The story of human rights over time has been one of “three steps forward, one step back.” As various disenfranchised groups have sought their places at the table, experience suggests that for each success, there is a failure. Each painful setback is often followed by a breakthrough. The musical play “Not Without Our Women,” by Andrew Black, Caroline Altman, and …
UPDATE: “Reduction in Force” has won the 2011 Broadway World Award for “Best Local Play.” Central Works’ premiere production of “Reduction in Force” was nominated for several awards in the 2011 Broadway World San Francisco Theatre Awards. The results have been tabulated and are in! Gary Graves: Best Director, Gregory Scharpen: Best Sound Design, and Jan Zvaifler: Best Featured Actress, …
“Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have — by disrupting that order — a way of surprising.” ~Vaclav Havel
“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it’s the most comical thing in the world.” ~Samuel Beckett
It’s known as “theatre boiled down to its essence.” And, to tell you the truth, it seemed to me to be pretty hard to write. Yes, many things can happen in a minute, but they are not necessarily theatrical. And I was somewhat surprised there was not some sort of theme to help us make a unified evening’s entertainment. I’m …
As you may know, I am an Associate Playwright with Three Girls Theatre Company in San Francisco. Recently we launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $6,100 for our month-long stint of readings, performances, and special events at Thick House next March. The great news is, we’ve raised over $9,000. Thanks, backers! What’s especially exciting is that Three Girls Theatre has …
I will have a table reading of “Believers” November 19 with the Central Works writing group. The cast will be Chris Morell as Rocky, Gabi Patacsil as Grace, Amy Prosser as April, and Harold Smith as Sam: a fantastic group! In this rewrite I worked to “activate” my protagonist, Rocky, whom I saw as too passive. Because he doesn’t have …
Strange Bedfellows, which I co-wrote with Andrew Black, will receive its world premiere next August (2012). Appropriately, the venue is Santa Ana (Orange County) CA – our friends at Theatre Out. I’m delighted that Theatre Out is producing this hilarious play. It features a few of my favorite characters, including Fern Mulligan, the escaped husband-murderer. “. . . a wondrous …
“Then what is good? The obsessive interest in human affairs, plus a certain amount of compassion and moral conviction, that first made the experience of living something that must be translated into pigment or music or bodily movement or poetry or prose or anything that’s dynamic and expressive — that’s what’s good for you if you’re at all serious in …
I had the opportunity to visit Asheville, NC and enjoy a reading of “Not Without Our Women” with my collaborators Caroline Altman and Andrew Black. The reading was well received by a very engaged audience. While we had a ridiculously short rehearsal time – just four hours – the cast rose to the occasion, and several seasoned professionals knocked it out of …