Welcome

Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS



The Frank Moffett Mosier Fellowship for Works in Heightened Language for 2023-2024.
Monetary award to playwright: $3000 for works with a running time of at least 40 minutes.
Submissions must be in a heightened version of the English language in order to provide a meaningful challenge to the actors. This includes, but is not limited to, works using metre, verse, rhyming schemes, pidgins, creoles, and code-switching.

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Relentless Award 2024 ~ The Relentless Award, established in honor of Philip Seymour Hoffman and his pursuit of truth in the theater, is the largest annual cash prize in American theater awarded to a playwright in recognition of a new play.

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Heartland Theatre Company is seeking eight 10-minute original plays to be considered for production in June of 2024 as part of our 21st annual 10-Minute Play Festival. This year, the theme is GHOSTS.

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


*** PSYCHOLOGY OF THEATER ***

Why do we need live theatre? Many artists suggest that theatre can improve empathy for those who are different from ourselves, but until recently, there has been little research on the psychology of attending live shows. This is surprising, since theatre has been a major part of our lives both recently and throughout history. For example, before the pandemic, according to Americans for the Arts, about 44 million Americans attended non-profit theatres in the United States each year.

My colleagues and I set out to investigate the effects of attending live theatre.

More...
https://spsp.org/news-center/character-context-blog/psychology-live-theatre-can-seeing-theatre-increase-empathy


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Elliott Loverin, a junior majoring in Psychology with a minor in musical theater, is focused on the intersections of developmental, abnormal and social psychology. He’s also intrigued by the interactions between individual psychopathology and group dynamics, especially in young people.

“Gaining insight into the processes that govern human behavior inspired me to pursue psychology, and its diverse applications allow me to investigate the topics I find interesting within the field.”

Loverin’s theater career began with an audition for “A Christmas Carol” at the Berkshire Theatre Group in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Although he wasn’t cast, the 10-year-old was invited to perform in the background chorus for the annual holiday concert.

More...
https://trinity.duke.edu/news/psychology-student-hones-critical-thinking-skills-theater


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Drama therapy is the intentional use of drama and/or theater processes to achieve therapeutic goals.

Drama therapy is an embodied practice that is active and experiential. This approach can provide the context for participants to tell their stories, set goals and solve problems, express feelings, or achieve catharsis. Through drama, the depth and breadth of inner experience can be actively explored and interpersonal relationship skills can be enhanced.

More...
https://www.nadta.org/what-is-drama-therapy


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Community-based theater is a form of sociopolitical theater that takes a critical position toward social issues, often focuses on creating original works, aims to raise awareness, and works to alleviate social frustrations and conflict. This form of theater functions from a community-citizen empowerment and social justice perspective and is designed to be inclusive ( 4 ). Community-based theater activities often exist outside mainstream theater institutions and are intended to benefit not only individual participants but also communities and societies ( 5 ). These are interdisciplinary and hybrid practices based within a wide variety of contexts around the world. Community-based theater projects emphasize the dialogical nature and ongoing process of creating empowering workshops and performances. These are often grounded in established theoretical or logistical structures, such as Playback Theater, Sociodrama, Theatre of the Oppressed, or Agit-Prop Theater.

More...
https://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/ps.2010.61.3.306


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“Actors work hard to embody and personify their characters,” Sherman said. “If they just pretend to be a character, their performance is not genuine.” When a musical’s character experiences mental illness and other characters react to that illness, she continued, actors “really want to portray the illness accurately. They have to get in touch with that emotional internal experience to portray a character accurately on stage.”

While inhabiting a character is central in a performance, Sherman said her study participants told her it can also present personal challenges.

“What you take in you become,” Sherman said. “That is why musical theater is so potent. It can do beautiful things, but it can also do damage.”

More...
https://www.minnpost.com/mental-health-addiction/2021/08/study-investigates-mental-health-themed-musicals-significant-toll-on-performers/


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“I wanted to get ahead on the lunches,” Diana tells her husband, Dan, as she frenetically lines up slices of white bread on the floor and begins piling on the lettuce and mayo.

That is the moment in “next to normal,” the new musical at the Booth Theater, when Dan (J. Robert Spencer) realizes it is time for his manic-depressive wife (Alice Ripley) to go back into therapy. As artistic portrayals of mental illness go, the moment is fairly tame. Wonder Bread doesn’t have the same dramatic bam as, say, gouging out the eyes of six horses (as in “Equus”). But that quotidian element is perhaps what makes “normal,” which opened on Broadway on Wednesday, so unusual.

Mental illness on the stage and screen is often portrayed in extreme ways, and not just for dramatic effect. In Western culture psychic pain has tended to be seen as the territory of the artist, visionary, rebel and genius, from Emily Dickinson to Sylvia Plath and Friedrich Nietzsche to John Forbes Nash Jr. So it should be no surprise that madness is often used to signify creativity, sensitivity or spiritual and intellectual depth.

More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/theater/19cohe.html


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“Our findings indicate that collaborating with the theatre industry could be helpful in producing theories about social interaction that could also be investigated in the real world,” said Dwaynica Greaves, lead author of the study. In particular, the researchers are hoping that future work in this space can focus on how participation in theatrical activities might help people with autism.

This is the first time that neuroscientists have been able to record brain activity in actors during their performances, Greaves added. The actors were fitted with brain imaging technology while they rehearsed scenes from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The researchers then proceeded to call out each actor’s name while they were performing, measuring brain activity in the prefrontal cortex.

Their findings, published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, showed that when actors heard their names while performing, their response was suppressed in the brain region associated with self-awareness. These results were consistent across the six actors who were tested during rehearsals, several times a week. While they were not performing, the actors responded normally when called by name.

“The shout of a person’s own name is a powerful and compelling sound which normally makes the subject turn their head. It also engages the prefrontal cortex of the brain. However, our findings suggest that actors may learn to suppress their sense of self as they train in the theatre and take on a different character,” Greaves said.

More...
https://www.theswaddle.com/brain-activity-of-actors-shows-they-really-do-lose-themselves-while-performing

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