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.

Best Ten-Minute Plays, 3 or More Actors

My copy of 2008: The Best Ten-Minute Plays 3 or More Actors (published by Smith & Kraus, edited by Lawrence Harbison) came in the mail today. My very own Measuring Matthew is one of the plays included in addition to plays by friends (including Kathleen Warnock and Mark Harvey Levine).

I've been in a bunch of these anthologies, but I never get tired of the book showing up on my doorstep and seeing my play inside. The concreteness of the book is immensely satisfying. I know they sell a good thousand copies or more, which is cool, and I imagine libraries carry it. It's pretty rare to get a request from a theatre for permission to produce a script in one of these anthologies, but I do get e-mails about the plays in them every once in a while. I assume that actors use the scripts in scene classes, for the most part. I'm glad that people are at least reading them, and that the book might still be on the shelves twenty years from now.

It's been a fairly discouraging week, in terms of the writing-business, so this book's arrival was perfectly timed. (The fact that I'm about 20,000 words into the first draft of my new middle-grade novel has also helped wipe away a lot of anxieties around publishing stuff right now--my mind is elsewhere).

Good News: Best Ten-Minute Plays and Bulgaria

It's an odd phenomenon that rejections and acceptances seem to come in waves/heaps/piles/puddles. I just found out that two of my short plays, Den of Iniquity (which was just in NYC in EATFest and in Chicago) and Measuring Matthew, will be included in Smith & Kraus's upcoming anthology, Best Ten-Minute Plays 2008, 3 or More Actors. It's a thrill to be included (I had two plays in the 2007, 2-actor version, too).

At the same time, I also received some positive responses to queries I sent about a book proposal, a request from a community theatre for a script of Tightly Bound, and an e-mail from an actress/producer/agent in Bulgaria (yes, Bulgaria) with an offer to translate my full-length play, Hearing Voices, into Bulgarian (of course) and represent it, in the Bulgarian theatre scene.

Now I'm feeling greedy, of course, and I'm still checking my e-mail box, hoping this little spurt of good fortune hasn't petered out quite yet. We'll see.

Good news from Smith & Kraus

This morning I got an e-mail saying that Smith & Kraus wants to publish two of my plays, Pumpkin Patch (which was just done in NYC) and Stop Rain, in Best Ten-Minute Plays 2007, Two Actors.

I'm delighted that both plays were selected and will now have a chance to reach a broader audience. I'd had a couple tough rejections lately--usually rejections don't phase me at all, but these were for things I REALLY wanted--so these acceptances come at the perfect time. I've had items in S&K anthologies before, but it's been quite a while.