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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC
playwrights
*** NYCPLAYWRIGHTS 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY ***
It's the 10 Year Anniversary of NYCPlaywrights and we've asked readers to share their stories of productions, readings etc. they may have found through of our blog and weekly email
Do you have a story to share? Send it to us at info@nycplaywrights.org - thanks!
You can see the first reader story from Allie Costa here. Congratulations Allie.
More readers stories are coming this week.
*** FREE THEATER ONLINE ***
The Episcopal Actors’ Guild and the House of the Redeemer will present an online holiday party featuring carols and a benefit reading of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol on December 14 at 6:00 P.M. EST.
Tickets: Free (donations accepted) available at www.ticketstripe.com/holidayparty2020
Event Contact: Rebecca Lovett - (212) 685-2927, rebecca@actorsguild.org
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
B3 Theater of Phoenix, Arizona, seeks scripts for their Fourth Festival of Shorts. The Festival will be held in June/July of 2021. The Shorts will be fully rehearsed shows, whether they take place live or virtually.
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Young writers with disabilities are invited to submit a 'ten-minute script' of any genre. Scripts may be for theater scripts, musicals, multimedia, video, film, or TV scripts, non-linear scripts, or other writing for performance. Entries may be the work of an individual student or a collaboration by a group of up to five students that includes at least one student with a disability. A panel of theater professionals selects division winners.
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We are looking for unproduced plays to feature in our “Stage to Screen” series. These plays should have 6 or fewer actors, and no previous productions. The chosen play(s) will be produced as an elevated workshop production. Additionally, each production will be filmed and a trailer will be made available to the author as a means to assist in promoting the work. The play(s) chosen will be awarded a monetary prize of $1000.00.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** SOCK & BUSKIN ***
The nine Muses were the daughters of Zeus, king of the gods, and Mnemosyne, the personification of Memory. The Romans adopted the idea of the Muses from the Greeks and assigned functions to each one. Thalia, whose name means ‘flourishing’, became the Muse of comedy and idyllic poetry, which portrayed country life. She was portrayed in statues and art as a joyous young woman, crowned with ivy and holding a comic mask in her hand. Sometimes she was also seen holding a bugle, or trumpet, which was used to amplify actor’s voices in ancient comedy. Melpomene’s name means ‘one who is melodious’, because she was originally the Muse of singing before becoming that of tragedy. She was portrayed holding a tragic mask and wearing buskins, the laced calf-length boots which tragic actors wore to appear taller on stage. Comic actors wore socks instead; to this day ‘Sock and Buskin’ is a way to refer to drama, and is the name of many dramatic societies.
More...
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Within our cemeteries, it is common to find among different symbols objects that may reflect either the profession of the buried person, or act as a reference to their affiliations or membership (i.e. Freemasonry). They may also represent their hobbies, leisure or fields of interest.
A mask or, more commonly, two masks would symbolise the world of theatre/ drama. Found on a grave, it is usually associated with comedians and actors.
The two masks together are known as the Sock and Buskin.
The sock and buskin are two ancient symbols of comedy and tragedy. In Greek theatre, actors in tragic roles wore a boot called a buskin (Latin cothurnus) that elevated them above the other actors. The actors with comedic roles only wore a thin soled shoe called a sock (Latin soccus).
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buskin (n.)
"half-boot, high laced shoe," c. 1500, of unknown origin. The word exists in different forms in most of the continental languages, and the exact relationship of them all apparently has yet to be determined. The English word is perhaps immediately from Old French broissequin "buskin; a kind of cloth" (14c., Modern French brodequin by influence of broder "to embroider"), or from Middle Dutch brosekin "small leather boot," which is of uncertain origin. OED suggests Spanish borcegui, earlier boszegui.
Figurative senses in English relating to "stage tragedy, tragic drama" are from the word being used (since mid-16c.) to translate Greek kothurnus, the high, thick-soled boot worn in Athenian tragedy; contrasted with sock, the low shoe worn by comedians. Related: Buskined.
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The cothurnus also has a long history in theater. In classical Greek and Roman theater the cothurnus was the shoe worn by the players in tragedies, serious plays that showed the conflict between a great man and powerful forces such as destiny or fate. Depending on the importance of the character in the play, the cothurnus was made of different heights. The taller the actor, the more important his role. The cothurnus is still worn in reenactments of classical tragedies, and the word cothurnus has come to stand for the unique style in which such ancient dramas are performed.
More: http://www.fashionencyclopedia.com/fashion_costume_culture/The-Ancient-World-Rome/Cothurnus.html
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SOCCUS, dim. SO′CCULUS, was nearly if not altogether equivalent in meaning to Crepida, and denoted a slipper or low shoe, which did not fit closely, and was not fastened by any tie (Isid. Orig. XIX.34).º Shoes of this description were worn, more especially among the Greeks together with the Pallium, both by men and by women. But those appropriated to the female sex were finer and more ornamented (Plin. H. N. IX.35 s56; Soccus muliebris, Suet. Calig. 52, Vitell. 2), although those worn by men were likewise in some instances richly adorned according to the taste and means of the wearer (Plaut. Bacch. II.3.98).
For the reasons mentioned under the articles Baxa and Crepida the Soccus was worn by comic actors (Hor. Ars Poët. 80, 90), and was in this respect opposed to the Cothurnus (Mart. VIII.3.13; Plin. Epist. IX.7). The preceding woodcut is taken from an ancient painting of a buffoon [Mimus], who is dancing in loose yellow slippers (luteum soccum, Catull. Epithal. Jul. 10). This was one of their most common colours (De L'Aulnaye, Salt. Théat. pl. IV). [Solea.]
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The Use of the High-Soled Shoe or Buskin in Greek Tragedy of the Fifth and Fourth Centuries B. C.
Author(s): Kendall K. Smith
Source: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology , 1905, Vol. 16 (1905), pp. 123-164 Published by: Department of the Classics, Harvard University
...Even the most conservative agree that actors in classic Greek tragedy walked about in shoes with soles of more than ordinary thickness.
In the face of such unanimity of opinion it may seem strange that I have ventured to investigate the subject afresh. It was the doubt expressed by Professor Edward Capps, of the University of Chicago, that first prompted my investigation of the evidence on the use of the buskin or high-soled shoe in the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ. This evidence I found to be both insufficient and contradictory; but I present it in full in the hope that it may be valuable for reference, even though it lead us to no positive conclusion.
Many difficulties arise in treating a subject of this nature. None of the works of art have been accessible except through publications, and these in many cases, I fear, inexact. For this reason my calculations of the height of different soles is only approximate. Furthermore, I have not had time to take up the problem of which Dierks' says did not have a high so have used evidence for the Greek buskin whic cothurnus. In any case, it has not been my shape or size of the buskin, but simply to fin made use of the high sole.
EVIDENCE FROM CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
Two passages from Aristophanes furnish all the evidence from con- temporary literature on which can be based arguments in support of the high-soled tragic shoe; and this evidence is extremely uncertain. In Ranae, 35, we see Dionysus before -the door of Heracles...
Downloadable at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/310339
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Sock & Buskin was founded in 1901 by Professor Thomas Crosby of the Brown University English Department. There has since been an unbroken record of seasons, first at the Providence Opera House and various theatres in downcity Providence, then in Rockefeller Hall, and finally in 1931 at the Faunce House Theatre, which was restored and reopened as Stuart Theatre in 1993. When the Isabelle Russek Leeds Theatre and Ashamu Dance Studio were built in 1979, they joined the Stuart Theatre and together became the Catherine Bryan Dill Center for the Performing Arts.
In 1927, Sock & Buskin, which was at the time an all-male organization, began using actresses in its productions. Soon Komians, the all-female theatrical group from Pembroke college, merged with Sock & Buskin to create the co-ed group that exists today.
More...
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Sock ‘n’ Buskin, Council Rock North’s theatre club, was founded in 1967 under the direction of Mr. David R. Harris. At that time, about thirty young students with an intense interest and excitement about theatre began doing plays at Council Rock. More than forty years later, the club has an annual membership of one hundred fifty students. Instead of one advisor, Sock ‘n’ Buskin has many committed adults who are willing to share their expertise, time and energy with students who want to learn more about theatre. Instead of just a fall show and spring show, the club does as many as seven plays a year and is involved with many other school related activities.
New members of the club often wonder what, after all, is a “sock” and a “buskin”. The club’s name comes from footwear used in ancient Greek theater. Like the masks of comedy and tragedy, the “sock” refers to a soft shoe worn by ancient actors - usually used in comedies or lighter fare. A “buskin” was a harder shoe or boot worn in more serious dramatic work.
The Sock and Buskin Theatre Club Handbook
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The latest something funny in a long line of funnies in the intimate underground room at the American Place Theater, 111 West 46th Street (2470393), where humor with an American flavor has been a weekend staple for several seasons, gets its laugh on film. This is the first cinematic ha‐ha in the American Humorists Series. The offering this weekend is an hour‐and‐45minute reel of drollery that embraces humor from its most rustic to its most rugged.
There's something funny going on at the Subplot Cabaret.
This is how it goes, and stop me you've heard this one. The version is the one told by Wynn Handman, director of the American Place, who gets as much charge out of the Subplot's sock as he does out of the larger hall's more somber buskin.
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