Back home with good news about Constant State of Panic

We just got back from almost two weeks of vacation to visit family and friends in Michigan, Illinois, and Colorado. This is the view I had from Spy Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, the destination of my 10-mile solo hike on a very early morning. At an elevation of 11,000 feet, the wind was howling.

While we were gone, I received two bits of good news about my newest full-length play, Constant State of Panic.

First, it was nominated for the Christopher Brian Wolk award given out by the Abingdon Theatre Company in New York. It's now one of nine finalists--the winner, to be announced in late September, will receive $1,000 and a staged reading.

Second, it looks like Constant State of Panic will have a workshop in October followed by a full production in January with a (smallish) theatre company in Washington, D.C. I'll provide more details once we've finalized everything, but I'm very excited to have a chance to work with these folks again. The script is a very good match with this particular company. And DC is the perfect city for the premiere of this political play about fear.

Though I've had a bunch of productions and publications of short plays, it's been a long time since I've had a full production of a full-length play. I'm actually embarrassed to say how long it's been (shhh. four years.). Part of that is because I was working on two novels during that time, thus it took a while to write this newest play. But the long dry spell chipped away at my confidence. I'm a little young to feel theatrically washed up, and I knew the market has been really, really tight. But still...

Now, who knows, maybe this will lead to a bunch of new open doors. Whether it does or not, I look forward to having a blast working on the play.

Good News: Counting Rita to be in Best Ten-Minute Plays

I just heard from Smith & Kraus that they want to include Counting Rita in the upcoming Best Ten-Minute Plays 2009, Two Actors. This will be my third year in a row with a play in one of their anthologies, which feels especially gratifying. I really enjoyed the production in the Boston Marathon earlier this year (the one that made it eligible for the anthology) and I hope the anthology will help make it even more popular.

Anthologies haven't led to many productions for me, but I do have folks from all over the world contact me (rarely) with questions about the plays. And I love the idea of a couple thousand people reading the script.

Good News: Lies, Lies, Lies at BCA in 2008

I just found out that CentaStage will produce my short play, Lies, Lies, Lies, at the Boston Center for the Arts, as part of 8 short plays set in bars and restaurants. I don't have all the details yet, but Joe Antoun will direct, and the show will run for 11 performances, opening February 15th.

CentaStage gave me my Boston debut when we moved back here in 2000, with my play Christmas Breaks as part of The Xmas Files. I'm excited to have a chance to work with them again. Lies, Lies, Lies is a funny play for me--it's my most popular play with Brooklyn Publishers--more than 1,200 students have bought copies of the script to use in competition, but it's only had one professional production (last year in Virginia) and I've never seen it on stage.

The other good part about this news is that it gives me something ahead on the schedule. After the Pumpkin Patch show last week, the calendar looked awfully empty. It's reassuring to know I've got something lined up in the not-too-distant future. No many how many productions I get, I always worry that the time is ripe for a big dry spell.

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.

some good news

I found out (last week, actually) that my short play, Pumpkin Patch, will be part of SlamBoston, Diverse Voices in Theatre, a one-night play slam on November 13th, at the Boston Center for the Arts (produced by Another Country Productions and Company One).

I've been a bit skeptical about the whole notion of play slams for a while, but I know folks who have done this one and liked it, and, more importantly, it's run by Lyralen Kaye, who directed a short play of mine earlier this year, and I really enjoyed working with her. So I'm excited to give it a try (if we win our evening, we win money, which would be a good thing).

Even better is that my director is Kortney Adams. She's also a terrific actress and has worked with the Rhombus playwrights group a lot. This is my first chance getting to work with her as a director, and I'm really looking forward to it.

I'd worried that I'd have no theatre action this fall, but this is helping the end of the year not seem too empty. Plus, I've got Den of Iniquity coming up in NYC at Emerging Artists Fall EATFest in October. I really like my director, Ian Streicher. Looks like I'll be able to get down to NYC to see the show on October 20th.

So, life is good. (And I even got some writing done over the past two days.) (And I've been getting marketing done every day with the Playwright Submission Binge.)

Good News: Tightly Bound (and Great Short Plays Volume 1)

It's always nice to be able to report a little good news. After a fair amount of wrangling, Brooklyn Publishers has published Tightly Bound, which is a collection of eight of my short plays for women performers. The idea is that the group of plays works together to make an entire evening of theatre, with a flexible cast size of 4-18 women. It just went on sale last week, so we'll see how it goes. Some of the plays have done extremely well on their own (Insomnia, Stop Rain, Ship of Fools), and we'll just have to see if they can pick up even more productions as a group. (Fingers crossed.) It's a nice set, in that it works pretty well both for students and for theatre companies.

Also, Playscripts has decided to bundle my short play, Christmas Breaks, as part of Great Short Plays, Volume 1. It just went on sale this week (and sold at least one copy today). I'm in good company, with other plays by Stephen Belber, Brooke Berman, Judy GeBauer, Barry Hall, J. Holtham, David Riedy, D. Tucker Smith, John Walch, and Sheri Wilner. This is a good experiment, to see if this is a more productive way to sell short plays. I hope it is.

Good News: Pumpkin Patch advances

My short play, Pumpkin Patch, had its premiere on Saturday night, at the American Globe/Turnip Theatre 15-Minute Play Festival in New York. The show went pretty well. For various reasons, the rehearsal period ended up being compressed, so the actors and director were working hard on Friday night and during the day on Saturday to get ready. I did my best to be helpful.

The good news is that the play won the competition for that evening, so it will move on to the finals this Friday (7pm) and Saturday (5pm). Competitions decided by audience voting are often problematic, but I think these folks do it better than anywhere else I've seen. The voting is done by secret ballot, you rank your top choices (1-4), and you have to see all the show in order to vote (you can't arrive late or leave early). Seven shows (one from each night) move on to the finals, and the producers pick three others to even it out to ten plays for the final weekend.

I've got my fingers crossed that all will go smoothly this weekend (I'll be in Boston, not NYC).