Once–

Gorgeous music. Terrific leads. Movement and direction by Steven Hoggett and John Tiffany are stellar. Enda Walsh’s book is funny and poignant.

The Lyons–

Hilarious dialogue thorughout the play. Linda Lavin is brilliant. The play is structurally lacking and thus, ultimately unsatisfying.

Leap of Faith–

Raul Esparza is charming and quirky as Jonas Nightengale. Leslie Odom Jr. is fantastic. A true triple threat in a show full of incredibly talented performers. The production value is high. The book and lyrics might as well not be there.

A Streetcar Named Desire–

Nicole Ari Parker is fantastic. Nice use of color by the lighting designer. The addition of racial tension heightens certain aspects of the play. Blair Underwood is so attractive the audience has to laugh as if to cut the tension.

Ghost–

Cool special effects. Forgettable songs, but pretty orchestrations. Overuse of projections. Great portrayal of Oda Mae

One Man Two Guvnors–

Hilarious and brilliant . The use of physical comedy is flawless, as is the use of audience interaction and improv. The skiffle band is great.

Three Sisters by Maly Drama Theatre–

Such stunning acting. Gorgeous set and smart use of the set to showcase the passage of time. Poignant, effective and at times funny. Perfect Chekhov.

Every year I try to make a point of doing something slightly different from the year before, either personally or professionally. So far it’s been easy to do that, especially in 2012. I already have worked on starting a new theatre company, had a play produced in Hanover, started adapting a screenplay, interviewed for a prestigious playwriting fellowship and started a new job! And that’s just in the past three months! One of the wonderful things about pursuing a career in the theatre is the amount of projects you can work on simultaneously and the amount of ways you can make yourself feel productive. The downside, of course, is the feeling of being bogged down by all the ideas and projects and not feeling capable of getting it all done, but that’s where deadlines and lists come in handy. That and the occasional weekend of hermetic behavior.

Today I presented my “story” in class and because it was an over-written synopsis of the play (apologies to whomever that was written for!), there were a lot of questions afterwards. Why did all the characters have names that sound the same? Is Meredith supposed to be likeable? What is it about this woman that she needs to validate herself with a borderline creepy relationship with a high school junior? Suddenly a play that I felt very close to was exposed to a new audience and without the spiffy dialogue and charming monologues to back it up. It was just a story. And stories are great, but we all know they aren’t everything.

I spend a lot of time reading plays on the page. I can breeze through a play quickly and have an opinion on it, but the key is recognizing the difference between what’s on the page and what comes when the play stands on its feet. In the past year I’ve had the great fortune of seeing three of my plays come to life in full productions and every time I’m mesmerized by what actors and a director and design elements can bring to my writing. Each time it is equally magical.

What has drawn me to playwriting since that first class I took my senior year of high school is the immediacy of seeing my work fully realized. The first time I experienced this was January of 2005 when I took part in WIRED, a 24 hour play festival at Dartmouth. I was given rules and a prompt at 8 pm and at 8 am I handed a sketchy* play about George W Bush’s run-in with a rogue intern and his subsequent hallucinations to my director. Twelve hours later, a sold out audience (and a nervous sweaty me behind them) was watching Macbeth morph into William Wallace while Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher made eyes at one another. And I was overjoyed. Since then I’ve experienced that nervous elated feeling a number of times. Most recently was earlier this month, in the same theatre WIRED was in, after a fantastic week-long workshop in Hanover. We started with a sketchy play and 6 days later I once again stood nervously behind the audience with my director hoping that the audience would be swept up in the show. And once again they were.

The contrast between the short turn-around between writing and production of these plays and the development process of filmmaking is why screenwriting has a very different feel to me. The immediacy is taken out of the equation on a number of levels. The audience can be swept up in a film, but my being able to embark on that journey with them is unlikely. And the amount of time it takes between when a screenplay is written and when it becomes a movie is much longer than most play development processes. And personally, I suppose I’m also concerned with adapting my play too theatrically. There are so many other tools I can use when writing for film. And I worry that I’ll forget I can use any of them. But I’m also excited to exercise the more visual part of my brain. And use this opportunity to watch some great movies to inspire me.

*In this context I’m using the dictionary definition of sketchy (Not thorough or detailed.) rather than my typical use of it. 

We’re currently on day three of rehearsals for The Reluctant Lesbian. We’re spending the week workshopping and rehearsing this work in progress of mine, which means lots of long days, intense rehearsals and quality time with my laptop. It’s been such a pleasure to work on a show up here at Dartmouth with alums and faculty. The Department has been so inviting and the company has been dedicated and enthusiastic.

If anyone happens to be in the Upper Valley this weekend, please come see it. It’ll be at the Bentley Theater at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at 4 on Saturday afternoon. An article in The Dartmouth explores some aspects of the project and where we hope to take it after this week.

Just before Christmas, a conversation with a playwright mentor sparked my desire to push beyond what I’m doing now. To take chances and ask questions and risk rejection. Since then, I’ve actually made a spreadsheet of 20+ residencies and fellowships and playwriting competitions to be aware of and to apply to. Something about the new year (and sometimes Thanksgiving, for whatever reason) always instills this desire to really push harder and do new things. 2011 was a wonderful year for my writing life. I was blessed to have two plays produced in New York. I also endeavored to develop my interest in producing further. Let’s hope that 2012 has wonderful things in store as well!

I saw another one of these yesterday at the Bank Street Theatre (The Atmosphere of Memory) and left the theatre wishing that the playwright hadn’t felt the need to explore this particular play within a play. It’s fun to watch actors like Ellen Burstyn and John Glover play over the top parents who have made their son crazy through years of psychological warfare. It’s less fun to watch the playwright character storm around the stage like an overgrown 5 year old trying to discover what made him so unhappy and neurotic (halfway through I decided he was channelling Woody Allen, sigh)

We’re all guilty of writing about things that interest us. My writers group members make fun of me for writing about romantically challenged women in or obsessed with England as a default. Writing plays is a special form of narcissism. Not only are you taking something from your brain and assuming people will care, you’re making actors perform it, directors hone it, and designers provide you with whatever you came up with. The world can, in fact, revolve around you when you’re a playwright, however, anything that’s too self-referential risks alienating the audience (and not in a good Brechtian way) or worse, boring them. And so, I hereby resolve to never write a play about a playwright and his or her issues.

Friday night I was offered a last minute ticket to David Ives’ Venus in Fur, newly transferred to Broadway after a successful run at CSC in the spring. A two-hander about a playwright and a mysterious actress, Venus in Fur borrows its plot and character types from the Austrian novella Venus im Pelz (this is one of those times German seems so self-evident to me!) by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. It explores the games (psychological and otherwise) that are played in romantic and sexual relationships, while also exposes “the theatre.” Nina Arianda is stunning in this play. Her energy and capability are astonishing to watch. Hugh Dancy can’t really compete with her, nor is he really allowed to. I’ve noticed that playwrights tend to get a bad rap in plays (oddly) and are always played as helpless, overly intellectual people who are blown away by larger personalities (especially actors). Whether this is intentional, it allows for a lot of very true feeling situations between the two characters and ultimately it’s an entertaining, well-performed two-hander. (The rules here are small cast, sexy subject matter, star casting.)

Saturday night I attended a special Halloween weekend performance of Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, a production I saw in Boston almost two years ago. The audience was instructed to wear film noir clothing and everyone seemed to follow their instructions (say what you will about New Yorkers, if you tell them to dress a certain way for a cool party, they will). It was quite an experience to be surrounded by people wearing outfits that occasionally resembled actors’ costumes running around in masks. I saw a great deal that I had not seen during the performance in Boston but still felt (and I’ve said this about other Punchdrunk performances) that I was able to ‘cheat the system.’ Once you understand what they are doing, it’s very easy to tailor your own experience and not be surprised by what you see. There were two moments on Saturday night that surprised me, one was the “orgy” in the basement (I had heard of this, but not seen it last time) and when I happened upon a very large crowd watching Macbeth dancing with bricks. I think that Punchdrunk’s aesthetic is absolutely gorgeous and that their ambition is noteworthy, I’d just like to see something by them that scared me the same way that their Faust scared me 5 years ago. After the show, there was a theme dance party, which I was unfortunately to sick to stay for. It looked fun, but my throat led me home to bed and a hot toddy. (The rules here are “cool factor” (apparently a recent episode of Gossip Girl was filmed at Sleep No More), transfer from London, audience participation.)

Sunday afternoon I had the pleasure of seeing a college classmate perform the lead role in the Broadway production of Sister Act. My extreme pride for Kim completely outweighed any issues I had with the show. I found myself standing in tears at the end of the play not because of the arc of the story, but because of how amazing it was to see someone I know achieve her dream so completely. The music was catchy, the slight variations on the plot of the film were smart and the production value was high. But it remains a musical based on a film from the 90s, a very popular cash cow at the moment. (The rules here are adaptation of popular 90s film, movie star producer/cheerleader (Whoopi Goldberg, natch), disco theme/spangly overload.)

After quite some time working on my own plays and not attending shows, Halloween weekend was a good lesson in what’s being produced, what’s popular and why.

(Monday afternoon I saw a reading/workshop of a new musical, Volleygirls, and thoroughly enjoyed its originality, emphasis on the relationships on a women’s sports teams and clever humor. Keep a look out! Monday night I attended Celebrity Autobiography, which was very entertaining, especially since Florence Henderson winked at me!)

And now, back to writing, website creating and other assorted theatrical activities. I’m seeing The Mountaintop this afternoon, which will be a nice break from working on my own play.

Every performance has been different, mostly due to strange technical issues that we’ve had to deal with at the theatre. One day the projections didn’t work, but the live video did and yesterday the projector didn’t work (so no projections or live video) and the speakers were screwed up. It felt like the unplugged (and occasionally underwater) version of the play (which luckily seems to work just as well as the tech-heavy version). One final performance on Saturday afternoon! Hopefully everything will be in working order by then.