Welcome

Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***

 *** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***

 

The Syracuse University Department of Drama is seeking submissions for the inaugural year of its New Works, New Voices (NWNV) initiative. The purpose of NWNV is to support the development of musicals by writers and composers whose perspectives have been historically underrepresented in the musical theater canon. 

 

NWNV is seeking completed musicals or musicals-in-progress from teams who are interested in developing their work with undergraduate BFA students. One musical will be selected, to receive a four-week developmental reading during the Spring 2022 semester, directed and music directed by SU Drama faculty and performed by SU Drama students. The writing team will be in residence during the final two (2) weeks of the rehearsal process (travel and lodging provided by NWNV) and will participate virtually during the first two (2) weeks.

 

***

 

Gallery Players is seeking plays for its 25th Annual Black Box New Play Festival to be held online January/February 2022. Each play selected will be given a virtual production with non-Equity actors. Playwrights must be available via Zoom or some other virtual venue for rehearsals and use this as an opportunity to continue work on their play.

We are specifically seeking plays from the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) playwriting community.

 

***

 

Adirondack Theater Festival produces new scripts of the highest caliber throughout each season. To help fulfill this mission, we welcome the opportunity to read submissions from skilled playwrights who feel their work would be a good fit at the Adirondack Theatre Festival.

 

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

 

 

*** BECOMING A PLAYWRIGHT ***

 

1. Learn the Basics of Playwriting

Playwriting is an ancient artistic expression that began to take shape as early as 4000 B.C., but theater, as we know it today, started in Ancient Greece with playwrights like Sophocles. Theatrical performances have certainly changed since the tragedies that were presented in Greece at festivals of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility. However, the role of the playwright remains the same – to develop stories that are brought to life by actors and actresses on the stage.

 

The main responsibility of the playwright is to develop scripts for theatrical productions. In addition to coming up with the concept for the story and crafting characters’ dialogue, playwrights also make suggestions for the theatrical set design and develop stage directions for the actors to follow throughout the performance. But, developing plays requires more than just effective writing skills. Playwrights must be able to envision and communicate important details, like the way characters look and behave so that actors can accurately bring these characters to life for the audience.

 

More...

https://www.theartcareerproject.com/become/playwright/

 

***

 

MY LIFE AMONG THE DOLLS; OR HOW I BECAME A RADICAL FEMINIST PLAYWRIGHT

 

My career in theatre began at an early age, when I realized that reality was going to kill me.

Raised in an environment of terror where my father had license to act on his irrational and sadistic impulses without fear of reprisals, I learned that it was possible to create another world, one where justice could prevail. Even more miraculously, I found that I could inhabit this world at will. It was, of course, a trick done with mirrors—or, more accurately, a trick done with those brilliant, refractory shards of a shattered identity, but it did enable me to survive the horrors of my childhood.

 

Everything in my universe as a child was sentient and animate, except for other human beings—especially adults. Like the images of Godzilla or King Kong in the old movies, grownups lumbered mechanically across the enchanted landscape of my childhood, obviously inorganic and superimposed—their outsize scale rendering their atrocities fantastical.

 

Read more:

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=mqr;c=mqr;c=mqrarchive;idno=act2080.0039.215;rgn=main;view=text;xc=1;g=mqrg

 

***

 

Becoming a Playwright in Midlife: Lucy’s Story

 

When acting gigs dried up for Lucy, she embarked on a career in research. But, years later, an offhand remark gave her the opportunity to write and star in her own one-woman show, paving the way for her to emerge as a writer.

 

Tell us a little about your background…

 

I am a foundling from Hong Kong, China. I was abandoned at birth, in Kowloon, on a public stairwell; it was known as being “abandoned in order to be found.” I was found by the local police and taken to the Fanling Babies Home. I was pre-term, covered from head to foot in boils, and suffering from extreme malnutrition.

 

After the standard six months at the orphanage, waiting to see if anyone would claim me or respond to newspaper and radio ads, I was then eligible to be put up for adoption. Given that in Hong Kong it was an offense to abandon a minor, it was highly unlikely that anyone would claim me. The general state of poverty for the indigenous population I have no doubt also contributed to my blood relatives not coming forward.

 

More...

https://helenetstelian.com/becoming-a-playwright-in-midlife-lucys-story/

 

***

 

Shaw Decides to Become a Playwright

 

Bernard Shaw often mythologized his own history. How and why he completed his first play, Windower's Houses, as he described the episode, became a laid-back affair, accomplished as any genius would have done it. "I came across the manuscript of the play,' he wrote in the March 1893 preface to the first edition, only nine months after he had rediscovered the abandoned two acts, "and it so ticked me that I there and then sat down and finished it."

Shaw's shorthand diary is a better source for what happen, beginning on 29 July 1892. "Began to set papers in order," he wrote, "and came across the comedy which I began in 1885"  - it was actually begun in 1884 - "and set aside after finishing two acts." When Shaw was at loose ends he often resorted to rearranging his disorganized heaps of papers.

 

Read more:

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40655107?uid=3739832&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21103455734967

 

***

 

What could teenage playwright Jeyna Lynn Gonzales, Florida-based International Thespian Officer, do with an inspiring idea and a free week? She could write an innovative play that places students right at the center of social justice movements. Gonzales, a Filipino-American student leader, dancer, and actor now adds one more title to her already impressive list: published playwright.

 

The high school senior recently published her play, With Liberty and Justice For All, through Theatrefolk, an influential publisher that provides plays for schools. Gonzales’ play follows multiple teens at Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020. It illuminates how the pursuit of justice requires people of all ages and identities to be involved.

 

Q & A WITH TEENAGE PLAYWRIGHT, JEYNA LYNN GONZALES

To celebrate her publication, Gonzales talked with us about her writing process, her goals as a student leader, and the pressing need for diversity in the playwriting industry. Through her work, she proves to other thespians what’s possible. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

 

Dylan Malloy: Will you tell us about the characters, and what your writing process was while working on With Liberty and Justice For All?

 

More...

https://dramatics.org/how-one-teenage-playwright-got-her-first-play-published/

 

***

 

Question: I’m interested in becoming a playwright; any tips or suggestions? What program would be best for me? Keep up the good work! Alex

 

Answer: Before you go and do something rash and foolish, ask yourself: Do you really want to be a playwright? Well, obviously you want to be a “playwright,” but do you actually want to write plays? It’s tedious, solitary work with little reward. You will struggle for years in self-imposed isolation on the greatest musical drama about rollerskating cats in the hopes that at least your mother will show up on opening night, and even then she will strain to make a compliment like, “That was nice, but did you have to use so many swears?”

 

Did she not even notice the heart and soul you poured into this masterpiece? That you insisted on real pig’s blood for the carnal orgy scenes? That you hid references to Hamlet, Henry the Fifth, and Tuesdays with Morrie even the actors missed? Every play you ever mount will be like this, and each one will be worse than the last.

 

Considering all of that struggle and toil, think to yourself, “Do I still want to bother with the whole tedious business of actually writing the damn thing?” You could easily just show up at ritzy gala balls with a beret and a cigarette holder claiming to be the heir apparent to Tennessee Williams and nobody would be the wiser. If they ask why they’ve never heard of you, it’s because they’re uncultured. Then jam a quill pen in their eye, shout Vive la Révolution!, and urinate in the closest porcelein vase. Trust me, it feels good.

 

Read more:

http://www.themorningnews.org/article/how-to-become-a-playwright

 

***

 

When I was growing up I was really focused on being an actor. I think quite often it’s the first port of call when you’re thinking about going into theatre. I mean, what seven year old says they want to be a director or a lighting designer? They don’t, because they never see it – we all know the names of our favourite actors of the telly, we probably don't know the name of the DOP or the Sound Engineer who all contribute towards the end product.  

 

So I went to drama school and trained and spent a couple of years after I graduated auditioning with little success. I couldn't get an agent. I couldn't get enough paid work. I suspect I was probably wasn’t much good! Around this time a friend invited me to go to the Young Writers course at the Lyric Hammersmith, (which if I remember rightly was only three of four quid a session). 

 

I started writing my debut play Yous Twos on that course in 2012, and although it’s not exactly the same as it was then, it’s not far off. Ella Hickson (Boys, Oil) who taught the course, was really encouraging, she pushed me to finish the play and then directed a reading of it. I've always found writers to be an exceptionally generous breed. 

 

I used the play like a calling card, it got me my agent and a bit of other work but I'd resigned myself to it not being produced. In 2015 after the play was shortlisted for Soho Theatre’s Verity Bargate Award, the now director Chelsea Walker contacted my agent asking to read it. We worked together on developing the play and on finding a theatre to produce it - which took another two years. It's now running at Hampstead Theatre downstairs, but getting it to production took six years, a bit of persistence and a lot of luck. Timing, I have found, is everything.

 

More...

https://www.nyt.org.uk/about-us/news/interview-georgia-christou-working-hard-and-becoming-playwright

 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NYCPlaywrights" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to 
nycplaywrights_group+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nycplaywrights_group/16e3c677-337d-465f-af75-a3ba23d66be6n%40googlegroups.com.