Boston Theatre Marathon this Sunday

My ten-minute play, Confirmed Sighting, will be in the Boston Theatre Marathon this Sunday at the Calderwood Pavilion Theatre at the BCA.  My show is at 7pm, produced by the Fort Point Theatre Channel, directed by Christie Gibson, starring two of my friends and fabulous actresses, Kippy Goldfarb and Maureen Keiller.  The event runs from Noon until 10pm and is one of my favorite theatrical events of the year.  All the proceeds of the day benefit the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund.

(Oh, and don't miss a reading of the fabulous play, The Live Dress, by my fellow Huntington Playwriting Fellow, Martha Kaufman, on Saturday, at 1pm.  You won't be sorry.)

interview on ArtSake blog

The folks over at the Massachusetts Cultural Council put together this nice interview with me on their ArtSake blog yesterday.  I hope you'll check it out.

Emerging America Festival this weekend (and my cell phone play--i am not invisible)

The Emerging America Festival is happening in Boston this weekend--a collaborative event in Boston and Cambridge between the ART, the Huntington, and the ICA.  You might want to check it out.  They're bringing in a bunch of artists and hosting parties and talks and events all weekend long.

One fun part of the weekend, is a podcast and walking tour with short audio plays written by Huntington Playwriting fellows, including me.  I think there's supposed to be some sort of map that you can get that tells you where you call a number and listen to the play for your spot (the spots are mostly in Harvard Square, around the BCA, and also near the ICA). But you can also just visit the web site and listen to them on your computer.

To listen on your phone, dial 215-525-1043.  My play takes place at the BCA plaza.  You can dial the number, hit 1#, and then enter 72# to hear my play.

I had a great time making my play (we had to perform our own), and I can't wait to listen to everyone else's.  If you want to listen to my piece, i am not invisible, just click right here.  (It's an mp3 file.)

Constant State of Panic reading tonight at Boston Playwrights Theatre

I know I've been plugging away at this via e-mail and Facebook, and all that.  But here's one more reminder, just in case:

Constant State of Panic will be read at Boston Playwrights Theatre, tonight, Thursday, May 6, at 7pm
BPT is at 949 Commonwealth Avenue.  Bevin O'Gara will direct.  Kris Sidberry, Maureen Keiller, Tom O'Keefe, and Ed Hoopman will make the up cast.   The play is both fun and intense, a dark and sometimes comic love story that blurs the lines between reality and fantasy, as we journey through a Bush-era Wonderland.    It's about paranoia, murder, conspiracies, loss, and a world where bad, lovely, and weird things happen.

Admission is free, but you can reserve a seaton their web site (I recommend this). 


So today will be a fun and very busy day for me (we rehearse all afternoon and then have the reading at 7.  I'm pretty psyched--this a play that's enormously fun to work on, and we've got a great cast and director.  With any luck, we'll have a mostly full house, too, which always makes a reading a lot more fun for everyone, and useful for me.

Off to Muse & Marketplace

 Tomorrow, I'm off to Grub Street's Muse & the Marketplace writer's conference.  It'll be two days of workshops, panels, networking, and a whole bunch of people trying to put their best feet forward.  (Hopefully not too forcefully.)  I start off with a one-on-one session with an agent from NYC to talk about the first few pages of my middle-grade novel (fingers crossed, hoping that she liked it).  After that, the pressure will be off (sort of), and I can just focus on learning as much as I can and meeting new people.

Last year I had a great time, and I love that I can just hop on the T and get to a conference with 500 other writers.  Lately, my head's been pretty deep into theatre (though I did just go on a research trip for my newest novel), so this will be a good jolt back to fiction for a few days. 

(Though I'll be right back into theatre-mode for my reading next Thursday.)  (You're going, right?)

Weekly Update (#3)

Okay, so I'm a little late on the update, but we were on vacation and it took a while to get caught up:

What I've been writing:

Well, I was out of town, so I haven't done much actual writing, but I did get in some on-the-ground research in Charleston and Beaufort, SC, for my Robert Smalls project(s).  Very helpful to get to see it all in person, including Fort Sumter.  Took pages of notes and lots of photos.  I carried my video camera all the way to SC, but didn't have a tape and didn't have time to get one.  Oh, well.

Today, instead of working on Robert Smalls, I was working on my history of the English Bible play.  I'm juggling a lot of projects right now, but sometimes that's a good thing.


The business side:


No real business news this week.   We've finished casting the upcoming reading of Constant State of Panic, which is a very good thing.  (As a reminder, the reading will be at Boston Playwrights Theatre, May 6, 7pm.)

Last night I was hanging out with Huntington Theatre Company friends and donors are their big gala.  Quite a party. 

My play, Confirmed Sighting did not win its night at the NYC 15-Minute Play Festival, which was too bad, but appreciate all the hard work on the part of the actors and Deb Linehan, the director.  Wish I could have seen the show, but it was too close to our return from vacation.  I did get to see Lies, Lies, Lies in Boston's Chinatown by the Actors Refuge Repertory Theatre this weekend, and they did a fine job.

This upcoming weekend, I'll be attending Grub Street's Muse and Marketplace conference, taking in lots of workshops and a meeting with an agent.  I had a great time at the event last year and am looking forward to it again (with requisite high hopes for something good to happen).  (Please send good vibes, mojo, whatever, towards Boston for me.)

Now I have to go cook dinner before heading off to my Rhombus playwrights' meeting tonight.

Weekly Update

Back for another weekly update (see, two weeks in a row, I'm on a roll).

What I've been writing:

This week, I kept working hard on rewrites/overhaul of my play about the history of the English Bible.  I got useful feedback from both my Rhombus and Huntington playwright groups and keep trying to figure it all out.  I've got most of the first act, at least in the proper shape (I think), and am anxious to get on to writing/re-writing Act II (though I already know how it ends).

In addition, I'm working on a new novel about Civil War hero Robert Smalls--I did a bunch of research on it years ago, but it got pushed aside, but now I'm getting started again.  Tomorrow, as part of our family spring break trip, Tracy and I are getting two days on our own in Charleston (thanks, Mom!), where I can do some serious research for the book.  That's one of the cool things about being a writer--booking my tickets for a ferry ride to Fort Sumter actually counts as work.  And this week, it turned out that a brand new traveling exhibit on Robert Smalls opened at the Museum of Afro-American history here in Boston--I got to attend the opening reception and listened to an informative and entertaining talk by Professor Jeffrey Bolster (who wrote Black Jacks, a hugely useful and important book about the history of black American seafarers).  I'll be returning to the museum a lot as I jump back into the Robert Smalls research (especially since they have models of the ships, The Planter and the Keokuk).


The business side:

Just got some good news yesterday that my short play, Confirmed Sighting, will be part of the Boston Theatre Marathon on May 23rd, at the Calderwood Pavillion Theatre in Boston's South End.  This is one of my favorite theatre events of the year--producing 50 plays, by 50 writers, by 50 different theatre companies (and it benefits the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund).  I should find out in the next week or so which company will be producing my play. 

I also got myself to sit down and e-mail my list in New York and Boston about upcoming shows--Confirmed Sighting will be part of the NYC-15-Minute Play Festival next Saturday, April 24.  Lies, Lies, Lies, will be produced in Boston by the Actors Refuge Repertory Theatre on April 23 and 24th.  (And about the reading on May 6th.)

We've cast most of the upcoming reading of Constant State of Panic--with any luck we'll be done in the next few days.  (As a reminder, the reading will be at Boston Playwrights Theatre, May 6, 7pm.)


The rest of life:

This week, I had a few meetings for the Brookline Special Education Parent Advisory Council (I'm co-chair), and spent time on our various gardens (the lettuce is up, beet seeds and onions went in this week, and we repotted a couple hundred plants this morning at the 200 Foot Garden). 

Now it's time to go back for South Caroline/Florida.