Just Wrought

Sandbox Radio Live! Makes a Bold New Move

Sure bigger isn’t always better, and art doesn’t always thrive when it moves to a fancier-panted venue. I know I’d rather have seen the Beatles work the Cavern Club in Liverpool—or even better, one of the Hamburg dives they learned their chops in—rather than Shea Stadium, where even they couldn’t hear themselves play.

So there are inevitably doubters about Sandbox Radio LIVE’s move to the much larger venue of ACT’s Falls Theatre for its upcoming episode, January 13, 2004.  But here’s the thing: for about three years running we have sold out every live taping of SBRL! that we have produced at West of Lenin, our perfectly cozy little venue in Fremont. That means there are people—lots of people—actually, that would like to experience the unique fun of witnessing the live recording of our podcasts who can’t, simply because we don’t have seats for them. 

This move can help us reach more people with our unique live performance offering which is quite literally (old-school usage) different from anything you have ever seen, featuring some of Seattle’s finest actors performing brand new locally sourced material generated by some of Seattle’s finest playwrights and (ahem) former playwrights.

In short, this is the kind of bold artistic risk that deserves your reward. So how can you help? Just come!  Click this link and order your tickets so that we can have friendly butts in every new seat we’re adding.  Help us spread the fun of Sandbox Radio Live! Do it for the Beatles!  (It’s what Pete Best and Stu Sutcliffe would’ve wanted.)

The details:

 

January 13, 2014 at 8:00pm

ACT’s Falls Theatre

Running Time: 2 hours (including an intermission)

The Food of Love includes new short audio plays from Seattle playwrights Vincent Delaney, Elizabeth Heffron, and Wayne Rawley, a fresh new episode of Paul Mullin's noir-angel serial Markheim, the latest adventure of Scot Augustson's hilarious Cousin Katie, special guest Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings, our fabulous live sfx, original music from Jose “Juicy” Gonzales and the Sandbox Radio Orchestra, and more surprises, all recorded in front of you, our "studio" audience.

 

Oh, and know that you can always enjoy the fun of Sandbox Radio, going back to our very first episode, by clicking below and downloading the podcasts:

Here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/sandbox-radio-live/id452830642

Or here: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sandbox-radio-live?refid=stpr

 

PS !  You can message me privately for a discount code which will save you 25% off your ticket price.

Related articles

The Naked Truth

Sexy New Acting Edition of THE SEQUENCE

Original Works Publishing has just released a sweet, sexy and sleek new edition trade acting edition of my play The Sequence, about the real-life race to decode the human genome. The new edition features a flat binding, super-gloss cover, larger print, ample margins for blocking, and extra pages for notes.

 

 

Original Works is a great outfit, with plenty of new titles from some of the hottest American playwrights including Elizabeth Heffron, Jeff Goode, Gwydion Suilebhan, Adam Szymkowicz and on and on. If The Sequence ain’t your cup of tea, you’ll still likely find something at OWP that is. Head on over and check out their deeply impressive catalog of hard copy and electronic titles.

 

Related articles

Finally Face to Face with the Other Racer

My Last Play Reading

You might rightly judge that title to be half fib, depending on how you read it.  The upcoming public reading of  Philosophical Zombie Killers, happening on September 14 at 7:30 pm at Freehold Theatre, will certainly, and happily, not be the last public reading of a play of mine. The Sequence is scheduled to be read on October 12 at 2pm at the Bathhouse Theater at Green Lake.  (More details here.)  But Philosophical Zombie Killers is indeed my last full-length play. I have no plans to write another, and no great prospects for future full production of this, or any other play I have written. On September 15, the day after this reading, I will officially step away from the theatre. I have no plans to return. Of course threads of sadness run through this decision, but it is also interwoven with hope, and anticipation of new adventures. I hope you’ll wish me well. And if you can, I hope you’ll come see this reading. Here, below the fold, is the press release with all the info:

Once Again the Times Skims Seattle’s Surface and Gets it Wrong

I promised myself and you, gentle readers, that Just Wrought was moving on from being a Seattle theatre bitch blog, so I am asking you to help a homey out and chime in below in the comments section to educate The New York Times and Intiman’s Artistic Director, Andrew Russell, about why his statement in that paper’s recent article on the Intiman’s Summer Festival is so woefully ignorant. The condescending carpet-bagging quote in question: “Few theaters in Seattle have ambitious summer shows.” 

Here, I’ll prime the pump: every summer Balagan Theatre develops a brand new, original locally grown children’s show and puts it on free in Seattle parks. I had the immense pleasure of participating in the 2011 offering, King Arthur and the Knights of the Playground.

That’s just one example pulled from the myriad of amazing ambitious work getting done here each summer. Now you add one.

And seriously, New York Times, if you want to know what’s happening in Seattle, get on a plane and get out here.  Your breezy phone interviews with Big House wannabe auteurs just don’t cut it anymore. And if your shrinking budget doesn’t allow for that sort of quality reportage, then do us a favor and STFU about Seattle theatre, ‘cuz ya know what? We don’t care what you think.

I'm am striking the above paragraph out, as it is based on my eroneous assumption. The fact is, the Times reporter did fly out to research this story. (Thank you, Brendan Kiley, for setting me straight.)  I could wish that Mr. Healy had taken the time to investigate how rich and ambitious the Seattle theatre scene really is in the Summer (and every other season), but you know what they say about wishing.

Related articles

Paul Mullin on the NYT on Intiman

Local TV Gives Local Theatre a Glance

I have not been on television since my brief, ill-fated appearance  on Romper Room in Baltimore, circa 1972. Miss Sally was asking the circle of kids what their favorite drink was and when she got to me, I said, “Whiskey”. Even Mr. Do-Bee looked shocked. (In my defense, my dad had once given me a sip and I wasn’t as horrified by the taste as everyone expected me to be.) When the broadcast was done, my mom yanked me out of WBAL’s studio so fast I thought she was going to dislocate my shoulder. Oddly, I was not asked back.

 

 

Happily, last week I made my triumphant return, along with Amy Love, to talk about Sandbox One-Act Play Festival (or SOAPFest, as the kids are calling it.) The festival opens tomorrow night and runs for only this weekend.  It features brand new plays by  Scot Augustson, Emily Conberre, Elizabeth Heffron and myself , presented by some of Seattle’s very best directors, designers, technicians and actors.

Now that Amy and I are tv stars, tickets to the three night run are unlikely to last long.  I recommend getting some while the getting is good. (Order tickets here.)

And if you’re wracking your brain for a gift to bring to celebrate these world premieres, just remember: whiskey’s still my favorite drink

Related articles

The SOAP Poster!

The SOAP Poster!

 

I have said it before: one of the most exciting moments for this playwright is when the posters for a world premiere drop into circulation. Something about it says, “Yup, this is happening all right.” And I really love this one for SOAPFest. (Thanks to Sean Williams of Gigantic Planet for the evocative design.)

I plan on writing more later about why this upcoming festival of short world premiere plays is particularly special for me, but for now, let me simply share SOAPFest’s press release below the fold so you can have all of that important information now.

Remember, SOAPFest is three nights only in a small venue.  Tickets are on sale here, now!  So . . . you know what to do.

 

 

Record Corrector

Saying that what Mike Daisey does isn’t theatre is not equivalent to saying that what Jackson Pollock painted isn’t art. Rather, it’s equivalent to saying what Jackson Pollock painted isn’t photography. I make this argument in greater detail in my essay, “The Solo Show: A Risk Averse Artistic Administrator’s Best Friend” which is, beyond a reasonable doubt, what Omar Willey refers to in his withering list of “nonsense” and “childish territorialism” nestled within his hot-off-the-virtual presses criticism of Culturebot’s recent evening  Everyone’s a Critic. Omar’s essay is worth the read despite the red herrings and half-thrown gauntlets. Just as— I like to think— my essay on one-person shows is also worth a glance, despite its putative shortcomings.

Easily one of the three smartest people I know, Omar Willey is a mensch’s mensch. His contributions as the founding publisher of The Seattle Star are profound, and his thinking on how criticism can make Seattle theatre better is vital to the conversation, no matter how proudly he praises his own prolixity and opacity. (Trust me: it’s quite not as bad as he hopes.) If, however, Omar were always right, I would be compelled to worship him as a fearsome god, instead of treasuring him, as I do, for the dear friend he is.

Locally Grown Gains a DC Advocate

You need to check out D.C. playwright Gwydion Suilebhan’s brilliant new essay, “Theatrical Biodiversity”. Seriously. Click here. Take the time to read it all the way through.  It’s hard for me to express how gratifying it is to see a fellow theatre artist so  effectively articulate why he is joining the locally grown theatre movement.  Fresh and fierce, Suilebhan’s voice achieves an eloquence that has eluded me in these discussions.  Witness him bring the rigor of science to his metaphors:

In the same way that all the corn we eat in America now comes from a small number of genetic strains owned by a small number of huge agribusinesses, we now experience theater made largely by artists from a small number of graduate programs who live in a small number of huge cities…. We have lost, or may be at least losing, our artistic biodiversity.

… That’s bad for a lot of reasons. … A mono-culture (either agricultural or artistic) is vulnerable. If a new pest or blight emerges to which the one predominant strain of a crop is vulnerable, we all starve. What then might happen to the American theater, then, if it’s threatened by a similar pest or blight? Or has it already? Has the accessibility and quality and ubiquity of television and film, for example, turned theater into a “gourmet” entertainment that only a few well-heeled diners can afford to consume?

And watch him bring even more rigor to targets that take us beyond the status quo:

…In a healthy theatrical ecosystem, one that doesn’t suffer from the weaknesses of a mono-culture, at least 33% of the plays on our stages every season will be… completely locally grown. That is to say: drafted, developed, directed, designed, dramaturged, and done by people who live and work within a reasonable distance — let’s say 100 miles, since that’s the locavore standard — of the audience members who are going to engage with it.

And maybe 33% isn’t enough.… But [it] is a start. Right now in DC — a theatrical community that’s considered fairly healthy, nationwide — we’re at about half that level….  New York, Chicago, and likely LA are almost certainly higher than that, but…is St. Louis — just to pick a city at random — even close? What about Mankato, MN, or Decorah, IA?… My guess is the numbers don’t look good.

And what about Seattle?  What are our numbers?  And what sort of future benchmarks for locally grown works can we get ACT, The Rep, Intiman, and all the houses in smaller tiers to commit to?  I think Gwydion might agree that hothouse development workshops, from which scripts never see the light of full production, don’t count as a viable or sustainable source of theatrical nourishment.

However, Suilebhan’s admonishments aren’t reserved solely for feckless, floundering artistic administrators.  We playwrights come in for some rightful tweaking too:

… We need to write plays that wrestle with the everyday concerns and the specific interests and particular longings of our audiences. We need to understand our neighbors — to be among them, to be members of our communities — in order to give them what they need. (Which is not the same as what they want. We all want doughnuts; we do not need doughnuts.) We need to start writing for the family next door, not for a nameless artistic director in Manhattan.

To you status quo clingers that clutched faith that I had given up and gone permanently quiet about the necessity of locally grown organic theatre, your prayers may be getting answered ironically.  Others are coming to the struggle: smarter and better spoken.

.…We’d be establishing what the biologists call semi-permeable membranes between them in order to regulate what gets in and what gets out. In effect, if we embraced a locally grown cultural development approach, the American theatrical ecosystem would become less of a top-down hierarchical structure controlled by centralized authorities and more of a distributed network of peers. Just like, oh, everything else that’s succeeding in the world at the moment.

With folks like Gwydion joining the fray, the word you are now looking for to describe progress toward a locally grown American Theatre, exploding Manhattan’s hub-and-spokes model, is “inexorable.”

Related articles

Simultaneous Publication: Legit Experiment or Hat on a Hat?

Ballard House Duet’s Poster is Here!

There’s nothing quite like a show’s  poster going live to underscore the message: “This sh*t is happening!”

 

You can get your tix here.  (Do the math. {Small house + short run} * {dynamite cast + crackerjack production team} = early sellout!)

You can stay up-to-date  on additional Ballard House Duet information as it comes available by “liking” the Custom Made Plays Project Facebook page here.

And as always, I’ll do my best to keep you up to date here at Just Wrought. More fun news is on the way, I promise!

Ballard House Duet: Just the Facts

Blogging is hard. You have to keep posts short to hold people’s attention, but then a project comes along like Ballard House Duet and all I want to do is tell everyone every little thing about it. I want to describe why it’s been so important to me creatively: how it’s been so fun, but also stretched me; why I think every playwright should try custom writing for individual actors; why I think the play tells a locally grown story Seattleites can uniquely identify with; and on and on.

I am, however, going to show some restraint, by limiting myself in this post to delivering the simple facts.  Ballard House Duet grew out of local actor Rebecca Olson’s idea to commission plays crafted especially for individual actors in Seattle. Says Olson:

The process begins with a blank page; the actors themselves are the basis for the play, and the actors stay attached to the script from conception through performance. The project includes development, workshops and full production of the finished scripts. This model allows the playwrights to draw on the individual and collective experiences of the artists they are working with. The resulting plays are more satisfying to produce and more resonant with local audiences.

Olson offered me the honor of being the premiere guinea pig playwright. Hana Lass is Rebecca’s castmate, and Erin Kraft leads the project as director and unofficial dramaturg (though Hana and Rebecca certainly had a hand in that as well. More on that later.)

We kick this premiere off on December 7 (‘cuz nothing bad has ever happened on that date, right?) and run for two short weeks in a small house, so you’re gonna wanna get your tix quick, by clicking here.

 

Here’s a synopsis . . .

Heidi doesn’t say the word “adopted”.  Holly’s her full sister, even if she is half-Asian and Heidi’s all American.  Somehow Holly inherited Aunt Nana’s religion gene, while Heidi got Mom’s need to be the center of attention.  Now in their 30’s the two sisters have agreed to clear out their hopelessly hoarding great aunt’s house, but when Heidi shows up a week late, hoping to film the process for a reality show, the past and future explode, scattering the shrapnel of strong, deeply hidden betrayals and even stronger, more deeply hidden loyalties.  As they wade through a lifetime of accumulated possessions - and personal grudges – Holly and Heidi must decide: What has value and what are they better off just throwing away?

 

And here are the production details . . .

WHAT:  Ballard House Duet.  A Custom Made Play Project & World Premiere

WHO:  Written by Paul Mullin  for actresses Hana Lass and Rebecca Olson; directed by Erin Kraft.

WHEN:  December 7-17th, 2012, Thursdays through Mondays at 7:30pm; Sneak Peak Thursday Preview, December 6th @ 7:30pm

WHERE:  608 19th Avenue East, at The Little Theatre in Capitol Hill

TICKET INFORMATION:  Tickets are $15-$25 and are available at the door or in advance at www.washingtonensemble.org.