Cape Cod Theater Project 2022
As we rely on the generosity of
our donors for housing, we usually limit our cast sizes to no more than six
actors, though there have been exceptions. To answer a frequently asked
question, we do develop musicals and have done so in the past. If your play is
selected, your play will have a 20-25 hour developmental rehearsal process
followed by 2 or 3 public readings with talkbacks.
***
Recover-Me's third annual event
to raise a deeper understanding of mental illness through visual and performing
arts is now accepting submissions for this year's hybred in person and virtual
event!
Looking for scenes, monologues,
songs, movement pieces, and poetry about but not limited to the following:
DID (Dissociative Identity
Disorder)
Schizophrenia
Depression
Anxiety Disorders
Bipolar 1 and 2
PTSD
Trauma
Eating Disorders
***
The Strides Collective offers a
special opportunity for emerging playwrights to have a chance to have their
scripts edited, workshopped, and performed. These programs can take the form of
full residencies, which culminate in some sort of final produced element, or
workshops, which are strictly developmental processes with no final
audience-facing production.
To us, Emerging Playwrights are
those who have not had their work fully produced before or may not have the
resources or means to have their work developed otherwise. Wherever you’re
young in your playwrighting career or seeking a change of direction in your
life, we’d be happy to consider your work!
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about
these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** REVIEWS REVIEW ***
I know I am never, never, never
going to convince anyone that reviewers, as a breed, aren't a malicious lot
whose primary occupation and principal delight is the shredding to pieces of
bad plays. But I am, for the 65th time, going to give it a try - in spite of
the fact that bad plays do indeed abound.
I was sitting there, just the
other night, attending as dutifully as possible to yet another new play that
grew worse by the moment, by the entrance, by the line, almost by the coffee
costing no more than a dollar during intermission (please do not carry the
cartons back to your seats, always supposing you plan to return to your seats).
Some members of the slightly stunned audience - not reviewers, probably just
nice ordinary people - were to be seen slipping away between acts into the
early autumn night, and they were not to be scorned as slackers. There was
nothing really to be hoped for up there on the stage.
More...
***
The debate as to whether press
nights are a good thing or not is back in the headlines. This old chestnut is
to the theatre community what a discussion on capital punishment is to Radio 5
live or the exploits of Katie Price to the red tops – a reliable old standby,
always in the bottom drawer. The latest brouhaha was ignited by suspicions that
some of the critics reviewing Timberlake Wertenbaker's new play at the Arcola
had supped a little too well at an awards junket earlier in the day, and may
not have been in a fit state to review.
Even beyond the details of this
case – some critics have hit back, accusing Wertenbaker of sour grapes – the
wider debate is still worth having. Someone once estimated that the amount of
stress suffered by actors on a press night is roughly akin to that of being in
a minor car shunt; and indeed, with so much riding on the performance, it
becomes an unrepresentative experience for both cast and critics.
Once you've divvied up the seats
between critics, producers, backers, relatives, friends, agents and rival
actors who've come along to see if they've missed out on something, there's
hardly any room for the average punter. Audiences are either friends or foes,
desperate for the play to either succeed or fail. Nourished only by forced
enthusiasm from one section of the stalls and detachment from the other, a
production that went well the night before – and will, no doubt, do so again
tomorrow – becomes mangled. Laughs mysteriously disappear, fluency is replaced
by force, and the result is often far removed from what it says on the tin.
More...
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2009/nov/30/press-nights-theatre
***
As dutiful Theatre Nerds, not
even the most cynical among us should root for a Broadway show to fail. I mean,
what’s the point? First of all, there’s already enough negativity in this
world… And, second of all, the closing of a show puts good people out of work —
not to mention all the money that it washes down the drain. Yes, sure — buying
a ticket entitles you to an opinion (how loud you decide to scream that opinion
is totally up to you). But, frankly, when a show doesn’t work it’s just plain
sad.
Ye olde critic for the New York
Times Brooks Atkinson shared a similarly sentimental sentiment. As he put it in
his review for the doomed 1958 musical “Portofino,” — “There is something
pathetic about a musical show that is hopeless. For the hopeless ones require
as much work as those that succeed. There are just as many carnival-colored
costumes; there is just as much cheerful scenery. The light cues are just as
intricate, and the orchestrations as ebullient. Just as many attractive young
people dance their feet off and smile as pleasantly. Everybody has rehearsed
just as loyally, as if he were bound to succeed. What makes a hopeless musical
show pathetic is the fact that the medium is glamorous and gay.” From there, he
went on to tear the show to shreds.
More...
https://theatrenerds.com/12-times-critics-were-absolutely-savage-not-necessarily-wrong/
***
This week my show bug, a theater
performance about women of an Indigenous family navigating addiction and
intergenerational trauma, opened in Tkarón:to (Toronto).
As part of our efforts to
decolonize art and foster culturally informed criticism, my theater company,
mandoons collective, run by Cole Alvis and I, requested that only Indigenous,
Black, people of color (IBPOC) review the show.
To be clear, white people are
welcome to attend the show. It’s important to have witnesses present to
understand the ongoing effects of colonialism. And we are totally fine with a
person of color giving us a bad review. It’s not the review we’re worried
about, it’s the voice behind it.
Indigenous performance has been
grossly under-reviewed and while the tide is shifting, the lens with which
predominantly white critics view the work has been problematic. The lack of
IBPOC voices in the media—at a time when arts’ coverage is shrinking—means
white critics are often the gatekeepers of success.
More...
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dygxgw/why-im-asking-white-critics-not-to-review-my-show
***
Here, then, are some of our
crutches, translated.
Charismatic: “This person’s
stage presence seems to extend beyond his physical boundaries, rippling the air
around him, the way a supermassive celestial body warps space and time. I say
‘him’ because this quality is almost exclusively applied to men.”
Clear-voiced (of singing; also,
bell-like): “If you think describing good acting is hard, try finding the words
to distinguish one ingenue’s lovely voice from another’s.”
Committed: “This actor kept
being in character even in non-speaking moments.”
Complicated (of a female character):
“This character was neither merely a virgin nor a whore nor a mother.”
Controversial: “I would like to
acknowledge that others have expressed strong opinions about this play, but I’d
prefer to just observe the fray from a distance, if it’s all the same to you.”
Dated: “This show is painfully
racist, sexist, homophobic, heteronormative and/or nationalist, and quite
likely very boring in the moments when it’s not making you wince. You’re
watching it for one of two reasons: One, long ago, it was the best of the pack,
perhaps because we didn’t let most of humanity be playwrights back then. Two,
some current-day director or producer is banking on name recognition or hoping
for credit for discovering a ‘hidden gem.’ ”
Edgy: “This production was
created by people who are younger than I am.”
More
https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/theater/theater-criticism-jargon-translated
***
“Slave Play” creator Jeremy O.
Harris has become the golden boy of theater. Out labeled the 6-foot 5-inch Yale
Drama School graduate “the queer Black savior the theater world needs.” In the
New York Times, Tarell Alvin Mcraney, “Moonlight” co-writer and chair of Yale’s
playwriting program, called Harris “a supernova star that consumes everything
around them and metabolizes a new energy.”
With his penchant for
gender-bending high fashion, the only thing eclipsing Harris’ persona is his
provocatively titled “Slave Play.” Predictably, the name and the racially
charged BDSM themes of the play have elicited strong reactions.
On the one hand there is
theatergoer Ashley B who started a change.org petition titled “Shut Down Slave
Play.” “I wanted to verbalize that this was one of the most disrespectful
displays of anti-Black sentiment disguised as art that I have ever seen,” she
wrote in the description. “As a Black woman I was terribly offended and
traumatized by the graphic imagery mixed with laughter from a predominantly
White audience.”
On the other hand there is “What
It’s Like to See ‘Slave Play’ as a Black Person” by New York Times opinion
writer Aisha Harris. She first saw the production at a special performance for
Black people and then watched it again with a standard, predominantly White
crowd. Her verdict: She understands Black people’s “hesitation and dubiousness”
but concludes that “those of us who choose to endure it, we might just find a
new way of living in that uncomfortable space, and reimagine the possibilities
of what theater can give us.” (This is not to mention a nod from Roxanne Gay
and attendance by luminaries such as Whoopi Goldberg, Steven Sondheim, Kehinde
Wiley, Janelle Monáe and Rihanna, whose song “Work” is featured.)
More...
https://www.colorlines.com/articles/despite-hype-i-hated-slave-play-op-ed
***
“Are you going to let somebody
else grade your work?” Victory Gardens Theater Artistic Director Chay Yew
responded to my latest snarky comment about the number of stars my most recent
show had received in the Chicago Tribune.
I paused. “No, of course not!”
Until that moment, I hadn’t ever thought of it as a “grade.”
But I certainly don’t ignore the
star rating. Words have sometimes hurt when I’ve read them about my work, but
when I’ve reread a review later it usually has meant something different and
has perhaps even been helpful to me with the cool eye of distance. But unlike
words, the number of stars is so conclusive and final; reducing the worth of
the work to a numeric appraisal, “this production is worth this many stars.”
Like most artists, I teeter tentatively between caring what others think and
not, and I sometimes can’t help but feel like I wear those stars, like a
scarlet letter, around with me during the days after the review goes to print.
As a director, I put my most
intimate thoughts and feelings into my theatrical work. I spend hours of mental
space researching, analyzing, dreaming, collaborating, rehearsing, teching, and
fine-tuning every play I direct, sometimes for more than a year in the making.
And then there it is, after opening, the long anticipated review. The printed
response. The permanent proof of this ephemeral piece of art that I have
spearheaded.
More...
https://howlround.com/are-criticism-rating-systems-serving-anybody
