Welcome

Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***





Little Fish Theatre (San Pedro CA) is accepting scripts for our 19th Annual PICK OF THE VINE short play production to be presented in January-February 2021. There will be a $75 flat fee royalty payment to playwrights per play produced. (or $25 flat fee royalty if presented virtually)

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The Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers supports projects that draw on the research collections at The New York Public Library's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (formerly the Humanities and Social Sciences Library). The Center looks for top-quality writing from academics as well as from creative writers and independent scholars. Visual artists whose projects require extensive use of Library collections are also encouraged to apply. The Center aims to promote dynamic conversation about the humanities, social sciences, and scholarship at the highest level—within the Center, in public forums throughout the Library, and in the Fellows' published work. Stipend: $75,000

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SEEKING: Complete original stage musicals which play between seven and twenty minutes. Works which have been previously produced are acceptable, as are excerpts from full-length shows, if they can stand up on their own.


*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***


*** ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM ***


How to Use Zoom Like a Theater or Film Professional

Since the pandemic forced theaters to close their doors in mid-March, there has been no shortage of noble attempts to recreate the magic of the stage on streaming platforms including Zoom, Instagram Live and YouTube (where the Broadway interview show “Stars in the House” streams two theater productions daily). Virtual theater productions, of course, are mediated through technology and thus not experienced as they would be from the front mezzanine, and yet they’re not fully polished or always prerecorded, either. Part of the thrill of theater is its immediacy and, along with it, the potential for something to fall to pieces.

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“What Do We Need to Talk About?” (directed by Nelson) takes place, inevitably, on Zoom, which, for once, isn’t an irritating technical compromise but an integral plot point. Rather than gathering around the dining-room table, as they usually do, the siblings congregate online, to catch up for an hour or so at the end of the day. The first to appear is Barbara (Maryann Plunkett), who, as we discover, has just come home from the hospital, where she managed to recover from covid-19. Richard (Sanders, who, like the rest of the cast, is reprising his role), the lone brother of the family, is quarantined with her; the fact that he, and not the domestic-minded Barbara, cooks and serves dinner tells us how serious her condition must have been. (No actors were harmed, or social-distancing protocols violated, in the making of this play; Sanders and Plunkett are married.)

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LESSONS IN DIRECTING YOUTH FOR A ZOOM THEATRE PERFORMANCE

I’m not going to kid you. Creating a virtual stage for remote learning with students from the ages of 8 to 18 has its challenges. Mostly, I’ve read about academic theatre programs like Shakespeare at Winedale and various other universities adjusting to virtual rehearsals. On the other hand, professional theatre companies similar to Creation Theatre and the Handlebards (both in the UK) have adapted quickly, with a plethora of online performing arts offerings. However, it seems that at the moment, their educational outreach is limited to (stellar!) workshops for Kids.

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We're witnessing the emergence of a new theatre aesthetic characterised by a “causal intimacy”, and a “low-tech, low-key, one-on-one, close-up” approach to theatre-making. Theatre-makers have taken to Zoom, incorporating sock puppets, soliloquies and miniaturised figures composed of household items to captivate audiences trapped in their homes.

For example, Shakespeare's The Tempest recently aired on Zoom, with audiences invited to enter Prospero’s island through the portal of their phone or computer screens. Audience members were invited to click their fingers through their microphones to collectively conjure a storm (ibid).

Classic texts such as The Diary of Anne Frank have also been adapted for Zoom. Anne Frank, her father, Otto, and other cast members have taken to the online stage, reading from the pages of Anne’s diary from their isolated Zoom boxes.

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The Old Globe recently presented the world premiere of a 10-minute play created by Bill Irwin: In-Zoom, featuring Irwin and Broadway veteran Christopher Fitzgerald.

The two-hander premiered live online on Thursday, May 14, but is now available to watch any time.

Check out the full play below!

Two comic minds convene a meeting on Zoom and surprise themselves as they look at our particular pandemic moment and the virtual way we're living it. Two-time Tony Award winner Bill Irwin (Fool Moon, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) and three-time Tony Award nominee Christopher Fitzgerald (Broadway's Waitress, Young Frankenstein, Wicked) delight in Irwin's beguiling take on our new reality.

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A Mexican female senator has issued an apology after going topless during a government video while trying to change without realising her camera was still on.

Martha Lucia Micher, 66, was unaware her camera was still on when she started to get changed during the live meeting last week.
The incident occurred during an official meeting on zoom, a measure taken by the Mexican government during the coronavirus pandemic to avoid unnecessary risk of contagion.

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Theatre-makers quickly adopted Zoom and Facebook as a virtual venue during the Covid-19 shutdown. Even though theatres have been greenlit to open from 1 July, the social distancing rules requiring audience members to sit four square metres apart make it financially non-viable. “We can’t play to 20 people,” says Eamon Flack at Belvoir. At Sydney Theatre Company, Patrick McIntyre says “it won’t be economically viable to return to the stage until restrictions are lifted altogether ... until we have greater certainty, we’re stuck.”

While the theatres wait, the digital seasons roll on. There have been dozens of productions, ranging from intimate cabarets to full-cast Shakespeare plays and musicals performed live with actors in isolation, often streaming from their own homes.

But with viewers fatigued by Zoom meetings during work hours and theatre-makers increasingly aware of the technical limitations of teleconferencing platforms, producers are now turning to new digital avenues.

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