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Ocean Beach Youth Group Fundraiser Jan. 6

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 3, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Today I had an amusing back and forth with Fire Islanders past and present. It was about a fund raiser for what we used to call “Group” back when I was a day camper and later a counselor and writer-director of teenage musicals.

The fundraiser is to restore the Ocean Beach Youth Group (“Group”) building below, which was pummeled by Hurricane Sandy. From the first e-mail:

“Food . Beer & Wine . Auction . Guest Bartenders . Tequila Tasting
“Sun., Jan. 6, 2013, 4-7 pm @ Rodeo Bar, 375 Third Avenue, NYC
“$50 cash/check at door, 21+
“$30 for 16-20 For advance tickets or to make a donation, visit http://www.nycharities.org/Events/EventLevels.aspx?ETID=5691 OBYG is a 501(c)3 organization.
“As an added bonus Tony Roberts of Broadway fame and Youth Group Alumnus will be our guest.”

I wrote back that I was in one of Tony Roberts’s teenage plays (back when his name was still Dave) and can sing most of the lyrics to the theme song of his show Like You Like It.

I then indulged in some contradictory reminiscing with my first co-writer/director and with the daughter of playwright Arnold Horwitt, who was an adviser on the first show we wrote.

“Memories can be beautiful and yet” … (Oh, sorry, we used to burst into song a lot.)

But about memories. I know I have the most accurate memories for the shows I worked on, yet friends keep remembering differently. And who can blame Arnold Horwitt’s daughter, for example, if she thinks her father wrote all the lyrics to our “Return of the Native” when he only contributed the song that he had already written for a cruise to fight a bridge, “Everything’s Coming Up Moses”? He was a huge support, and that’s what she gets right.

Want me to sing anything for you?

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Playwright in the Window

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 20, 2012| 2 Comments »

Deanna Isaacs has a funny post at the Chicago Reader. It’s about the Storefront Playwright Project.

“Tired of sitting around watching paint dry?” she asks.

“Then get yourself over to 72 E. Randolph, where, thanks to the League of Chicago Theatres and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, you can watch a real, live writer at work.

“The Storefront Playwright Project is putting 27 authors on exhibit this month in the big front window at Hot Tix/Expo 72.

“Never mind that writing is right up there with sleeping as a potential spectator sport, so stimulating that the writer him- or herself often has to bring the action to a complete stop in order to check e-mail, clean a closet, or book a flight and get the hell out of there. …

“Guessing that dramatists would be more dynamic at work than, say, novelists (readily observed in deep rumination at most any coffee shop), I stopped by last week, when Emilio Williams was on display.

“The playwrights each take a four-hour shift. Williams was a couple hours into his afternoon stint, gamely focused on his laptop, which was perched on a small white table and hooked into a large screen mounted in the window. The big screen faces outward, allowing passersby a look at the creative product the instant it emerges from the writer’s brain. …

“Behind the glass, Williams pursed his lips and crossed his ankles. …

“He leaned his chin on his hand and scrolled through several pages of dialogue that went something like this:

“Mar: Done?

“Ted: Yep.

“Mar: You don’t sound very enthusiastic.

“Williams paused.

“He blinked.

“He scrolled again.

“And then, it happened!

“On the big screen, before my very eyes, the cursor hesitated. It stopped. And it backed up, deleting as it went, wiping out ‘tucitcennoC’ and replacing it with ‘Lake Geneva.’ ” More from Deanna, even funnier.

Readers may recall several posts I wrote on a playwriting class I took the summer before last. (For example, here.) I thought the class got playwriting out of my system. Should I reconsider now that playwrights have the opportunity to sit in storefronts where strangers can watch them think?

Um, maybe not.

Photograph: The Chicago Reader

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Puppet Becomes War Horse

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on November 14, 2012| Leave a Comment »

At Pamela’s party Sunday, I was talking to Jean and Dorothy, who had seen the theater production of War Horse and were enthusiastic about everything — the story, the performances, and the puppets.

Jean sent me to an online TED talk in which the puppet masters explain how they create animals that seem real to audiences even when the puppeteers are visible.

Check the website: ” ‘Puppets always have to try to be alive,’ says Adrian Kohler of the Handspring Puppet Company, a gloriously ambitious troupe of human and wooden actors. Beginning with the tale of a hyena’s subtle paw, puppeteers Kohler and Basil Jones build to the story of their latest astonishment: the wonderfully life-like Joey, the War Horse, who trots (and gallops) convincingly onto the TED stage.”

 

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When Artists Control the Building: A Minneapolis Story

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on August 11, 2012| Leave a Comment »

We lived in Minneapolis in the late 1990s and thought the theater scene there was super — many small, under-the-radar groups taking on adventurous work.

We also enjoyed going to music and art events, especially open houses in the former Warehouse District, where some of the Twin Cities’ best restaurants had sprung up.

So we weren’t surprised to learn that a national effort to tackle rundown areas in a way that benefits both local economies and artists emanates from Minneapolis.

Emily Badger writes about Artspace in Fast Company.

“The city of Minneapolis’ arts commission founded Artspace in 1979 to help connect local artists to affordable space in the city’s warehouse district. But the same artists kept coming back, priced out of their homes and studios, in need of yet another space. When [Kelley] Lindquist took over a decade later, the local arts community began to focus instead on the only permanent solution: They needed to control the buildings. Since then, Artspace has completed 30 live/work developments in 21 U.S. cities, with two more opening this fall, two more under construction, and another dozen in the pipeline.

“Lindquist recalls that in the ’80s, four other organizations — in Seattle, San Francisco, Washington and New York — were toying with a concept similar to Artspace’s (at the time, the five had been given a grant by the Apple Foundation to network with each other). Artspace is the only one of those original five that has survived to this day.

“ ‘I do honestly think that there is a prairie spirit here,’ Lindquist says, laughing. He sometimes thinks about why this idea got off the ground in Minnesota when it didn’t elsewhere. ‘Living in Minnesota is pretty rough,’ he says. ‘There can be easily six months of the year that would seem pretty hard to live in and intolerable to a lot of people. But I think it forced those of us here to try harder, and to be a little more experimental, a little more risk-taking on how do we keep our culture vibrant?’ ” Read more.

By the way, this lead came from ArtsJournal.com, a reliable source of bloggy inspiration.

Photograph: Warehouse Entertainment District

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Theater for Kids with Disabilities

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 14, 2012| 2 Comments »

At the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey, a group of children are learning the joy of theater.

Tammy La Gorce writes in the NY Times that the playhouse now has a class for children with disabilities.

“The class is a logical next step for Paper Mill, which last year began offering a series of sensory-friendly presentations for children with autism in its ‘Theater for Everyone’ programming. Sensory-friendly shows are scripted to be more literal, with innuendo kept to a minimum, and the theater’s lighting and volume are adjusted to help audience members feel more comfortable.

“This year, in a partnership with VSA New Jersey, a nonprofit organization that provides arts programming for children and adults with disabilities, Paper Mill joined the ranks of theaters welcoming such children who have an interest in learning to perform.

“Parents of children with developmental disabilities ‘are seeing the benefits of arts education,’ said Lisa Cooney, 46, director of education for Paper Mill. ‘And they’re a lot more proactive than they used to be.’

“Those who run the programs find them rewarding as well. The children ‘give so much to us,’ said Mickey McNany, the director of Paper Mill’s Theater School, after the recent class. In it, her 10-year-old granddaughter, Mary McNany, who has Down syndrome, identified Mozart as the composer of ‘Eine kleine Nachtmusik,’ performed an improvised roller-skating scene and used sign language, as well as her voice, to sing a song.” Read more.

Below, Marnie McNany takes part with her children Finn and Mary.
Photograph: Aaron Houston for the New York Times

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Youth Theater Creates “Money Matters”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 3, 2012| 2 Comments »

There’s a theory that if you want information to stick, it helps to tie it to emotions. The Center for Community Capital at the University of North Carolina tested the idea with The Bold and the Bankable: How the Nuestro Barrio Soap Opera Effectively Delivers Financial Education to Latino Immigrants.

It’s all true: If a character you like goes bankrupt because of reckless behavior with money, you are likely to remember and apply the learning to your own situation.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a theatrical production by teenagers from the Underground Railway Youth Theater who had written a script from interviews they conducted with 80 people of all ages. The teens asked interviewees about their experiences with money and how they felt about it. Some of the stories were quite moving, and the high school audience’s emotions were likely engaged as they were quiet as mice.

There was a talkback afterward. A few students wanted to know how to join Youth Underground.

From the group’s website: “Youth Underground serves youth ages 13-18 with stipend eligible opportunities to create theater together and in tandem with community-based organizations; and to showcase their work throughout the city, Greater Boston, and at Central Square Theater. Youth Underground holds both an academic year program and intensive summer residency with an annual Ensemble of 30 members. Youth Underground showcases work through performances, a youth driven Community Dialogue Series, and peer exchanges with local and global organizations.”

The Boston Globe has a good article on it.

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Little Women

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 8, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Twenty years ago I helped out on what local people jokingly refer to as the Concord Passion Play: Little Women. It’s performed every 10 years by the Concord Players because (a) author Louisa May Alcott lived at Orchard House in Concord and (b) she was a founder of the theater group that became the Concord Players.

Kate Clarke is directing the show this year, and she just got some great publicity in the Boston Globe.

“ ‘Preparing to direct the play, I started to do some research and was fascinated to discover just how meaningful the book is to so many people,’ Clarke said.

“ ‘Even the rock star Patti Smith wrote in her recent memoir that “Little Women” was what made her feel as a young high school student that she could be an artist. It motivated her to go to New York and become a performer. I started thinking, “Good Lord, Jo March is everywhere! Why do people find her so compelling?”

“ ‘That’s the question I’ve been tackling with this group of actors. Yes, it’s about the Civil War era, and the societal restrictions that females were under at that time. But the fact that the book’s popularity has endured reflects what compelling characters these young women were.

“ ‘This story is so uniquely Concord and yet reaches far beyond the boundaries of Concord, just as it is a story about the 1860s that also brings up a lot of contemporary issues,’ Clarke said.” Read more.

Here’s photo by Jon Chase for the Boston Globe. Pat Kane, an incredible costume designer, is in the middle. (I don’t think she remembers, but the first time she worked for the Concord Players was when I sought her help on a one-act I directed, Stoppard’s After Magritte.)

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Presentation Class

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on February 27, 2012| 2 Comments »

I have always loved theater, and even when I have been in a play and felt stage fright, I have been able to make it work as a springboard for the lines I have to say. But when I have to do a presentation as myself and not a character, I freeze up.

Which is why I keep taking classes in how to give presentations, to no avail. But the class that I took last week may finally help me. And I think the secret of it was that the instructor, though an experienced corporate coach and adviser, is also a practicing actor and playwright.

He was very good at paring down the words participants wanted to use and helping choose the most effective ones. And his ideas about how to make an entrance, how to stand, natural gestures to use, tone of voice, and eye contact seemed to have roots in the stage. Even the freshness of his own presentation to the class seemed the result of having to say the same lines night after night in a show and make them seem new.

Of course, no class is magic, so we have to wait and see how it goes when I do my work presentation in late March. But I am definitely going to try harder to apply what I heard than when I took presentation classes in the past full of jargon, phony jokes, and gimmicks that are supposed to work but don’t seem to have a lot underpinning them.

The teacher was Brandt Johnson. See the actor here. See the corporate consultant here. Another one of these people who lead several lives simultaneously.

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Ex-inmates Reborn through Theater

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 25, 2012| 2 Comments »

I’ve blogged about Mary Driscoll and OWLL, the nonprofit she set up to help ex-offenders break vicious cycles. Soon she will launch her play Generational Legacy, about what happens to children when mothers are imprisoned. People who had experienced prison helped her write it.

Because I am very interested in this and other ways that people use the arts to help prisoners turn their lives around, an article about using Dante and Shakespeare in a women’s prison caught my eye.

Joel Brown writes in the February 24 Boston Globe,

“Lynda Gardner, Saundra Duncan, and Deborah Ranger will give a reading of a new play at a Harvard University conference next week. A different kind of alma mater qualifies them for this appearance: York Correctional Institution in Niantic, Conn., a high-security state facility for female offenders.

“While behind bars at York, all three joined theater workshops with Wesleyan University professor Ron Jenkins and students from his Activism and Outreach Through Theater course. They got to know Shakespeare and Dante, and it changed their lives.

“ ‘I spent my first six months [in York] trying to figure out ways to kill myself, and the next four and a half years trying to see how much more I can live,’ says Gardner. …

“Saundra Duncan said, ‘When I looked at Dante and saw how he was in exile . . . I saw a lot of that situation in [myself].’ ”

I especially liked this comment on the Inferno: “I’ve been in a lot of the circles of hell … It really isn’t about hell; it is about hope. Climbing out of those circles.’’

Read more.

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Unusual NYC Tour Bus

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on February 18, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Speaking of theater, here’s a new one on me.

According to Edward Rothstein in the NY Times, “Passengers on ‘The Ride’ — a tour bus with floor-to-ceiling windows and nightclub-style audio — tool through Manhattan, encountering such (pre-arranged) sights as a businessman breaking into tap dance, a juggler tossing hot dogs, and a ballerina in a glowing tutu dancing around Columbus Circle.” Read more.

I’d love to look out a bus window and see a businessman breaking into a tap dance. Years ago, I knew a tap dance teacher who wanted to organize groups of “shoppers” who could suddenly break into choreographed tap routines up and down supermarket aisles. Am still looking for them.

I do have to wonder what NYC tourists expect to see when they look out bus windows. An artsy guy, my brother’s classmate, was walking down the street in Greenwich Village minding his own business one day in the sixties when someone leaned out of a bus and called, “There’s one of them now!” One of what? he wondered.

Whatever you’re looking for in New York, you can probably find it. All you have to do is believe.

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A Musician with a Funny Bone

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 13, 2012| 2 Comments »

I was reading an article in the Sunday Globe about a musician who self-published a comedic memoir on his years as a freelance bassist with the Boston Pops. The book was called Real Men Don’t Rehearse; the article was mainly about self-publishing.

As I read the article, I kept thinking the guy’s name was familiar. I racked my brain: who wrote and the funny plays for Adventures in Music in the 1980s, the stage series introducing kids to classical music?

John had performed in two of those productions, sometimes called the Splatgort Series after the adult character. But John was 11 or 12 and now he’s a grown-up with a toddler and a wife. I looked at the photo of the author in the paper. Less hair. Not sure.

But, soft! (as they say in Shakespeare). Google meets all needs (as they don’t say in Shakespeare). Here is the site for Justin Locke Productions, and it’s definitely the same guy.

If you are mainly interested in the self-publishing aspect of this tale, read the Globe  article by Megan McKee. That’s quite engaging, too. I especially like this line, “Locke believes that real success can often be found through unconventional routes.”

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Artist Colony, Boston

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 29, 2012| 2 Comments »

I met Mary Driscoll in playwriting class last summer.

Mary has had a lifetime focus on social justice for marginalized people. She has traveled to foreign countries to work with refugees. For people with HIV, she has taught pilates and the healing art of telling one’s stories. She has performed with mission-oriented theater troupes. And she is the founder of  OWLL, On with Living and Learning, which helps ex-offenders build new lives after prison.

At Mary’s invitation, my husband and I found our way last night to what is a virtual artist colony in the long-abandoned but reemerging warehouse district of South Boston. In Mary’s loft apartment, one of the artists she has drawn into her orbit presented a wonderful cabaret show to raise money for OWLL’s production of Generational Legacy about mothers and children after prison.

Michael Ricca interpreted songs by Michel Legrand with great humor and feeling (including the theme song of our wedding, “What Are You Doing for the Rest of Your Life?”). Ricca is performing the songs and others by Legrand at Scullers in March.

My husband and I enjoyed talking to Mary’s guests  — artists, actors, musicians, social activists, old  friends. We’re especially keen to keep an eye on the doings of the Fort Point Theatre Channel in the Midway Studios building, where Mary  lives and works. The collaborative productions in the Black Box Theatre sound intriguing and offbeat. We like offbeat.

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52nd Street Project

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 6, 2011| 2 Comments »

When playwright Willie Reale started the 52nd Street Project in 1981 it was to meet a need. Children living in poverty in and around the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York City often had little joy in their lives. A group of theater people decided to use the art they knew best to change that.

“The mission of The 52nd Street Project is to bring together kids (ages 9 to 18) from the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, with theater professionals to create original theater.  The primary activity of the Project is to present free theater to a general audience. The Project’s deeper purpose is to use the art form of theater to engage the children’s imaginations, broaden their means of expression, and increase their sense of self worth, their literacy skills and their appreciation for the arts. With the addition of our expanded Clubhouse and our own theater, the Project has been able to add programming in various other art forms (such as Photography, Poetry, Theatrical Design and Dance). Additionally, the Project runs a free, after school homework help and academic mentoring program.”

In the early years, I saw some of the plays created when one child and one actor bonded and collaborated. Delightful. As Reale says, “There is no way to fast forward and know how the kids will look back on this, but I have seen the joy in their eyes and have heard it in their voices and I have watched them take a bow and come up taller.”

In this clip, kids work with adult partners on haiku.

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Taming Unease

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 25, 2011| 1 Comment »

We went downtown to have lunch at the Whitney Museum with friends and to take in the Real/Surreal exhibit.

Favorite artists like Charles Sheeler, Mardsen Hartley, and Grant Wood were featured. I liked the eerie emptiness of Edward Hopper’s “Seventh Avenue” and the anxious denizens of George Tooker’s subway world.

Sounds unnerving, but in surfacing the alienation, I think the artists make one feel the possibility of getting a grip on it.

Afterward, we walked up Madison, stopping at a gallery in the Carlyle Hotel that was showing Magritte works, some for sale.

I have always liked Magritte, with his bowler-hatted men blocked by giant green apples and his nighttime streets overarched by daytime skies. And I especially like him because once in a workshop, I directed a Tom Stoppard one-act play inspired by him, After Magritte. It was the best fun!

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A Star is Born

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I love stories like this one in today’s NY Times, “Out of the Spotlight, Until the Met Needed a Tenor.”

Jim Dwyer writes in his About New York column, “Until a few weeks ago, Jay Hunter Morris had spent much of his early 40s in the invisible universe of the backup opera singer, a life that included selling Rollerblades in Central Park and passing out towels at gyms.

“Then he got The Call.

“ ‘We were in a rehearsal room, doing the understudy rehearsal,’ Mr. Morris said.

“Waiting for him was Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera. Mr. Gelb needed a tenor, and fast, to take on what people in opera say is one of the most demanding roles ever written: Siegfried, the hero of the third part of Wagner’s ‘Ring’ cycle, a five-and-a-half-hour production. The role had eaten up two tenors before opening night, with the second falling ill with less than two weeks to go. …

“ ‘Mr. Gelb looked me in the eye and said, “Can you do this?” ‘ Mr. Morris recalled. ‘I said, “Yes, I can.” ‘ He nodded … “O.K., I’m going to give you a chance.” ‘ ”

A star was born.

P.S. Got any young stars graduating from the middle school musical to, say, community theater? Consider a gift like this one from Suzanne’s company, Luna & Stella.

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