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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Expanding the Idea of New Work - Part IV

Contributed by Literary Associate Charles Haugland, responding to Lisa Timmel (Huntington's Director of New Work) in their recent posts about new work. Click here to read the entire conversation.

Okay, it’s up to me to wrap up the conversation. I’m going to provide a quick summary, and then leave us with a few provocations and things I will be continuing to think about.

I take you as defining three categories. (Art Hennessey also theorized three categories when he did his exhaustive tally on his blog, though he defined the categories differently)

New:
Artists are actively doing developmental work during their HTC production, particularly of text. Playwright is in residence.

Contemporary:
Plays that we have no relationship to the development. Usually they are written in the last 20ish years, but more often in the last one or two. (This definition also means that sometimes a contemporary play can be the same distance from its premiere as a new play being developed in its second production.)

Classic:
Plays that are older or canonical (i.e., We think of FENCES as classic and PRELUDE as contemporary even though they are separated by only two years.)

These categories are not represented in our theatre haphazardly. As I discussed in my last post, we think of new work and classic work as different kinds of pleasure - active nostalgia versus active synthesis - that we try to balance. A season that we think will be both embraced and challenging to our audience includes both. (Challenging goes both ways; I think there are new work devotees, you included Lisa, who can find the idea of going to see and revisit classics “challenging” to your expectations and your taste.)

What is the breakdown of our new season then?
New: VENGEANCE IS THE LORD’S and SONS OF THE PROPHET
Contemporary: CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION and RUINED
Classic: BUS STOP, RICHARD III/COMEDY OF ERRORS, and EDUCATING RITA (Though I’m sure some would say RITA feels more contemporary than classic, it is from 1980, and has been so widely performed that I’d say it is canonical.)

A couple of wrenches that I can throw in the works:
- Many audience members told me that they had never seen ALL MY SONS. How does that effect reception? Is it “new” if it is new to you (a belief held strongly by our marketing department)?
- A good chunk of our audience had seen the Boston workshop presentation of A LONG AND WINDING ROAD or the New Haven production of A CIVIL WAR CHRISTMAS. Does it matter that they aren’t “new” to them? (In both cases, they were substantially different from their earlier productions.)
- In Peter’s first season, four out of seven plays were new and in development during their production cycle, though our audience does not remember that season as being heavily focused on new work. Why? (One thought I have is that they were all period pieces, which I believe influences reception.)
 

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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Prelude Review, Interview, Slideshow

Here's a slideshow courtesy of BU Today with Cassie Beck and Brian Sgambati.



And a review from the Boston Globe

And a great interview with Peter DuBois on Edge Boston

Have you seen the show? Did you stay afterward for post show conversation? What did you talk about on the way home. Please leave your thoughts about the play, performances, and production right here on our blog for others to respond to.

Click here to comment!