*** PLAYWRIGHTS OPPORTUNITIES ***
Musical Theatre Development Lab (MTDL) is a program devised and directed by Megan Doyle for the 92nd Street Y, and is the umbrella for intersectional opportunities for artists. The Collective supports up to 10 emerging hybrid artists for a one-year residency of educational and creative events. The Resident Artist series provides up to 2 years of both financial and production support towards their Lab Production, an original evening-length Musical Theatre work presented by the 92nd Street Y.
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The Ingram New Works Project was launched by Nashville Repertory Theatre in 2009 thanks to the generous support of Martha Ingram. With the mission to support the creation of new works for the theatre, Nashville Rep created a project that includes the New Works Lab. The Ingram New Works Lab is intended to be an artistic home for early career playwrights to share and develop new work, hone craft, receive support, and springboard themselves into the next phase of their writing career. Nashville Rep seeks committed playwrights for residency in the 2017-2018 Ingram New Works Lab
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We’ve produced a collection of short plays before (Comic Shorts, April 2013) but this time we’re inviting aspiring playwrights of any age to submit scripts, and we’re inviting aspiring directors age 12 to 18 to direct. Teens are also welcome to be involved as designers, stage managers, or producers. Don’t have any experience as a director or in any of these other roles? Not to worry! Each production will have an NBYT staff member working on it for guidance; in some cases, a staff member may even be directing the production. Auditions for actors will be held in the fall.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at http://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** INSPIRATION FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Have you ever had too much story? You know, where you have so many ideas and so many great scenes, you have to cut your script because nobody does four-hour plays anymore? Or, maybe you actually have two plays, or even three. Some playwright and actor friends told me that at a living room reading of one of my scripts recently. I was delighted because it meant I had a lot of compelling material, but also dismayed because – let’s face it – playwriting is a lot of work.
If you’ve got a lot of material and aren’t sure how to pick and choose from it to make a story, I have an inspiration for you.
More…
https://playwrightsmuse.wordpress.com/2015/01/16/inspiration-for-too-much-material/
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“If you were born with the ability to change someone’s perspective or emotions, never waste that gift. It is one of the most powerful gifts God can give—the ability to influence.”
~ Shannon L. Alder
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Playwright Michael Healey finds comedic inspiration in the predicament of then-PM Joe Clark
The ouster of a government is no laughing matter — unless you’re Michael Healey.
It’s taken the acclaimed Canadian playwright almost four decades of hindsight, but he’s crafted a new play, 1979, which dramatizes — and comedically so — the moments leading up to the downfall of Prime Minister Joe Clark’s fledgling government. The play opens at the Great Canadian Theatre Company on April 13, a week after its world premiere in Calgary.
Below, Healey discusses his fascination with making politics funny, and why Clark’s dilemma still resonates in today’s political climate.
Q: What prompted you to create a play about Joe Clark?
A: I’ve been interested in the 48 hours between the presentation of Joe Clark’s first budget and the vote on the budget and specifically on the decision-making, the machinations and the stress that must have been going on during those 48 hours when they came to realize they didn’t have the votes to get the budget through…
More…
http://ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/local-arts/playwright-michael-healey-finds-comedic-inspiration-in-the-predicament-of-then-pm-joe-clark
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“The stage is a magic circle where only the most real things happen, a neutral territory outside the jurisdiction of Fate where stars may be crossed with impunity. A truer and more real place does not exist in all the universe.”
~ P.S. Baber
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A Trio of Local Playwrights Use Personal Ads as Inspiration
According to the People's Almanac, the first personal ad was published in 1727 by The Manchester Weekly Journal - Manchester, England, that is - and submitted by a woman named Helen Morrison. It drew a response, sure enough, but from the Lord Mayor of the city, who found such bold self-assertion not just unladylike but criminal. He confined Morrison to a lunatic asylum for four weeks.
To anyone who has tapped his or her knee nervously against the bar at the Daily Planet, awaiting the arrival of a personals blind date, an asylum might not seem such a bad place, really. The safe distance of the word exchange is about to dissolve; the flesh-and-bone part of the show about to begin.
Burlington writers Chris Caswell, Marianne DiMascio and Geeda Searfoorce also recognize power in the personals; not so much in their immediate results as in the stories and characters such spare bits of copy can convey. They culled ads from sources such as the Harvard Review, trekpassions.com and Seven Days and used them as inspiration for Seeking . . ., a romantic comedy that will premiere at the Waterfront Theatre on April 23 for a four-night run. A collection of encounters with wildly disparate outcomes, the play is set in Burlington and combines scenes of searing discomfort and cavernous conversational silences with real tenderness. Which is pretty much par for the course on a decent blind date.
More…
https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/a-trio-of-local-playwrights-use-personal-ads-as-inspiration/Content?oid=2133253
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“the theater is one of the few places left in the bright and noisy world where we sit in the quiet dark together, to be awake."
~ Sarah Ruhl
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In 2009, after the premiere of her play The Language Archive, Julia Cho was stricken by that thing that most writers dread: writer’s block. “I was deeply afraid that maybe I would never write another play again,” the playwright said. Up until that point, Cho was prolific. She had had a new play premiere every year since 2002, including 99 Histories and Durango, with 12 works in total. And then in 2009, the river ran dry.
“Even at the time I was writing Language Archive, I felt like: Man, I’m really tapped out! I felt like I barely managed to write it,” she recalled. Now, six years later, it seems that the river has begun flowing—or the dam has been broken, another one of the water metaphors Cho used during our conversation. She has two world premieres in the space of the next two months: Aubergine at Berkeley Repertory Theatre (through March 20) and Office Hour at South Coast Repertory (April 10–30). Then starting Aug. 19, Aubergine will play at Playwrights Horizons in New York City.* As another aquatic adage goes, when it rains, it pours.
“I didn’t think it through very well,” she admitted with a laugh. “I really should’ve grouped it out.” But you can’t question when inspiration strikes—or rather, when life events will lead to inspiration. For Cho, her playwriting hiatus coincided with the death of two close people in her life: her father in 2010, and a close friend, poet Kim-An Lieberman, in 2013. “I felt like my well was dry to begin with,” she said. “Then when my dad passed away, there wasn’t a bucket even, and I [couldn’t] even find the well anymore!”
More…
http://www.americantheatre.org/2016/02/17/julia-cho-returns-to-playwriting-with-two-new-plays/
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“Theatre is pure teleportation by means of suspension.
It’s a voyage into the archives of the human imagination.
A passport to all what ifs.”
~ Natasha Tsakos
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Taking inspiration from Brecht
IT'S all in the title. ''The Good Person of New Haven'' reflects the best of intentions: To be a good person in a bad world. You can't get much better than that. Talk of what's in a name: New stands for redemptive change, saving grace, hope eternal. And doesn't everyone hope for a safe haven? As for person, the word is human, gender-free.
What better notion than to adapt time-honored traditions of classical theater to the immediate concerns of a contemporary urban community? And the thrust of arts in education, with an emphasis on diversity, is on the minds of every concerned artist and educator.
It is no wonder that the Cornerstone Theater Company, based in Los Angeles and traveling everywhere, is applauded for its effort to make the classics fit time and place. And the company is welcomed by communities that need the reinvigoration and enlightenment that theater does best. Think live, interactive, collaborative, participatory, all terms that transcend ego and personal gain. Cornerstone puts such ideals into practice, moving into cities and setting up workshops involving students, elderly people, community leaders, business executives, volunteers of all stripe -- and, for example, resetting Shakespeare to nourish dreams and lift spirits.
More…
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/28/nyregion/theater-taking-inspiration-from-brecht.html
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“Movies will make you famous; Television will make you rich; But theatre will make you good.”
~ Terrence Mann
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INSPIRATION, DEADLINES & CANDY CORN: MUSINGS BY ERIN BREGMAN
After a weekend up in the California foothills, PF asked one of our Resident Playwrights, Erin Bregman, to write some thoughts about her writer’s retreat. This is a sweet response, pun intended.
When asked the dreaded question what inspires you to write?’, I immediately pull out my ready-made, slightly scrappy retort: Deadlines. But if the latest (and first!) Resident Playwrights Retreat reminded me of anything, it’s that my oldest writing companion is not plain old last minute panic. It is last minute panic infused with a faithful yet unpredictable companion–Sugar. My relationship with writing on Sugar began in college, when my writing-on-a-deadline routine started with a quick trip to the corner store where I would purchase a small bag of jelly bellies. Thus armed, I would return to my room and write, popping a jelly belly every time I got stuck. I got stuck often. The test was, could I finish the assignment before the bag was empty, or would I be left feeling sick on Sugar without having produced anything worthwhile?
More…
http://playwrightsfoundation.org/2010/09/22/inspiration-deadlines-candy-corn-musings-by-erin-bregman/
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“I regard the theater as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being. This supremacy of the theater derives from the fact that it is always "now" on the stage.”
~ Thornton Wilder
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