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*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Now in our 30th season, Obie
Award-winning Metropolitan Playhouse is accepting submissions for its 17th
presentation of East Village Chronicles, a festival of new one-act plays
inspired by the diverse population, culture, and history of Manhattan’s Lower East
Side. There is an honorarium of $100 for each script accepted for production.
Plays must pertain specifically,
even if not exclusively, to the character, reputation, and/or history of the
East Village and/or Lower East Side neighborhoods of Manhattan. Creative
responses to this broad theme are encouraged, but plays that do not address the
neighborhood’s history and/or character will not be considered.
***
New Circle Theatre Company’s
Second Annual L.B. Williams BIPOC writers new ten-minute play contest for NYC-
area playwrights
New Circle Theatre Company is a
NYC company devoted to the development of new plays. In furthering the
company’s commitment to foster diversity, we announce our second annual
playwriting contest for new, ten minute plays by playwrights of color,
including Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, etc. This contest is different from
many out there, in that we are seeking, not so much new plays, but potential
new members of our company, who wish to work with us continuously in the future
to develop their new plays.
***
We are so incredibly excited to
announce the submissions for the 2022 Intensive Mentorship officially open! It
has been a long road this past year, full of uncertainty for artists, as well
as complex conversations on what American Theater is and who American Theater
Audiences are. We at the Latinx Playwrights Circle are enthusiastically
committed to our community. We are so thrilled at the prospect of taking four
experienced peers in our community, partnering them with four amazing emerging
playwrights, and facilitating the development of four new plays.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about
these and other opportunities see the web site at
https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** MOOSE/TURKEY ***
MOOSE MURDERS
The owners and a group of guests
at a hunting lodge in the Adirondacks discover that a murderer is among them.
https://www.playbill.com/production/moose-murders-eugene-oneill-theatre-vault-0000004709
***
We should not still be talking
about Moose Murders. That’s the first thing Ricka Kanter Fisher, the play’s
associate producer, tells me when I ask about Broadway’s most infamous flop.
(Well, after she demands to know how I got her number.) Thirty-seven years have
passed since it opened and closed at Broadway’s Eugene O’Neill Theatre in the
span of a single Tuesday night in 1983. This is not a singular badge of honor.
Plenty of productions in theater history — as recently as 2008’s Glory Days and
way more from the decades when mounting a Broadway show did not require
Disney-size budgets and carried a much better shot at a return on investment —
have also met the same 24-hour doom.
Yet the Moose has come to stand
for them all. “It was a long time ago, and I think that there are an infinite
number of stories to pursue and research and interview and reminisce about. But
I don’t have any interest these many years later to talk about this show,”
Fisher told me as she declined, obviously, to comment on the fate of the Moose.
But we are still talking about
Moose Murders. Its story is hard to resist: A young playwright’s Broadway debut
headlined by an aging Hollywood icon as she tries to return to relevance. A
first-time no-name director who cast his wife with top billing. A vanity
production backed by Texas oil money. Holland Taylor ex machina in a desperate
attempt to save a ship both sinking and aflame. A critic who found himself
seated behind a vomit-covered patron brought in off the street to paper the
house. And then there’s the name itself. Moose Murders. An alliterative and very
literal title that all but ensured its place on the wall of shame at Joe
Allen’s. (In 2019, that theater-district restaurant introduced a cocktail, “The
Murdered Moose,” on the show’s birthday. “A drink so bad you never wanted
another,” it was made with sambuca and lime juice and garnished with a pearl
onion and a cherry. It’s disgusting.) Moose Murders had what Springtime for
Hitler wanted.
More...
https://www.vulture.com/article/moose-murders-biggest-broadway-disaster.html
***
FROM now on, there will always be
two groups of theatergoers in this world: those who have seen ''Moose
Murders,'' and those who have not. Those of us who have witnessed the play that
opened at the Eugene O'Neill Theater last night will undoubtedly hold periodic
reunions, in the noble tradition of survivors of the Titanic. Tears and booze
will flow in equal measure, and there will be a prize awarded to the bearer of
the most outstanding antlers. As for those theatergoers who miss ''Moose
Murders'' - well, they just don't rate. A visit to ''Moose Murders'' is what
will separate the connoisseurs of Broadway disaster from mere dilettantes for
many moons to come.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/23/theater/stage-moose-murders-a-brand-of-whodunit.html
***
It is generally not a good sign
for a Broadway show when people leave the opening-night party early. That is
what Arthur Bicknell noticed at the celebration for the premiere of his play.
As soon as the dessert forks were down, there they went, acquaintances, cast
members, even family, out the door of Sardi’s restaurant. A friend finally
approached with a report on the reviews.
Two words: “the worst.”
Indeed they were. The play was
“Moose Murders,” and even now, 25 years later, it is considered the standard of
awfulness against which all Broadway flops are judged.
“Was it really that bad?” asked
Mr. Bicknell, who now lives in Springfield, Mass., and is the chief publicist for
Merriam-Webster. “The simple answer is yes.”
Things weren’t so grim at the L
& M bowling lanes in Rochester, N.Y., on Friday night, when a cast of
nonprofessional — most barely even amateur — actors had just finished a second
performance of “Moose Murders” at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center. The
show, a staged reading but with original music, was put together by John Borek,
58, a self-described “part-time conceptual artist” who works by day as an aide
to a Rochester city councilman. The first performance was on Feb. 22, the 25th
anniversary of the play’s Broadway opening, and closing, night.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/theater/21moos.html
***
It was the night a 28-year-old
writer named Arthur Bicknell opened his first (and last) Broadway play, a
mystery-farce called “Moose Murders.” Previews had been . . . well, “rocky”
doesn’t do them justice. Better to use Bicknell’s own description: “an amazing
stew of magnificent incompetence.”
The leading lady quit, a man
sitting alongside the critics at a matinee vomited all over himself and a woman
leaving the theater one night shouted to a policeman, “Arrest this play!”
On opening night, Bicknell
awaited the reviews at Sardi’s, where he sensed the show hadn’t gone over well,
especially since the “semi-celebrities” at the party declined to meet him.
(“They ate the food, though,” he
recalls.)
But nothing prepared him for the
reviews, which came like bullets from a machine gun:
“If your name is Arthur Bicknell,
change it.” — Dennis
Cunningham, WCBS.
“So indescribably bad that I do
not intend to waste anyone’s time by describing it.” — Clive Barnes, the New
York Post
“I will not identify the cast
pending notification of next of kin.” — Associated Press.
“A visit to ‘Moose Murders’ will
separate the connoisseurs of Broadway disaster from mere dilettantes for many
moons to come.” — Frank Rich, the New York Times.
“Moose Murders” closed that
night, and instantly became the yardstick by which all Broadway fiascos would
be measured.
More...
https://nypost.com/2012/09/07/moose-is-loose/
***
“From now on, there will always
be two groups of theatergoers in this world: those who have seen ‘Moose
Murders,’ and those who have not.”
So began Frank Rich’s legendary
review of the legendary flop, a 1983 farce by Arthur Bicknell that closed on
opening night and after some of the most gobsmacked notices in Broadway
history.
With a revised version of the
play opening off Broadway Wednesday night, that first group might get larger.
But among those unlikely to return is Holland Taylor, who played Hedda Holloway
in the original production.
As it happens Ms. Taylor — who
went on to a lengthy TV career that included an Emmy nomination for “Two and a
Half Men” and a win for “The Practice” — is back in New York, rehearsing “Ann,”
her one-woman show about the late Texas Gov. Ann W. Richards, which opens on
Broadway in March.
More...
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RujlhV_Jl7EJ:https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/remember-moose-murders-she-was-there-on-stage/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari
***
The Script Library Podcast -
Episode One - Moose Murders
Discussion and review of MOOSE
MURDERS
https://anchor.fm/thescriptlibrary/episodes/Episode-One---Moose-Murders-by-Arthur-Bicknell-etq0cb
***
Somehow I let yesterday’s
anniversary slip by that marked the historic opening of Moose Murders, the
one-performance comedy/mystery which overnight was enshrined for all eternity;
its title synonymous with the word “flop.” As Frank Rich of the New York Times
wrote in one of his most memorable reviews: “Those of us who have witnessed the
play that opened at the Eugene O’Neill Theater last night will undoubtedly hold
periodic reunions, in the noble tradition of survivors of the Titanic.”
I was not one of those survivors.
I threw away my shot at seeing the show even though I had caught wind of what
was transpiring (soon to be expiring) on West 49th Street as the rumors drifted
their way uptown to West 85th Street where I was living at the time. In the
days before email and texting, my phone was ringing with friends telling me
that “If I knew what was good for me, I had better get down to see Moose
Murders, because not only wasn’t it going to be there very long, but it simply
had to be seen to be believed.”
More...
https://ronfassler.medium.com/moose-memories-6be15330d8e
--
Keep writing
When your head hits the pillow tonight, remind yourself that you’ve done a good job. Be patient with yourself. Remember that things aren’t achieved all at once - but one day at a time.
