Songs for Amazing Comet Girls

Behold, a photo of the raffle prize I brought to last week's staged reading of my newest play, Carmenta (themed raffle prizes being one of the charms of the San Francisco Olympians Festival).

Carmenta is a play about motherhood, rock music, and the turns a woman's life can take, so my prize was a book called Record Collecting for Girls and a handwritten playlist of songs that fit the play's mood. Female singers, jangly guitars, '90s nostalgia, empowering and/or mystical lyrics, and no love songs or breakup songs. I call it Songs for Amazing Comet Girls (after a line in the play) -- listen on Spotify or just reference the list of song titles below:

1.  “Feed the Tree” - Belly
2. “Can’t Be Sure” - The Sundays
3. “Gepetto” - Belly
4. “Running Up That Hill” - Kate Bush
5.  “Dog Days Are Over” - Florence & the Machine
6.  “Winter” - Tori Amos
7.  “Dreams” - The Cranberries 
8. “Not Too Soon” - Throwing Muses 
9. “Wonder” - Natalie Merchant 
10. “Ray of Light” - Madonna   

Admittedly, the playlist was also a means of sweetening the raffle-prize pot, because I bought the book mainly for its title and don't actually think it's a great read...

Record Collecting for Girls: Unleashing Your Inner Music Nerd, One Album at a Time by Courtney E. Smith
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Courtney E. Smith has definite music-nerd cred. She owns hundreds of records, she loves pop-music history, and she used to promote upcoming indie bands at MTV. Unfortunately, all that music cred doesn’t automatically make someone a good music writer. Yes, yes, “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”—Smith even uses this quote in her book, crediting it to Elvis Costello, her all-time favorite musician. But clearly some people are better music-writers (or architecture-dancers) than others. Describing her love for Costello’s music, Smith resorts to banalities like “I found myself really getting into his clever lyrics. His songs are so easy to fall in love with.” Surely it’s possible to come up with livelier commentary than that.

I picked up Record Collecting for Girls because I’ve been thinking a lot about how women make and listen to music (my new play Carmenta touches on that theme, and I’ve been diving into NPR’s Turning the Tables project). As such, it’s kind of unfortunate how many of these essays are about men. Smith’s tone is somewhere between “cool big sister” and “one of the boys.” She obviously wants young women to explore their musical passions and to hold their own with other music nerds (who tend to be male). But I wish there was more in here about music-related experiences she has had on her own or with female friends, rather than with crushes or boyfriends.

And yes, I know this is intended as a light, fun memoir/essay collection, not a how-to book, a scholarly study of how women relate to pop music, or an in-depth work of music criticism. All the same, I feel like I read better pop-culture writing on the Internet every day. The online personal-essay boom produced lots of deep, funny, vulnerable writing, and Smith just can’t compete. For instance, one essay here is about how you should never date a guy who loves the Smiths. Isn’t there something amusingly Freudian about a woman named Smith who distrusts men who like The Smiths? But she never gets to that deeper level, she just keeps sniping about Morrissey.

Workshop Production of "You'll Not Feel the Drowning," April 13-22

My play You'll Not Feel the Drowning, an hourlong drama about life in an earthquake zone, the bleak beauty of the Oregon coast, and the giant squids that lurk in our hearts, has been in development with Custom Made Theatre's Undiscovered Works program for the last year. Custom Made is now granting it a 6-performance developmental workshop at the EXIT Theatre. I've been hard at work this month in a whirlwind rehearsal process, and we open tonight!

If you're in the Bay Area, I'd be honored if you can attend, especially as this script is still in development and we will be soliciting audience feedback. (There's a space for comments on the back of the playbill, and there'll be talk-backs after the Friday performances.) I'll be at all of the shows, too, so please feel free to say hello if you're there.

The details:

• Directed by Gabriel A. Ross, dramaturgy by Allie Moss, tech by Linda Huang
• Cast: Terry Bamberger as Susan, Maria Giere Marquis as Laura, and Jason W. Wong as Greg
• 6 performances: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights at 8 PM, April 13-22
• All performances at the EXIT Studio, 156 Eddy Street in San Francisco, near the Powell BART/MUNI station
• Facebook event
• Tickets 

Hope to see you there!

The End of Theater Pub

A lot of things have ended in 2016, and San Francisco Theater Pub is among them.

I fell behind on cross-linking my Theater Pub columns here this year, and in 2017 I hope to collect links to all of my writing in one place, but, for now, here are the five final Theater Pub pieces I wrote.

"What I Did For Love" – following the September announcement that Theater Pub would end after its December show, I wrote about the factors that led to this decision and the reasons why no one should feel heartbroken at the news.

"Comma Comments" – "I’m a descriptivist when it comes to how I punctuate the dialogue of my plays, but I am a strict prescriptivist when it comes to expecting actors to respect that punctuation," and more thoughts on punctuation and playwriting.

"Pet Peeves in Arts Journalism" – after 4+ years of blogging for Theater Pub, I used one of my final columns to complain about phrases and ideas that bother me in other arts writing, including "The Bard," "the play's the thing," and either too much or too little knowledge of the past.

"If Only Angels Could Prevail" – I wrote this the night after the election and don't know how I did it. On facing the next four years, the possible role of artist and artists during that time, and how I survived Election Night by sneaking into a Sondheim rehearsal in the back room.

"They Can't Take That Away From Me" – there was no time for nostalgia the day after the election, but last week, I took some time to write a nostalgic look-back at seven years of Theater Pub and seven years of my twenties, titled after the song I sang at the final Theater Pub show.

"You'll Not Feel the Drowning": Upcoming Reading & Workshop

My play You'll Not Feel the Drowning, about how to go on living when there's a persistent sense of doom hanging over you, had developmental readings in May and September of this year as part of Custom Made Theatre's new-works program. I am honored to announce that Custom Made has been pleased with the script's progress and has chosen it for further development, including a workshop production!

First, though, another developmental reading of Drowning is happening tonight at 7 PM at the Gallery Cafe on Nob Hill. (the arts editors of the SF Chronicle named this as one of today's critic's picks!) See the Facebook invite for more details.

Then, I'll think about the feedback from tonight's audience, do another round of focused rewriting, and in mid-April of 2017, Drowning will have a 6-performance workshop production at the EXIT Theatre. It will be directed by Gabriel Ross, and Allie Moss will be the dramaturg.

More information about the April workshop forthcoming as I have it (and yes, I will make an effort to post event info with more than an hour to spare before it happens).

My Projects for 2016

For convenient reference, and by way of explaining why I don't have lots of time anymore for random blogging, I'm posting a list of the projects that I have coming up in 2016.

Major Projects

Juana, or the Greater Glory in the Loud & Unladylike Festival: This festival, which honors lesser-known historical women, has commissioned me to write a full-length play about Princess Juana: Spanish princess, member of the powerful Hapsburg family, and the only woman ever to become a Jesuit. I'm working hard on the initial draft and will be going on a writers' retreat with the other L&U folks this weekend. Once the script is in better shape, I also hope to write some blog posts geeking out about my historical research -- Spanish royal history is completely fascinating and not nearly well-known enough in this country. Besides, do you expect me to spend six weeks reading the writings of Ignatius of Loyola and just keep my thoughts to myself? Juana will have a public staged reading in mid-July, directed by Claire Rice: date TBD, but either July 14, 15, or 16.

You'll Not Feel the Drowning in Custom Made Theatre's Undiscovered Works program: San Francisco's Custom Made Theatre Co. has started a new-works development program and my script You'll Not Feel the Drowning (originally written for the 2015 Olympians Festival) was one of four plays selected for it! I was not expecting this to happen -- the draft that I submitted is a really odd length, 35 minutes, and more than with any play I've ever written, my feelings about this script shift from day to day. Still, I look forward to developing this piece in a focused, systematic way, until it becomes something that I truly love and no longer feel uncertain about. Drowning will have two developmental readings at the Gallery Café on Nob Hill, on May 14 and September 13, both directed by Gabe Ross.

Macaria in the SF Olympians Festival: For the sixth year in a row, I'll be writing a Greek-myth-inspired play for the Olympians Festival, which is happening in October this year. The theme of the 2016 festival is the Underworld (including, intriguingly, a week devoted to Egyptian mythology) and my subject is Macaria, Hades and Persephone's daughter, the Princess of the Underworld. You can read more about her, and my play, here. It will have a staged reading on October 14, along with readings of plays by Bridgette Dutta Portman and Elizabeth Flanagan.

It's a fun coincidence that I'm writing Juana and Macaria in the same year: both Juana and Macaria are rebellious teenage princesses of rich but death-haunted kingdoms, who dress in black and have fateful encounters with their possibly-crazy grandmothers. I can tell that these two scripts will influence one another in fruitful ways!

Other Projects

"The Dryad of Suburbia" in ShortLived 2016: This happened last weekend, and after four performances and a hard-fought battle, my play came in second -- 1908 points to 1969. And the winning play, "Goodsell, Good Life," by writer-performers Tommy Lazer and Suzil Von, featured funky dance moves and a fog machine -- I mean how could I be expected to win against that?

Pint-Sized Plays 2016 at SF Theater Pub: For the second year in a row, I am Tsarina (producer) of the Pint-Sized Plays, though this year I'm bringing on a Tsarevich (deputy producer) in the form of Alejandro Torres. Bay Area playwrights, the Pint-Sized script submission call should be posted on the Theater Pub blog next week. The performances for this will be August 22, 23, 29, and 30, in the PianoFight bar.

Arts journalism: I've been writing a column for the Theater Pub blog every two weeks for almost four years, and... well, it might be time for me to transition into a different role over there. Still, I credit this columnist gig with making me a much better writer, more comfortable with both personal essays and interviews/journalistic pieces, and in 2016 it looks like I will be doing some freelance arts journalism for higher-profile venues. Yes, I'm being vague on purpose, but All Will Be Revealed soon.

The Weekend Without a Summer: 2016 is a great year for British-literature nerds. Besides being the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, it's the 200th anniversary of the "Year Without a Summer," during which Mary Shelley got the idea for Frankenstein and the Romantic poets got up to some of their most characteristic shenanigans. Huge nerds that we are, my friend Stuart Bousel and I are planning a five-day celebration of the Romantic movement over Labor Day Weekend. It will be Gothic, it will be sublime, it will be mad & bad & dangerous to know.

Travel: With this busy year ahead of me, I'd assumed I wouldn't have time to take a vacation and would have to white-knuckle it till November, which was a depressing thought. (I spent much of February feeling lethargic and overwhelmed.) Then I reviewed my calendar, realized that if I played my cards right I could go away for two weeks in late April, and, with a much sunnier spirit, got to planning a vacation. NYC, Paris, and Oxford, here I come!

Writing, Acting, and Directing in the 2015 Olympians Festival

2015 is my fifth year participating in the San Francisco Olympians Festival as a writer, but it is the first year I will be acting and directing for the festival as well!

We're advertising it with this Lisa Frank poster
because it's just too perfect.

On Wednesday, November 18, I am acting in the staged reading of Delphin: Christian Teen Dolphin-Sex Beach Party by Anthony Miller (directed by Colin Johnson). If you've ever wanted to hear me talk in a ridiculously thick French accent about having sex with a dolphin, THIS MAY BE YOUR ONLY CHANCE. The show is goofy as hell yet surprisingly sweet, and everyone in it is hilarious. And, I mean, I've always half-jokingly said that my goal in life is to be an intense French woman -- and now, thanks to the magic of theater, I get to do that for forty-five minutes. It's just that the thing I'm really intense about is dolphin-fucking.

"Tethys" poster specially drawn for the
Olympians Festival by Brett Grunig. I love
how dark and grim and rainy it is. I can
almost feel the cold seawater on my skin.

Then on Friday, November 20, I am directing a staged reading of my own Tethys, or You'll Not Feel the Drowning. It's a one-act play that draws upon my love for my home state of Oregon, its tenacious pioneer spirit and its beautifully bleak winter weather; as well as the terror that all Oregonians felt when they read that New Yorker article this summer about the possibility of a great Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. I've got a great cast -- Janice Wright as the formidable mayor of a small coastal town, Alan Coyne as a seismologist with bad news, and Kendra Webb as the schoolteacher who is caught between them -- and while my direction is pretty minimalist, I'm still learning a lot from the experience of directing my own work.

Both Delphin and Tethys are one-act plays, so they'll be paired with another one-act show in order to make a full evening of theater. I should also note that neither of these plays requires any prior knowledge of Greek mythology to enjoy! They explore some of the themes associated with the dolphin god Delphin and the deep sea goddess Tethys, but they don't actually re-tell a specific myth.

The Olympians Festival staged readings are at 8 PM at the EXIT Theatre (156 Eddy St, San Francisco). Tickets $12 online or $10 at the door.

September on the Theater Pub blog

Two more columns this month!

In "Male and Female, I Created Them," I continued my inquiry into issues of gender and feminism and theater and what we "should" or "shouldn't" be writing. I talk about the first time I wrote a male character that I felt really proud of, and push back against the notion that ideological concerns should govern art. I also describe one of my favorite scenes in the movie Mistress America, which has probably come and gone from theaters by now, but which you should put on your queue because it's super funny and smart.

In my other piece, I wrote a little about Dada and Surrealism, and interviewed actor-director Steven Westdahl about Zurich Plays, his Dada-themed SF Fringe Festival show. (It was a hit and won Best of Fringe!) This also continues my mini-theme of writing pieces for the Theater Pub blog about European avant-garde movements of the 20th century -- earlier this year, I wrote about Parisian bohemia and about Oulipo/Outrapo.

"The Dryad of Suburbia" - staged reading Nov. 5

2014 is my fourth year participating in the San Francisco Olympians Festival as a writer. My contribution this year is a 10-minute play, The Dryad of Suburbia, which is part of the festival's "Nymphs! Nymphs! Nymphs!" night on Wednesday, November 5.

(At least two people have already inquired whether there will be nudity on this evening. Highly unlikely, as it's a staged reading. But I'm pleased that the evening's title has done its job and grabbed people's attention.)

You can find out more about The Dryad of Suburbia on the festival's website. Yes, that page has changed since the last time I linked to it, back in January. Back then, I thought I was going to write a play about a Dryad encountering a Druid. I clung to that idea for months without writing a word -- because I was unable to hear my characters' voices. At the eleventh hour, I scrapped that idea and banged out The Dryad of Suburbia in a mad rush. I wrote about this experience in more detail for my Theater Pub column this week.

My new play is about a contemporary, suburban couple whose young daughter has become convinced that she is a "tree spirit." When I was writing it, I had no idea that Cody Rishell, the poster artist for Nymph Night, was designing a suite of posters that show little girls playing with their nymph friends! It's like we were tuned into the same wavelength. The Dryads poster (above) is astoundingly perfect -- I am a very happy playwright! You can check out all of the Nymph posters on Cody's website.

The reading of The Dryad of Suburbia will be directed by Valerie Fachman and feature actors Colleen Egan and Nick Trengove. The other "Nymphs!" playwrights are Sam Bertken, Leah Halper, Sam Hurwitt, Carol Lashof, Bridgette Dutta Portman, Jennifer Lynne Roberts, and Siyu Song.

It's all happening at 8 PM on November 5 at EXIT Theatre in San Francisco's scenic Tenderloin. RSVP to the Facebook event here. Tickets $10 at the door.

"Running Down a Dream" -- a Saturday Write Fever monologue

I went to Saturday Write Fever last night for the first time in over a year and was given the prompt "Running down a dream." I wrote the following monologue in 30 minutes. It was performed by a woman named Loretta (whose last name I didn't catch).

The speaker is onstage at a TED-type conference. He/she uses a wheelchair.

"Ah, the irony of fate. Ah, how the gods are laughing." That's what everyone said, or thought, after I got in the accident that snapped my spinal cord at the fifth vertebra and left me unable to use my legs. Me, the world-famous ultramarathoner! Winner of the Ironman triathlon three years in a row! That, on my record-breaking fourth attempt, my bike and I should go careering off the side of that volcano... that I should be paralyzed for life, incontinent, as helpless as a baby... Ah, how the gods laughed!

There were many times I wished I had been killed rather than paralyzed.

There were times I tried to finish the job. See these scars on my wrists? Or the hours I spent trying to rig a noose that would tighten if I whizzed away in my electric wheelchair...

For months, for years, there was only one experience that made me happy. When I slept. When I dreamed. In dreams I could walk! In dreams, I was whole! I got a prescription for sleeping pills. My legs had already withered, now my other muscles withered too, as I spent more and more time flat on my back in the realm of dreams.

And then a kind friend introduced me to the concept of lucid dreaming and I learned that I could not only walk, I could run! I could FLY! I could climb and jump and dance like Fred Astaire and Mikhail Baryshnikov rolled into one!

But lucid dreaming is not easy. To catch a dream in the right way. To be both aware and not-aware. To think. To not wake up. And then, even if you do get the knack of it... you still have to wake up eventually! You still have to eat, or use the toilet...

But each time I awoke from a lucid dream, each time I opened my eyelids and saw my broken body, it hurt me afresh. It snapped my spinal cord all over again.

There is so much pain in being awake, why do we even allow ourselves to wake up at all? Why did we not evolve to live forever in the limitless world of dreams?

And that is when I discovered my true purpose. It was not, actually, to run races and win triathlons. It was to unlock the world of dreams for everyone. To make it so you can fall asleep and have sweet, restorative, refreshing dreams for months!

Working with a team of scientists at Johns Hopkins, I have developed Somnola -- a pill that allows uninterrupted sleep of up to 500 hours at a time, and also enhances lucid dreaming. With no side effects!

Somnola will end wars and violence and hatred. It will end misery and poverty and anguish. We will all be asleep, dreaming our beautiful dreams. And in that sleep, what dreams may come!

And gods, who's laughing now?

A Development Hell Of Our Own Making @ SF Theater Pub Blog

My Theater Pub column this week is my longest column yet! Even better, it's also one of my most widely-read and -discussed columns, too, after @2amt (2 AM Theatre) tweeted a link to it. I am really proud to have written something that started some conversations. I am also really proud of the fact that, according to Google, I am the only person who has ever used the phrase "a development hell of our own making."

And that's the theme of the piece, basically: we are told not to self-produce our plays until they are "ready," and that we should put them through multiple drafts, readings, and workshops before production. But is it possible to take that too far? There seems to be a trend of telling writers that they must develop a play for years before it can be considered stageworthy—and that has dangerous implications for the theater.

The column also contains this theory/metaphor/analogy that I am really proud of, because
it's offbeat and slightly offensive and as close as I'll ever come to making a dead-baby joke in a serious essay:

You’ve probably heard people compare writing a play to having or raising a child. And, in the olden days of high infant mortality, parents would have lots of children and then try not to get too attached to them, for fear that the child would die. Discipline was severe, and parents expected their kids to grow up fast. Nowadays, people plan for their children carefully, have just one or two kids, lavish them with attention, and overthink every aspect of parenting. Likewise, in the olden days, playwrights expected to write plays at a steady pace, have them produced regularly, and then move on to their next play. But, nowadays, we are encouraged to write fewer plays, and become “helicopter parents” to the plays we have written.

The column, by the way, is titled "I Don't Want to Wait," and now most of you probably have that '90s Paula Cole song stuck in your head and scenes of Dawson's Creek flashing before your eyes (YOU'RE WELCOME). But it's also pretty close to the title of a song by my friend Robin Yukiko – "Don't Wanna Wait" is from her new album, and the video just came out:



My boyfriend appears briefly in the video as a stern, disapproving librarian... very out of character for him, I must say. (Well, the bookishness and the good dress sense is not out of character, but the stony-faced attitude is!)

Theatergoing (and Theatermaking) 2013

I've already seen one play and one staged reading in 2014, which means it's time that I posted my annual round-up of shows that I saw in 2013!

As for what my favorites among these were, I won't be making an official "best of" or "top ten" list, but I did write up five of my most memorable 2013 theatergoing moments for the Theater Pub blog.

Links are to other reviews or pieces that I have written about these shows.

FULL PRODUCTIONS

1. Troublemaker, by Dan LeFranc, at Berkeley Rep 
2. Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them, by Christopher Durang, at Custom Made Theatre Co.
3. Manic Pixie Dream Girl, by Katie May, at ACT’s Costume Shop 
4. In and Out of Shadows, by Gary Soto, at the Marsh Youth Theater 
5. The Boy Friend, by Sandy Wilson, performed by the Bay School of San Francisco
6. The Heart Plays, adapted by various contributors from Heiner Muller's original, at Theater Pub 
7. Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare, at Theater Pub 
8. Fallaci, by Lawrence Wright, at Berkeley Rep 
9. Eurydice, by Sarah Ruhl, at Custom Made 
10. Shipwreck, by Tom Stoppard, at Shotgun Players 
11. Pericles, by William Shakespeare, at Berkeley Rep 
12. The Arsonists, by Max Frisch, at Aurora Theater 
13. You’re Going to Bleed, by Melissa Fall, at DIVAfest 
14. The Helen Project, by Megan Cohen and Amy Clare Tasker, at DIVAfest 
15. Arcadia, by Tom Stoppard, at ACT 
16. Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, adapted by Dave Malloy from Tolstoy's War and Peace, at Kazino 
17. The Explorers Club, by Nell Benjamin, at Manhattan Theatre Club 
18. Prelude to a Kiss, by Craig Lucas, at Custom Made 
19. By and By, by Lauren Gunderson, at Shotgun Players 
20. ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, by John Ford, adapted by Oren Stevens, produced by Bigger than a Breadbox Theatre 
21. Dear Elizabeth, adapted by Sarah Ruhl from the letters of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, at Berkeley Rep 
22. Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, at Cal Shakes 
23. Sea of Reeds, by Josh Kornbluth, at Shotgun Players 
24. Pint-Sized Plays IV, short plays by Christian Simonsen, Sang Kim, Kirk Shimano, Peter Hsieh, Carl Lucania, Dan Ng, Megan Cohen, and Stuart Bousel, at Theater Pub 
25. A Maze, by Rob Handel, at Just Theater 
26. The Fantasy Club, by Rachel Bublitz, produced by All Terrain Theater 
27. The Age of Beauty, by Stuart Bousel, produced by No Nude Men 
28. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, by Stephan Elliot and Allan Scott, national tour
29. Lady Windermere’s Fan, by Oscar Wilde, at Calshakes 
30. StormStressLenz, adapted by Martin Schwartz from J. M. R. Lenz, at SF Fringe 
31. Babies, the Ultimate Birth Control, by Rachel Bublitz and Tracy Held Potter, at SF Fringe
32. O Best Beloved, adapted by the cast from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, at SF Fringe
33. Philia, adapted by Evangeline Crittenden from a short story by Traci Chee, at SF Fringe
34. Volcano, by Aram Krikorian, at SF Fringe
35. Cinnamon and Cigarettes, by Jenny Newbry Waters, at SF Fringe
36. A Man, a Magic, a Music, by Movin' Melvin Brown, at SF Fringe
37. Serving Bait to Rich People, by Alexa Fitzpatrick, at SF Fringe
38. Next to Normal, by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, at Custom Made
39. Everything Go Boom, by John Pennington, at SF Fringe
40. With Held, by Jeremy Greco, at SF Fringe
41. Bonnie and Clyde, by Adam Peck, at Shotgun Players
42. Bay One-Acts Program 1, featuring plays by Tracy Held Potter, Sam Leichter, Daniel Holloway, Bennett Fisher, William Bivins, and a piece adapted by Allison Combs from T. S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
43. Bay One-Acts Program 2, featuring plays by Nancy Cooper Frank, Lauren Gunderson, Michael Phillis, Megan Cohen, Daniel Hirsch, Jeff Carter, and Ignacio Zulueta
44. What Every Girl Should Know, by Monica Byrne, at Impact Theatre
45. Scamoramaland, by Eve Edelson, at Performers Under Stress
46. Strangers, Babies, by Linda McLean, at Shotgun Players 
47. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare, produced by the Bay School of San Francisco
48. Peter/Wendy, adapted by Jeremy Bloom from J. M. Barrie, at Custom Made
49. Troilus and Cressida, by William Shakespeare, at Impact Theatre
50. Tristan and Yseult, adapted by Emma Rice, Carl Grose, and Anna Maria Murphy from folklore, by Kneehigh Theater at Berkeley Rep
51. The 4th Annual San Francisco One-Minute Play Festival, featuring 90 short plays by 52 writers.

STAGED READINGS

1. Pajanuary, by various contributors and adaptors, at Theater Pub 
2. The Showdown, short plays by Susan Jackson, Charles Lewis III, Ignacio Zulueta, Patricia Milton, Jaene Leonard, Bridgette Dutta Portman, Kirk Shimano, and Marissa Skudlarek, at Wily West Productions
3. The Actual Stuff, by Megan Cohen, produced in SF Playhouse’s “Our Voices, Our Stories” Festival 
4. In the Wings, by Meghan O’Connor, part of the "Behind the Curtain" Festival
5. The Rose of Youth, by Marissa Skudlarek, part of the "Behind the Curtain" Festival
6. Pastorella, by Stuart Bousel, part of the "Behind the Curtain" Festival
7. Orphée, by Jean Cocteau, translated by Marissa Skudlarek, at Theater Pub 
8. The Pub from Another World, short plays by Timothy Kay, Audrey Kessinger, Sang Kim, Allison Page, Sunil Patel, Bridgette Dutta Portman, Kirk Shimano, and Marissa Skudlarek, at Theater Pub
9. The Dead, adapted by Jeremy Cole from James Joyce, at Theater Pub 
10. The Carmine Lie, by Claire Rice, at the Garage 
11. Greeks Bearing Gifts, short plays by Charles Lewis III, Barbara Jwanouskos, Robert Estes, Joel Street, Daniel Hirsch, and Marissa Skudlarek, at the Olympians Festival
12. Megan Cohen’s Totally Epic Odyssey, by Megan Cohen, at the Olympians Festival
13. Under the Gods’ Golden Cleats, by Rachel Bublitz, at the Olympians Festival
14. Trojan Women, short plays by Patsy Fergusson, Carol Lashof, Peter Hsieh, Ashley Cowan, Sarah McKereghan, Tonya Narvaez, and Marissa Skudlarek, at the Olympians Festival
15. Prince of the City by Bridgette Dutta Portman and The Judgment of Paris is Burning by Kirk Shimano, at the Olympians Festival
16. Cassandra, by Claire Rice, at the Olympians Festival
17. The Tools of War, short plays by Meghan O'Connor, Tracy Held Potter, Neil Higgins, Sunil Patel, Helen Noakes, and Allison Page, at the Olympians Festival
18. The Plains of Ilium by Jeremy Cole and The Immortal Wall of Troy by Madeline Puccioni, at the Olympians Festival
19. Ellen’s Undone, by Sam Hurwitt, at the Olympians Festival
20. See Also All, by Stuart Bousel, at the Olympians Festival

I also saw two operas this year, both at the San Francisco Opera: Tales of Hoffman and The Flying Dutchman.

And because I like seeing it all in one place and congratulating myself on a busy year, here are my personal theater-making credits of 2013:

• actor/participant in Pajanuary
• writer of "Harriet's Flying Cacti" for The Showdown
• writer, director, and producer of The Rose of Youth staged reading
• translator and producer of the Orphée staged reading
• member of the Pub From Another World reading/submissions committee and writer of "Horny"
• member of the Bay One-Acts reading/submissions committee, copy-editor of their anthology, and interviewer for their website
• writer for the SF Fringe Festival newsletter, The Daily Starr
• writer of "Teucer" for Greeks Bearing Gifts
• writer of "Laodike" for Trojan Women
• writer of "Oblivious" and "Cultural Baggage" for the One-Minute Play Festival

Plus, my play Pleiades got a staged reading at Atlantic Stage in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina!

See also my previous theater roundups: 2012, 2011, 2010

How the Bechdel Test Made Me a Better Playwright @ SF Theater Pub Blog

Here's a blog post I've been meaning to write for nearly a year: How the Bechdel Test Made Me a Better Playwright.

The post tells how I wrote the closing scene of my screenplay Aphrodite, or the Love Goddess to make it comply with the Bechdel Test. The scene worked like gangbusters, and I probably could not have arrived at it if I hadn't been thinking of the Bechdel Test. I'd love it if other playwrights considered using the Bechdel Test in this fashion, as a way of sparking their imaginations and leading them down pathways that they hadn't previously considered.

(An anecdote that didn't make it into the column: At the time I had the first living-room reading of Aphrodite, I hadn't written the final scene, but I was mapping it out in my head. I told my cast, "I want it to show Rosalie with another woman, because that hasn't happened yet," and everyone in the room went "ooooh," really salacious-like, because it sounded like I was saying that the scene would depict Rosalie with another woman sexually. I blushed like crazy and said "No! Not like that!"

Well, I suppose one does have to wonder: if Aphrodite is the goddess of love and many of the gods are bisexual, why are there no myths that show Aphrodite with female lovers? [Answer: the Greeks were a patriarchal culture in which it was OK for men to be homosexual, but not for women to be lesbian. Another answer: there is something very homoerotic about paintings that show Aphrodite and the Three Graces all clad in mere shreds of gauze, isn't there?] Nonetheless, that's not the direction I wanted to go in with my screenplay. Maybe it would've been more courageous -- and still Bechdel-test compliant -- if I had.)

Anyway, like I said, I've wanted to write this post for a year and I ended up doing it for my Theater Pub blogging gig, so go check it out.

Script Evaluation 101 @ SF Theater Pub Blog

Another week, another Theater Pub column. This week, my topic is "Script Evaluation 101" -- the basic questions, rubrics, and biases that I use when I'm evaluating play scripts. Read my column and you, too, can become just as qualified as I am to judge new plays!

Or, if you disagree with the sweeping generalizations, unsubstantiated opinions, and blatant prejudices that I use to evaluate scripts, why don't you tell me your rules for evaluating plays, and we can hash it out in the comments?

"Wendy and the Lost Boys": Wasserstein's stranger-than-fiction life

If you're an American female playwright, particularly one who went to a Seven Sisters college, you're going to have to grapple with the legacy of Wendy Wasserstein. We all have our literary forebears that we do battle with in that "Anxiety of Influence" kind of way, and Wasserstein is one of mine. Not the only one, certainly. But Uncommon Women and Others was a big, big influence on me when I was writing Pleiades, and I wrote a college term paper on The Heidi Chronicles. And Wasserstein is the archetypal Baby Boomer female playwright, and I am a daughter of Boomers, so in some sense, it's like she is my mother...

As such, I had wanted to read Julie Salamon's biography of Wasserstein, Wendy and the Lost Boys, ever since it came out two years ago. But I was also hesitant: I read reviews stating that the biography made Wasserstein out to be a sadder and more complicated woman than she ever let on. Is this what it meant to be a female artist? (Must a female artist suffer?) Would reading the book just depress me? I knew that Wasserstein never found romantic love, and I too was suffering bad luck in my love life, and in my more cynical moments I'd repeat to myself, "Arthur Miller married Marilyn Monroe, and Wendy Wasserstein died alone."

Maybe I finally allowed myself to read Wendy and the Lost Boys this month because I am secure and happy in a relationship, so the story of a romantically-frustrated female playwright now has less power to trigger my neuroses. Anyway, here's my Goodreads review of the biography.

  Wendy and the Lost Boys: The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein by Julie Salamon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


"Wendy and the Lost Boys" is a fascinating biography that ferrets out some of the secrets and sorrows that Wendy Wasserstein hid beneath her giggly, lovably self-deprecating public persona. In some respects, Wasserstein was a typical Baby Boomer woman, breaking the glass ceiling in the '70s, giving up her bohemian roots and becoming part of the Establishment during the '80s and '90s, etc. In other respects, she was completely atypical. Her parents, siblings, friendships, and romantic relationships were all far more complicated than she ever revealed to the public, either in her plays (which were often semi-autobiographical) or her magazine essays.

Julie Salamon tells this story capably, bringing to life the vivid "cast of characters" that made up Wendy's world. Many of Wasserstein's famous friends, such as Christopher Durang and André Bishop, spoke to Salamon and provided valuable insights. (Dishiest piece of gossip: around the time "The Heidi Chronicles" was on Broadway, Wendy had a lengthy affair with Terrence McNally -- though McNally was gay, and had formerly been Edward Albee's boyfriend!)

Salamon's writing shows some signs of fatigue in the later chapters of the book -- lots of one-sentence paragraphs, things like that. Nevertheless, the final chapters are surprisingly suspenseful, as Wendy has a "mystery" baby and then a "mystery" illness, all within the last six years of her too-short life. Her secretiveness about the pregnancy and about her baby's father is mirrored by her secretiveness about the lymphoma that killed her. If this were a play, you might not believe it -- but this is Wendy's uncommon life.

View all my reviews

What Makes a Play a "Marissa Skudlarek Play"? And Other Thoughts on Personal Branding

In my latest piece for San Francisco Theater Pub's blog, "Branding Upon the Brain," I contemplate the pros and cons of branding yourself as a writer. Is branding a means of identifying and promoting your strengths, or is it a distraction? Does branding yourself mean pigeonholing and caricaturing yourself?

(Does asking all these questions make me sound like Carrie Bradshaw?)

This piece ties in rather well with this marissabidilla post from 2010, "What kind of plays do you write?" Funny: in the older post, I wrote, "Being a young writer, I am fortunate that I can hedge and say 'Well, I feel like I'm still learning, and finding my voice.' But I don't have too many more years in which I can get away with this." How right I was. It's three years later, and I feel like I have passed the point where I can just smile winsomely and say "I think I'm still finding my voice."

After my post went up on the Theater Pub site, I received a very kind and thoughtful Facebook message from a friend who wished to comment on it in a non-public way. While I respect my friend's desire for anonymity, I also really liked what s/he had to say, and I don't want the message to get lost in the depths of Facebook. And when someone tells you something really smart about your own work, I think you have the right to post it on your blog. This is what my friend wrote:

Your work as I know it has a strong brand and a strong feeling to it, from the pregnant lady drinking a beer to the '40s movie star, and it's related not to how you tell your stories (place, time, style) per se, but to what you tell stories about. At least so far, I would say your work is marked by an obsessive exploration of how social expectations prevent selfless connections between people. I see that in almost all your plays: the war between the selfish and the innocent, or maybe between the selfless and the cruel, sometimes between those tendencies within one person, set in a terrain of social/historical confines, looking at how these absurd or arcane social norms are a breeding ground for cruelty and frustration. It doesn't mean you can't try something new and keep growing, but that particular subject matter seems to matter to you in most of your plays, and there's nothing wrong with being pretty sure about what matters to you!

I love it when other people can explain me to myself. Seriously, this is explains so much about my body of work, both its flaws and its virtues. (When writing about "the war between the selfish and the innocent," you have to be careful not to tip over into melodrama, hyperbole, or gratuitous cruelty.) It explains why I am so proud of Pleiades and why feel, somehow, like only I could have written it. It explains why I write so many plays that take place in different eras — the deeper purpose that historical fiction serves for me as a writer. Heck, even the first play I ever wrote, Deus ex Machina, was about greedy, selfish television producers versus an innocent teenage girl, and the absurdities of peer pressure and media influence.

And it's odd, isn't it? I say I don't want to brand myself because I don't want to constrain myself — yet my brand, it seems, is writing about people who feel constrained, and therefore dissatisfied and unhappy.

Also: in my Theater Pub column, I make reference to my participation in the ATLAS Program for Playwrights, a career development initiative. In July, at the ATLAS Playwrights' Showcase, I spoke a little bit about my work and read the first five minutes of my play Beer Theory (which is definitely about "looking at how absurd social norms can breed cruelty and frustration," oh boy). Local actor Don Hardwick attended the showcase and recently wrote it up on his blog. Thanks, Don!

See my play "Horny" at SF Theater Pub on Monday, May 20

My latest short play, "Horny," will have a one-night-only performance in San Francisco on Monday, as part of The Pub From Another World.

It's a play about sex and unicorns. Obviously. What happens when you're a young woman who really, really wants to have sex with your boyfriend... but, if you lose your virginity, you can never touch your pet unicorn again?

The Pub From Another World is an evening of eight sci-fi, fantasy, and horror short plays, produced by Sunil Patel. In addition to my unicorn play, there's plays about psychos, superheroes, time travelers, and mad scientists. Plus a play by four-year-old Audrey Kessinger that went viral on BoingBoing.

It should be a really fun evening and I suggest getting there early, as it's bound to get crowded. The performance is at 8 PM at the Cafe Royale, 800 Post St. (at Leavenworth).

"Horny" is directed by Meg O'Connor and will feature actors Sam Bertken and Olivia Youngers. Making out. Lots of making out.

Image: "Young Woman with Unicorn" by Raphael.

The Bicoastal Playwright-Producer-Translator

I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that my play Pleiades was selected by the Atlantic Stage Co. in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for their New Voices Play Festival. At this very moment, 1:30 PM on the East Coast), the staged reading of Pleiades is beginning in South Carolina...

...and I can't be there, because I am at the Cafe Royale in San Francisco in my capacity as the producer of San Francisco Theater Pub's April show, my new translation of Orphée. (OK, fine, I wrote this blog post in advance and have timed it to go up on Sunday morning.)

Tech rehearsal for Orphée on one coast, a staged reading of Pleiades on the other. Weekends like this don't come along very often.

And it should be no surprise that this beautiful song has been stuck in my head all week: "South Carolina" by Tennis:

Upcoming: "The Rose of Youth," "Orphée," "Pleiades"

 Apologies for the lack of posting, but 2013 is turning out to be busier than I anticipated. I spent much of this afternoon in a coffee shop, revising my translation of Jean Cocteau's Orphée in preparation for its staged reading at Theater Pub on April 15. The sunlight streamed through the beveled edge of the coffee shop's glass door, casting rainbows on my computer screen and making me think of the glass panes of Heurtebise, the guardian angel-glazier character in Orphée.

It's slightly odd to return to my translation of Orphée after I first translated it two years ago. The initial translation project might be one of my favorite bits of writing I've ever done, though, just because I accomplished it in such a stress-free, orderly fashion. Every night, I would translate one page of the script, and in a little over a month (it's not a long play) I had a finished translation. Instead of making me insane, it actually made me feel saner and smarter. Though I don't like admitting it to myself, I need routines and patterns. Maybe I should do more translations; maybe I should just be better at setting aside a dedicated time to write.

Moreover, because it's a translation, I feel less of an emotional connection to the writing than I usually do, so it isn't too difficult to go back and revise it. Often, what I write is intimately linked to my emotional state at the time, so revisiting a work years later means I must make an effort to remember my mindset when I first wrote it. With Orphée, though, returning to the work does not mean dredging up the past, because I've always viewed the work rather objectively.

Perhaps one theme of 2013 is seeing artistic projects come to fruition years after I first conceived them. I decided in 2010 to translate Orphée, worked on the translation in early 2011, and only now am I actually getting to present it publicly.

Furthermore, I have my staged reading of The Rose of Youth coming up in less than two weeks, on March 29. And, as I've said before, I wrote that play during the 2007-2008 school year, saw it as the culmination to a great four years studying drama at Vassar, and never expected anything more to come of it. But here I am, five years later, directing a staged reading of it.

I also wanted to announce something else exciting that I have coming up this spring. Atlantic Stage, a theater company in Myrtle Beach, SC, will present a staged reading of my play Pleiades on the second weekend of April, as part of their New Voices PlayFest! (I wrote Pleiades in 2011, if you're counting.) This marks the first time my work will be seen in the South, and makes Pleiades one of the many San Francisco Olympians Festival plays that have gone on to have a continued life. And I kind of love that the play, which takes place in the Hamptons, will be performed in a different East Coast beach town. I practically danced around my room when I learned that Atlantic Stage had selected my play, and I hope to have more information soon. Unfortunately, I can't jet off to Myrtle Beach to see the reading -- I could really use a beach vacation after the busy month I've been having!

Image: Jarvis Cocker, holding a French dictionary. Yeah, one reason I wrote this post is to have an excuse to use this picture.

"Rose of Youth" Staged Reading on March 29

Mark your calendars, 'cause I have exciting news! My full-length play, The Rose of Youth, will be presented in a staged reading at the EXIT Theatre in San Francisco on March 29.

If you're a longtime reader of my blog, you might recognize that play title — though I haven't mentioned it, or thought about it, in years. The Rose of Youth was my senior thesis play at Vassar. I wrote it in fall 2007, and it received a production as part of the Drama Department's Dynamo Theater Lab project in spring 2008.

And after that incredible experience, I honestly expected that I'd put the play in a drawer and forget about it. I had written it specifically for my college: it's a backstage drama about Vassar's 1934 production of Antony and Cleopatra. But its huge cast means that no professional or indie theater company would consider producing it, and even if cast size were no obstacle, I thought it was just too "Vassar" for anyone else to care about it.

Well, never say never. Or something like that. The Rose of Youth will be one of three staged readings on the last weekend of March, as part of a mini-festival of backstage comedies that we're calling "Behind the Curtain."

The festival came about when my friend Stuart Bousel posted on Facebook that he'd written a new backstage comedy about a theater company producing Arcadia. Another friend of ours, Meg O'Connor, congratulated Stuart and added that she'd written a backstage comedy as her senior thesis play in college. "How funny, Meg," I wrote in response, "I also wrote a backstage play as my senior thesis. We should trade."

But where my instinct is just to say to Meg "Let's read each other's scripts," Stuart's instinct is to say "Let's put on a festival!" (This is why we love him.) He secured the EXIT Theatre for the weekend of March 28-30, and now "Behind the Curtain" is happening. Meg's In the Wings is the Thursday show, and Stuart's Pastorella is Saturday. Here's the festival poster (by Cody Rishell):

So this is going to be a trip and a half. It will be so strange and wonderful to return to The Rose of Youth, five years and three thousand miles later. This also marks the first time that I'm directing my own work in God knows how long. I mean, having produced the play five years ago, I already know that the script works and I'm not planning to make any changes or revisions to it. All the same, I'm a little bit nervous about directing! I'll be the only person to blame if things go wrong!

Casting is still in progress, but so far, Patrick Barresi, Jan Carty Mash, Travis Howse, Theresa Miller, and Jonathon Brooks are lined up to appear.

Look for more updates as March 29 draws closer.

How to Host a Living Room Reading @ SF Theater Pub Blog

I am not Martha Stewart, but I have the same initials. And in my latest column for SF Theater Pub, I offer some tips on how to successfully host a script reading in your living room.

Because a living-room reading is the first time that we playwrights hear our work aloud, it can be a surprisingly nerve-wracking process. My tips are about how to calm your jitters and ensure that you and your guests/actors have both a pleasant and productive time.

Go check it out, and feel free to add your own tips in the comments. I'd love to hear from actors or directors about what they feel makes for a successful living room script reading!

And Bay Area residents, mark your calendars for April 15, 2013 -- that's when my new translation of Jean Cocteau's Orphée, which was the subject of my living-room reading on Wednesday night, will be produced at Theater Pub!