#yourmemorial

Produced by Pigeonholed  @pigeonholedco
Written by Emily J. Daly
Directed by Emily Lyon

Nomination: Outstanding Original Full-Length Script - Emily J. Daly

About Pigeonholed: Pigeonholed gives theater artists the chance to make the work they want to make, not the work the industry tells them they should be making.

About #yourmemorial: Lottie has always been that all-star student who’s everyone best friend. Fresh out of college, she’s determined to change the world and make a difference. But when she dies at her internship in Afghanistan, the internet threatens to tear her memory apart. As fangirls, rubberneckers, pseudo-friends, trolls and her own social media fuel the digital storm, Lottie's friends will struggle over how and who gets to tell her story, and what her legacy should be. #yourmemorial is a play about what we choose to remember, what we refuse to see, and what it means to be real in the Facebook age.

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What first attracted you to this subject matter?

Emily: #yourmemorial is a play about what we choose to remember, what we refuse to see, and what it means to be real in the Facebook age. Looking back, I think the heart of this story was born during the times of the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq following 9/11. I remember thinking very clearly at the time “I’m only fourteen and even I know this is some horrifying bullshit going down.” Ever since then, I’ve been surprised again and again by how little Americans (myself included!) notice or even think about the military actions that America is waging around the world, in the name of our supposed safety. At the same time, I’ve always been fascinated by our relationship to trauma through social media. In my very humble opinion, social media allows us to flirt with the sexiness of political action and others’ trauma - then conveniently dismiss that with a scroll. Again - that’s some horrifying bullshit. They say that for a person with a hammer, everything becomes a nail. Playwriting is the biggest hammer I have. I wanted to tell a story in a super theatrical way that forced us to confront the ways we choose to forget or remember with social media, and the hubris and hope of “making a difference”. You know. Kitchen Sink Drama stuff.

What was your favorite part of working on #yourmemorial?

Emily: Getting to work on any production feels like it’s your birthday every day of rehearsal. Using the rehearsal process to actively workshop the script by trying things out in the room was such a joy, even during those stressful moments that come with any process (hey, joy can be stressful).

Justin Cimino (Producer): Emily Daly's  play is awesome and getting to workshop the play with her over the course of a year was the best part of this experience.

What was the most challenging part of working on this production?

Emily: In a very basic sense, #yourmemorial is a digital ghost story - featuring a social media account come to life, speaking through posts, comments and photos. I always knew that our greatest challenge in this production was going to be translating that digital haunting into a theatrical vocabulary. Thankfully, I had a team of incredible collaborators, including director Emily Lyon, costume designer Sera Bourgeau, set/props/projection designer Susannah Hyde, lighting designer Sammy Jelinek, and sound designer Carsen Joenk. We also talked a lot about how this play takes place in 2013, which in social media terms means its a period piece. Remember what the old Facebook interface looked like back then? We do.

What was the coolest part about your experience?

Emily: I sat in the back row of the theater for every show, so I could watch the audience watch the performance. (Yes, Audience. We playwrights are always watching you. We’re creepy like that.) There was one night where I watched a woman in the front row who, to my eyes, spent the whole-time sighing, squirming, and looking around the room. At the end, she spoke intensely with all the audience members around her before leaving. I assumed she had just had the worst night of theater in her life and was telling everyone how much she hated it. I found out later that I had it totally backwards - she had loved it, she had been so excited and provoked by the story, and had just been telling everyone how moved she was. That felt pretty cool.

What is the best thing about working with Pigeonholed?

Emily: Dude, they are so smart. There were so many changes to the script, and I brought in a lot of new pages. By a lot, I mean A LOT. Pigeonholed producer Justin Cimino was always supportive, and the actors John Dewey, Sasha Lazare, Esmeralda Garza and Meredith Starkman were theater warriors 100% ready to play. Also, my director Emily Lyon and stage manager Lindsey Zinbarg deserve gold medals for gently taking the script out of my hands a week before we opened and saying “Sweet Playwright, we love you, but you have to stop writing entirely new scenes, dammit.”

Did you discover anything new while writing #yourmemorial?

Emily: David Van Asselt, the founding Artistic Director of Rattlestick Playwrights, told me way back when I started writing that the best way for playwrights to learn is to see their work fully up on its feet in production. This process showed me just how true that is. By getting to see this story fully realized onstage, I learned so much not just about this play, but about my own artistic process - what it means to rewrite, what it means to collaborate, and what it means to let a story fly on its own.

What does receiving this nomination mean to you?

Emily: So often in the theater, especially as a writer, it feels like you’re throwing stuff into the void. This nomination is a wonderful reminder that I’m writing for real people, who generously listen to the stories I have to tell. Thank you!

Justin Cimino: This will be the first awards recognition our fairly young company has gotten, and for our first time producing an original work. It makes it that much more special that we nursed the piece over the course of the year with Emily.

 Follow Pigeonholed on Twitter: @pigeonholedco

Writing to Be Seen

By Pia Wilson

In America, playwrights write to be read. I don’t know if we were taught to do that, or if that’s just the nature of the business here. There are so few opportunities to get a play up on its feet and explore the work that we don’t just build our plays for the boards anymore.

I recently heard back from a theater in London, and long story short, they couldn’t visualize how some things would work in my play. They wanted to put it up on its feet for a day, in a workshop. Just to see how it moved. But I’m an American (happily so), and they have a tiny theater in London, and neither of us could afford to have me come out for just a day or two. Just to see how the play moved.

I write plays to be seen.

And thank goodness for the people in my career who have seen something while reading my work. I’m grateful for the people who have fought to get my work on the stage, who have come to writers meetings and listened to pages and passed things along. Otherwise, I would have given up this impossible career quite a while ago. I would have eventually become that old lady who goes up to the young playwright after their show and says, “I was a playwright too, once.”

I write plays to be seen. So I don’t become invisible.

Because I’ve been lucky in my career, I had people I could reach out to in New York, to tell them about the lost opportunity in London, to see if they could give me a similar opportunity in New York.

You know how the story went. I was asked to apply for this or that. I was offered table reads.

Can we move the table out of the room?

I don’t know. Maybe, if I were a high-profile writer, I would have gotten that opportunity with no questions asked. Maybe if I’d asked different people. But, you know, strangers in London wanted to do it, so I thought not-strangers in New York might want to as well. Not just read but see. I forgot how we do things here.

I remain hopeful, though. Each time I see one of my friends achieve something, I think I can do it, too. I’ve just got to figure out the alchemy of it all. Maybe start applying to things more – or at all. Maybe write for the readers. Maybe.


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Pia Wilson is a 2015 Sundance fellow, and a recipient of the 2014 Sarah Verdone Writing Award. She is a 2012-2013 resident with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace program, a member of the 2008 Emerging Writers Group at The Public Theater, and a 2009 playwriting fellow with the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her drama TURNING THE GLASS AROUND was produced by Workspace Collective in October 2014. GENERATION T, was produced at Adelphi University in March 2014. Her play, THE FLOWER THIEF, was an August 2012 co-production between Horse Trade Theater Group and The Fire This Time play festival. www.piawilson.com | Twitter & Instagram: @pwilson720

Self-help and the OOB theatre artist

Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, David Johnston

I read an article in The New Yorker last week. It was about that
self-help book, “The Secret,” one of those books that teaches you to
“think” yourself rich, you’re an amazing creature, God wants you to
have nice stuff, etc etc. It’s a very popular book. I’ve never read
it. To be honest, self-help books annoy the crap out of me. Their
aura of smugness puts me right off. Sometimes people are sitting in
cars and a tree falls on them, and impoverished children in other
countries starve to death or die in floods, and it’s distasteful to
sit in our fat wealthy country and chalk it up to “negative thinking”
on the part of the victim.

But this New Yorker article also dealt with some of the backlash from
this book. (Hooray! Backlash!) Barbara Ehrenreich wrote in her new
book, “Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America”
(which I also have not read) how books like “The Secret” offend her,
too. What offends her is the notion that “poverty is a voluntary
condition.” I’d probably like Barbara Ehrenreich.

But it got me to thinking about those of us who work in Off Off
Broadway in New York. We work in an impoverished field. We don’t have
money and we certainly don’t have nice stuff. We’re passionately
devoted to an art form that the overwhelming majority of people in
this country couldn’t care less about. I don’t have the stats right
here. It’s early in the morning, and I’m drinking coffee and my
wireless keeps going out because the neighbors keep changing their
password. So I’m not going to look it up right now. Plus, I’ve got
to go to the post office and send off this application that I’ve been
putting off. God, I need a few days to catch up on everything. Where
was I? Oh yeah. We’re negligible in terms of cultural impact, and
most people think we should really stop this and get a job.

But we work hard and we do it because we love it and we think we have
something to say or we have an idea. It’s a good role, someone’s
going to give us a break on the space, the script isn’t perfect but
the writer needs a production and how’s he going to learn otherwise?
It’s tough and heartbreaking and the rewards are small. But if my
lips twitch in anger in a Barnes and Noble as I pass by racks and
racks of “The Secret,” it’s because I’m saying to the writer, “Nobody
chose this poverty. We live in a system. We love this art form, this
discipline. We also live in a society that doesn’t value it. We
didn’t make that. But we don’t see any reason to stop doing what we
love just because a society or political system is indifferent.”

Yes, I frequently stop in the stacks at Barnes and Noble and have
conversations with the author who isn’t there. Don’t judge.

So this week, folks, when the world around says “you need to think
like a business,” or “you would have more money and resources if you
adjusted your attitude” or “have you thought about law school?” – the
everlasting chorus of “no” that surrounds you whenever you try to
create something – this week, dear reader, I hereby give you (and
myself) permission to cut a break. Give a pat on the back. Thank all
the negating voices for their time and tell them you will keep them on
file for the next project.

You’re doing just fine. Keep doing what you do. The world around us
is what needs fixing.

David J

Guest Blogger of the Week: David Johnston

Many thanks to Cat Parker for blogging last week!

We're happy to announce our guest blogger during ceremony week: David Johnston!

David Johnston’s plays have been performed and read at the New Group,
Moving Arts, Rude Guerrilla, the Neighborhood Playhouse, Henry Street
Settlement, and Ensemble Studio Theatre. He was named one of Time
Out’s Playwrights to Watch. Recent regional productions include The
George Place at Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre. New York productions:
with Blue Coyote Theater Group, Conversations on Russian Literature
Plus Three More Plays, a new adaptation of The Oresteia, Busted Jesus
Comix (GLAAD nominee 2005), and A Bush Carol, or George Dubya and the
Xmas of Evil. With director Kevin Newbury, Candy & Dorothy (GLAAD
winner, 2006) and The Eumenides. Publications: The Eumenides, (Playing
With Canons, published by New York Theatre Experience, Inc.) Leaving
Tangier, (Samuel French, produced by Blue Coyote). Awards include
Theater Oxford, Turnip Festival, Playwright Residency at the
University of Cincinnati, Berrilla Kerr Foundation Grant, Ludwig
Vogelstein Foundation and the Arch & Bruce Brown Foundation.
Education: College of William and Mary, Circle in the Square. Member: Actors Equity, Dramatists Guild, Charles Maryan's Playwrights/Directors Workshop.

Out with the Old…

Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, James Carter.

This week is my 17th anniversary of living in New York City. I, like so many before me, came here to study acting. I attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and shortly thereafter, I was cast in my first play. The play came and went, and the venue, One Dream in TriBeCa, disappeared, too, like so many of the other Off-Off Broadway spaces in downtown New York. I went on to perform at Nada on Ludlow, cut my teeth writing at Collective:Unconscious , and I experienced some of my favorite avant-garde work at Surf Reality and The Theatorium. All are gone, except the names and memories. Trav S.D. gave a great obituary for some of these venues in a 2003 The Village Voice article, examining a shift in the theatrical landscape of the Lower East Side. Recently, our beloved Ohio Theatre lost its space, and this season, 3LD (who recently overcame their own real estate woes) will help keep The Ohio floating on their ship for the time being. When we’re in the thick of it, it feels like the creative joy will never end. But it does end. Everything always does.

I don’t want to lament the loss of downtown theaters. Too often, our community focuses on loss of “great theaters” that cultivated life from their petri dishes of downtown awesomeness. Some truly are victims of inflation, real estate vampires and lack of funding. Some people, however, do not know how to manage spaces and let venues run to near ruins because egos stand in the way of allowing those more knowledgeable help them improve or change bad business practices. There are great moments in OOB, but there are horrors, too. The loss of some theaters may not be a bad thing. I even suggest the loss of some theaters have created opportunity where many OOB theatre artists would have never imagined 15 years ago. That opportunity is Brooklyn.

What I’m sharing isn’t new. The Brick, Chez Bushwick and Vampire Cowboys are the shit. They are the new homes to displaced downtowners who once lived across and down the street from Katz’s Delicatessen (http://www.katzdeli.com/). Two of the three of these are Caffe Cino Fellowship winners. All three of them generate work at a fast and furious level. Granted, Vampire Cowboys produce in Manhattan, but their Battle Ranch houses Saloons and rehearsal space for some of the greatest OOB theatre artists, including Taylor Mac. Fresh artists like Reggie Watts, Thomas Bradshaw, Crystal Skillman and Qui Nguyen throw down in the BK. These homes allow artists to explore, create and, most importantly, have fun. These companies have proven you don’t need to be in Manhattan to be cool, and people will trek a few stops into Brooklyn to experience new and exciting theatre.

We are a sentimental bunch, theatre people. We laugh hard, love hard and we lose hard. We will go kicking and screaming before someone takes what’s “ours”. Theatre people don’t have much, and when we get something – anything at all – we cling to it for dear life. I’m suggesting that we learn to let go. There was a wise old dude who explained why we all suffer – it’s because we cling to things. Let it go, and you no longer suffer. The less we suffer, the clearer our minds will be to move forward and generate great theatre.

It all ebbs and flows, and we need to focus on now. If a venue is endangered, of course we should fight for it. More importantly, though, we should focus on the OOB theaters that are succeeding. Why are they succeeding? Did they go to Brooklyn and find cheaper rent? Did they get sharp managers who wish to treat fellow artists with respect? Do they keep their season manageable, not overloading, double booking, and writing checks their butts can’t cash? Too often we roll our eyes and allow poorly run theater spaces to continue abusing and hurting the very community it purports to support. It seems we should focus on those doing it well to figure out how to get better.

The landscape of OOB has drastically changed over the past 17 years. When I arrived in New York, there was no organization like the Innovative Theatre Awards. The League of Independent Theatre hadn’t even been imagined. Hell, the word “blog” didn’t even exist, and now we have a place to put our thoughts and share with each other. As we entered the 21st Century, our gathering spaces may have changed, but they’ve become more organized and more global. Now, we congregate on Twitter and Facebook, sharing links with people from other countries, growing our understanding of theatrical greatness. If we embrace all that works and let go of that which doesn’t, we will grow by learning from the past.

What are some venues you think are doing a great job and why?

Guest Blogger of the Week: James Carter

Thanks very much to last week's blogger, Neal J. Freeman!

We're happy to announce this week's blogger - James Carter!

James Carter is a dramatist and producer. Full length plays include: Reaching Outpost (commissioned by Kaneland High School, Elburn, IL), Baby Steps (The Lion, Theatre Row), FEEDER: A Love Story (Center Stage, NY – terraNOVA’s 3rd Annual Solo Arts Festival & Collective: Unconscious’ undergroundzero Festival 2008), and Family Wayward (terraNOVA’s Groundbreakers Reading Series). One acts include: “Billy’s Bad Behavior” (part 1) and “Number Four” (part 2) with Impetuous Theater Group’s 2006 47:59 Festival; “The Christmas Card” for Center Stage, NY’s ‘Open 24 Hours’ hosted by John Patrick Shanley. Producer - Artists’ Night, dancelikeforever (CSNY), Baby Steps, Buck Fever (Blue Heron Arts Center), Lead Curator on terraNOVA’s soloNOVA Arts Festival (2004-2010 – DR2 Theatre & D-Lounge, Performance Space 122, Mo Pitkin’s, Center Stage, NY and People’s Improv Theater), Curator and Producer on SUBTERRANEAN, a monthly performance party (D-Lounge). James also served as Season Producer for The Ensemble Studio Theatre’s 2007/2008 season, including: Going to the River 2007, Lucy (William Carden, dir.), and On The Way To Timbuktu (written & performed by Petronia Paley; Talvin Wilks, dir.), Thicker Than Water 2008 (Youngblood), Marathon 2008 (playwrights – Auburn, Black, LaBute, Mac, Rivera), Close Ties (Pamela Berlin, dir). James is the Associate Artistic Director for terraNOVA Collective. http://www.terranovacollective.org

A Year of Plays: an interview with Anna Moore

Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, Neal Freeman

Today’s post is an interview with my good friend Anna Moore who has just wrapped up a yearlong project called “A Year of Plays” in which she went to see one play a week for an entire year and wrote a blog about the experience.

Neal: Hi Anna. Thanks for helping me pad out my blog posts this week!*


Anna: My pleasure!*


*Note: I made up these two lines to make it seem like we were in the same room talking.


What is the "Year of Plays" project and why did you decide to do it?


I started A Year of Plays because I was an actor who never went to see theater. In my first four years of living in NYC, I'd probably seen less than a dozen plays, which is just shameful. My brother was just finishing up a year in which he saw 52 live performances in 365 days, so I decided to do the same -- a play a week for a year.


The blog became a part of the project because I wanted a way to document the plays I'd seen, as well as a means to share my experience with family and friends. I'd had a blog once before, while performing sketch comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe, but I had run into some trouble as an actor reviewing other participants' shows. (You can read about that mortifying misadventure here and here.) So in this new blog I decided to write about theater without reviewing it. I wasn't sure it was possible, but I wanted to try.


Talk about writing about theater without reviewing it. Was this a difficult challenge? Did you develop any strategies or go-to methods in absence of writing reviews?


Reviews mess about with egos and feelings and after my experience in Edinburgh, I just didn't have the stomach for it. So initially this was just a way to avoid that mess. But the more I sat with idea, the more I liked it. The point was not to denounce criticism but just to challenge myself to see what else there was to talk about. I figured there had to be more to say than whether or not I like a play, or whether or not it “succeeded” at what it was trying to do. I was also interested in what happens when you remove permission to write negatively about a play. What other conversations might arise to fill that vacuum?


It was definitely difficult, particularly in the first few months. Reviewing is a hard habit to break. But I eventually got the hang of it. I allowed myself to write positively about a show if I was so inspired, but otherwise I would begin by investigating some kernel of the show that stuck with me – a moment or aspect of the show that I particularly remembered. Once I began examining those nuggets, they usually led me somewhere interesting and often surprising.


Do you think you kept to this rule throughout the year?


I think I did. I’ve had people tell me they can tell when I like a show and when I don’t. But my response to that is, “You’d be surprised.”


How did you choose the plays?


Ironically, sometimes it was by glancing through reviews. Other times they were friends’ shows. Sometimes I just picked plays with titles that appealed to me, or picked whatever TDF had available for the time I’d set aside to see something.


What were the theatrical highlights of the year? What were the lowlights?


Highlights: Venus in Fur at Classic Stage, A View from the Bridge on Broadway, Our Town at Barrow Street.
Lowlights: You can’t trick me. I don’t do bad reviews.


Any aphorisms or lessons or observations you can pass on to others having gone through this process for a year? Have your perceptions about the nature of theater or the nature of making theater changed since August 2009?


I don’t know if my perceptions about theater have changed so much as they have been more clearly defined. And they’ve expanded in number too. I had a pretty narrow perspective before, being an actor who didn’t see much theater. Spending a year immersed in my field, and forcing myself to explore and articulate my thoughts on the matter, has given me greater confidence as an artist. I have a better sense of what I think about theater now – of what I like and dislike, what I believe it can do, what I think it should do. That’s probably been the best part about this whole thing. That and rediscovering how much I love to write.


What's next for you in the "blogosphere"?


Year of Plays will continue as a theater blog. I just enjoy writing it too much to stop. I’ll probably loosen things up a bit though – relieve myself of the obligation to see something every week, for example. And I will definitely be expanding my scope of inquiry to include less conventional forms of theater. I’m heading out to Burning Man, for example, at the end of this week, and that whole event can be described as theater. I’m sure I’ll return with plenty to write about.

Thanks, Anna! I’m looking forward to reading about it.


Thank you, Neal. You’re definitely my favorite director working in New York today!**


**Note: Anna did not actually say this.


Read Anna’s blog!
http://yearofplays.blogspot.com/

Theatre for social change, continued: thoughts and doubts about Theatre of Compassion

Contributed by our Guest Blogger of the week, Mariah MacCarthy

When I was twelve, my parents were smart and nice enough to enroll me and my brother in a summer playwriting class. I turned my focus towards God that summer, and wrote the Job-like tale of a guy who gets to choose between erasing Original Sin from history—killing the serpent that seduced Eve with the apple and creating a world where no one feels any pain—or leaving the world as it is. There were angels and devils tempting the protagonist at every turn, and of course he fell in love with a girl from this parallel sin-free universe, which further complicated his decision-making. Lucifer was, for no real reason, a cross-dresser who went by Lucy, and I decided that the song “Amazing Grace” needed to make an appearance (which, at the final reading, my actresses could not get through without a straight face, for which I am still a teeny bit ticked off but don’t really blame them). In the end, the protagonist chooses the world as it is—sin and all—and ends up deleting his lady love from existence.

I share this, not to celebrate my former precociousness, but because the above story explains a lot. I haven’t lost my penchant for cross-dressed characters, and while my focus has secularized since my tweens, all those years of church continue to influence me as a writer and a person. Namely, the basics: love your neighbor; love your enemy; be the Good Samaritan; love, love, love, etc, etc, etc.

This is probably where my obsession with Theatre of Compassion comes from. (Side note: I’m happy to note that when you Google “theatre of compassion,” that blog post is the first thing that comes up. My SEO is AWESOME, yo.) Not that you need a Christian background to understand or practice Theatre of Compassion; the basics of Christianity are pretty much the same as the basics of most other religions, and it is precisely this universality that makes Theatre of Compassion so potent, in my opinion.

In case you don’t feel like reading my whole big original post, let me just lay out a few tenets of Theatre of Compassion:

-In Theatre of Compassion, gray is the new black. Moral ambiguity is the rule, absolutes are the exception.
-While we may not sympathize with every character in Theatre of Compassion, we are at least given the opportunity to do so.
-There are no heroes in Theatre of Compassion, and there are no villains—or, everyone is a bit of both.
-Theatre of Compassion does not preach. It does not yell (though its characters certainly might). It may ultimately take a moral stance, but not without giving the other side a voice.

Because vague, unsupported concepts drive me batty, let’s talk examples.

One of the first times I can remember being profoundly affected by Theatre of Compassion was when I saw Eric LaRue in the UK. To summarize Eric LaRue: our protagonist, Janice, is the mother of a teenage boy, Eric LaRue, who has shot several of his classmates, Columbine-style. It’s clear throughout the play that she’s in a kind of hell and that no one—not her husband, not her pastor, no one—is really listening to her. In the end, she visits her son in jail and tells him, “You did the right thing” by killing his classmates. He is appalled and basically disowns her, begging her to tell everyone that he “feels remorse.”

It was an excruciating play to watch. When Janice said, “You did the right thing,” you could feel, if not hear, the entire audience suck in their breath. We went on an excruciating journey with her, watching the mothers of the victims berate her and blame her for their sons’ deaths, watching as her repeated requests to process her grief in her own way went ignored. She completely had our sympathy. And then, by professing that an act of murder was “the right thing” to do, she basically took a huge dump on that sympathy—and it was UH-MAY-ZEENG THEATRE. No blameless martyrs here, folks.

But, no one is pure evil, either. The pastor and husband, as obnoxious and intolerable as I found them, thought they were helping. And who can blame the mother of a murdered son for being furious and lashing out? Even the boy who killed his classmates is sympathetic. He feels remorse, and the shooting was a reaction to being bullied. All gray. All hopelessly complicated and infuriating—and five years later, I’m STILL thinking about that damn play. Had we been allowed to see the mother as a blameless victim of her environment, I assure you, I wouldn’t be thinking about that play today.

While I gravitate toward most Theatre of Compassion, I’m specifically interested in it as a means of creating social change. If we show somewhat-good, somewhat-flawed characters on both sides of an issue or a spectrum, can we change how our audience feels about said issue? Can we then continue the debate about that issue in a more respectful manner, increase our likelihood of the debate actually getting somewhere, rather than just spewing vitriol at each other?

A commenter on the original Theatre of Compassion post admitted that she had her doubts about it being a successful tool of change. She cited her own unsuccessful experiences with trying to tread lightly when talking about issues of race. And hey—I get it. People may like honey better, but sometimes the situation calls for vinegar. I don’t feel like having an intellectual discussion about gender roles with the guy who catcalls me in Hell’s Kitchen late at night; I feel like hitting him in the face (though I don’t do so). And on a better-lit street where I feel safe enough to pull this off, I may respond with a “fuck off.” I say “fuck off” because I want him to experience some negative consequences to his actions so maybe he’ll stop doing it. When I feel threatened, I feel no need to be polite.

But when I get home and I’m alone with my Microsoft Word, I have an asset that I don’t have walking home from Hell’s Kitchen. I have the asset of fiction. We accept things from fictional characters that we don’t accept from real people; we can sympathize with a fictional murderer more easily than we can a real one. Even if the characters are real people, they are probably fictionalized somehow, and so we can let ourselves sympathize with that particular author’s version of that real person.

My hope, then—my pipe dream, maybe—is that we can take that compassion for those fictional people and transfer it onto their real-life counterparts. People who demonize each other, I’ve found, rarely get anywhere in conversation. But people who respect each other are more likely to try to meet each other halfway, and, therefore, increase their likelihood of getting somewhere.

Example: a program called Sex Signals came to my college every year. It lured people in with its humor and pseudo-racy title, but then about halfway through the evening, they started talking about date rape. It presented a situation that started as consensual sex, then became, shall we say, complicated. The guy in this situation—the perp, if you will—seemed genuinely unaware that he’d done something that constituted an illegal or harmful action. He was a sympathetic character.

I can’t tell you how many times I have mentally referred to that show, or sometimes in conversation with friends who saw it too. It gave me the tools to understand how something that is devastating to one person—something like date rape—can happen through no malice on the other person’s part. And this allows me to address the issue in a more productive way. After all, date rape won’t stop if we don’t talk to the people doing it—which, 99% of the time, is men. And men won’t listen to me if I seem unwilling to consider where they’re coming from. By saying, “I understand how it might seem like an innocuous situation to you, but…” I increase my likelihood of being heard.

Then again, I find myself getting just as cynical as my commenter sometimes. Lynn Nottage’s Ruined, for example, is a magnificent example of Theatre of Compassion. There are some villains, sure, but there are far more characters who float in that gray space—most importantly and deliciously, Mama, who protects girls in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from the violence outside, but does so by making them prostitutes. However, we have yet to care as a country about the atrocities happening in the DRC, Nottage’s well-deserved Pulitzer notwithstanding. Lawmakers aren’t doing anything.

The play that has accomplished the most tangible social progress, on the other hand, is by no means gray. It’s The Vagina Monologues, and it makes no attempt to humanize those who commit atrocities against women. Yet it’s still a magnificent piece of theatre, which has raised millions of dollars that have gone toward ending violence against women, or helping women who have already experienced violence. And I am sure that if Eve Ensler had written a grayer piece, it would not be as widely performed, because gray is less empowering (or at the very least, it empowers in a less obvious way), and then the play would not have raised as much money as it has. So maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.

What do people think? Can Theatre of Compassion change the world? Can theatre change the world at all?

Theatre for social change - an interview with Ashley Marinaccio

Contributed by our Guest Blogger of the week, Mariah MacCarthy

Hola, comrades! Mariah here—this week in my blogs I’m going to be mainly focusing on the idea of theatre as an instrument for social change. And I can’t think of a better way to kick things off than to introduce you to one of the top practitioners of activist theatre I know, Ashley Marinaccio. I’ve blogged about Ashley before, she’s blogged about me, and now I get the privilege of interviewing her for all you lovely people!

The day before our interview, I saw Ashley at the opening of her Fringe show and I wish I had snapped a picture: with hot pink skinny jeans, a tank top reading “Project Girl” in hot pink lettering, and enormous/fabulous turquoise heels, you could see from a distance she was a force to be reckoned with. However, I think you’ll be able to pick that up from her answers. Without further ado: Ashley Marinaccio!

I’m going to ask you a question that you ask people on your People Who Want Change blog: who are you?

25 years old. Artist and activist. Observer. Perpetual student of life. Ever evolving, never still.

So, you’re in the middle of Fringe right now. Are you going completely out of your mind?

Not at all. The Project Girl Performance Collective has a phenomenal team assembled, and all the most difficult and time consuming tasks are delegated. The power of delegation is mighty! (It took me awhile but I just learned this… ha-ha) We also have a new executive director on board who has taken PGPC to another level in only weeks. The collective has grown immensely in such a short time and we’re ever evolving, it’s fantastic and truly inspiring!

Fabulous—tell me more about the show, the girls, and your collaborators.

GirlPower: Survival of the Fittest is created by the members of the Project Girl Performance Collective, a group of young women between the ages of 13-21 who devise and perform original work based on their own life experiences and the current political, social and cultural issues that are most important to them. It is under the direction of myself, writer, activist and academic Elizabeth Koke and Jessica Greer Morris who is a playwright, performer and activist (and these women are fierce… let me tell you). We also have the unbelievably talented and organized Katherine Sommer stage managing/assistant directing and Alexa Winston, a former performer with last year’s PGPC Fringe company assistant directing.

PGPC was founded in 2008 after our experience directing GirlPower in the Manhattan Theatre Source’s Estrogenius Festival . We saw the need to continue the work with the young women that was being done in the festival annually, throughout the year.

The girls have been working together on the Fringe show for the past 3 months. We hold weekly meetings where we do writing prompts and acting exercises, read articles and have guest speakers meet with the collective to create dialogue on the issues they feel are most pressing both personally and to their generation as a whole. Our objective is to create a safe space for the young women to express their voices openly, honestly and without fear of judgment or ridicule. We also encourage the girls to come up with solutions to the injustices they face and apply them to their lives and actions.


And what are some of those issues?

The beauty of this project is that each new cast brings a variety of new topics to explore. There are common threads that have been part of every GirlPower performance such as body image, societal pressure to fit a certain mold, family, peer pressure, relationships and sexuality.

This year’s group was particularly interested in exploring the role of women in theatre and questioning the lack of opportunities for women playwrights/directors in addition to looking at racism, gentrification and learning disabilities through the theatrical lens.


You are one of the most definitive examples I know of a theatre artist/activist. Were you always both? Was there a moment or a person or an experience that made you realize that you should combine the two, or that made you realize you were both?

My activism and art existed in completely separate planes for a long time (they were born separately). Truthfully, it was a professor I had in undergrad that made me see that they could be one. She was an anthropology professor who ironically gave me my first off-off Broadway directing gig at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center (the site of our Fringe show last year) while I was still in school. She forced me to see the world of theatre that exists outside my microcosm and the potential it has for sustainable societal change. I am certain that I would not be doing any of this work if it wasn’t for her.

In your perfect world, what would The Theater look like? If you could change any and everything about the theater, what would you change?

This is a hard question as my idea of perfection is relative only to my own experiences, as is everyone else’s. In the perfect world, or at least in mine, all of the theatre that exists today (commercial, independent, community, guerrilla, etc.) exists but without the labels I just gave it and it’s accessible to all regardless of age, gender, finances and geographic location. The arts are globally respected and seen as vital to the continuation of the human race so there is never a lack of opportunity for playwrights, directors, performers or any artists. Small theatre collectives are generously funded, and making a living through membership in one of these companies is not only common but also well respected.

I don’t think any of these dreams are impossible or unattainable at all. It’s just going to take an organized movement and everybody’s participation to make it happen. Director Lev Dodin told the members of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab last year, “What we do is not just a job or profession – it’s a calling. The highest calling. Treat it as such.” As artists, we need to embody and remember this. We get so caught up in just trying to survive that we forget why it is we do what we do. We must always strive to stay connected to our community of fellow theatre artists through supporting each other’s work and offering/accepting valuable feedback and criticism. We also must know our history and be willing to learn from the past.


Now speaking more broadly, what kind of change do you want to see in the World At Large?

Justice and Peace. To accomplish this everyone must work together. It sounds Utopian but it’s possible. Artists give people hope and a vision of what is possible. We as a community of socially engaged artists need to both continue and amp up this work so that people see change is not only attainable but something everyone can take part in despite the social constructs that exist to limit the potential of many people.

What suggestions would you offer other theatre artists who are interested in collaborating with nonprofits on socially relevant theatre, or just doing activist theatre in general?

Do it! The best advice we got from our professors at Tisch when asked how to get COTE off the ground was to go out and make it happen. Also, don’t be afraid to reach out to both artists you admire and organizations you want to work with and introduce yourself. You’d be surprised how many people are not only willing, but genuinely excited to talk about their own experiences and mentor like minded artists. The theatre community is unbelievably generous. You must be willing to put yourself out there and ask for help.

You’re clearly a very nice person. But, it seems clear to me from your work that you have a lot of anger toward the injustices of the world. How do you balance your warm fuzziness and your anger? What keeps you going?

Faith, hope, the belief that everyone is connected and we’re all part of something so much bigger than this and a strong sense of community and support is what keeps me going. Right before opening GirlPower I was telling the girls that there is going to be a lot of industry and press coming to see the show. You know, giving them a rundown of what to expect, who may talk to them after and getting them hyped. And you know what? The majority of them didn’t care about that sort of thing. It was such a beautiful moment because there they were, all 14 of them sitting in a clump eating lunch, braiding hair and enjoying each other’s company. They were so empowered. They knew what they had created was special and that it would touch people and they didn’t need anyone’s official opinion to say so. Don’t get me wrong, they were thrilled when they saw their first glowing review and love having the support of industry and the press, but their confidence as artists, in their work and in themselves has taken precedence over everything else. It’s moments like that where I’m like, “Yes! We’re headed in the right direction!” and I know we can empower more people this way. We can continue the cycle, you know.

What makes Co-Op Theatre East different from other Off-Off Broadway theatre companies out there?

All theatre is socially relevant and there are a lot of theatre companies with similar missions popping up all over the place which is fantastic. There needs to be even more of this! I think that what we’re trying to do with COTE, which sets us apart from other companies is that our mission is to use theatre as a tool for social activism and we’re actively seeking out new and innovative ways to bring both theatre to the people and the people to the theater.

We have an exciting season planned for 2010-2011 that includes a series of new radio plays (staged live and podcasted), a new adaptation of Euripides’ The Trojan Women by COTE’s literary director Casey Cleverly which is addressing the issue of sex trafficking and the global slave trade, and in the spring we’re starting a series called the COTE Home and Garden tour where we’ll be performing in people’s homes and apartments, bringing the dialogue home. We have a phenomenal ensemble of actors and artists who will be working with us this year. I strongly encourage everyone to become a fan of COTE on facebook and twitter and visit our website www.cooptheatreeast.org to keep up with the latest news.

What’s one of your dream projects?

This is going to sound crazy and perhaps unexpected, being that most of my work thus far has been new plays, but my dream project is to direct a re-imagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar, a grandiose budget musical, complete with singing, dancing, puppetry, costumes… the whole nine yards. I actually think about it all the time and how I want to approach it (which changes daily, usually when I’m out jogging or driving in the car). I am obsessed with religion, patriotism, fundamentalism and how these things coincide in American politics. I want to explore the question of WWJD: What Would Jesus Do if he was here on earth, right now in 2010? Who would be his disciples? Where would he “hang out”? What messages would he preach and to who? How would he feel about the people who are using his name for personal and/or political gain? I have strong opinions on this topic. I was raised in the church and have had a very rocky relationship with organized religion (not spirituality… religiosity) over the years. I have a lot of questions, specifically dealing with Christianity, that I think many people share and I would like to address them through a theatrical lens. I would really encourage the political churches in addition to outspoken members of the religious right to weigh in on a production like this. I think it would be fascinating on many levels.

What’s next for you?

Acting. My soul is aching to be on stage again and that’s going to be my focus for the next few months. I’ve been auditioning and at the moment finishing up a one-woman show I’ve been writing sporadically for the past few years called What to do In case you miss the Rapture… based on interviews I’ve been conducting with people who believe the end of the world is upon us.

I’m in the beginning stages of a collaborative piece between PGPC and COTE which will debut in September 2011 that I’m tentatively calling 10 Years Later: Voices from the Post 9/11 Generation. It’s going to be a collection of written words - songs, poetry, scenes and monologues by young people, ages 10 to 21 specifically, focusing on the aftermath of 9/11 and the “post 9/11 generation”. Many of these kids were babies on September 11th, 2001. We need to hear their stories and see what we’ve created, how terrorism, war, media, religious fundamentalism has had an impact on these kids. Throughout most of their lives, the US has been engaged in war. What kind of impact does this have on their psyche? How do they view the future? Where do they see their place in the world? We’re going to explore this.

Finally, I want to work on devising an episodic theatre piece with a group of playwrights and actors that deals with the prison system, particularly incarcerated women. I would like to work in collaboration with a women’s correctional institution, perhaps doing workshops and having the artists involved become personally involved. I have always been interested in prison reform and the justice system. I’m going to be fleshing this idea out a bit more within the next few months but it’s definitely something close to my heart.

Continuing work with and developing Co-Op Theatre East and Project Girl Performance Collective is my priority. We’re always looking for collaborators and likeminded artists so please reach out, by contacting either cooptheatreeast@gmail.com (COTE) or projectgirlperformancecollective@gmail.com (PGPC).

Guest Blogger of the week: Mariah MacCarthy

I'm excited to announce our Guest Blogger of the week: Mariah MacCarthy!

Mariah MacCarthy is an OOB playwright and sometimes director/dramaturg/producer. Her plays include Dismemberment (Player's Theatre), A Man of His Word (San Diego Old Globe with Playwrights Project), Ampersand: A Romeo & Juliet Story (Looking Glass Theatre, winner of 20 Looking Glass Forum Awards), and The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret (sold-out run at UNDER St. Mark's with Rapscallion Theatre Collective). She has a blog, A Rehearsal Room of One's Own, and is in the process of incubating an OOB theater company with fellow playwright Larry Kunofsky.

American?

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, John Patrick Bray.

    Hello, all. Today’s blog will be a bit brief.  I was watching the election results from across the country, and there have been a number of upsets, and a number of surprise victories (and depending which side of the equation you find yourself on, the two may not be mutually exclusive).  One of the people who read and commented on my blog regarding Regional Theatre was Jason Loewith, the Executive Director of the National New Play Network. I asked him if he had considered the definition of an American playwright. Today, I would just like to pose the same question to everyone here.       

    When I was a little boy, I said the pledge of allegiance every day at school. Sometimes we sang “God Bless America” or “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” I never doubted my feelings of patriotism. As I grew older, I grew more skeptical due to the various administrations that I watched come and go, each bringing a hidden agenda that lead to war, greed, and corruption.  Now that I’m even older, an historian, and a parent, I find myself wanting to reclaim the word “American” and look being an American as something to be proud of.  In this regard, I want to include all of the Americas, not just the U.S. There are many of us who are entitled to the word, and at the risk of exposing my politics, there are many more who should be.

    My question to you is: what is it, in your opinion, to be an American? How does this play out in your art? How does the idea of being American play out in theatre you have seen or that you have been a part of?

    I have enjoyed writing these blogs. I look forward to wrapping it up tomorrow!


Best to you and yours,
John P. Bray

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On Dramaturgy and the American Theatre

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, John Patrick Bray.

    In my first two blogs, I examined what I feel to be the quintessential American Theatre (Theatre of the U.S.).  In the first blog, I examined the Independent Theatre model, specifically, the Cite des Arts  in Lafayette, Louisiana, and how it escapes some of the totalizing of the commercial Regional theatre via the (unspoken) motto of “have theatre, bring show.”  In the second blog, I championed the plethora of independent theatres that create the Off-Off-Broadway community, focusing specifically on a few of the companies that I have the most familiarity with. In each blog, I have suggested that the NYC independent theatre is vibrant, and while it stands at the threshold of defining itself, I have cautioned that it needs to avoid some of the traps that previous models have fallen into. That is, models that have attempted to provide an outlet for regional artists have fallen victim to commercialism, often in the name of survival, resulting in the inability to serve the artists of the immediate community.  It is my hope that Off-Off-Broadway and independent theatres around the country will continue to provide a home for artists who are not necessarily “names,” and who do not fit the profile of the majority of successful regional artists.

    Many of my opinions about the commercial theatre vs. indie theatre come from my experiences as a playwright and as a dramaturge. There was a time when I thought, “Geez, am I crazy? Am I the only one who feels this way?”  But then two events occurred, practically simultaneously. The first was the publication of OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE NEW AMERICAN PLAY,  which I spoke about in my first blog. The second was a meeting with a dramaturge from a major regional company who spoke to a group of PhD students at LSU about the life of a dramaturge in new play development. During the course of the conversation, she told us that most playwrights do not know how to write a play anymore, and how dare they waste the dramaturge’s “precious time?”  As a result, she solicits scripts during an open submission period without reading the submitted scripts (?!?!?!), and feels that open submissions should be done away with all together. After all, dramaturges know playwrights, why not just ask them for scripts? By the by, this dramaturge has an MFA from an Ivy League institution. The playwright she asked?  Also an Ivy Leaguer. 

    Rather than fume over this, I think the best course of action is to consider the role of a dramaturge. You’ve heard the word before, right? Maybe you’ve been one.  Maybe you’ve been one and haven’t even known it (the magic of theatre!). So, what exactly does a dramaturge do? Or, better yet, what are they supposed to do?  For most of us, it’s kind of hard to exactly put our collective finger on it. What I have come to understand is that a dramaturge wears, primarily, one of three hats.

    The first: the dramaturge performs research alongside a director in order to heighten the historical-socioeconomic context of an established work.  The dramaturge may give a presentation to the cast and crew, or perform specific tasks in terms of historical research (so, if a dramaturge is working on a Restoration play, perhaps he or she will research the various ways to flirt with a fan).  While a director, I believe, should conduct a majority of their own historical research when approaching a work, as a means of creating a coherent concept, I believe the dramaturge may help fill in some of the historical gaps, and be a go-to person if and when questions arise which require additional research.

    The second hat is new play development; that is, a dramaturge sometimes doubles as a literary manager. So, the dramaturge solicits scripts which fit the vision of the company as dictated by the artistic director. If a company says they seek “diverse voices,” you need to read a little more closely. Each company has, for better or for worse, its own ideology; so, as a playwright (I try like hell to speak from experience here), I need to get the sense of which company might be interested in which work.  Once a work is accepted, it is up to the dramaturge to help the playwright develop his or her work. Again, this is tricky.  Playwrights are very protective of their work, and rightfully so, considering the reality of development hell (the dramaturge who sat in with us at LSU claims that “developmental hell is a myth”; um…playwrights, back me up here?).  So, it’s up to the dramaturge to get on the same proverbial page as the playwright and make sure that the playwright’s work is being served, while also making sure that the work stays within the margins of the company’s mission statement. This is often easier said than done. And if the dramaturge fails, they become the enemy to everyone (which could explain, but certainly not excuse, the behavior of the professional dramaturge who sat in with us).

    The third hat has to do with community outreach and audience building: talk-backs after productions, lectures at libraries and colleges, etc.  This is where the workshop readings come into play, which – as many playwrights such as Richard Nelson, James Ryan, Jeffrey Sweet, and Edward Albee have remarked – have more to do with satisfying grants for a company rather than serving the needs of a script.  I personally do not feel that the two need to be mutually exclusive, but over the years that has become more and more the case. Another problem with this model is that if a reading is lip-service to a playwright and lip-service to an audience who will hopefully come back and spend money, then in the end no one is being served, and everyone is getting a kind of subtextual “f*** you.”  This warrants further evaluation (even further than that provided in OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE). Certainly there has to be some way to make this model work?  Another topic for another time.

    So, the dramaturge has a host of responsibilities, depending on which production they are serving, or which theatre company they are hired to work with.  My favorite two personal examples were when I was the dramaturge for the “punk-rock” themed Antigone at LSU.  My wife and I spent a lot of time digging through our records and burning CDs.  The other example is when I was coordinator for “It’s Scary, Y’all! Horror Fest 2009” at LSU.  I produced four one-act plays (one was my own; the other three were written by LSU undergrads), directed and designed by students.  I let them stretch their imaginations. The result was fun, incredibly GOREY, and had Intro to Theatre students (our primary audience) saying things like, “Man, I never knew you could do that in the theatre!” That was probably the greatest thrill of all.

    Where is the problem with dramaturgy?  If a dramaturge is randomly assigned to a playwright or director, the dramaturge first has the task of explaining his or her role, followed by the never ending justification of their position. Also, the dramaturge can be a problem by soliciting scripts during an open submission process, not reading the scripts, approaching scripts with cynicism, or, okay I’m stepping in it, trying to sue the estate of a playwright claiming authorial credit on a work they helped develop.  If anything, that makes the dramaturge look even more like a nuisance. Bottom line, a bad experience with one dramaturge can poison the well for everyone else. I have heard directors say “I’m never working with playwright J. Smith again, he’s a real pain in the ass,” but I have never heard a director say “I am never working with any playwright ever again.”  On the other hand, I have heard directors swear off dramaturges after one poor experience.  Imagine if I had no awareness of the dramaturge position when I met up with the so-called professional at LSU?  I might have been tempted to do the same.

    Dramaturgy is both the most exciting and also the worst job in the American theatre. The successful dramaturge, in my opinion, resists burn-out and cynicism, approaches new works with an eye toward the uncanny, and is the silent bodyguard of the American theatre by trying to keep it fresh, alive, plural, and culturally important (which should really be a given; I think we spend too much time trying to justify theatre rather than treating its importance as a commonplace). My hope is that the dramaturge in the independent theatre, and in the academy, is aware of their great responsibility to the plurality of American theatre (again, here defined as Indie theatre of the U.S.), resisting the tendency to look at other models that may have worked for other plays. After all, if each play is different, why treat them all the same?


John Patrick Bray (ABD, MFA)

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Writing a play – I rant I rave, I write.

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the week, ML Kinney.


It started with an iota of an idea. It actually started by me getting rather pissed off one day by something I read. I don’t need to go any further with the “what.” My friends and family already know how I deal with getting pissed off – I rant, I rave, I write! (Usually taking an opposing argument, most times theirs, and using it to push my own home.) It gets frustrating for them that they have no rebuttal in my process, but it makes for good theatre.

So this iota of an idea, this tirade took form, of course, as a play. It actually took form as a one-joke play of thirty pages. I brought it to the Milk Can and asked for a read. So one evening we sat down as a group and read out loud the jumble of pages I had assembled. From feedback, and me listening to both the script and comments, it became clear that this joke was more. It was more than an iota of an idea, a joke, but a reality for a script.

I spent some months reviewing the script and making notes. I then sat down with the arguments in the background, an echo bouncing in my skull, and I started in earnest to form a fully evolved reality that went beyond the punch line and actually became a play.

With this draft, I started in the Milk Can’s Scene Herd Uddered (SHU) development workshop series. After seven weeks of working, I was amazed at how the script grew -- it become a world of its own, which is Life Among The Natives.

I am now in the midst of pre-production for the premiere of this new play, a play which has taken a two-year trip down the aisle to center stage. The process and the piece astound me daily.

That’s not to say that my work is done. We are two weeks into the rehearsal process and I find myself re-writing as we go along. Most evenings I sit in the rehearsal room cutting and pasting scenes beyond recognition, where the actors can’t even follow along. I change a word, a sentence, I write a monologue. I come home and re-write new pages and drift off to sleep with the characters talking new arguments in my ear. I listen, re-write and listen again. And through this process, I watch as a world takes shape and an event, the event of theatre, takes form.

I sit nightly humbled in rehearsals by the energy present from a group of artists who are there to fully realize an iota of an idea that formed in my brain some two years earlier. It would have remained there, floating voices for my therapist, or stayed splayed on an unread page, but for the ability I have with the company I work with. This play would not be if it wasn’t for a group of people, The Milk Canners, whom I respect and cherish. They prodded and pushed for me to take this iota, this joke, this part of me to its realized conclusion, which shall complete its two year journey on May 8, 2010, as it is handed to an audience to devour and enjoy.

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