Boston Theater Marathon May 12!

That's right, it's marathon time again!  This year's Boston Theater Marathon will take place on Sunday, May 12, from noon until 10pm, at the Boston Center for the Arts/Calderwood Pavilion Theatre..  It'll feature 50 (yep, 50!) ten-minute plays by 50 New England playwrights, produced by 50 different theatre companies.  It's my very favorite theatrical event of the year. 

I'm fortunate to be included yet again--this will mark the 10th time I've had a play in the Marathon.  New Rep will produce my short, goofy play, Curse the Darkness.  Bridget O'Leary will direct Robert P. Murphy, Lisa Tucker, Erica Spyres, and one other actor (TBA).  My play will appear in the 3-4pm slot, but take the challenge and come for the entire day.  (I will be on hand to watch all 50 plays.  You can do it, too.  Pack a snack.  Dark chocolate is my secret.)

Not only is this an amazing way to see a huge cross-section of amazing Boston theatre, it's also a fundraiser for a good cause--the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund, which provided grants to members of the theatre community facing unexpected crises and dire needs (floods, fires, medical emergencies, theft, etc.).  So come have a blast and do some good at the same time.

Look What Came in the Mail

Yes, the Boston Theater Marathon XIII anthology is finally out, publishing the 50 ten-minute plays that were part of the Marathon in 2011, including my play, Escape to Wonderland.  As pretty much the whole world knows by now, I love the Boston Theater Marathon--I love its energy and vibrancy, and how it lets me see a big swath of Boston theatre all in a single day.

Since I like it so much, Kate actually asked me to write the foreword for this printed edition.  Yep, take a look.

I was honored to be asked (I've never written the foreword for a book before).  The anthology is published by Smith & Kraus, and you can buy a copy on Amazon, or order it from your local bookseller.

2012 Boston Theater Marathon Round Up

I had a great time at the Boston Theater Marathon yesterday.  My daughter, Kira, and fellow Rhombus playwrights, Alexa Mavromatis and Ginger Lazarus, were part of our theatre-absorbing team.  We saw them all.  Yep, 53 plays in 10 hours. 

My play, Second Look, ran in the 6-7pm hour, and I was delighted.  It's a serious piece, and the audience was clearly with us.  The house grew very, very quiet, which is just what we needed.  Actors Charles Van Eman and Bob DeLibero did a fantastic job, under Stephen Faria's direction, of capturing the awkwardness and silent pauses in the difficult encounter portrayed in Second Look.  Much thanks to the Firehouse Center for the Arts for choosing and producing the play.

Bob DeLibero, Stephen Faria, and Charles Van Eman at rehearsal.

I was was a little concerned about how the audience would react to our piece when I first sat down and saw the program, because our hour started with Designated Sitter, by George Sauer, featuring Hannah Husband, Nael Nacer, and Ed Hoopman--and this promised to have the audience laughing.  (And it did.)  And then right before Second Look was scheduled Walt McGough's piece, The Dinosaurs Have a Request, with a cast of a dozen actors.  I'm a huge fan of Walt's work, and this promised to keep the audience chuckling.  How would we get them to settle down for Second Look?

Turns out, Walt's piece was funny, sure, but it was also extremely thoughtful and thought-provoking, and highly theatrical.  A hard act to follow, but it fully engaged the audience.  This was just what we needed and Bob and Charlie kept a tight trip on them throughout our piece.

There were many good plays and performances over the course of the evening.  Far too many to list all of them here, but besides Walt and George's pieces, here are a few that stood out for me:

• Shrapnel by young playwright Yavni Bar-Yam. Intense play about potential high school shooters.
• Love, Billy Bunny by Peter Floyd.  I'm a big fan of plays about obsessives, and any play that features a gun being held to the head of a stuffed bunny has my vote.
• Kevin LaVelle completely grabbed our attention in William Donnelly's play, Animal Boat, as a former writer of children's songs turned corporate PR hack.  (This was one of Kira's favorite's, too.)
• Ronan Noone's I Glue You showed his dark, dark sense of humor and clear love and skill with language.
• Bob Mussett and Lynn R. Guerra shone in an intense encounter between two people who have trouble dealing with other people in Sheri Wilner's Arts and Sciences. 
• Grant MacDermott made a fine playwriting debut with the heartfelt King Richards, with strong performances from Dale Place and Bob Pemberton.
• C.J. Erlich, whom I met at the EstroGenius festival last year, gave us some great laughs with The Lilac Ticket, about an elderly married couple.  Kippy Goldfarb and Stephen Benson had terrific chemistry.
• I was delighted to see Audrey Claire Johnson, who is in the film version of Measuring Matthew, give a strong performance as a sleepless mother in Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich's play, 3 A.M.
• Hand Down the Chesterfield, by Tom Grady, was one of the more ambitious pieces of the day, with Michael Fordham Walker giving a fluid performance as a coat, in a play that had a complex view of time, place, and memory.
• I like a play with a good surprise, and John Shanahan's play, Hot Water, featuring Will Lyman, Bill Mootos, and Amanda Collins, certainly made me happy.
• Erin Striff's The As-If Sisters was a solid adoption play, and I happen to love writing and watching adoption plays.  As well as plays with Georgia Lyman in them.
• Deirdre Girard's play, Frickin' Woodpecker, got a great cast in Steven Barkhimer and Barlow Adamson, that got this script to land with just the right gentle touch.
• Esme Allen blew me away in The Accidents of Bread by William Orem.  I turned to Alexa and said, "who the hell was that?"  Having spent the last zillion years working on a play about the creation of the English Bible, I loved seeing someone flip out over the nature of transubstantiation.
• And Reproduction by Elizabeth Dupre, featured some great romantic geek humor.  I adore romantic geek humor, since I might actually be a romantic geek myself (you'll have to ask Tracy for confirmation).  Excellent performances in this one by Andrew Bernap and Rachel Dulude.

 The day ran, as always, seamlessly.  The BPT staff, designers, running crew, and stage managers are special kinds of magicians and deserve high prize for this most intense juggling act.

I dragged Kira to the party afterwards.  I promised that we'd only stay 15 minutes (she protested that she needed to go home and get to bed because she had school the next day.  Pshaw!)  but of course I kept us there for almost an hour.  My wife pointed out that the BTM is basically Bring-Your-Daughter-To-Work Day for me.   [The following is apparently a secret.  Do not tell anyone:]  The BTM party is pretty much the ideal networking situation for playwrights.  There's plentiful, delicious food, cheap drinks, and LOTS of actors and directors who like working on new plays.  Is there a better place to catch up with old friends and make new contacts?  If you're a playwright working in Boston, you're a fool, a fool I say, not to go to the BTM and the party, even if you don't have a play selected.  You can scout dozens of actors, directors, and theatre companies.  What kind of new scripts interest these folks?  And then that very same night, you can hunt down the ones you like and introduce yourself, tell them how much you love their work, and give them business cards.  Seriously--you get all this for $25 (if you buy in advance).  It'd be worth that much just to go to the party alone, but no, you can watch 53 short plays, too.  It's pure insanity.   [Some playwrights are very shy and find parties painful.  The solution is to find an extroverted friend and go as a tag team.  It works.  Trust me.]


It was a great night.  I can't wait for next year!


(My apologies to playwright Erin Striff.  In the initial version of this post, I mistakenly gave writing credit for The As-If Sisters to Laura Crook, who was the director for the piece. Erin wrote the piece and North Shore Music Theatre produced.)

Good news: Second Look is in Boston Theater Marathon XIV

I got some more good news:  my ten-minute play, Second Look, will be part of the Boston Theater Marathon XIV.  This marks my ninth time being part of this festival, which is my very favorite theatrical event.  Fifty different New England theatre companies produce fifty scripts by fifty different writers.  It's a great way to see a cross section of Boston/New England theatre at its finest.  It does require some stamina--the show will run on Sunday, May 20, from noon until 10 pm, but that makes it even more fun.  Not only is it great, high energy, theatrical fun, but it's also a fundraiser for the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund (of which I happen to be on the board).  TCBF provides funds to members of the greater Boston theatre community who are in crisis (illness, flood, fire, etc.).

In a couple weeks, I'll find out which company is producing my play.  Can't wait.  And I hope you can be at the show to check it out, or that you'll help spread the word.

Boston Theater Marathon XIII report

I'm still tired after yesterday's Boston Theater Marathon.  You'd think I'd run an actual marathon, rather sit in a dark theatre for 10 hours watching 50 ten-minute plays.  This year, I had my 16-year-old daughter, Kira, in tow, and we were also joined by Alexa Mavromatis (a fellow Rhombus playwright), for the entire event.  We carefully packed pb&j, nuts, chips, water, and a pound of dark chocolate to help us remain in our seats for an entire day (bathroom breaks excepted). 

The time passes a lot faster that you might expect.  Every hour, there are five new plays, each in a different author's voice, produced by a different theatre company with a unique cast (though there is some overlap--my friend Bob Murphy was in three Marathon plays).

There is, as you would expect, usually a pretty big mix of plays, some that I like and some that I don't, a couple favorites and a couple dogs.  I would say that this year seemed to be the strongest set of plays I can remember.  There were no plays or productions that I thought were absolutely terrible (and let's face it, in 50 plays, you expect something that just won't sit right), and there was a stretch from 2pm - 5pm, that I thought was the best stretch of ten-minute plays I'd seen strung together for a long time, just winner after winner.

Some of my favorite plays of the day included:

• Slugger by Terrence Kidd about an oddly upbeat, slightly crazed woman, with desire for a little payback.  It featured a fantastic performance by Jessica Webb.  
• Rick Parks' Birdbaths, "Twilight" and Other Sundry Items, which I'd seen before at the T Plays, was just as delightful in this subsequent production.  
• Trust Fall by Steve Lewis, was zany and bright and a provided great spark of energy to start the third hour.  Brain surgery with a plastic knife has never been so funny.  Director Vincent Ularich got stellar performances by two of my favorite Boston actors, Becca Lewis and Bob Murphy.
• Speaking of Boston actors, Michael Ennis' play, Park N' Ride, got a scene stealing performance from Marie Polizzano, who you might remember from the Huntington's Cirlce, Mirror, Transformation (as well as strong performances from Barlow Adamson and Maureen Keiller).
• My daughter and I both had great fondness for the only one-woman show of the evening, Camberwell House by Amelia Roper.
• In A Tall Order, Sheri Wilner's very sharp play, about dating and the possible consequences of ordering from the menu on a date, got another terrific performance from Jessica Webb.
• I was pleased to see strong physical humor in Christopher Lockheardt's play, Stuck, produced by New Exhibition Room, both Alejandro Simoes and Hannah Husband were great fun to watch.  They're a company that really interests me now that I've seen a couple of their shows.
• I'm a sucker for math plays or plays about mathematicians, so Erin Striff's Ms. Connections made me happy.

And there were plenty of other good scripts and performances.

Oh, yeah, I had a play in there, too.  Escape to Wonderland was in the 6-7pm hour, and we got vibrant performances from Meredith Stypinski and Allison Vanouse.  I saw them on Friday night, in Hotel Cassiopeia, and could definitely see how their work together on that play helped boost their work in my play--just by virtue of already knowing each other so well.  Director Jeff Mosser did a great job of directing the action so it was clear and energetic.  I couldn't have asked for a better production of the play.  (And hope to work with this bunch of folks again soon.)

This Marathon offered a few less than the usual number of Red Sox plays and references, though there were still a few, of course.  We had a lot of plays this year about aging and, as might be expected, a fair number about dating and first meetings.  Not very many political plays, which is too bad, because I'm a fan of political theatre, though they're not always easy to manage in a festival setting.

Though the scripts and productions are always of high quality, I always long for a better use of the theatrical space.  (See my web post from 2009--An Open Challenge to Playwrights Writing for the Marathon.)  The super constricted tech time and set change set creates high barriers to interesting design for Marathon shows, but I'm always dying to see more shows making use of movement, dance, color, sound, music.  We only had one musical this year, plus two other plays in which music played a role in the narrative.  I'd love to see more productions finding ways to fully inhabit the space available and giving audiences something bright and interesting to watch. 

Thanks, as always, to Kate, Marc, Jake, Michael, and everyone at BPT and the BCA for keeping this important theatrical event not just going, but thriving.  I was grateful to be part of it this year and hope to be involved again.  Can't wait to see BTM XIV next year!