Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Every month, Kumu Kahua’s artistic director Harry Wong III will select a
writing prompt on or by the first day of that month. We’re looking for 5-page
monologues or 10-page scenes based on that prompt; the due date for submissions
will always be the last day of the month. The prompt for the month of August
2022 is: An initial meeting between 2 college freshmen in their dorm room from
different parts of the USA. For example, a local girl leaves Hawaiʻi for
college where she shares a room with a girl from Sudbury, Massachusetts.
***
Canthius is an intersectional feminist magazine that publishes poetry and prose
by writers of marginalized gender identities, including trans, Two Spirit,
non-binary, agender, cis women, genderqueer, GNC, and intersex writers. We are
committed to publishing diverse perspectives and experiences and strongly
encourage Indigenous women, Black women, and women of colour to submit. We also
welcome submissions in Indigenous languages.
***
DGF’s Fellows program 2022 - 2023
The Fellows program is a year-long New York City-based intensive for
professional dramatists who are looking to develop their existing work in the
next level of their careers. The Fellows is a free program, hosted by the
Dramatists Guild Foundation, to eliminate historical barriers of entry for many
emerging dramatists. This cohort of playwrights, composers, lyricists, and
librettists will work together under the guidance and leadership of
Award-winning dramatists to develop their current work in pursuit of further
development and production.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site
at https://www.nycplaywrights.org
***
*** ESPIONAGE & TREASON ***
Debate remains about Rosenberg’s complicity in spying by her husband, Julius.
But the play never really examines any of the contradictions of the testimony,
nor does it consider the implications of aiding the Russians at the dawn of the
Cold War. Instead, Ms. Beber, a cousin of the Rosenbergs, depicts Ethel (Tracy
Michailidis) as a blameless wife and mother, guilty of nothing worse than
feeding her son ice cream for dinner and worrying about her weight.
The set never wavers from Ethel’s prison cell, even as the play tours her past
and present. Like a morbid episode of “This Is Your Life,” the play runs from
her days as a high school thespian (she starred as St. Joan) right up to the
electric chair. Loraine (Adrienne C. Moore of “Orange Is the New Black”),
Ethel’s imaginary cellmate, guides these recollections. A figure in flowing
clothes and hoop earrings, Loraine is prone to statements like this: “I’m
multicultural, endlessly dimensional, exuding, including but not excluding
anything.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/theater/ethel-sings-revisits-the-mccarthy-era-rosenberg-execution.html
***
Certainly, this is an explosive subject. Arnold was not only the hero of the
Battle of Saratoga who stood up to his superiors, but also a corrupt war
profiteer. And his motives for betraying his emerging country are intriguingly
ambiguous.
Nelson's true concern is not so much Arnold's treason, but the hypocritical,
bone-chilling, self-righteous patriotism of politicians who evoke God at every
opportunity. Obviously, the playwright is commenting on our present-day
leaders, down to their demand for blind loyalty.
Only one scene has real power. It comes toward the end when the British
commander, Sir Henry Clinton, tries to get Arnold to agree to be exchanged for
Major John Andre, whom the Americans have captured and threatened with hanging.
Thanks to the sophisticated, lively playing of Nicholas Kepros as Clinton, a
man with a sexual yen for Andre, the scene is compelling. For once, dramatic
forces are joined and the outcome, although historically known, is filled with
suspense.
More...
https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/general-america-35585/
***
Hugh Whitemore’s PACK OF LIES the new play at the Royale, tells a cold war spy
story about KGB agents and purloined NATO secrets, but its author won't settle
for entertaining the audience with anything as trivial as a suspense yarn. This
is a play about the morality of lying, not the theatrics of espionage, and, in
Mr. Whitemore's view, lying is a virulent disease that saps patriots and
traitors alike of their humanity.
More…
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/12/theater/theater-pack-of-lies-at-the-royale.html
***
Plenty of playwrights try to draw parallels between America’s past and present.
So it can take a minute watching “André,” a play about the Revolutionary United
States that opened on March 10 at the Metropolitan Playhouse, to remember that
this is not a stilted look back at history through the lens of hindsight. “André”
is the story of the British officer who helped Benedict Arnold to turn his
coat. It was written in 1798, when the events it dealt with were still fresh,
and the question of how the Republic should behave in wartime was crucial to
the still-forming identity of a new nation. Plus ça change. ...
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/theater/reviews/16andr.html
***
The past year has seen a significant surge in the number of spies and informers
plying their trade in new English-language plays. Doug Wright's "I Am My
Own Wife," about an East German transsexual who may have acted as an
informer during the Cold War, is currently on Broadway. This fall, the George
Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, N.J., launched the world premiere of Charles
Evered's "Wilderness of Mirrors," about agent recruitment at Yale in
the 1940s. Evered, who teaches writing at Emerson College, based the piece in
part on Robin W. Winks's 1987 book "Cloak & Gown."
More…
http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/12/28/spies_onstage_the_rise_of_the_espionage_play/
***
Mike Bartlett’s curious blank-verse drama Charles III became an international
hit. His new effort examines the cut-throat world of dark-web espionage. An
American traitor named Andrew (Edward Snowden presumably) is hiding out in a
Moscow hotel. Enter a flirty, giggling Irishwoman played by Caoilfhionn Dunne,
who claims to be British and who teases Andrew over his betrayal of his
homeland’s secrets. She evinces an interest in Oscar Wilde and the pair lock
horns over footling minutiae. Andrew points out that Barbie dolls are called
Sindy in the UK and this seems to demonstrate his familiarity with Britain. But
he fails to spot the false cadences of her accent and he doesn’t query her use
of the strange term ‘British Metropolitan Police’. And the name ‘Nick Leeson’
means nothing to him.
More…
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/a-spy-thriller-by-a-writer-with-no-knowledge-of-spying-or-thrilling-hampstead-theatres-wild-reviewed/
***
In
the opening moments of a play called “Treason,” the poet Ezra Pound, dressed
flamboyantly in cape, sombrero, flowing cravat, and ruffled shirt, speaks into
a microphone at a broadcast studio in Rome in 1941. “Kike Rosenfelt,” he
exclaims, “that snotty barbarian … If ever a nation produced efficient
democracy it has been in Germany … Eliminate Roosevelt and his Jews, or the Jews
and their Roosevelt … ”
In the middle of the play called “Treason,” Pound, now at St. Elizabeth’s
Hospital for the Insane in Alexandria, Virginia, is visited in 1955 by a young
American agitator named John Kasper, who does Pound one better with: “This ain’t
about poetry, Pops, this is about the Mission: Cleansing the Anglo-Saxon race
of befouling elements – Nigs, Yids, and the rest of the gutter trash. Write
that, Pops!”
More...
https://www.amny.com/news/poet-in-a-cage-long-before-guantnamo/
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Once again....WOW
The Dark Seahorse in Cepheus : Light-years across, this suggestive shape known as the Seahorse Nebula appears in silhouette against a rich, luminous background of stars. Seen toward the royal northern constellation of Cepheus, the dusty, obscuring clouds are part of a Milky Way molecular cloud some 1,200 light-years distant. It is also listed as Barnard 150 (B150), one of 182 dark markings of the sky cataloged in the early 20th century by astronomer E. E. Barnard. Packs of low mass stars are forming within, but their collapsing cores are only visible at long infrared wavelengths. Still, the colorful stars of Cepheus add to this pretty, galactic skyscape. via NASA
Wow....
NGC 6995: The Bat Nebula : Do you see the bat? It haunts
this cosmic close-up of the eastern Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a
large supernova remnant, the expanding debris cloud from the death explosion of
a massive star. While the Veil is roughly circular in shape and covers nearly 3
degrees on the sky toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus), NGC 6995,
known informally as the Bat Nebula, spans only ½ degree, about the apparent
size of the Moon. That translates to 12 light-years at the Veil’s estimated
distance, a reassuring 1,400 light-years from planet Earth. In the composite of
image data recorded through narrow band filters, emission from hydrogen atoms
in the remnant is shown in red with strong emission from oxygen atoms shown in
hues of blue. Of course, in the western part of the Veil lies another seasonal
apparition: the Witch’s Broom Nebula. via NASA
Ghost Head Nebula taken with the Hubble Space Telescope.
Similar to the icon of a fictional ghost, NGC 2080 is actually a star forming
region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way
Galaxy. The Ghost Head Nebula (NGC 2080) spans about 50 light-years and is
shown in representative colors. via NASA
Cartwheel Galaxy PGC 2248
500 Million light years away in the aptly named constellation of
Sculptor, but a JWST breaks no sweat.
The IR composite image adds so much detail about the dynamics of the galaxy, the outer ring thought to be a shockwave emanating from centre as a smaller galaxy (not in this image) interacted as they passed by over 400 million years ago. The inner ring is also a similar event, and represents a dense area of star formation , both rings are expanding outwards. What I love about JWST images, is the abundance of galaxies in the background, Webb really picks up galaxies stretching back billions of light years.
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Druid New Writing Script Submissions 2022
The company accepts plays in the English language. For the purposes of clarity:
Druid accepts translations of original plays into English which meet our
criteria.
For the open submission process, a reading panel assists the Artistic Director
in assessing your play and ensures that a range of perspectives are brought to
bear on each submission.
***
Athena Project’s new Read & Rant program seeks to combine the original
form’s sharing of theatrical work with the wider public with the new play
development aspects of Plays In Progress while also fostering collaboration
between playwrights and dramaturgs. We are initiating these changes to Read
& Rant with the goal to create digital opportunities for early and mid-career
playwrights, uplift women* writers and dramaturgs overall, and highlight
underrepresentation for women* in these positions.
***
Brave New World Repertory Theatre is seeking new play submissions for Brave New
Works: Ditmas Park 2022 Reading Series. This season, we are especially looking
to feature LGBTQIA+ stories.
Three original, full-length plays (under 120 pages) will be selected and given
minimally staged readings between January 10th – March 30th, 2022 (if we are
unable to have in-person readings due to COVID19, they will be done virtually).
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site
at https://www.nycplaywrights.org
***
Lake Forest home of real-life Daisy Buchanan sells for $7.5M
August 03, 2022 11:00 AM
A Lake Forest mansion with ties to F. Scott Fitzgerald sold for
$7.5 million, the highest price for a home in the town in four years.
The six-bedroom, 11,600-square-foot home, known as “La Vieille
Maison” hit the market in March 2021 with an asking price of $10.5
million. It went
into contract this week.
The 5.2-acre estate was the 40th Chicago-area home to sell for
$5 million or more this year, compared with 48 in 2021. The last time a home in
Lake Forest, among Chicago’s affluent suburbs, sold for more was in 2018, when
Nancy Hughes, the widow of 1980s filmmaker John Hughes, paid $12 million for a
3.4-acre property on nearby Mayflower Road.
Originally built in 1888 for a Chicago map publisher, the
Rosemary Road mansion was remodeled in 1910 for well-to-do newlyweds William
and Ginevra King Mitchell. She inspired the character Daisy Buchanan in
Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”
Fitzgerald met King Mitchell, one of Chicago’s “Big Four”
debutantes during World War I, when they were teenagers in his hometown of St.
Paul, Minn. After he visited her at her parent’s home in Lake Forest, King
Mitchell shifted her attention to the much wealthier Mitchell, the son of a
local bank president.
Fitzgerald went on to create characters in Gatsby and short
stories that were based on King Mitchell. Another Gatsby character, Jordan
Baker, was based on one of Chicago’s other “Big Four” debutantes, amateur
golfer Edith Cummings.
The Mitchell family owned the home until 1988. In 1995, a couple
bought the home and used it on weekends. Before listing the home in 2007 and
selling it in 2011, the pipes burst. A rehab firm bought the property for $2.25
million and sold it to the most recent owners for $5 million in 2013.
JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE FINDS CANDIDATES FOR EARLIEST GALAXIES
While the Hubble Space Telescope
(HST) has previously looked at the Cartwheel, dust obscured its view.
This image from Webb’s
Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) shows a group of galaxies, including a large
distorted ring-shaped galaxy known as the Cartwheel.
This image from Webb’s
Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) shows a group of galaxies, including a large
distorted ring-shaped galaxy known as the Cartwheel. (Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA,
STScI, Webb ERO Production Team)
"NIRCam also reveals the
difference between the smooth distribution or shape of the older star
populations and dense dust in the core compared to the clumpy shapes associated
with the younger star populations outside of it," the agency said in a
release with the image.
The Mid-Infrared Instrument
(MIRI) reveals regions in the Cartwheel Galaxy that form the spiraling spokes
much more prominently.
What looks much like craggy
mountains on a moonlit evening is actually the edge of a nearby, young,
star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula.
What looks much like craggy mountains on a moonlit evening is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. (IMAGE: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)
"Webb’s observations
underscore that the Cartwheel is in a very transitory stage. The galaxy, which
was presumably a normal spiral galaxy like the Milky Way before its collision,
will continue to transform," NASA said. "While Webb gives us a
snapshot of the current state of the Cartwheel, it also provides insight into
what happened to this galaxy in the past and how it will evolve in the future."
The first images from the
international observatory, including the wondrous cosmic cliffs of the Carina
Nebula, were released last month.
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
Over Our Head Players is accepting submissions for the "2023 Snowdance® 10
Minute Comedy Festival." "Snowdance®" entry is open to original
10 minute or shorter comedies for the stage. 2023. Concluding each performance,
audience members can vote for their favorite individual comedy; the audience
favorites will earn cash prizes for the playwright.
***
Theatre Now New York is accepting submissions from across the country for its
Musical Writers Lab, a community of musical writing teams that meet biweekly
for feedback and developmental opportunities for both traditional and
genre-bending new work. There are two chapters; the local New York Group meets
in person in midtown Manhattan, and the National Group meets on zoom.
***
Echoes Writers Group at Primary Stages is a year-long, educational program
focused on finding, nurturing, and amplifying the voices of women, non-binary,
and gender non-conforming artists. It is a place for writers to develop their
practice in a supportive and creative community that grows together. Led by the
artistic team at Primary Stages, the group is comprised of writers who are just
starting to discover their voice and build their craft, particularly those who
are interested in learning about the art of playwriting.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site
at https://www.nycplaywrights.org
***
*** PETER BROOK ***
Mr. Brook was called many other things: a maverick, a romantic, a classicist.
But he was never easily pigeonholed. British by nationality but based in Paris
since 1970, he spent years in commercial theater, winning Tony Awards in 1966
and 1971 for the Broadway transfers of highly original productions of Peter
Weiss’s “Marat/Sade” and Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” He staged
crowd-pleasers like the musical “Irma la Douce” and Arthur Miller’s “A View
From the Bridge.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/03/obituaries/peter-brook-dead.html
***
Peter Brook, the legendary film, theater, and opera director whose extensive
career spans 70 years, recently joined The Brooklyn Rail for a conversation via
Zoom hosted by President emerita of Brooklyn Academy of Music, Karen Brooks
Hopkins, and director of Theater of War and writer, Bryan Doerries.
https://www.tfana.org/education/digital-programming/peter-brook
***
"I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across
this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is
needed for an act of theatre to be engaged."
"A critic is always serving the theatre when he is hounding out
incompetence. If he spends most of his time grumbling, he is almost always
right. The appalling difficulty of making theatre must be accepted: it is, or
would be, if truly practised, perhaps the hardest medium of all: it is
merciless, there is no room for error, or for waste."
"In a sense the director is always an imposter, a guide at night who does
not know the territory, and yet has no choice – he must guide, learning the
route as he goes."
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/jul/03/the-best-peter-brook-quotes
***
The monumental “Mahabharata,” adapted from the Sanskrit epic poem, had a cast
of 21 performers from 16 countries and toured for four years. (It was seen at
the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1987.)
A sworn, lifelong foe of colonialism, Mr. Brook found himself accused of
cultural appropriation.
“When we did it, Indians said, ‘Here you are, colonialists, stealing our
heritage.’ I said, ‘No, it belongs to the world.’ And I know that you have
little companies all over India who do Shakespeare. Has anyone ever said, ‘This
belongs to England’?”
An early pioneer in color- and gender-blind casting, Mr. Brook defines the
actor as a storyteller who transcends his visible physicality. He cites the
theater theorist Antonin Artaud’s phrase, “the actor and his double,” and says,
“This is the secret, an open secret: No actor and no audience believe for one
moment that this is the real person.”
“It’s like there’s the person, the role and in between is the space where the
two meet,” he continues. “That’s what the performance is, where it’s the
invisible becoming visible, it’s the space where the two meet.”
Theater reaches its apotheosis, he says, when such a space, outside of time, is
occupied by the audience as well as the performers. It can’t happen, he adds,
“if the actors are too tense or too ambitious, if the audience is too stupid or
laughs too easily. But if these two concentrations, two essences, really come
together, for a moment, it’s plain sailing.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/theater/peter-brook-interview.html
***
Peter Brook describes Threads of Time as ‘a relatively full answer’ to the
question ‘Why Paris?’ It is the first of his books not to have started out in
another form. The Empty Space (1968) was based on lectures; The Shifting Point
(1988) consists of articles, interviews, speeches, programme notes and other
occasional writings drawn from his whole career; There Are No Secrets (1993)
began life as three talks on acting delivered in Paris and Kyoto.
The new book is a memoir and started out as it is. Brook’s autobiographical
writing is recognisably clean, clear and colloquial, only occasionally falling
into what David Hare calls ‘the Esperanto patter of the higher mysticism’. From
the start, Brook avoids ‘personal relationships, indiscretions, indulgences,
excesses, names of close friends, private angers, family adventures or debts of
gratitude’, though there is a wistful moment later on when he speaks of the
‘book that is not to be written’, a family history of memories that belong only
to those who share them. Equally, he claims to have spurned ‘the well-known
splendours and miseries of first nights’.
Unencumbered by private or professional anecdotage, Brook is able to chart two
voyages of discovery. The first is his conversion from the magical illusion of
the toy theatre (what he calls the conventional ‘two room’ theatre of darkened
auditorium and blazingly illuminated stage) to the sterner, less flashy but
infinitely more powerful theatrical space that is the shared possession of
actors and audiences. Parallel to this journey is his trajectory from ambitious
theatrical prodigy to Zen pupil, from busy careerist to seeker after spiritual
truth. Like the rivers which provide so much of Brook’s theatrical and literary
imagery, these two courses eventually meet, as Brook starts to work
developmentally with small groups in the Royal Shakespeare Company. ‘For
years,’ he writes, ‘I had rigorously kept my inner explorations and theatre
experiments apart.’ However, ‘nothing can stay for long in watertight
compartments’ and in the early Sixties Brook realised that, far from being the
truth-seeker’s day job, ‘the theatre was becoming a practical field in which
the possibility existed of observing laws and structures parallel to those
found in traditional teaching.’
More...
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v20/n22/david-edgar/showman-v.-shaman
***
ENCORE! - Legendary director Peter Brook delves into the human mind
Many consider him one of the most visionary and influential directors of the
past half century. In a career spanning over 70 years and several disciplines
from theatre, film and opera, he's continually pushed the limits.
British by birth and Parisian by adoption, director Peter Brook joins Jade
Barker on set to talk about his incredible career. Brook explains why he
decided to explore the workings of the human mind in his latest production
"The Valley of Astonishment", how Shakespeare will always be
relevant and why he decided to call France home for over four decades.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQSlQZxYvog
***
A Midsummer Night's Dream - Peter Brook - Documentary with original footage
excerpts - 1970
Peter Brook's landmark production featured a white box and trapeze set designed
by Sally Jacobs.
Brook approached the play with deliberate radicalism, taking up the baton from
Granville-Barker almost 60 years earlier who innovatively presented the play in
London on an apron stage with minimal set.
The 1970 Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) production of A Midsummer Night's
Dream was directed by Peter Brook, and is often known simply as Peter Brook's
Dream. It opened in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon and
then moved to the Aldwych Theatre in London's West End in 1971. It was taken on
a world tour in 1972–1973. Brook's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream for
the RSC is often described as one of the 20th century's most influential
productions of Shakespeare, as it rejected many traditional ideas about the
staging of classic drama.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdtlsWpeLDM
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