Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Blog”
I’ve created a dramaturgy site for my play, “Escape from the Asylum,” with research resources. The concept behind the play is that unconventional women are still dismissed as “crazy” and “hysterical” in present day, just as they were in Victorian times. While we are no longer burned at the stake or beheaded, a woman’s pushing boundaries is an invitation to …
Raymond Chandler was a brilliant noir writer, and a cat fancier through and through. Here’s a quote of his that’s a favorite of mine: “I decided I could lose nothing by the soft approach. If that didn’t produce for me—and I didn’t think it would—nature could take its course and we could bust up the furniture.”– The Lady In The …
a poem by Lisel Mueller What happened is, we grew lonelyliving among the things,so we gave the clock a face,the chair a back,the table four stout legswhich will never suffer fatigue. We fitted our shoes with tonguesas smooth as our ownand hung tongues inside bellsso we could listento their emotional language, and because we loved graceful profilesthe pitcher received a …
I’ve recently had the chance to use a collaboration skill that I treasure: one that I learned when I worked at Interaction Associates. It’s very simple, though not necessarily easy, especially for a conflict-avoidant person like me. The skill is to Ask or Say What’s Going On. Sometimes there’s a tension or feeling of discord in a one-to-one or group …
This lovely poem, “Chocolate,” was written by Rita Dove. (No relation to the Dove Chocolate bar.) Velvet fruit, exquisite squareI hold up to sniffbetween finger and thumb – how you numb mewith your rich attentions!If I don’t eat you quickly, you’ll melt in my palm.Pleasure seeker, if i let youyou’d liquefy everywhere. Knotted smoke, dark punchof earth and night and …
My comedy mystery play, Escape from the Asylum, will premiere in March 2022 (if the pandemic permits) at Central Works Theater in the the Berkeley City Club. Directed by Gary Graves, it will feature Chelsea Bearce, Alan Coyne, Danielle O’Hare, and Jan Zvaifler. Can the lady detectives escape the madness of the patriarchy? 1895 London: When Loveday, Katie, and Valeria …
Shake hands, we shall never be friends, all’s over;I only vex you the more I try.All’s wrong that ever I’ve done or said,And nought to help it in this dull head:Shake hands, here’s luck, good-bye. But if you come to a road where dangerOr guilt or anguish or shame’s to share,Be good to the lad that loves you trueAnd the …
The celebrated playwright began posting playwriting tips in September on Twitter, much to the delight of playwrights and theatregoers. These helpful and provocative notes have been posted in their entirety on The Bruntwood Prize website. Here’s just one example: #3. Characters asking questions is often the engine of a play. When writing/ rewriting see if you can frame lines as …
Henri Bergson’s essay On Laughter originally appeared in a series of three articles in one of the leading magazines in France, the Revue de Paris. “This will account for the relatively simple form of the work and the comparative absence of technical terms. It will also explain why the author has confined himself to exposing and illustrating his novel theory …
What is it about chocolate that inspires such poetry? Here’s one by Erin Keane about the bad kids in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory What they didn’t tell us, after we unwrappedthe lucky bar, was our place in the plot: stupid, fat, competitive, spoiled—at a madman’s whim.We were to make the blond kid look …