NYCPlaywrights
Sat 4/10/2021 5:17 PM
Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER ONLINE ***
Concord Theatricals is proud to launch the Read More Plays Club. This new reading club will focus on recognizing select Concord Theatricals plays as important works of literature. We hope that while live performance is on pause, the Read More Plays Club can unite theatre lovers and create a digital space dedicated to celebrating great artists, good conversation and plays on the page.
Each club session will feature a fantastic Concord Theatricals title and artists connected to the work in an hour-long candid discussion around the creation and history of the play. Readers will have a chance to engage with the artist and learn more about their motivations, their creative process, and the work itself.
Our Town (Multilingual) by Thornton Wilder Translations by Nilo Cruz and Jeff Augustin
(Full-Length Play, Drama)
Spanish and Creole translated portions © 2017 Miami New Drama. Published 2020.
Arguably America’s best-known and most celebrated play, Our Town depicts the small town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, through three acts: “Daily Life,” “Love and Marriage” and “Death and Eternity.” In the next step for a work that Wilder conceived as a play about everywhere, Our Town (Multilingual) presents the material for the first time in three languages: English, Spanish and Creole. Infused with layers of culture and community, this new version celebrates Grover’s Corners as an international address.
In this discussion, noted Wilder scholar and translator Julie Vatain-Corfdir will talk to Tappan Wilder, the literary executor of the Wilder Estate and nephew of Thornton Wilder, and Michel Hausmann, the Artistic Director of Miami New Drama, about the genesis of this new version of the beloved classic and the process of translating a major work. Additionally, there will be a Q&A with our panelists about the production and ongoing impact of Our Town. Please join us!
The Our Town discussion will take place Tuesday, April 20, 2021 at 5 PM EDT. Register here!
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
The Chameleon Theatre Circle (located in the Twin Cities area in Minnesota) is seeking original works that have never been produced. All styles and genres are welcomed (i.e. one-acts, musicals, full length dramas, etc.). The winning plays are scheduled to be showcased in a concert-format festival in the fall of 2021. All shows submitted will automatically be placed on the slate of shows in consideration for future seasons.
***
We're calling for worldwide short play submissions of max 10 min for our new Village live online showcase themed 'LIMITATIONS'! We will be producing 5 selected submissions to be performed live via Zoom for our Village showcase in June or July, 2021. Revolve around the theme 'LIMITATIONS' and your inference of it. Feel free to explore different elements and sides of the concept
***
New Voices is a two-week production process for students ages 13-19 that takes original one-act plays from script to stage for public performance. These plays will be written, directed, designed, performed, and technically managed by program participants, running from June 21-June 30. No previous theatrical experience required!
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** REJECTION ***
Stages Of Recovery From The Rejection Letter Blues
Disbelief And Denial
What?! This can’t be possible! They must have confused my work with someone else’s. Your eager smile fades away, and you check the email address again and again to be sure it’s correct. The celebratory cookie you’re holding crumbles in your grasp as disbelief turns into…
Wailing And Gnashing Of Teeth
Woe! Despair! You express your disappointment and frustration. Shake your fists at the sky and hope the name of the editor or literary agent who callously turned down your work will be badly misspelled on a coffee shop paper cup. Okay, maybe not that extreme. But how could the agent not recognize the literary gold you offered them? How could the journal editor ignore your perfect phrasing?
Curling Up In A Ball
Now it’s time to take action: Curl up into a ball on the bed, the couch, or maybe the floor of the coffee shop so the cad who rejected you trips over you while retrieving that mislabeled coffee cup. Let’s face it: Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like a rejection letter is a personal judgment against you and all of your work as a writer. You might even curl up metaphorically and refuse to submit your writing anywhere else. After all, if your writing was rejected once, it will be rejected forever, right?
Actually, no. Just because you received one rejection doesn’t mean that particular piece will never be accepted elsewhere. The submission strategy experts at Writer’s Relief recommend that you submit your short story, poem, or book at least one hundred times before you give up. In fact, on more than one occasion, our clients received an acceptance on the ninety-ninth try! But back to the stages of rejection blues recovery…
More...
***
Rejections can be hard. Whether they're for jobs, for relationships, or even by strange cats in the street, they can stick with us. Scripts get rejected too, and often they're for the most ridiculous of reasons - maybe a character was too brash, or the format wasn't quite right.
Director Emma Maguire says, “Scripts are rejected for any number of reasons. We want to give these scripts their due - to the benefit of actors, playwrights and the audience. It’s all about owning our rejections, and improving our writing.” Tempest will be opening up submissions for scripts later in the month, and will be showcasing as many as possible across a series of live script readings at the Circus Bar in Wellington. Playwrights are invited to attend these readings, to take notes, and to enjoy their play being read out loud.
More...
***
Reading Between the Lines of Rejection Letters
Is there a way to humanize playwrights’ familiar submission/rejection cycle? Remembering that there are human beings on both sides of the exchange can help.
It’s a cold, gray February afternoon in Makanda, Ill. I’m standing before my mailbox, sorting junk from bills and occasional correspondences with theatres or publishers. While letters from publishers nearly always contain checks (not many, but enough), most correspondences from theatres carry form letters notifying me that I’ve been rejected for various opportunities. So my trips to the mailbox, much like my role in raising my 15-year-old son, Ricky, act as a daily reminder to practice humility, patience, and perseverance.
Today’s delivery brought a different kind of energy, though: I saw the Actors Theatre of Louisville logo and didn’t want to open the envelope immediately. In truth, I was afraid of its contents.
More...
***
Ten Things a Reader Wants You to Know (or, How to Keep Your Script in Consideration)
Dear Gentle Playwright:
I want to like your script sample. Actually, I want to love your script sample. Surprised? Did you think that I am a wicked, villainous, old grouch that lives to destroy budding young theatrical writers and can't wait to be cruel while assessing their work? No, in actuality I have been engaged as a reader because I truly love theatre.
However, there are some common mistakes that many playwrights make when they are starting out that will instantly relegate their work to the bottom of the pile. Please remember that a reader will have many scripts to work through, and you don't want to give them an excuse to quickly move on from your script due to frustration. Readers do not want to see your creativity stifled and understand that some rules are meant to be broken. But a submitting playwright needs to understand that there is a difference between creative writing and crafting theatre. Part of your job as a writer is to create a text that will allow the director, designers, and actors to do their job as well. In the name of keeping your reader engaged and giving your play its best chance, please consider the following:
1. A script is not a musical score.
I am instantly turned off by a writer providing a punctuation glossary at the top of the script.
More...
***
Rejection is something that most people working in theatre will regularly experience. Whether you are trying to get into drama school, having an audition or interview, getting an agent or just trying to get seen by the right people, you will experience rejection throughout your career. So, how do you deal with it?
Experience
Use your rejection as experience. Take on board any comments you may have received and use them to improve yourself for the next opportunity. Go for every experience that comes your way – especially when it comes to auditions or interviews, the more you do, the more you will feel comfortable with the experience. Those who you may look up to in the industry went through a lot of rejection before they got to where they are now.
More...
***
The Most Rejected Playwright
Don is a playwright and has been one for 26 years. He has kept up quite a detailed tracking system for play submissions. What was sent out, to whom, and what response was sent back. This is the first thing to take note of, it’s important to have a process for what you’re sending out. This way you never send the same script to the same theatre twice. If you get in a submission groove, it’s more than possible you’ll forget what’s gone out and where.
More...
***
“My body kinda implodes. Like, all my energy swirls down and disappears as if it were flushed down a toilet.” Clara (not her real name), a sharp and accomplished fellow playwright and coaching client, sits across from me, talking about receiving yet another rejection email among dozens this year. “I want to reach through the computer and bitch-slap someone.” She mimes this. “But there’s no one there but me, so I do it to myself internally. I later compare myself to friends who did get it and feel even shittier. I wish I didn’t react this much, but I do. I think, what’s the point? I contemplate quitting theatre all the time.”
We playwrights, not to mention actors, musicians, directors, other writers, and artists of all kinds, have all been Clara. I most certainly have. The “wall of no” surrounding us can sometimes seem wider—and higher—than anything Donald Trump could dream. On the one hand, that speaks to the abundance of magnificent playwrights. On the other hand, the full-time side hustle of sending out work can invite a tsunami of rejection in our inboxes. Yet, amazingly, many of us find a way to keep writing and keep sharing. What do playwrights do to metabolize rejection (other than posting our sad face on sadplaywright.com) and stay with it?
More...
--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/b3d300f8-03c8-4e69-adf2-e36dc8e5c561n%40googlegroups.com.