Gearing Up for the Boston Theatre Marathon

From Sam Lasman, Literary Professional Intern

This weekend (May 11 and 12), Boston Playwrights’ Theatre presents the 15^th annual Boston Theater Marathon and the associated Warm-Up Laps reading series.  The Warm-Up Laps, now in their fourth year, present free, public readings of new plays by area playwrights, and the Marathon showcases ten hours of ten-minute plays by local writers, each produced by a different New England theatre company. Actors and directors volunteer their time, and all ticket proceeds go to the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund, a non-profit organization that provides financial relief for theatre artists and organizations who face dire need and require financial assistance.

As you might expect, a huge number of Huntington staff members, 

associated artists, and other friends are involved in the fifty plays that comprise the Marathon and the three Warm-Up Labs, both of which will take place at the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA (the Huntington donates the venue each year). The Warm-Up Laps are on Saturday at 12pm, 2pm, and 4pm in the Deane Rehearsal Hall. The following day, the Marathon itself runs from 12pm – 10pm in the Wimberly Theatre. 
Five ten-minute plays run each hour, followed by a ten-minute break.

Amongst the Huntington affiliates whose work will be presented this weekend is 2010-2012 Huntington Playwriting Fellow Miranda Craigwell, whose Shelter will be read on Saturday at 2pm. It is directed by the Huntington’s Associate Producer, M. Bevin O'Gara. Learn more.

The Huntington’s entry in the Marathon, Saturday Matinee by Allan Appel, will perform in the 5pm hour of plays on Sunday. It is directed by yours truly, Sam Lasman (Literary Professional Intern), produced by Ali Leskowitz (Artistic Producing Professional Intern), and features Our Town actors Nicholas Carterand Jay Ben Markson.

Other plays with Huntington staff involvement include:

• Drive by James Wilkinson, produced by the Boston Children’s Theatre in the 2pm group and featuring Robert Orzalli (Calderwood Pavilion Professional Intern)
• Cleavage by Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich, produced by The Lyric Stage Company in the 6pm group, directed by Anna Trachtman (General Management Professional Intern) and featuring Paul Melendy from the cast of Ryan Landry’s “M”
• Rocky Road by Elisabeth Burdick, produced by Nora Theatre Company in the 8pm group, directed by Vicki Schairer (Assistant to the Artistic Director).

The work of many Huntington Playwriting Fellows will also appear in the Marathon, including:

• Joyce Van Dyke’s White Hole, produced by the Boston Center for American Performance, in the 12pm group
• John Kuntz’s The Nice Hotel, produced by Happy Medium Theatre Company, in the 1pm group
• Patrick Gabridge’s Curse the Darkness, produced by New Repertory Theatre, in the 3pm group
• Sinan Ünel’s Last Flight Out, produced by Provincetown Counter Productions, in the 4pm group
• Ronan Noone’s Boyfriend, produced by the Salem Theatre Company, in the 6pm group
• Lila Rose Kaplan’s The Chapel Play, produced by the American Repertory Theatre, in the 9pm group

Bad Habit Productions, helmed by Daniel Morris (BU Theatre House Manager) and Meg O’Brien (Manager of Education Operations)  is producing Red Drink by Obehi Janice, directed by Jeff Mosser, in the 12pm group.

And, of course, the entire Marathon is organized by HPF Kate Snodgrass, who is now  Artistic Director at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre.

Learn more about the Marathon and get your tickets on BostonTheatreScene.com. We look forward to seeing you there!

Hit "The Luck of the Irish" Sets Huntington Record as it Closes

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Rebecca Curtiss, rcurtiss@huntingtontheatre.bu.edu / 617 273 1537

PHOTOS: huntingtontheatre.org/news/photo-library

“THE LUCK OF THE IRISH” CLOSES
AS HUNTINGTON THEATRE COMPANY’S HIGHEST GROSSING AND HIGHEST ATTENDED WORLD PREMIERE AT THE CALDERWOOD PAVILION AT THE BCA IN SEVEN YEARS

 (BOSTON) – The Huntington Theatre Company’s production of Huntington Playwriting Fellow Kirsten Greenidge’s The Luck of the Irish closed yesterday as the highest grossing and attended Huntington world premiere at the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA since the fall of 2004. The Luck of the Irish played for a total of 41 performances from March 29 through May 6, including a one-week extension due to popular demand that was announced on April 13. Ticket demand for The Luck of the Irish was so high that an advanced waiting list was introduced in April and final extension performances were sold out.

The production, which was directed by Obie Award winner Melia Bensussen, received universal critical acclaim:

• “Superb! Kirsten Greenidge is a writer of compassion and deep understanding...How rich Greenidge’s dialogue is, how satisfyingly detailed the two interwoven stories are, and how uniformly well acted The Luck of the Irish is.” – The Boston Globe

Now Accepting Applications for Huntington Playwriting Fellows Program

Huntington Theatre Company is now accepting applications for the 2011-2013 cohort of Huntington Playwriting Fellows (HPFs). Huntington Playwriting Fellows have a home at the Huntington with two-year residencies during which they participate in a writers’ collective with the artistic staff, attend Huntington productions and events, are eligible for readings and support through the Breaking Ground reading series, and receive a modest stipend. The HPF program is supported by the Stanford Calderwood Fund for New American Plays.

The Huntington is interested in fostering artistic relationships with local playwrights at all stages of their careers, from emerging talents to established professionals. The HPF program provides a framework for an in-depth two-year artistic conversation and a long-term professional relationship. It also encourages conversation in the Boston playwriting community. Past participants are leaders of the local community whose plays have been produced on the Huntington’s stages and throughout the country.

“I love being a Huntington Playwriting Fellow,” says Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro. “There’s a forty-year age span in our small group and an exciting range of styles and subject matter. Our bi-weekly discussions, under the sharp and genial direction of Lisa Timmel and Charles Haugland, are lively, helpful, and fun. I’ve never worked harder.”

Jason Dirden and Nikkole Salter in HPF Lydia R. Diamond's Stick Fly

 Many past HPFs have been produced by the Huntington including Melinda Lopez (Sonia Flew), Ronan Noone (The Atheist, Brendan), Lydia R. Diamond (Stick Fly), Rebekah Maggor (Shakespeare’s Actresses in America), and Sinan Unel (The Cry of the Reed). Ryan Landry’s Psyched will be produced as part of 2011’s Emerging America Festival. The Huntington’s 2011-2012 Season will include The Luck of the Irish, a compelling play about the “ghost-buying” of houses in segregated neighborhoods by white families on behalf of black ones, by HPF Kirsten Greenidge and Before I Leave You, a love story for grownups set in Harvard Square, by HPF Alfaro.

Application information and residency guidelines can be found online at huntingtontheatre.org/HPF. Applications will be accepted through May 18, 2011.

Tell us what new plays you've seen at the Huntington what was memorable about them.

2010-2011 Huntington Playwriting Fellows: Apply NOW!

Contributed by Lisa Timmel

We are pleased to announce that we are accepting applications for the 2010-2011 Huntington Playwriting Fellows. The deadline is June 23, 2010.

“But wait!” you exclaim. “Didn’t you just do this last fall? It hasn’t even been a year!”

Well, dear Playwright, you're right! When the HPF program was started, the playwrights’ tenures were intended to coincide with the theatre season. Over the years, we got a bit off track and it shifted to calendar year. Charles Haugland and I realized that we needed to return to the season-to-season cycle putting the bulk of the reading into the summer months when things slow down here a bit. So the time to apply is NOW.

You can find all the information you need here: http://www.huntingtontheatre.org/new_work/playwriting-fellows.aspx

There are a few important changes to note:

· You may submit either a full-length play or a one-act

· If you have submitted a play to us since May 1, 2009 there is no need to send an additional play.

· Please send us everything via email, and most importantly,

· You may not resubmit work that was previously considered by the Huntington, this includes 2009 HPF application scripts.

We are more interested in learning about your voice or sensibility than reading polished scripts, so we encourage you to send whatever you are currently working on, even if you do not consider it completely “finished.”

We had a great time reading the applications last year and we’re really looking forward to what you all have got for us now.


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Huntington @ Boston Theatre Marathon starts TODAY!

contributed by Boston Playwright's Theatre and Lisa Timmel
 
BOSTON PLAYWRIGHT'S THEATRE Presents 
The Boston Theater Marathon XII and the Warm-Up Laps


The Warm-Up Laps - Saturday, May 22
Presented in association with the Boston Center for the Arts at the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA
Free and open to the public - limited to 100 seats - no reservations necessary.

Huntington Theatre Company presents
A Live Dress by Huntington Playwriting Fellow Martha Jane Kaufman
Directed by Charles Haugland - Huntington's Literary Associate.
Reading begins at 1 pm

SpeakEasy Stage Company presents
The Baptisms of St. Genesius by Richard Snee
Reading begins at 4 pm

The Publick Theatre presents
The Gift Horse by Huntington Playwriting Fellow Lydia Diamond
Reading begins at 7 pm

Boston Theater Marathon XII - Sunday, May 23
Presented in part by the Boston University Humanities Foundation.
At the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts
Ten Hours - Fifty  Plays: $25 tickets in advance - $30 tickets at the door

Sunday's 10 minute plays feature:
Rosie's Things by Janet Kenney Directed by Thom Dunn, Huntington's Web and New Media Manager, in the 1PM hour

Pseudoephedrine by HPF Ken Urban/Pilgrim Theatre, in the 1PM hour

The Shit Stirring Machine by HPF Ronan Noone/Bad Habit Production, in the 4PM hour


Wasteland by HPF Kate Snodgrass Directed by Chris Carcione, Huntington's Assistant to the Artistic Director, in the 5PM hour

Confirmed Sighting by HPF Patrick Gabridge/Fort Point Theatre Channel, in the 7PM hour

Bad Santa by HPF Melinda Lopez & M. Lopez-Keough/Theatre on Fire,  in the 9PM hour

Sunday's entire line up here:http://www.bu.edu/bpt/btm/lineup.html 

About the Boston Theater Marathon

The BTM is a program of Boston Playwrights' Theatre and is funded by a grant from the Humanities Foundation at Boston University. We would like to thank the Huntington Theatre Company once again for donating space for this annual charity event in their new Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts.

The Boston Theater Marathon is "astonishing," "exciting," "extraordinary," and, most of all, "fun." In its first seven years, the Boston Theater Marathon played to standing-room-only crowds for all 10 hours of 10-minute plays by Boston's best playwrights -- the famous, the great, the unknown, and the soon-to-be-successful. In 2004 the BTM was awarded "Boston's Best" by the Improper Bostonian for "Best Original Programming." (read more in The Buzz)

In addition to Boston’s best playwrights, you will see Boston’s best actors and directors in this celebration involving the entire Boston theatre community. All net proceeds from this charity event go a fund for actors & theatres in need called the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund. You can find out more about this fund on the StageSource website.

The plays begin at 12 noon and are performed one after the other continuously until 10 PM.

The Boston Theater Marathon is supported by a grant from The Humanities Foundation of Boston University, enabling all net proceeds to benefit The Theater Community Benevolent Fund.

In 2000, the BTM received a special Elliot Norton Award for "Enlivening Local Theatre." Read the article to learn more about this wonderful charity theatre festival.

The Judging Process - A letter from Artistic Director Kate Snodgrass

Check out Baker's Plays to order a collection of these plays: BTM1, BTM2, BTM3, BTM4.

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Live from the Norton Awards

We're here at the Norton Awards. So far it's a great night with the Boston theatre community. Things kicked off with glitter and high heels courtesy of the Gold Dust Orphans.

The best new script category nominees are all HPFs and congrats to John Kuntz for taking the prize.

Peter DuBois just took the Stage to accept best actress on behalf of Crystal Fox ("Fences").

Gonna hit send now so I can watch Speakeasy perform from "Adding Machine".

HPF iPlays: Boston writers take on audio plays

Contributed by Charles Haugland

For the Emerging America Festival, we issued an audio play challenge to all the current and former members of the Huntington Playwriting Fellows program. In collaboration with the other participating organizations, we gave them a few restrictions and ideas.

The only non-negotiables were that we wanted:
- an audio “play”
- less than ten minutes
- performed in the playwright’s own voice
- designed to be listened to in the close vicinity of one of the three participating venues: the Calderwood Pavilion in the South End, the ART in Harvard Square, and the ICA at the Harbor

Seven playwrights took us up on the challenge. What has been fascinating about the process is how differently each playwright interpreted the challenge. Listening to all seven becomes a tasting menu of these playwrights’ voices, one where the site-specific restrictions of the challenge bring out each playwright’s unique spin and point of view. And, because it is recorded in the playwright's own voice, you get a chance to hear their work just the way they imagine it.

The plays went live yesterday. To listen, download them as podcasts at emergingamericafestival.org/podcasts.html OR listen to them the weekend of the festival (May 14-16, 2010) by calling 215.525.1043 where an audio menu will guide you. There are also podcasts from our partners at the ICA and (coming soon) the ART.

Here's a sneak peek at each of the HPFs' plays:

I AM NOT INVISIBLE (5:51) by Pat Gabridge (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen on the brick plaza in front of the BCA.
Maybe you should pay more attention to the people behind you in the supermarket. You might have ignored and pissed off the wrong man, someone who has chosen to creep closer. Much closer.

JILL AND DELILAH (6:59) by Kirsten Greenidge (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen in Harvard Square, standing next to the Co-op.
Eavesdrop on a private conversation between sisters, and examine the space between checking out of your life and checking back in again.
Performed with actress Marvelyn McFarlane

TEA (7:12) by Martha Jane Kaufman (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen on the wooden steps behind the ICA, facing the harbor.
Slippage abounds between two very different "tea parties." Found text blurs the line between the dissenters and the terrorists, your patriotism and your ambivalence.

FLANNERY O'CONNOR GOOGLE (7:14) by John Kuntz (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen on the wooden steps behind the ICA, facing the harbor.
John Kuntz is talking directly to you. But, is that really John Kuntz? And, is that really you? And, what about the things he asks you to do...?

HELEN HANGS UP (10:14) by Ryan Landry (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen in the Eagle, drinking at the bar.
A few cocktails (and this short monologue) will give you all the courage it takes to drunk dial your ex and let 'em have it!

HAL'S HAVEN (8:20) by Rebekah Maggor (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen in the passageway adjacent to number 2 Arrow Street in Cambridge between Mt. Auburn Street and Massachusetts Avenue.
Your neighborhood changes when a nightclub moves in. One local grandmother takes a late night stand against ivy-league party kids and drunken professionals.

REAL TIME ENCOUNTER (2:45) by Ken Urban (Huntington Playwriting Fellow)
Listen in the MBTA Station at Back Bay, Dartmouth entrance.
Wait patiently in the station to meet up with Pat. Or, at least he told you that was his name online.

Peter DuBois also gives an irreverent and epicurean walking tour of the South End, where he lives. Check it out, too:

WALKING TOUR (21:29) with Peter DuBois (Artistic Director of the Huntington Theatre Company)
Begin at the Calderwood Pavilion, hub for HTC Emerging America events
Join Peter DuBois for stories about his home turf from stores to parks to restaurants. Watch out for large birds and firefighters. And your waistline.

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Inbox: Melinda Lopez - From Orchids to Octopi

contributed by Huntington Playwriting Fellow Melinda Lopez (Sonia Flew)

Hi Friends--

My play Orchids to Octopi just opened at Central Square--

It's a play about evolution and love and Why--

I hope you can find time to make it to the show.

Melinda Lopez

CentralSquareTheater.org
866 811-4111

Student Matinee to Huntington Playwriting Fellow: Kirsten Greenidge

Recently, we completed a grant for the NEA New Play Development Program seeking development support of Kirsten Greenidge's wonderful play, THE LUCK OF THE IRISH.  As part of the process, she wrote the following statement and it was so moving that I wanted to share with all of you.   - Lisa Timmel, Director of New Work

I decided to become a playwright after seeing August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. I was twelve. I sat in the balcony of the Huntington during that school matinee performance, and looked down onto that proscenium stage and saw, for the first time, an African American story that simultaneously challenged and affirmed what I knew about how black people fit into the cultural landscape that is America. Previously I had wanted to write novels. But I wasn’t sure how to do that. In the fog that hung over my junior high school years I had somehow concluded that in order to be published a story could not include only black people unless they were southern (I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings) or had been hurt and damaged in some way (To Kill A Mockingbird), or existed as a joke (I had fallen utterly in love with Tennessee Williams and A Streetcar Named Desire by this point but couldn’t forgive or forget Blanche Dubois telling her sister they could play at one of them being “the boy” when Blanche explains she’ll pour the drinks).

But these notions of how black characters fit into American literature melted quickly into the gilt that surrounds the Huntington’s main stage when I sat in that theatre on a gray and rainy day quite some time ago. For the first time in my life I saw black people on stage who were there to tell stories. Complicated stories. Rhythmical stories. Stories that were at once proud, true, painful, and funny. The dilemma, to me, lay in how I could, like August Wilson, write these stories, too. Despite the slightly feminist upbringing I received from my mother and the overtly feminist environment I experienced at my Quaker-slash-hippie grammar and middle school, I just didn’t believe girls could really be writers. I didn’t think black people really could either. Like the real kind, the kind that people took seriously, not the kind that sold their own books on subway platforms along with incense and sunglasses. So it took six years and a college class by an actual living breathing female writer to reverse my thinking. What I learned in Darrah Cloud’s class at Wesleyan (I took it as many times as I could) was that I am capable of fulfilling the ideas I had experienced in that school matinee in seventh grade. I am capable of creating black characters in a landscape that does not expect them but certainly should contain them. I am capable of creating characters who do not need to be southern, or conventionally hurt and damaged, or merely an afterthought of a joke. I love the process of writing for the stage (the research and the drafting and the polishing and the opening night wine receptions with kinds of cheese I don’t keep for myself in my own house). And truth be told I might be able to easily give it up if I needed to, say, get an office job. With benefits. Since I have two kids now. And while there are days, sometimes weeks, where I am tempted, my mind often reels back to that matinee in the late eighties, and I just can’t. While each play I have written may not be perfect—in fact, they may be far from that—I can be honest and say that I know each play I have written places characters into the Amlit landscape that need to be there, that call to be there, that deserve to be there.

It’s fitting that one of my current works in progress The Luck of the Irish has found itself at the Huntington. For although it is inherently a Boston story, it is also, in my thinking, cousin (perhaps distant, but that’s okay as long as I’m at the dinner table somehow) to the works Mr. Wilson was able to develop here decades ago. When I set out to write The Luck of the Irish, I had two objectives: to collect the original commission check for it (from South Coast Rep in Costa Mesa, California) quickly so I would not have to take any teaching jobs so soon after having my daughter, and to write a play about my grandmother, who had died about a month before. The more I wrote, the more “Boston” the play became, for the Boston I grew up in, and the Boston my parents and grandparents talked of, was not a melting pot. Or, if it was, someone long ago neglected to turn on the stove. Who your parents were predicted who you could become. Where you and these parents all lived predicted what other places you were or were not allowed to call home, or, in some instances, visit. I remember one St. Patrick’s Day asking my mother when were we heading to the parade “in Boston”—not knowing we were the only group of people decidedly not considered Irish for the day and also not knowing what “Southie” meant—and she looked at me with both horror and sadness. “We can’t go there”, was all she said. In many ways The Luck of the Irish explores why, so far up above the Mason Dixon line, this might be. And so I began to explore not only my grandparents’ move from the black South End to the suburbs, but also the ambiguousness of being “other” in a town that your people have called home for over half a century. As I raise my daughter (and now son, too), it’s becoming clear to me that the racially stratified world I was taught about from my family has changed. So the play also explores this as well: how do we live as neighbors when we may not have been taught how or expected to do so openly and with the compassion and understanding good neighbors are supposed to exercise.

What excites me about working with the Huntington is that I will get a chance to workshop a play that is self consciously set in Boston in a theatre that makes its home in Boston. It is not work that is new to me, as I have worked on pieces with CompanyOne and the Huntington that use Boston as their locale. But what I hope the Huntington and I will be able to do with The Luck of the Irish is use our being in Boston to inform the rewrites that I am doing on the play by consulting not only with researchers and scholars in the Boston area but also with people who may remember how Boston real estate practices influenced post World War Two life here. To do this, I am looking forward to the Huntington possibly hosting a series of discussions that invite those researchers and scholars and members of the community to discuss what they know. It’s my hope these discussions can help as I refine what I have already written. I am also looking forward to having research support from the Huntington, as often I must choose between research and writing the dang thing, and writing always wins that particular battle.

In addition to how the process will interact with the community, this collaboration with the Huntington is also exciting to me because artistically Lisa Timmel, Peter DuBois, Charles Haugland and I have talked not only about the histories that the play presents on stage, but also how the play itself is rendered. My writing is easily poetic and cyclical, but in our initial discussions about my upcoming rewrites, the four of us were able to discuss how I might restructure the piece so that I am making the best use of conventional structure in ways that will strengthen the play. And while it may seem a small thing, it is in fact (for a writer who often wags her finger at conventional structure and dramaturgy) not. Delving back into the script in this way is both challenging and affirming, and I look forward to continuing to do so.

The most I can say about this upcoming venture is that because of sitting in that balcony however many years ago the Huntington has felt like home and working on The Luck of the Irish in that home feels just as true as those words that flew up and into me when I was twelve.

- Kirsten Greenidge


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Ronan Noone's Little Black Dress

I saw Ronan Noone at the Fences opening a couple of weeks ago. We talked about the rehearsals for a production of his new play Little Black Dress at Boston Playwrights' Theatre and he was very excited about it... he says he has the BEST cast ever!

Here's what the BPT website has to say about it:

"Following his sold-out Huntington Theatre Company production of Brendan, where he recounts an Irish immigrant’s voyage to US citizenship, and his off-Broadway smash hit starring Campbell Scott as the Midwestern journalist August Early in The Atheist, Elliot Norton Award-winner Ronan Noone continues his exploration of the American psyche in Little Black Dress. Turning the Midwestern rustic stereotype on its ear, Noone’s visceral game of risk conceals twisted dreams lurking behind the video arcade. Featuring Elliot Norton Award-winners Jeremiah Kissel* and Marianna Bassham*, along with newcomers Karl Baker Olson and Alex Pollock, Noone culls all the dark humor and pathos from the Kansas prairie where every girl wants to be Grace Kelly."

"What would you do for a string of pearls?"

BU Today has a slideshow/interview here and the Boston Globe has a preview article here. Enjoy.

Ronan is a Huntington Playwrighting Fellow, and also teaches at Boston University. I'm looking forward to heading over to campus and seeing the show after A Long and Winding Road opens. I hope I can still get in.

Tonight is opening night! Break a leg...

PS: Ronan also said he loved the changes I'd made to the blog. I think he's the only one who noticed! Thanks dude.
PPS: Click the links and read about our productions of The Atheist and Brendan from our blog archives.


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Huntington shakes up Playwriting Fellows Program

From Lisa Timmel:

The Huntington Theatre Company is accepting applications for its Huntington Playwriting Fellows program.  Go here for more information.




Here’s the short version why:

Literary Department Goals, 2009-2010:
1. Create a more transparent process for becoming a fellow
2. Streamline submission process
3. Create a more sustainable community of HPF writers

Here’s the long version why:

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

My first real job was at Playwrights Horizons, a theater that accepts unsolicited manuscripts.   At the time, the literary office was the size of a very small walk-in closet.  It housed then literary manager, Tim Sanford, me, one pc, an electric typewriter, about ten years of archives looming on shelves that reached the ceiling, an index card filing system, and at any given time, 800 manuscripts vying for 3 to 5 production slots.  The math is dispiriting, no?

The first two lessons I had to learn were how to be open to a diverse range of voices and the innate value of getting to know a writer by simply reading their work.  Then I learned that the supply of good plays far exceeds the demand. And finally, that good writing alone is usually not enough to get a production.  Producing a new play based only on the script is a little like giving someone a 5-carat engagement ring after the first date. 

The Huntington accepts unsolicited manuscripts from local writers because we are committed to being a well-rounded company that produces the best work of international, national and local artists.  But even in the much smaller market of Boston, the supply of good plays by local writers far exceeds our capacity. When I got here, I set about trying to figure out what it takes for a local writer to get produced by the Huntington.  It didn’t take much analysis: all our produced local writers have been Huntington Playwriting Fellows.

Applying what I learned all those years ago on 42nd street, that there needs to be a real, working relationship between a writer and a theatre before committing to a production, I realized that local writers need to be encouraged to become Fellows rather than encouraged to submit for production. Traditionally, Fellows were chosen at the discretion of the literary manager.  This wasn’t going to work for me since my knowledge of the local scene is, at this point, pretty thin and, as a process, it lacks transparency.  How was I to know who even wanted to be a Fellow? So, an application process was born.

This process forced me to spend time thinking about what I care about and what kind of theatre I want the Huntington to be, at least the 30 square feet of it that I control.  I am not, temperamentally, a fan of big arts institutions.  They can be remote from the community that they are trying to serve.  What I love about working at the Huntington is the many ways we are trying to chip away at that distance between the institution and the people.  An artist needs a platform, and a platform needs steps.  You do your best work, and we’ll do our best to find room on the step for you.

Apply for the Huntington Playwriting Fellow Program (local playwrights only).


Script submission for non-local playwrights

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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

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.

Lysistrata, Lizzie Stranton, Liz Estrada, Lydia Diamond

So - shortly after publishing this - I had an nagging feeling something was off. I knew BU CFA's School of Theatre was producing Lysistrata over at the Calderwood Pavilion in December - and that Lydia was doing a lot this fall with the school. Could it be?

Yes - the Boston Globe was wrong (it's not called Liz Estrada) and Lydia's adaptation of Aristophanes' Lysistrata is indeed happening in December at the Wimberly.

I contacted Lydia to get the details: Hi Todd, I hadn't seen the blog, and thank you regardless for thinking of me and including me in it. So, I'm adapting Lysistrata.... the title of which is "Lizzie Stranton" a re-imagining of Aristophanes' Lysistrata.

You can get more info here and here. Huntington subscribers get in for just $10

BTW - Voyeurs de Venus is getting great reviews... It runs through Nov 22 and you can get tickets at our very own BTS.

Lydia Diamond - Voyeurs de Venus

Huntington Playwriting Fellow Lydia Diamond is getting a lot of well deserved attention in Boston's papers this week. Click to read the Boston Globe and Edge Boston articles.

Lydia's plays The Bluest Eye, Harriet Jacobs, Stick Fly and Voyeurs de Venus have seen many readings and productions in the region - and now you can catch Company One's new production of Voyeurs de Venus over at the BCA. Tickets, of course, are available at our very own box office and at bostontheatrescene.com

Lydia's newest play, Liz Estrada, currently in development, may hit a local stage soon. Let's hope so!

Breaking Ground 2008

The press release with full details should be out any day - but here are some of the details of this year's 5th Anniversary Breaking Ground Festival at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts - April 3-6, 2008. Hope to see you there!

THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 7:30p

Unknown Soldier

Music and Lyrics by Michael Friedman, Book and Lyrics by Daniel Goldstein

Directed by Will Frears

This epistolary chamber musical’s intimacy beautifully conveys the tale of WWI-era lovers separated by time and space. When a modern-era woman discovers their letters, the past becomes present as she enlists the help of a researcher far away, and their correspondence begins to mirror that of previous generations. Unknown Soldier is the result of a commission from the Huntington’s Stanford Calderwood Fund for New American Plays.

FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 8p

Sense of an Ending

By Ken Urban

Directed by Evan Cabnet

An African-American journalist arrives in the land of his ancestors to uncover dark truths about an act of genocide. The trip becomes something more troubling, however, when he finds he may be part of the story. After he meets a survivor, the journalist struggles to understand the nature of man's inhumanity, and to find the path that returns us to the best versions of ourselves. Ken Urban is a current Huntington Playwriting Fellow.

SATURDAY, APRIL 5, 2p

Thomas Repair

By Mat Smart

Directed by Melia Bensussen

A family crisis ensues when a mysterious girl appears in Jacob Thomas’ quirky repair shop. She’s blue – literally and figuratively – and as she attempts to “come clean,” the relationships around her are thrown into chaos. Things left unsaid begin to fester and rot, and she proves she might be the only one who knows how to fix what’s long been broken. Thomas Repair is the result of a commission from the Huntington’s Stanford Calderwood Fund for New American Plays.

SATURDAY, APRIL 5, 8p

Broke-ology

By Nathan Jackson

Directed by Amanda Charlton

In this family serio-comedy, the sons of an African-American family are torn between familial obligations and the dreams they’ve established for themselves. With dashed hopes for higher education, an ailing patriarch who sees his dead wife, and the mounting expenses of a new baby, the boys help each other face the major decisions of their lives. Together they just may discover a new definition of what it means to be a family.

SUNDAY, APRIL 6, 7p

Caroline in Jersey

By Melinda Lopez

Directed by M. Bevin O’Gara

Things aren’t looking so great for Caroline. Her husband has left her for a younger woman, she’s about to be thrown out of her sublet in New Jersey, her landlady thinks she’s crazy… and the spirit of Arthur Miller’s accountant lives in her refrigerator. Thrown into this mystery, Caroline must discover the truth about her haunting (and herself) to help to heal a broken family across two planes of existence. Melinda Lopez is a 2003-2005 Huntington Playwriting Fellow; Caroline in Jersey is the result of a commission from South Coast Repertory Theatre.

Fellows at work

Ilana sent the following along for posting. Stay tuned for our 2008 BREAKING GROUND FESTIVAL announcement soon.

Hi All,

There are some exciting things afoot for our current and past HPFs.

First off, Joyce Van Dyke's new play THE OIL THIEF was just read at New Rep as part of their New Voices series. Joyce got a great interview and write-up in the Globe last week, too: www.boston.com


Secondly, Melinda Lopez's new play with music, GARY, opens this Thursday at Boston Playwrights' Theatre, with Bevin O'Gara directing and me serving as guest dramaturg. The process has been terrific, and the actors have been really rocking out. Featuring: Adrianne Krstansky, Elise Manning, Nael Nacer, Karl Baker Olson & Molly Schreiber. February 28 - March 16; tickets $25 Gen./$20 Sen./$10 Stu. BPT is offering a special friends and family deal for the first weekend only: $10 tickets through Sunday, March 2. Online or phone, use the promotional code: GARY949
There was a nice write-up on Melinda in the Globe this past weekend:
www.boston.com


Ken Urban's play THE HAPPY SAD will receive its world premiere at New York's Flea Theatre (in a double-bill with a new play by Breaking Ground alum Tommy Smith), March 6 through April 22. Info here: www.theflea.org


Both Ken and Melinda will be represented in the Breaking Ground Festival this year! Stay tuned for more info on that front.


Lydia Diamond's STICK FLY will go up this summer at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival (CATF) in Sheperdstown, West Virginia. (Sonia Flew played there, too!) You can catch a piece on NPR about the play here: www.npr.org
You can hear the play in its entirety (until next weekend) here: www.scpr.org

THE BLUEST EYE is open now at Hartford Stage through March 23, and then runs at the Long Wharf March 28 to April 20.
Lydia's HARRIET JACOBS (recently up at the Steppenwolf) is scheduled for Williamstown this summer, where it will be kept in good company with Ronan Noone's THE ATHEIST, once again featuring Campbell Scott, with Justin Waldman directing.


Kirsten Greenidge's GIBSON GIRL opens at Boston's Company One (where's she's this season's Playwright in Residence) on March 14 and plays through April 5. More info here:
www.companyone.org


And of course, Sinan Unel's THE CRY OF THE REED goes into rehearsal next week, directed by Danny Goldstein.


What a terrific round-up of work for these talented writers!

Cheers,
Ilana

Young Writers explore plays

This article about our Young Voices Playwriting program caught my eye this morning. Just had to share:

"From Shakespeare to Broadway, live theatre has survived for centuries through the advent of moving pictures, radio broadcasts, television and iPods, and remains a thriving art form into the 21st century.

A great production requires top-notch performances from actors and crew alike, but none of that can get off the ground without a strong writer and a great script.

One group of Lynn Classical students is taking the first step in becoming the next great American playwrights by participating in a unique program at the Huntington Theatre in Boston, where they will work one-on-one with theatre professionals to polish their scriptwriting skills and produce an original work."

I've got lots of other stuff to share in my reader - which you will find in the sidebar labeled "Todd's shared items". Check out Melinda Lopez's new play Gary, reviews for Shining City at the Goodman in Chicago, and find opinion about Rebekah Maggor's Shakespeare's Actresses which opened this week at the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA. I've only seen one post so far - but I will add to the list as soon as I see more.

In other playwriting news; our recent announcement of the next round of artists to join our Huntington Playwriting Fellows has been getting some attention lately, with a question coming in from all quarters, including this blog. Click here to read the post and comments.

New Fellows

HUNTINGTON ANNOUNCES 2008 PLAYWRITING FELLOWS
Program helps four local artists develop new work for the stage.

BOSTON – The Huntington Theatre Company announced today its choices for the 2008 Huntington Playwriting Fellows program, which provides a structured environment for theatre artists to explore and talk about their work while providing significant access to the company’s artistic staff and resources.

The current class includes Boston-area playwrights Kirsten Greenidge, Jacqui Parker, Ken Urban, and Joyce Van Dyke. This is the third class since the program began in 2004.

The Fellows meet together with Brownstein twice monthly for one year to discuss creative ideas, receive critical input on their works, and learn the process of getting plays read at theatres across the country. In year two, they receive individual support focused on specific theatrical pieces they are developing. To date, the Huntington has produced five plays by its Fellows.

The 2008 Fellows are, in alphabetical order:

Wesleyan University and University of Iowa graduate Kirsten Greenidge has received commissions from New York’s Clubbed Thumb, The Kennedy Center/White House Historical Association, South Coast Rep, and Boston’s Company One, where she is this season’s playwright in residence. (Company One will produce her play, “Gibson Girl” this spring.) An Arlington, Mass. native, she was the NEA/Theatre Communications Group playwright-in-residence at New York’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre and has had plays produced around the country, including two at Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival. Greenidge’s “103 Within the Veil,” featuring stories inspired by a cache of historical African American photographs, was the 2005 winner for Best New Play from the Independent Reviewers of New England.

Recipient of Elliot Norton and Independent Reviewers of New England Awards, Boston's Jacqui Parker is a playwright, actor, artistic director of Our Place Theater Project, and founder of Boston's African American Theatre Festival. In 2004 she received the StageSource Theatre Hero Award. Her play "Dark as a Thousand Midnights" premiered at the 2006 Festival at the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA. She has been seen on stages around the country, including the Huntington’s productions of “Breath, Boom,” and as an understudy to Phylicia Rashad in August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean.”

A recent transplant to Boston, Ken Urban is a Harvard University professor and founding artistic director of The Committee, a New York-based theater company. He has received a commission from Target Margin Theatre in New York, and his work has been produced at Soho Rep, Moving Arts, Rude Guerrilla, and other theatres in Los Angeles and New York. His plays ( “Wasps,” “I [Heart] Kant,” and “The Secret Lives of Eskimos”) and critical essays about theatre have appeared in Performing Arts Journal, New Theatre Quarterly, New York Theatre Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Modern Drama, and Yale’s Theatre Journal.

Joyce Van Dyke graduated from Boston University’s playwriting program and was a Massachusetts Cultural Council Playwriting Grant finalist. Her play, "A Girl's War," received a workshop production at Boston Playwrights Theatre in 2001, for which it was named one of the Boston Globe’s Top Ten Plays of the year and won the John Gassner Memorial Playwriting Award. “A Girls’ War” premiered in 2003 at New Repertory Theatre in Watertown, Mass., was nominated for the Steinberg National New Play award, and was published in the anthology “Contemporary Armenian American Drama.” New York’s Ensemble Studio Theatre—in conjunction with the Sloan Foundation—commissioned her play, "The Oil Thief," in 2006. She is a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and is a published scholar of Shakespeare and poetry.

The program underscores the Huntington's commitment to fostering and presenting original work by local and new playwrights and artists. Under the direction of Literary Manager Ilana Brownstein, Fellows receive commissions from the Huntington’s Stanford Calderwood Fund for New American Plays.

"This program gives artists a safe place to flex their muscles and develop their work," says Ilana Brownstein. "Our goal is to allow the playwrights to feel they have a permanent artistic home – to welcome them as part of the company and the Huntington family."

PAST SUCCESSES
The 2005 group of four Huntington Playwriting Fellows has had significant success since its involvement with the program. Plays by Lydia Diamond and Kate Snodgrass are in development. John Shea's "Comp" premiered at Boston Playwright's Theater this year and Rebekah Maggor's one-woman show, "Shakespeare's Actresses in America" is part of this year’s “Huntington Presents” series at the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts.

The 2003 Fellows also have had success. Melinda Lopez’s “Sonia Flew” has been produced nationwide since its development and premiere at the Huntington’s Calderwood Pavilion. Sinan Unel’s “The Cry of the Reed,” and Ronan Noone’s “The Atheist” and “Brendan” were produced by the Huntington this season, and John Kuntz’s play, “Jasper Lake,” developed while at the Huntington, won the Kennedy Center’s National Student Playwriting Award and a Paula Vogel Playwriting Award.