Another Happy Student

We continue to gear up for a new round of playwriting classes taught by me at Chelsea Rep LAB. The classes will begin in mid-February. The beginning class meets on Sunday afternoons, 1-4. The advanced class meets on Monday evenings, 7-10. This week, I have been working on the syllabi for both classes. The beginning class will read two of my favorite one-acts: Cheryl Davis' "Child of the Movement" and Richard Hellesen's "Layin' Off the Lizard-Boy." The advanced class is reading full length plays, including Frank Wedekind's "Spring Awakening" and John Webster's "The White Devil" (I like my Jacobean tragedies!).
My student Claudia Anel (nee Tubrides) has written a lovely endorsement of our playwriting program:
"The LAB’s playwriting class is a phenomenal opportunity for anyone interested in developing a playwriting technique. Anne is extremely knowledgable; not only in terms of the actual writing, but also in the history and significance of all the works we studied. She is a stickler for proper form, which is great! What resonated with me the most, as a beginner, was the opportunity to start projects almost every week.
Through different in-class writing exercises and take home assignments, I was able to come up with several ideas that I later developed into one act plays. The reading assignments and in-class critiques set a foundation for analytical thinking that helped me as I worked on re-writes. I felt practicing as a beginner, was the opportunity to start projects almost every week.
I was able to come up with several ideas that I later developed into one-act plays. The reading assignments and in-class critiques set a foundation for analytical thinking that helped me as I worked on re-writes. Finally, I feel students of this class will benefit greatly from the tone set by Anne and the LAB which is one of hard work, mutual support and commitment."

A link to the Lab's website is above (we're working on the page, so the class information may not be up yet- check back in a few day).

7 Sins in 60 Minutes Hits the Road

I’ve just finished the rewrite of my Anger (a.k.a. Wrath, Ire) scene for 7 Sins in 60 Minutes in its Philadelphia Fringe Festival incarnation. Completely new scene, which culminates in completely new violence. In the midst of that, I wrote up a little essay about what anger means to me, and how it plays out in the scene itself. A version of it follows:

Anger is incredibly insidious, I think because there are so many possible different manifestations of it. Unlike envy or gluttony, there are good kinds of anger, like God’s wrath or righteous anger, or used creatively, as Rainer Maria Rilke writes in Letters to a Young Poet, “Anger, cleanly used, is clean, too.” You can tell yourself your anger is righteous, though it very well may not be. Anger can be passive-aggressiveness, impatience, self-destructive behavior, vengeance or rage. The experience of rage, the way it literally feels like it’s taking you over, makes me understand why people used to believe in demonic possession. Because that’s what rage feels like- it crowds out everything else from your mind. It’s also exhausting to live with for any length of time- either in yourself, or in your house.

What I didn’t know until the last night of 7 Sins in 60 Minutes at HERE (because that’s when fight choreographer Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum told me and pride-playwright Cheryl Davis) is that each Deadly Sin/Virtue has a demon assigned to it (by a German bishop in the 16th century). It seems that Amon (the Wrath demon) is a quite powerful one who has 40 legions of lesser devils at his beck and call. His particular talent is manipulating love and hate situations with both friends and enemies. One of Amon’s physical manifestations is “a man with dog’s teeth who is situated inside of a raven” (which I still can’t conjure up completely in my mind).

In Scene 5, anger first manifests itself as Amadea’s impatience and Dante’s passive-aggressiveness (pretending to look for the tire jack that isn’t there, continuing his pitch while Amadea rages). They each put themselves and others in danger (anger with a soupcon of pride) by trying to flag down a car. It culminates in violence, anger’s physical manifestation.

7 Sins in 60 Minutes

So a couple of months ago my friend Cheryl Davis tells me she's been chosen to work on this project with six other playwrights: 7 Sins in 60 Minutes. She's one of my closest friends, but I admit to being envious of her opportunity. I've written a play about avarice (It's Called Development) and I spent years of my life working on an adaptation of Goethe's Faust (a lot of pride). In March, Cheryl told me that they were short a playwright, and would I be interested in working on it? I said sure, and after meeting with director Melanie Sutherland, I was in. So that as I was working on Our Dolls, I was simultaneously writing and rewriting my scene (anger) for 7 Sins (link above).
We had our first reading last Wednesday. It's always interesting to hear the play for the first time, but seven different writers writing the same characters made it really interesting. And despite my worst fears, it really all hangs together. In addition to Cheryl, the writers are Paula Cizmar, Olga de la Fuente, Chisa Hutchinson (who just won the first Lilly Award), Natalia Naman, and Melisa Tien. Great writers and wonderful people.
7 Sins' first incarnation will be at HERE in July, part of their Summer Sublet series. In September, we go to the Philly Fringe Festival, and in August '11 (it looks funny to type that), to Edinburgh.

Estrogenius- Week One

Last week, I saw Week One (now closed) of Estrogenius at Manhatan Theatre Source. The range of plays, as always, interested me. I have seen other years of Estrogenius because my friend Cheryl Davis has had pieces in it several times. This year is its tenth anniversary.
The first play, Roar of the Crowd by Suzanne Lamberg, was very clever. It withheld just enough information to make its punch line pay off. It also reminded me of the endless arguments I've been in over what constitutes a ten-minute play versus a skit. This seemed pretty skit-like to me. Bette Siler's The Gift of the Maggie's is a take on O.Henry's The Gift of the Magi, but the adaptation does not match up on some pretty basic points of the original. It was certainly not a skit; it wasn't my brand of humor, but the audience laughed a lot. Junk Mail by Lynn Snyder was all over the place as a play, yet not clean enough to be a skit, but Anita Gonzalez's direction and the committed acting of Alana Jackler and Stephan Alan Wilson made it work. The last piece of the evening was Daniel Damiano's Enlightenment of Mrs. Cartwell, set during the Regency in Hyde Park. Conjures up Georgette Heyer novels, doesn't it? The plot of the play is Mrs. Cartwell overheard another woman say she had a big butt. Hilarity ensues.
My favorite, not surprisingly, was Elaine Romero's Revolutions. A play with genuine, deep emotion! That moved the audience! Set somewhere other than the contemporary US! I did wonder if it might be a longer play, since there's so much good stuff in it. I hesitate to give a complete plot summary (should you ever see it, I don't want to blow the ending), but it's about Pilar, a woman in a Latin American country, who goes to the General, looking for her missing son.

More on The Power Broker

One thing about “The Power Broker” is that when you encounter it, in all its heft, your first thought is “I know nothing whatsoever about Robert Moses.”

But as you keep reading, it comes back to you in pieces. Oh, yeah, the playground fight- neighborhood mothers protest Moses expanding the Tavern on the Green parking lot through their playground. Many times when I’ve been near that playground and the Tavern, I've witnessed some of the prodigious rodent population (and I don’t mean squirrels). Fearless rats, cavorting in broad daylight. [N.B.: For Cheryl Davis, who’s writing a ten-minute play about that fight- it’s Chapter 42.] It didn’t hurt the mothers that Arnold Newman lived across the street from the playground, and took some lovely photos for the press. The mothers (and their lawyer) stood up to Moses at a time when he had begun to fall from grace. There were mobsters (like Vinnie the Chin Gigante, in his youth, and Frank Costello) found connected to subcontractors on Title I slum clearance contracts. Then once reporters starting digging through Tavern on the Green’s financial records … well, it got very messy. Not bribes per se, but certainly honest graft and the Tammany machine (what greases a machine so well as money?).

Birth of a Nation

Since I moved to Brooklyn, I finally have a mailbox big enough to hold a DVD, so I am discovering the joys of Netflicks. I rent movies I’ve never seen or have only seen part of, or cable series I’m seen some or none of (“Deadwood” and “Rescue Me,” in particular). This week I saw “The Birth of a Nation.” I’d seen parts of it in a PBS documentary, and I’d certainly read about D.W. Griffith, Lillian Gish and Mae Marsh.

My friend Cheryl Davis recently had a production of her play “By Oscar Micheaux” produced by the Milk Can Theatre Company. Micheaux was a contemporary of Griffith’s, and also a film director (he made what were then called “race” movies). Throughout the play, Micheaux invokes Griffith as the exemplar of what is wrong with Hollywood and its treatment of black characters. His first full-length feature, “The Homesteader,” was made in response to Griffith’s depiction of Black Americans. Micheaux also wound up working with a young Robert Earl Jones towards the end of his life, which I find fascinating. Would James Earl Jones ever have gone into acting at all if his father hadn’t?

“Birth of a Nation” was made in 1915, the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Civil War. (The link above gives a lot of information about the film and a plot summary.) It was the most popular silent film ever made; then-President Woodrow Wilson (who, don’t forget, was a Southerner himself) described it as “History written with lightning.” It was based on two novels of the Rev. Thomas Dixon, Jr., who adapted them into a play (“The Clansman”) that ran on Broadway at the Liberty Theatre (approximately where the AMC is now, on the 200 block of 42nd Street) in 1906. Civil War plays were very popular- the great actor William Gillette’s most famous vehicle was “Sherlock Holmes,” but a close second was his “Secret Service,” about a Union spy. Griffith was originally an actor and performed in several plays about the Civil War. He was a native of Kentucky, and his father was a decorated Confederate Army colonel.

All of that said, “Birth of a Nation” is deeply shocking. When it opened , there were protests in the Northeast, and by the NAACP. The State of Ohio tried to ban it from being shown at all. If you could, even for a moment (and I don’t think it’s possible, actually), try to detach the rampant racism from it, which is in every frame where there are any Black characters, there is certainly more stuff going on besides. It is anti-Northern in a hundred subtle ways. If I’d been a Union Army veteran watching it, I’d have been absolutely incensed. This pricked my conscience on and off while I was watching it, until the final scene. That scene is the two honeymooning couples, by the sea, dreaming of the New Jerusalem, a city of brotherly love and the image of Jesus. These words and images, particularly after what has come before (it’s long- about two and a half hours), are incredibly jarring. This is how the Ku Klux Klan imagines heaven? I could only take cold comfort in the fact that no one could ever make a movie like “Birth of a Nation” today.

TRU Love Indeed

TRU (Theatre Resources Unlimited) has its mission in its name. Its main purpose is to help theatre producers and other theatre professionals through the exchange of information and networking opportunities. TRU’s electronic newsletter alone is a reason to join. It covers arts jobs, submission opportunities, apartment sublets, casting notices, professional services, classes- everything a theatre professional could want.

TRU was founded 15 years ago by president Bob Obst, Gary Hughes, and vice president Cheryl Davis. Each year, amidst the many panel discussions, the Audition Event (very handy for casting Off-Off Broadway or showcases), staged readings of new plays and musicals, TRU has a benefit to raise money to keep its many programs going. This year’s is a luncheon on Sunday, November 11th at 1PM at Sardi’s (234 West 44th St.). The TRU Love Benefit will honor producer Cheryl Wiesenfeld (“The Exonerated,” “Caroline or Change,” “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” etc.) with the 2007 TRU Spirit Award.

Cocktails begin at 12:30, followed by lunch at 1PM, and the award presentation and performance at 2PM. Confirmed performers include Mia Dillon, Keir Dullea and Tonya Pinkins, and maybe even Elaine Stritch. Tickets for $100 or $150 are still available. You can buy them online (click link above), by credit card or Paypal. I’ll be there!

De Gustibus

The Dramahound has been thinking about food lately. Not that there’s anything new about that, but this is more than the usual “what’s for dinner?”

There are not a lot of plays about food. I did see a hilarious ten-minute play by Melissa Fendell about the history of the potato a few months ago at the Milk Can Theatre Co., along with a play by my friend Cheryl Davis that involved a recipe for salmon poach in a dishwasher. M.L. Kinney has written a really creepy play about gluttony- a couple is so into what they’re eating and each other, they let their offstage baby die. Brecht mentions bread a lot (he would, wouldn’t he?), as does Shakespeare in Coriolanus.

My scene partner from grad school, Giuliano Hazan, now is a chef and writes cookbooks. The scene we did that I remember best was from The Country Girl, and when I had to slap him, my hand slipped and threw his glasses across the studio. But he forgave me. Before we went to school together, Giuliano translated at least one play of Dario Fo’s into English. There must be a Fo play about food.

Sunday night my boyfriend and I were cooking, which we do for recreation and because it’s something we can do together. Otherwise, that’s what take-out menus are for. We made a roasted vegetable dish from one of Giuliano’s books, and my boyfriend started waxing rhapsodically (as he is wont to do) about the Roman countryside, and what might Cincinnatus have had for dinner from his farm. And the more we talked about it, the more we were surprised. There’s no pasta in fourth century B.C.E. Italy- that doesn’t come until Marco Polo brings it back from China. Probably no rice or risotto yet, either. No potatoes or turkey, they’re American. Tomatoes are from South America. So old Cincinnatus has wine, olives, probably figs, some kind of bread. Not quite fettucine alfredo.