*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Welcome to the 3rd Annual SOOP to NUTS Short Play Festival original short-play
competition at our 530 Studios in Pelham, NY
PRIZES: 1st place: $500, 2nd place: $250, 3rd place $100.
NUMBER OF PLAYS: There will be 20 – 25 plays chosen as semi-finalists each
receiving two performances (one evening / one matinee); 5 plays will be chosen
for the final evening of competition.
***
SPELLBINDER A Quarterly Literary and Art Magazine ~ Autumn 2022 issue
Maximum of 5 pages of A4 content. Monologues are welcome.
Starting with the Autumn 2022 issue contributors, we pay a £3 honorarium per
acceptance after print publication.
***
We are open for submissions for our Special One Minute Play Anthology
'Contemporary Minute Plays-Volume 1' The One Minute Play can be a tragedy or
comedy or tragi-comedy.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site
at https://www.nycplaywrights.org
***
*** MEDIEVAL TIMES ***
Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament is a live two-hour show with a delicious
four-course feast served medieval-style, or without silverware. Guests cheer
for six brave Knights as they compete in games of skill, authentic jousting
matches and swordfights in an attempt to win the tournament. Beautiful, rare,
Pure Spanish Horses (P.R.E.) are featured throughout the show in breathtaking
acts of dressage. As the dynamic performance unfolds, the energy rises inside
the 1,000 seat Grand Ceremonial Arena. The heroic knights, spirited horses and
the flight of the falcon leave guests cheering for more. This unique
entertainment experience is a memory that will be remembered for years.
https://apply.jobappnetwork.com/medieval-times/
***
In the 1960s, on the small island of Mallorca, Spain, Jose Montaner had a
thriving barbeque business. So did someone else. Montaner and his rival each
vied for customers, locals and visitors from the island’s tourist trade.
One day, Montaner overheard some English tourists talking about medieval fairs,
and an idea occurred to him: What if he could lure more barbeque patrons by
seating them in front of an indoor dinner theater with dueling knights, serving
wenches, and horses?
The smell of manure may not have earned him any Michelin stars, but Montaner
was on to something. By the 1980s, he and a group of investors had taken his
notion and expanded it into the U.S. under the Medieval Times banner, a
sprawling bit of performance art that marries the spectacle of professional
wrestling with a four-course meal. While it’s never been heavily
franchised—there are only nine locations in North America—the marriage of
simulated chivalry and free Pepsi refills has proven to be a surprisingly
effective form of entertainment.
Part of what motivated Montaner’s pursuit of what would become Medieval Times
was his interest in Spanish history. He was also influenced by the 1961 movie
El Cid, a drama starring Charlton Heston that featured many of the tropes meant
to transport his visitors to 11th-century Spain: sword duels, castles, and
galloping horses.
Montaner put on a show in Spain for years before an investment panel was
gathered to bring the idea to the States. Scouts visited Orlando, Florida in
1980 and came across a prime spot of real estate in Kissimmee, just 15 minutes
from Walt Disney World. By 1983, the first Medieval Times on American soil was
open for business.
Then as now, the concept of “dinner theater” was not held in the highest of
regard. The first stage production that served meals opened in 1953 in
Richmond, Virginia, and initially kept their meals separate from their plays
until audiences who drove distances to get there complained about getting
hungry during the shows. After experiencing a surge of popularity in the 1960s
and 1970s, the idea of combining a live performance with a plated meal started
to collapse. The aging actors who could provide publicity for such shows
started gravitating toward television spots and commercials, where they might
earn as much for one day of shooting as they did doing several weeks of
stage-and-steak work.
More...
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/501000/knight-club-history-medieval-times-dinner-theater
***
On a crisp late January afternoon my husband Hugo and I snaked through the
stanchions at Medieval Times in Buena Park, California.
“Would you like to upgrade your ticket to include a visit to the Museum of
Torture, m’lady?” the customer ser(f)ice clerk asked, “No, I think we’re good”
I said. We made our way into the roadside castle where costumed staff placed
green paper crowns on our heads. Silently, we took in the scene around us: the
bar serving themed drinks in plastic souvenir cups, the gift shop full of
pewter dragon tchotchkes, and the birthday knighting ceremony, wondering what
we were in for.
Why I was at Medieval Times’ dinner and tournament you ask? My Mother-in-law
gifted my husband and me tickets for Christmas because she (rightfully) figured
that we needed to get out more. Neither of us had ever been to Medieval Times,
let alone dinner theater, but my deep love of kitsch led me to think it might
be a fun experience.
Medieval Times suggests that Lords and Ladies arrive over an hour before their
scheduled tournament for yet undetermined reasons. Most visitors used the time
to purchase drinks, but we used it for people watching. Going into the
experience, I figured that if I were to have any critiques of the show, it
would be about the historical accuracy. I don’t know why I expected myself, as
a historian of 20th century American foodways, to suddenly have extensive
knowledge of medieval jousting tournaments. Instead, I found myself curious,
and frankly judgmental of the entire experience. As we waited for our
tournament to begin, our morale dipped. We pondered:
How is that we’re all Lords? Shouldn’t some of us be peasants?
Wait, our meal comes with hummus and veggies? Is that historically accurate?
More...
https://www.clarestudiesfood.com/news/2019/3/11/a-food-historian-visits-medieval-times
***
During a Sunday shift at a Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament theater in late
October, Rigo Cardenas got a text from a high school friend saying that he was
going viral on TikTok.
Cardenas, 22, who performs as a knight at the themed chain, didn't even have a
TikTok at the time.
So after his second show of the day, as he fielded dozens of messages from
friends, he looked up the video — posted by an attendee — that was turning him
into the platform's biggest heartthrob.
"It was definitely like a smile ear-to-ear of, like, embarrassment,"
Cardenas told NBC News by phone Tuesday. "It's pretty fun."
That initial TikTok, posted Oct. 24 by user @Ch3rryCig4rette, briefly shows him
on horseback before the user reverses the camera to show her face. Her jaw
drops in awe. That video has since racked up nearly 2 million views.
Another video, posted by the same user on the same day, shows Cardenas flipping
his dark shoulder-length hair as he walks across the arena, sword in hand. That
one's garnered nearly 3 million views.
“It was absolutely going crazy," Cardenas said of the number of views the
videos were receiving.
Since then, others have made their way to the Medieval Times location in Buena
Park, California, where he has worked for three years, to get their own video
of "The Black and White Knight," as he is now known on TikTok.
More...
https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/meet-medieval-knight-people-tiktok-are-swooning-rcna4393
***
After a recent period of introspection, Medieval Times has decided it is a
little heavy on the dudes and a little light on female leadership. To fix the
problem, it is replacing all of its kings with queens at each of its nine North
American locations—the switches are already in place in Dallas, Chicago, and
New Jersey.
The new plot played out in the Medieval Times arena still has knights battling
each other in a tournament overseen by their monarch, only now she's a woman.
The twist is that one of the knights defies her authority because she's a
woman, and she calls out his sexism. According to the show's director, “You do
get a huge reaction from the females in the crowd." Hell yes.
This isn't exactly a feminist rallying cry around the implications of a
medieval #MeToo movement, however. As The New York Times reports, the script
was changed simply because audience members were wondering why the only women
in the show played princesses. And those heaping plates of greasy fried
chicken, corn on the cob, spiced potatoes, and garlic bread are still served by
"wenches." But hey, progress is progress.
More...
https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/restaurants/a15925649/medieval-times-queens/
***
What do you want the feel of a Medieval Times show to be?
It has to be family-friendly, in so much as we’re killing off four or five guys
every night. It’s a family destination. The idea is to weave the story through
the action. It would be difficult to have an hour and forty-five minutes of
non-stop action. You try to make the characters a little multidimensional along
the way.
How do you bring these characters to life?
The audience is divided up into six sections each night, so that relationship
[with the knights] has already established itself. Whether we had the king
before, or the queen, we make sure the audience understands that all the
knights that they’re cheering for are in service to the monarch.
What are some of the previous changes you’ve introduced to the story?
We came out of the gate with the first show I wrote. We had an after-the-battle
scene all in torchlight, and the guys all in distressed costumes, as a prequel
to the show. Then in the next show, we had a flashback scene that we had never
done before that took place in the arena, but it was a scene previous to the
action in the show. We also started micing some of the knights, which we had
never done before, and assigning them speaking roles. That turned into, in the
last three shows, the knight wearing the mic, who was subsequently in one of
the final combats, was probably going to be carrying one quarter of the
dialogue.
After something like 20 years of writing the show on my own, or close to it, I
felt like we had probably run all the possibilities. It started seeming
repetitive. The king this, the princess that, the king this, the princess
that…We were really looking for a way to change the model. And we have to be
careful, because people come to see the horses, they come to see the falcon,
they come to see the games, they come to see the jousting, so when you look at
it, you’re really only talking about 30 percent of the show you can play with.
What kinds of things do people often request to be added to the show?
We have people asking us why we don’t have a dragon, why we don’t use archers.
I mean, it’s a 360-degree theater, which way would you like us to shoot the
arrows? We had pyro for years, but we took it out. Indoor pyro is expensive and
unsafe. A lot of people want us to use fake blood. But we’ve got kids there,
and they’re eating dinner. You don’t want to spatter blood all over the front
row.
We do take pride that there’s nothing fake about the show. Everybody you see
talking is talking. The weapons are real, the combat is real. The stunts on the
horses are real. We don’t use anyone in a mask, we don’t use pre-recorded
stuff. No video, no lasers. What you see is all real. It’s live.
What are some things that, in a perfect world, you’d like to see added to the
show?
We’ve danced around with acrobatics and aerial [performances] over the years.
But with the limitations of the ceilings [it’s tough]. Like in California,
where they did 81 shows in July, I don’t know how many specialist people I
would need to staff that. That was something we experimented with once or twice
and then realized it probably wasn’t going to happen.
Then recently we were looking at the floor mapping [projections] that you see the
NHL and the NBA doing. The problem is that arenas have a 60-80 foot ceiling
height to throw the projection, but ours is only like 25 feet, so it would
require a ton of projectors. And then the surface of the arena is only gonna be
pristine when the show starts. Once the horses start running around out there,
you have this mottled surface that’s not going to be good for projection
mapping.
We are upgrading the lights across the country. We’re going all LED.
More...
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/medieval-times-interview-queen-cordner
***
In 11th-century Spain, a nobleman trying to put his hand up the queen’s skirt
after a royal feast might be subjected to medieval torture methods.
But at the Medieval Times just off Route 3, dealing with that kind of behavior
has been accepted as part of the job for too long, said Monica Garza, one of
several actresses who plays the queen at the dinner-and-a-tournament
attraction.
Garza said management made her feel like a “diva” for requesting additional
security protocols after she pointed out increasingly bold behavior from
guests. It was only after an incident in which a rowdy ticket holder got close
to her throne and tried to shout into her microphone, Garza said, that
management installed a chain to block access to her.
The desire for bolstered security and other safety measures at the castle —
where falling off horses can be part of the job description — was one reason
that queens, knights, squires and stablehands at the Lyndhurst castle voted on
Friday to unionize.
The
unionization effort, first reported by The Huffington Post, prevailed on
Friday, when the employees voted, 26 to 11, to join the American Guild of
Variety Artists. The medievalists will join a wide array of performers
represented by the guild, including the Radio City Rockettes, some circus
performers, and the character actors who perform at Disneyland — including
Mulan and Aladdin, for example — in California.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/arts/medieval-times-union.html
***
The American Guild of Variety Artists (AGVA) is an AFL-CIO affiliated labor
union founded in 1939 to represent performing Artists and Stage Managers in
live performances in the Variety field. The variety area of performance
includes singers & dancers in Theatrical Revues and touring shows (non-book
shows), Theme Park performers, skaters, circus performers, comedians &
stand-up comics, Cabaret & Club Artists,
lecturers/poets/monologists/spokespersons, and Variety performers working at
private parties & special events.
https://agvausa.com
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