Good News: The Sky is Falling will be in Fall EATFest

I got some good news via e-mail yesterday--my one-act, The Sky is Falling will be part of Emerging Artists Theatre's Fall EATFest, November4-16, in New York. They staged Den of Iniquity last year, and it was a very well run production. I'm excited to have a show on the schedule for the fall and glad to have an excuse to head down to NYC for a visit.

The Sky is Falling is a show that I wrote as part of May Day Play Day here in Boston, a 24-hour play festival. This new production will be a good chance to tweak and refine the script a little bit. The play has a cast of 3 or 4 women and was just a ton of fun when we did it in Boston. Here's the summary:

Samantha is informed by her guru that the rapture will arrive tomorrow, and she and the elect will be taken from the earth in space ships. Samantha’s sister and her grandmother aren’t surprised by the apocalyptic news—they’ve heard it from her before. But they go along for a wild night of farewells and a surprising visitation.

It's a fun comedy, but there's also something underneath that a lot more serious, about sisters and how hard it can be to connect with our own family.

Now in Print: Stop Rain and Pumpkin Patch in Best Ten-Minute Plays

My author copies of 2007 The Best Ten-Minute Plays, 2 Actors arrived from Smith and Kraus yesterday. There's something especially gratifying about having my work appear in an actual book that has a little heft to it. I have two plays included in this anthology, Pumpkin Patch and Stop Rain, and both are plays that I happen to especially like. The books looks and feels great (and friend and actor Kevin LaVelle is on the cover).

I've had books in S&K anthologies in the past (most recently in 2000) and nothing much, production-wise, has come from them. But, whether it's rational or not, I have hopes that this time it'll lead to more productions. It's been a long time. These are different plays. The format they're using is a little different. We'll see.

Good News: Stick Up For Mars will be in Ten by Ten

Just when I had that sinking feeling of, "Hey, I have no productions on the schedule, no one will ever produce my plays again," some good news came via e-mail. The ArtsCenter in Carrboro, NC, will produce my new ten-minute play, Stick Up For Mars, in their Ten by Ten in the Triangle festival, July 10-20.

I've been in the festival a number of times (Insomnia in '05, and Measuring Matthew and Ship of Fools in '04) and I've gotten good feedback, plus they pay ($100) and they bring in big audiences (maybe 1,000 for the run, or more), which helps me feel good about my annual numbers. Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it down to see the show, which stinks, because I've never seen it before. Oh, well, with any luck the play will end up with a bunch more productions. It's a comedy about two women on the first manned mission to mars--after a year of being cooped up in space together, their obsessions are driving each other insane. I'm planning to include it in a new collection of short plays I'm putting together, Collected Obsessions.

Boston Theatre Marathon: Counting Rita and more

Counting Rita was produced on Sunday, as part of the Boston Theatre Marathon. Normally, the Marathon is one of my big events of the year--I try to sit through as many plays as my butt can survive (the Marathon runs from noon to 10pm and features fifty plays, by fifty writers, produced by different fifty theatres). However, this year Tracy was out of town, and I didn't want Kira to have to babysit Noah for an entire day, so I only watched two hours of the Marathon.

Counting Rita came across very well. We had two talented and experienced actresses--Elaine Theodore and Julie Jarousek. Their sense of comic timing went well with the script, and they got a lot of laughs. For our hour, the Wimberly Theatre, which seats 360, was full, and the crowd was really with us. It's not often that I get to see my work in a sparkling new 360-seat theatre (with very comfy seats), so I savored it. I normally get a good tinge of nervousness right before one of my plays begins, but this time I was confident in our cast and hardly even had a flicker of nerves.

I was definitely left thinking that this is a piece that I should send out a lot more. We made a few changes in rehearsal that helped, too.

In my hour, John Shanahan's piece, First Time for Everything, also got a lot of laughs. (John is a fellow Binge member.)

Leslie Dillen's (fellow Rhombus member) play, Benji 53, was one of my favorites. It used sound and the entire stage in a powerful, highly theatrical way. So much of the Marathon tends to be similar in staging--desk, cafe table, bed, couch, in fairly realistic settings. Leslie's play used minimal staging to show a catastrophic fighter jet explosion in a way that was very powerful. We'd read the script at Rhombus before, but this was one that was tough to fully comprehend until it was fully staged.

At the moment, I don't have any productions lined up, which always produces a bit of nervous vertigo. I know something will come up soon.