Fire on Earth Opens Friday (and a fun preview video)

Yep, Fire on Earth opens this Friday at the Factory Theatre in Boston, produced by Fresh Ink.  Come check it out.  Oh, and check out this cool video that they put together of interviews with folks involved with the show (including me).

Fire on Earth opens February 1 at the Factory Theatre

My play, Fire on Earth, about the men behind the creation of the English Bible, opens February 1 at the Factory Theatre in Boston's South End.  The show is produced by the fabulous Fresh Ink Theatre and will run from February 1 - 16.  You can get your tickets here.

I am super excited by this production.  I've been at most of the rehearsals, and it's been an absolute joy to work with director Rebecca Bradshaw and our very talented cast (Omar Robinson, Bob Mussett, James Fay, Brett Malinoswki, and Scott Colford).  This is a play about three men whose faith and friendship face the most extreme tests, and I've loved watching the real-life friendships grow between everyone involved.

I've been working on this play for a super long time, with readings of the early version from Rough and Tumble in Boston, the Lida Project in Denver, and the Cotuit Center for the Arts on Cape Cod, and then developed with most recent version with the Huntington Theatre Company, Rhombus, and Fresh Ink.  Now it's finally time to see the results of all the development, fully produced, on stage.
Did I mentioned that I'm excited about this one?  I hope you'll check it out.

(Look for more photos here soon, as we get some promo and production images.)

My Current Juggling Act

Juggling takes a lot of focus, whether it's clubs or writing projects.

Now that farming season has ended, my writing season has picked up full speed.  I've got a whole bunch of projects that I'm juggling at the moment, as well as upcoming productions.  Here is some of what I'm up to:

• My latest novel, Moving (A Life in Boxes), will be coming out as an ebook in about two weeks.  I've got make sure people know about it and finish getting it proofread and formatted.
• I'm about to do revisions on the book for a musical (a commissioned work) adaptation of Penny Noyce's novel, Lost In Lexicon.
• I just finished a first draft of a new full-length play, Distant Neighbors, and am working on it in Rhombus and in the New Voices @ New Rep program.
• We start rehearsals for Fire on Earth with Fresh Ink. on Monday, and I'll be making revisions fairly steadily until we open on February 1 at the Factory Theatre in Boston.
• I have a couple short plays in the One-Minute Play Festival coming to Boston Playwrights Theatre. Rehearsals start soon, but revisions are quick on short plays.
• I'm supposed to write a ten-minute play, set in a garden, for production this spring in London by a small company there.  (They performed Pumpkin Patch last year.)
• If I can clear the decks a little, I'm ready to finish the next draft of an historical novel about Civil War hero Robert Smalls.
• And I have two short plays in the upcoming New Works Festival at the Firehouse Center for the Arts in Newburyport (but shouldn't have to do rewrites on them).

It's a good thing I'm not farming over the winter.  It seems like a lot of balls to have in the air, but I actually find myself more productive when I'm juggling a lot of projects at once.  It forces me to stay disciplined.  And one thing I've learned over my years writing is that I never know which project might suddenly catch fire and find the right people at the right time and have a chance to leap forward to find a larger audience.  Maybe it'll be one of these.  Maybe it'll be the next one.  Or the one after that.

And sometimes I miss a ball and they all come crashing down for a while.  But like in juggling, it's just a matter of picking them back up and starting over.

Yep, every juggler drops the balls sometimes. There's nothing to do but pick them up and start over.

Next Up: Fresh Ink workshop of Fire on Earth

After a few weeks with mostly farming filling up my time, it's time to head back into the rehearsal room.  I actually spent quite a bit of time last week making revisions to my play, Fire on Earth, based on the Fresh Ink reading back in June.  Now I'll get a chance to hear them and to play with the actors on some of the more physical scenes in the play.

Fresh Ink will be workshop Fire on Earth starting Sunday night--we'll spend three evenings at Boston Playwrights Theatre, reading through the play and up on our feet, playing with piles of paper and stacks of books and Bibles.  This is a chance for us to experiment and have fun with shaping this play while there is still plenty of time for me to make changes.  We won't head into rehearsal until December (for the production in February).  New play development is a long-term commitment, and I'm grateful that Fresh Ink is giving new plays the time and space they need to really grow before they get to production (and that they're giving new plays actual productions, not just workshops and readings).

Fire on Earth reading tonight!

Tonight, the Fresh Ink Theatre will be presenting a reading of my play, Fire on Earth, at the Factory Theatre in Boston at 7:30 pm (791 Tremont Street).  It's free.  It's fun (well, "intense" might be a better way to describe the play than "fun", but it depends on what you call fun.  It's the kind of play that I find fun.).   It's got a terrific cast.  And I'm baking brownies.

This is the start of the development and production process with Fresh Ink, which will continue with a workshop in August and a full production in February.  I've been working on this play for a very, very, very long time, so it's extra sweet to finally see it work its way onstage.

Here's what the play's about in a nutshell.  If you're around, I hope you'll join us.

1524. John Tewkesbury is a savvy trader and smuggler, smart enough to know William Tyndale's illegal translation of the Bible will be a hot commodity. But, to sell the good book, he must elude the spies of Sir Thomas More and escape the fires of the Catholic bishops. In this true story about the struggle between dangerous information and powerful knowledge, one man journeys from merchant to martyr.

Fire on Earth reading on June 26, at Boston Playwrights Theatre

 

Fire on Earth, will get a reading from Fresh Ink, on June 26, 7:30pm, at the Boston Playwrights Theatre.  This is part of their InkSpot reading series.  My director will be the fabulous Rebecca Bradshaw. We're still putting the cast together.  I'm super psyched about this reading and the start of the process that will lead to a full production in February.

Fresh Ink to take on Fire on Earth!

Very big news today: my full-length play, Fire on Earth, will be part of the Fresh Ink Theatre's 2012-2013 season, here in Boston  Sounds like we'll have some workshop time/readings, then a production in early 2013.  This new company is picking five playwrights to work with this season (three for production, including me, and two more for staged readings only).  The other writers are fellow Rhombus writer Ginger Lazarus, Emily Kaye Lazzaro, Kevin Mullins, and Noah Mease.

This is a young group, dedicated to new plays and New England playwrights.  They're one of several new companies that have sprung up lately in our area with an interest in developing new plays and local writers.

I've been working on this play for a long time, but I did a HUGE rewrite in 2010, while I was a Huntington Playwriting Fellow, followed by a reading from the Huntington Theatre Company.  All of which was enormously helpful.  Now I'll be able to make further changes and get to see the play finally staged.  I'm completely psyched.

Here's a short summary of the piece:

1524. John Tewkesbury is a savvy trader and smuggler, smart enough to know William Tyndale's illegal translation of the Bible will be a hot commodity. But, to sell the good book, he must elude the spies of Sir Thomas More and escape the fires of the Catholic bishops. In this true story about the struggle between dangerous information and powerful knowledge, one man journeys from merchant to martyr.

Don't Talk Back (or Do?)

The reading of Fire on Earth at the Huntington went quite well yesterday.  We had rehearsal from 12-5, which gave us time to read through the script once, and then go back through to look at a few important moments, figure out which stage directions should be read, and think about transitions.  We also cut a few pages, taking out some sections that were remnants of an earlier draft, that probably never quite fit in there either.  Rachel, my director (with some help from Lisa Timmel, the Huntington's Director of New Plays), was very good at helping me figure out whether the pages should stay or go.

For the reading itself, we had about 30 people in the audience, mostly people I knew.  The heavy rain kept people away--we'd cut off reservations last week (we only could seat 50) when we'd reached capacity, so we ended up less than full.  But they were a good, attentive crowd.

The cast, of Will LeBow, Gabriel Kuttner, Ben Evett, and Grant McDermott, were fantastic.  There's a special joy that comes from seeing your work read at its maximum capacity.  There's a lot less room for excuses that way ("oh, if only we'd had a different actor for that part.  He couldn't quite get it.")

We chose not to have an audience talkback, which I know disappointed some people.  I'm mixed on the value of talkbacks.   They certainly can be fun, especially for an audience eager to talk about what they've just heard.  When I helped run Colorado Dramatists (ages ago), I led a lot of reading discussions.  Over the years, I've probably facilitated at least 50, probably close to 70 or 100.  Having an experienced moderator helps (a lot).  But even then, the discussion sometimes veers into odd territory, into weird feedback, or unwanted rewriting of the playwright's work.

Still, sometimes it's helpful.  But I'm less and less likely to use them these days.  I find it more important to make sure there is a critical mass of bodies in the seats to watch the reading, so there's an actual audience there to respond.  (20-30 people will do the trick in a small space.  For a comedy, I think 20 is the minimum.  With less, you shouldn't even bother having a reading.  I make a point of sending a lot of person invites to people, to try to get them to attend.)   Part of my job as a playwright is to be able to watch my play, judge it on my own terms, while at the same time being in tune with the people sitting in the seats around me and noticing whether they're paying attention, laughing, sighing, etc.  I get better at this all the time, with practice. 

If I was in a strange city, I might actually still want a talkback, because I wouldn't know the people or how else to solicit their feedback.  Though, at the same time, too much of the wrong feedback can be very unhelpful (possibly even harmful.).

Since I was in Boston, though, I knew most of the people in attendance, and I'd made it a point to invite people whose opinions and feedback I valued highly.  Instead of trying to get their instantaneous impressions, I e-mailed all of them today and asked for them to send me any thoughts they had.  The advantage of this is that the responses are more likely to be to the play as a whole.  And one-on-one feedback doesn't favor people who are the most outgoing--the louder voices don't end up taking over the public conversation.  I've already received several detailed e-mails from audience members that are very helpful indeed.

One of the other ways I like to do feedback, which isn't what we did last night, is a millabout--where there is plenty of food and drink and we encourage people to linger and to come up and talk to me and each other.  This easier for some people than sitting in chairs waiting to be called on.  And a few drinks loosen people up.  Plus, I can eavesdrop on people, too.

The other advantage of not having a talkback right after a reading is that right when the reading is over, I haven't had time to digest my own thoughts about the play yet.  It's important for the playwright to take a little time after a reading to just sit with his or her own response and own notes, before hearing from a horde of people with other agendas.  It helps me to be better able to respond to outside feedback in a more useful manner.

And lastly (and this might seem trivial or stupid, and actually didn't occur to me before this reading, but rather afterwards), in a situation like last night, where the artistic director of a major theatre is hearing my play for the first time, I'm interesting in him taking away the experience of the play and thinking about it on his own, without that experience being stirred up and around by a discussion.  And discussions will often take a little journey and build momentum on certain topics, that after a while have more to do with the people commenting, that the script itself.  Now, of course, Peter Dubois probably isn't as likely to be as affected by this as I am myself (I imagine he's sat through many hundreds of talkbacks in his career), but still, I want to be able to talk with him about it first.

Anyway, that's my thinking about talkbacks these days.  I had a great time last night and am full of questions about what I need to do to continue to improve the script.

reading of Fire on Earth tonight

In about an hour, I need to head over to the Huntington Theatre (which is not far from my house) to work on Fire on Earth.  We've got a whole afternoon of rehearsal, with a fantastic director (Rachel Walshe, from the Perishable Theatre in Providence) and a stellar cast (Will LeBow, Gabe Kuttner, Grant McDermott, and Ben Evett!).

The reading is at 7pm tonight, and it's been sold out since Thursday.  From the reservation list, it looks like a good mix of theatre pros, friends, and Huntington subscribers.  I think you get a more honest response to the reading of a script with a balanced audience like that.

I'm excited and unusually nervous (it's a big opportunity), but I think the nervousness will disappear once we get to rehearsing.  I've been working hard over the past two weeks, making tweaks to the script.  This is my first chance to hear the whole new version aloud, and I'm grateful to have the chance with such a talented and experienced cast.

reading of Fire on Earth on August 23rd by the Huntington

I don't know a lot of the details yet, but at the moment, the Huntington Theatre Company is planning to hold a public reading of my newest full-length play, Fire on Earth, on August 23rd.  I'll have more details on cast, director, space, and time (it'll be in the evening) soon, but at least I know the date.

If you're in the Boston area, I hope you'll save the date on the calendar--it's a fun and interesting play (in my humble opinion), about the creation of the English Bible (it may not sound like fun, but it has intrigue, torture, people getting burned at the stake, and even shipwrecks).  I've been developing the play for years, but in the Huntington Playwriting Fellows program this year I've undertaken a huge rewrite (changed to a different character, reworked most of the structure, cut the number of actors from 6 to 4, and lost about half the characters).  I'm eager to this chance to hear the new version, but will definitely need an audience there to help me gauge how it's playing.