhausted it, but this hasn’t been the case with Fences. It feels like a new play every time. I’m always making new discoveries.”

Leon recalls the role the Huntington played in Wilson’s career and in their relationship. “I dearly miss August,” Leon recalls. “The last time he was healthy was the time we spent in Boston working on Gem of the Ocean. So when I think of August, I think of us walking on Huntington Avenue – starting out for a five minute conversation and talking for two hours.”

Fences is the story of Troy Maxson, a former Negro Leagues star who peaked too soon for baseball’s integration and instead hit the ceiling of racial prejudice. Working as a garbage collector in 1957 Pittsburgh, Troy is resentful of a world that denied him the opportunities for the national success he feels he deserves. Troy’s son Cory, an emerging football star, sees the world through very different eyes than his father, but paralyzed by his bitterness, Troy refuses to support his son’s ambitions. Meanwhile, Troy’s wife Rose yearns for a true outlet for her love,
his son Lyons strives for his father’s love and respect, and his brother Gabriel, a mentally-disabled war veteran, offers Troy a different perspective of the world.

The Huntington’s season of American stories is the first in the Company’s 28-year history comprised entirely of plays by American writers. The plays of the season relate to one another through stories of opportunities lost and found, of intergenerational struggles and successes, and of the most intimate and meaningful relationships. Drawn from some of the best writing the country has to offer, the Huntington will engage its audience in a season-long conversation about issues of race, class, values, and a shared American experience. The African-American experience is explored throughout the season, from the Civil War (A Civil War Christmas), to the 1950s (Fences), to today (Stick Fly).

“This season at the Huntington, we are taking on a range of compelling American writing,” says DuBois. “Each production offers us a singular point of view about the American experience, and I'm very excited by the diverse perspectives these artists bring.”


Leave your comments here.

Fences by August Wilson, directed by Kenny Leon, at the Huntington Theatre Company's mainstage - Boston University Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115. Buy tickets online or call our box office at 617 266-0800. Box Office locations and hours click here.

August 10, 2009

In Praise of the Actor’s Voice

Where does a writer’s voice come from? Beats the hell out of me. But it’s not terribly uncommon to be able to guess at what other kinds of art a playwright gets up to in the other places of his or her life. Poetry, movies, comic books, and music all leave traces on plays. That is to say, if a playwright also writes comic books, certain tropes and storytelling techniques from that literary form often show up in his plays. And vice versa. There’s nothing better for a playwright who struggles with structure than to spend a few years toiling away on a police procedural type television show. It makes perfect sense that who we are in one area of our creative, work or personal lives bleeds into who we are in other areas.

Huntington Playwrighting Fellow Jacqui Parker is a well-known actor and producer in Boston. Her play Jeanie Don't Sing No Mo’ has been a long time coming. She started it in 2005 and picked it up again to work on when she became a fellow. In reading the drafts, I understood intellectually that the language, the structure of the dialogue, is intended to work in a certain rhythm. But, the story is long, the relationships are complex and I wondered how and if it would really come together as a play. Well, dear reader, you’ll be happy to know that the play came together in the reading in a way that I had not anticipated.

As the cast practically sang their way through the script, I remembered that the writing is informed by an experienced actor’s point of view. The actors, of course, understood it immediately. It is the hardest kind of writing for me to recognize, not having been an actor. Ironically, it is often the kind of writing I find most pleasurable. It was a delight really hearing Jacqui’s voice in this play for the first time.

- Lisa Timmel, Director of New Work

And Now for a Complete Change in Tone: Lydia Diamond and LIZZIE STRANTON

I have a huge girl crush on Lydia Diamond. She is smart, lovely, funny and genuine, and, as we learned during her Breaking Ground reading Tuesday night, she can tell a good dirty joke. It’s like I died and went to dramaturg heaven.

Lydia’s brand spankin’ new comedy, Lizzie Stranton, is a very loose adaptation of the Greek classic, Lysistrata. Now, for those of you who don’t remember your freshman intro to drama class, the original tells the story of a group of Greek women who decide to boycott sex until their men stop the Peloponnesian War. If you haven’t read it, edumacate yourself.

Lizzie Stranton takes place in 2016, and the first lady, a woman who just so happens to resemble the ever girl-crush worthy Michelle Obama, exhorts the women of the world, a group far less repressed/oppressed than the women of ancient Greece to, well, you know.

The great joy of Lydia’s play is its earthy and genial humor. Jokes about sex (and women) are the staple of every slick and cynical stand-up comic (and the movies they make). So this particular mature-themed comedy is notable in how it combines truly filthy jokes without gratuitous exploitation. But fundamentally this play is not about sex; it’s about the long war and the seemingly unanswerable question of how to end it.

The draft we heard read on Tuesday is a fairly early one so there was much to be learned about how the text plays. Afterward, Lydia turned to me and said, “This play needs an instigating event.” Did I mention dramaturg heaven?

-Lisa Timmel, Director of New Work

August 4, 2009

Form vs. Function, Structure vs. Content and other false dichotomies

More from Director of New Work Lisa Timmel:

Joyce Van Dyke’s Deported/a dream play dramatizes the Armenian Massacre of 1915 and its repercussions on a survivor by drawing on the rich tradition of expressionism in writing that came out of the traumas of the birth of psychology and the horrors of the 20th century. That is a nice little thesis, isn’t it? Is it correct or true? Maybe. Anyone can have a theory about or an opinion on a piece of writing; the crux is what to do with it. I want to write a little bit about the legacy of modernism in theatre with regard to the choices writers have to make in crafting a play.

Modernism very broadly speaking taught us to look at the structure of things as originating from content; that form should follow function. Yesterday, I posted a bit about the function of a reading in terms of new play development. By implication, the content is a bit beside the point. As with most things, it’s more complicated than that. Dramaturgs and directors have spent a lot of time coming up with creative ways of making readings more communicative to an average audience about what the end result would look like (trusting product over process?). Deported/a dream play has been through several readings and workshops recently. Director Judy Braha and the actors have been working with Joyce for about two years developing the piece, which has a stylistically expansive dramaturgy. There are songs; there are dances; there are objects and images of great symbolic importance. None of which I allowed in yesterday’s reading because I had the sense that the text was getting lost in the development process. Did I have any proof? Nope. It was a just a hunch. In any case, I needed to hear the text and I have yet to figure out how to listen to projections.

Ultimately, I believe it’s sometimes important to pay attention to the established structure and ignore the demands of the content as part of a development process. On the one hand, theatre seems like an almost endlessly pliable art form. It truly is whatever you want it to be, from guerrilla street theatre to Broadway. On the other hand, the satisfaction granted by an engaging, disciplined and familiarly drawn narrative is impossible to deny. Herein lies the rub when approaching the content of Joyce’s play. How do you write about a generation of survivors who steadfastly refused or simply did not have the ability to translate their experience into narrative? To tell the story of her ancestors who were shamed into silence about their own horrific experiences, the writer has to find a storytelling form that is neither glib and easy, nor inaccessible to the audience who does not carry this culture memory. How do you tell a story that could not be told until after it had been superseded by ever more efficient atrocities? What is the structure that can allow for the content of this story and when does the style of piece interfere with the substance?

What I love about all those modernist mad men creating new forms of theatre and writing manifestos while Europe burned around them is that they bequeathed to us an almost bottomless bag of tools for storytelling. But a creative life with out boundaries is hard to navigate. Joyce, a fiercely intelligent writer, is clearly up to the task of finding the balance, of synthesizing the competing impulses at play in her current work. I can’t wait to see where she takes us next.

Tonight: Lizzie Stranton by Lydia Diamond.

August 3, 2009

In Media Res: Random Thoughts on Theatre and New Writing

From Director of New Work Lisa Timmel:

Inherent in making theatre is a tension between process and product, journey and destination. Many theatre practitioners invoke the journey as the most important aspect of creating art. Broadway producers, notoriously, are all about the end product, one that will sell tickets regardless of quality. The truth?

Well let's turn to that old standard, Ecclesiastes: "...God shall judge the righteous and the wicked..." No wait, wrong verse. Here's the one I mean: "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: ...a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak..." (If you've never read Ecclesiastes, you should. Now.)

Our Breaking Ground Reading Series is our time for process: a time for casting away wonky scenes and superfluous characters, a time for layering ambiguities, and a time for sewing up loose ends. It is a time for us to re-examine a play by listening instead of reading or seeing. It is just one of many processes a play and its creators go through on the road to production. By hearing it out loud read by other theatre artists, working in collaboration with a director, and feeling how it works with outsiders in the room, the playwrights can learn a lot about how and if this text will function as a production. The reading, which might seem like a "product," is in fact pure process. It informs the next step in the journey.

But for now, for the next three nights, we've invited you to join us in the middle of the journey. You're picking up the story of these plays in media res. And by doing that, by joining us in listening to a new piece of writing, you are becoming a part of the work itself. And good work, as you will learn from reading Ecclesiastes, is a key component of a good life.

Tonight we'll be hearing Deported / a dream play by Huntington Playwriting Fellow Joyce Van Dyke. More on that tomorrow.

For those of you who are joining us this week, please post your thoughts and ideas.

Breaking Ground: "Deported / a dream play" tonight

ArtSake, the MCC's blog, recently posted a great interview with Huntington Playwriting Fellow Joyce Van Dyke, whose play, Deported / a dream play will be read tonight at the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA as part of Breaking Ground. Check out the interview and join us tonight at 7pm - RSVP at tickets@huntingtontheatre.org or 617 266-0800. Readings of plays by Lydia R. Diamond and Jacqui Parker are tomorrow and Wednesday, respectively, also at 7pm.

Playwriting often travels a path from solitary labor to deep collaboration with other artists. Playwright Joyce Van Dyke has crossed back and forth between both ways of working - and between improvisation, personal history, and invention - to create Deported / a dream play. Joyce, whose play will be read on Monday, August 3, 7 PM as part of the Huntington Theatre Company Breaking Ground Festival of New Play Readings, spoke with us about the surprising journey of crafting a new work of theatre.

ArtSake: Deported / a dream play grew out of improvisational workshops with a group of actors. Is this the first time you’ve developed material that way? What has surprised you about that experience?

Joyce: I’ve never done anything remotely like this before. There were many, many surprises including how much fun it was to work this way, how eager all the actors and Judy [ed. Judy Braha, the director] were to help create a play (rather than receiving a finished script to interpret), the thrill and relief of feeling that I was not all alone as a writer, that I was sustained by everyone in the group. Because the process was completely new to me, I had no idea what the outcome would be, if it would even yield a play and, if so, would I feel like I’d written it? And that turned out to be another surprise, that the resulting play feels simultaneously like it’s mine and ours.

ArtSake: At the core of the play is a true story, the experiences of your grandmother and her friend during the 1915 Armenian genocide. What have you found to be the major challenges (and rewards) of working with such personally important material?

Joyce: I grew up aware of my grandmother’s and other Armenian relatives’ experiences during the genocide. It was knowledge that I fled from in the sense that for most of my life I avoided learning any more of the history. Writing this play gave me a purpose and perhaps a shield to venture into that territory, as well as the challenge of trying to find the aesthetic form for this overwhelming material. I also began to feel my way into an understanding of my grandmother’s lifelong refusal or inability to speak about what she experienced. To my amazement, partway through the writing of the play I started to feel a sense of happiness, despite the harrowing material, that never left me. There is both sadness and satisfaction in my sense that my relationship to my Armenian grandparents is so much closer now than it was while they were alive. I felt a deep sense of obligation to this material – to tell the truth, to do justice to the characters – impulses that belong to playwriting in general, but that operated in a doubly potent (and sometimes conflicting) way here, both on the historical/non-fictional plane and on the level of the drama. At times I felt my control of the play wrenched away almost physically by the primary material – some of which included the words of my grandmother and her friend, the play’s two main characters. At times during the writing I simply had to yield to the power of that reality. I gave way, and said, I’ll go back and rewrite this, I’ll go back and turn it into a play, but first their story must come out.

ArtSake: Judy Braha, the director of your reading at the Breaking Ground Festival, also directed your play The Oil Thief at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre in Fall 2008. How does an ongoing relationship with a director impact the evolution of a new work?

Joyce: Judy’s direction of The Oil Thief came about because I’d already been working with her over a period of about two years developing Deported, which was our first collaboration. So I already knew she was a director who could help me see what my play wanted to be – and I knew there was still work I wanted to do on the script of The Oil Thief. Judy is an unusual combination: very patient, very open (in a way that frees others), and very exacting. With The Oil Thief, she did some of the same things she’d done with Deported: for example, asking me to write what we called a “download” of everything that was swirling in my mind at all levels about the play’s issues, dreams, images, metaphors, characters, etc. Doing this turned out to be very helpful to me in revising both plays, and also in helping me to hold onto their original impulses. In terms of Deported, the collaboration with Judy was intrinsic to the whole process and resulting play. I might well have written a play on my own about the genocide, but it would never have been the play that emerged from our process. For a writer to have an ongoing relationship with a director you can trust completely both personally and artistically – well it has to be a good thing, doesn’t it? We all want to trust, and we all want to work with people we can trust. I think it’s hard to generalize because there’s no recipe – that’s the whole point, everything depends on the quirks of the individuals involved, their shared aesthetic, how they complement each other, the specific ways they talk and work together. For me the experience has been liberating, consoling, encouraging, inspiring and more.

ArtSake: Before turning your energies to playwriting, you taught Shakespeare and poetry, and worked as a speechwriter in D.C. Can you talk about how those “past lives” reverberate in your current work as a playwright?

Joyce: I think the reverberations are very extensive and deep – especially with respect to teaching and Shakespeare – but it’s not easy to put my finger on where and how and why. And it’s not as if I am always drawing on those past experiences in a conscious way. For example, Hamlet ended up becoming a sort of shadow-play that is woven throughout The Oil Thief, but not by design. It’s just that one character in The Oil Thief is an actor, and he needed to be cast in something and I wanted it to be a recognizable role so I made him Claudius in Hamlet. It was a simple decision, I thought. And then very much to my surprise, it was as if I’d opened a gate and Hamlet began flowing into The Oil Thief to an almost alarming extent to me. Right now I’m starting to work on a new play about a production of Othello. But it’s not as if I am trying to base my plays on Shakespeare’s or anything like that. The Othello story interests me because it’s about a real historic production of the play, and it’s a backstage story – which is always fascinating – although this particular situation also has big cultural and political ramifications. The fact that I also get to be immersed in a Shakespeare play that I love is part of the personal pleasure of working on this project. A lot of what I am conscious of in terms of reverberations has to do with technical and structural things or ways of thinking about character or the use of language. Or attitudes toward the audience. I think the audience is a brilliant organism, and I think I derived that sense from Shakespeare. As for the time I spent writing in D.C. – it’s a reservoir I’d like to draw on, but haven’t yet. I’ve had quite a few Washington characters and themes that at first loomed large and then were pruned out of plays I’ve written. I’d like to center a play in D.C. In America hardly anyone writes plays (at least that that I’m aware of) about the people who run the government. Isn’t that strange? Why do we not write about the center of power in politics, and also in corporate life?

ArtSake: What’s next for you?

Joyce: I’ve just finished revising Deported / a dream play for the Breaking Ground reading at the Huntington on August 3 which I’m excited about. Hearing this newest version of the play along with an audience will give me a feeling for the whole – which you can only get with an audience’s contribution – the rhythms, proportions, sense of flow, and anything about the storytelling that needs work. I’m sure I’ll be making further revisions based on what I discover from the Breaking Ground reading. I’m also working on a couple of new plays, including the Othello play. And then there’s always the work of trying to get productions.

Joyce Van Dyke received the 2009 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding New Script for The Oil Thief, which was commissioned by the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloane Foundation Science and Technology Project, and received its premiere in 2008 at the Boston Playwright’s Theatre. Her play A Girl’s War premiered at New Repertory Theatre in 2003. Joyce is a Huntington Theatre Playwriting Fellow, and her play Deported / a dream play will be read on Monday, August 3, 7 PM, at the Carol Deane Rehearsal Hall, Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts as part of the Huntington Theatre Breaking Ground Festival of New Play Readings.