*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
The American Playwriting Foundation is accepting applications for The 2023
“Picket Plays,” a Ten Minute Play Award created to support WGA writers who are
unable to work due to the current strike.
Six ten minute plays will be chosen by our selection committee, and each
winning writer will be awarded $10,000. The winning plays will be performed at
Theatre Row by a company of Relentless actors, who may include Wayne Brady,
Billy Crudup, Vincent D’Onofrio, Gina Gershon, Walton Goggins, Ethan Hawke,
Natasha Lyonne, Sam Rockwell, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Liev Schreiber, Yul Vazquez,
and others. Additionally, five finalist plays will be selected and awarded
$1000 each.
***
Veterans Repertory Theater (VetRep) is launching a full-length play competition
for playwrights who meet one of the following criteria:
~ current or former US military, law enforcement, fire, EMS, foreign service,
or intelligence service veteran OR
~ immediate family member of a current or former military, law enforcement,
fire, EMS, foreign service or intelligence service veteran (“immediate family
member” means: parents, siblings, children and spouse.)
***
Every month, Kumu Kahua’s artistic director Harry Wong III will select a
writing prompt on the first day of that month. We’re looking for 5-page
monologues or 10-page scenes based on that prompt.
August 2023 prompt: A super powers prompt. Write a ten page maximum scene or a
five page maximum monologue about a society where everyone has the same super
power, but one individual loses that power. The scene is about incidents that
happen to that individual, or the monologue is about what goes through their
mind as they deal with their new existence.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site
at https://www.nycplaywrights.org
***
*** GATSBY IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN ***
The copyright on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby expired on the first
stroke of 2021 and the book entered the public domain.
The classic 1925 novel of love foiled, ambitions foisted, class and betrayal
sold fewer than 25,000 copies before Fitzgerald died. It has since sold nearly
30 million. I gave our daughter the copy I had in high school when she read it
last year. The Great Gatsby has been turned into stage productions, an opera,
five film versions, a Taylor Swift song and inspired innumerable prequels,
spinoffs and variations.
More...
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/02/952737126/opinion-the-great-gatsby-enters-public-domain-but-it-already-entered-our-hearts
***
Finally set loose in the public domain, “Gatsby” is now the common property of
creative artists and unscrupulous entrepreneurs who will run faster, stretch
out their arms farther. We’ll see new illustrated editions, scholarly editions,
cheap knockoff editions (beware) and editions with introductions by John
Grisham and others. Fitzgerald’s lines could make their way into more songs,
plays and operas. I suspect Nick will finally come out of the closet, and those
East Egg lushes will reappear in the 1420s, the 1720s and space. We might
endure radical movie adaptations that will make us nostalgic even for Baz
Luhrmann’s authorized desecration in 2013.
Among the authors who waited for Fitzgerald’s copyright to expire is Michael
Farris Smith. Several years ago, he conceived the bold and arduous project of
writing a prequel to “The Great Gatsby.” Now unencumbered by legal
restrictions, he’s published “Nick,” a story about the years leading up to Nick
Carraway’s move to Long Island, where he falls under the spell of that charming
gangster.
More...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/for-gatsby-fans-2021-will-be-the-start-of-remakes-first-up-nick/2020/12/28/a6c7256a-4921-11eb-a9d9-1e3ec4a928b9_story.html
***
In the formerly deserted ballroom of a Midtown Manhattan hotel, on a morning in
early May, work lights shone on piles of tile and metal debris. A gramophone
stood atop a table beside bolts of shimmering cloth. Artificial flowers spilled
from bins. A stack of old-timey suitcases reached the ceiling. Plastic coated
the carpets. Dust coated the plastic. In just a month, the doors of this space
were scheduled to open onto opulent interiors, meant to evoke the moneyed New
York of a century ago. For now, I counted a dozen separate folding ladders and
choked on the particulate swirling in the air of this construction zone. Ain’t
we got fun.
This was the intended site of the Gatsby Mansion, the setting of the “The Great
Gatsby: The Immersive Show,” a theatrical performance of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
1925 novel that opens on Sunday at the Park Central Hotel, the latest in a very
long, heavily sequined line of “Gatsby” adaptations. That novel — yearning,
lyrical, mordant — tells the story of Jay Gatsby, a millionaire bootlegger and
minor gangster, who remakes himself in a disastrous attempt to win Daisy
Buchanan, the society girl he once loved.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/theater/great-gatsby-immersive-nyc.html
***
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s legendary novel The Great Gatsby comes to new life in
this world-premiere musical with a score by international rock star Florence
Welch (Florence + The Machine) and Oscar and Grammy Award nominee Thomas
Bartlett (Doveman), and a book by Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok (Cost of
Living).
Gatsby is staged by Tony Award-winning director Rachel Chavkin (Hadestown;
Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812; Moby-Dick) with choreography by
Tony Award winner Sonya Tayeh (Moulin Rouge!).
Gatsby will be produced at American Repertory Theater by special arrangement
with Amanda Ghost and Len Blavatnik for Unigram/Access Entertainment, and
Jordan Roth, in association with Robert Fox. Hannah Giannoulis serves as
co-producer.
More...
https://americanrepertorytheater.org/shows-events/gatsby/
***
Korean producer Chunsoo Shin has announced the creative team set to adapt the
novel for a Broadway-bound stage musical. The project will feature music and
lyrics by Tony nominees Nathan Tysen (Paradise Square) and Jason Howland
(Beautiful: The Carole King Musical), and a book by Jonathan Larson Grant
winner Kait Kerrigan (The Mad Ones). Marc Bruni (Beautiful: The Carole King
Musical) is attached to direct, with Mark Shacket of Foresight Theatrical
serving as executive producer. A private industry reading of the musical will
take place this December, and a regional production is being planned for the
2023-24 season.
More...
https://www.theatermania.com/broadway/news/great-gatsby-musical-broadway-bound_94624.html/
***
Why do we keep reading The Great Gatsby? Why do some of us keep taking our time
reading it? F. Scott Fitzgerald kept it short. A week is unwarranted. It should
be consumed in the course of a day. Two at most. Otherwise, all the mystery
seeps away, leaving Jay Gatsby lingering, ethereal but elusive, like cologne
somebody else is wearing.
I have read The Great Gatsby four times. Only in this most recent time did I
choose to attack it in a single sitting. I’m an authority now. In one day, you
can sit with the brutal awfulness of nearly every person in this book—booooo,
Jordan; just boo. And Mr. Wolfsheim, shame on you, sir; Gatsby was your friend.
In a day, you no longer have to wonder whether Daisy loved Gatsby back or
whether “love” aptly describes what Gatsby felt in the first place. After all,
The Great Gatsby is a classic of illusions and delusions. In a day, you reach
those closing words about the boats, the current, and the past, and rather than
allow them to haunt, you simply return to the first page and start all over
again. I know of someone—a well-heeled white woman in her midsixties—who reads
this book every year. What I don’t know is how long it takes her. What is she
hoping to find? Whether Gatsby strikes her as more cynical, naive, romantic, or
pitiful? After decades with this book, who emerges more surprised by Nick’s
friendship with Gatsby? The reader or Nick?
More...
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/01/11/why-do-we-keep-reading-the-great-gatsby/
***
What inspired you to write ‘Gatsby?”
Well, the truth? I was put on contract. But, in terms of actually writing,
because I think there is such a thing that happens because of adaptations where
you’re sitting in front of this piece of work that someone has already poured
countless hours and bits of their life, you know, poured themselves into this
piece of writing and you are just sitting in front of it and now it’s your job
to do something with it. That can be incredibly intimidating, especially when
the someone who did all of that pouring of affection is Scott Fitzgerald. I
think I must have sat down and read “The Great Gatsby" about three times
before I let myself put any words on the paper. It was a lot of research on the
front end and a lot of just burying myself into any Gatsby I could get my hands
on: any adaptations, any analysis, research, research papers, people’s just
offhand thoughts. I was just collecting. I was like a sponge. I had to get all
of it and then finally after three months into all of it I was like OK we’ve
just got to sit down and write it. So then I started writing.
How long did it take you?
The rough draft was a matter of about a week or two. I think because I could
practically see the arc of myself writing it before I actually sat down because
I had already frontloaded all of this extra work. I wasn't having to stop in the
middle and look something up because I already knew. I had already looked it up
in advance.
More...
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FpF8GX9o-OeVX_fIM-C2cgj2cTJysZcklWF-qHvTxQg/edit
***
THE GREAT GATSBY at Project Gutenberg
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64317
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