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The words we use
Life magazine’s coverage of the Watts riots in 1965 has a lesson for the Treyvon ...
“Ladies of the Pack”: Werewolves, or What It Means to be Human
There’s Cassandra, who hopes to become an IRS accountant and just wants everyone to get along; Sunny, who used to train assassins but now just wishes for a little furball with fangs; and their hostess, Allegra, who craves revenge for her being mortal.
Thoughts on “Gunplay: The Rifle Report”
Guns are a symbol of self against society, at once Romantic, Byronic, heroic, and a means to an end which has nothing to do with our selves.
Ten-minute plays
At this summer’s 13th annual 10×10 Festival of New Short Plays at the Carrboro Arts Center, I was struck by two things: how good acting and directing can rescue a mediocre script; and how lots of contemporary plays try to be postmodern by being self-referential. Oh look, there’s a playwright onstage trying to crank out […]
Understanding gun culture
I heard a sad story today about a teen who bagged a pileated woodpecker with his varmint rifle. No one knew what it was — “Ain’t seen one before, ain’t seen one since” — but his family praised his marksmanship, and the lad cut off the feet to carry as a trophy or talisman. The […]
Subtext
Beginning rehearsals of my short play Rainbow Round the Moon has led me to doff Playwright’s Mind for Director’s Mind. I like having to slow down, explicitly consider the beats, and articulate subtext. Whether or not it will affect how I write in future, the process stimulates me to deeper thought in the present: for […]
Making a play for a vampire
All those of you who, like me, are working on vampire plays may appreciate a short list of the books I’ve found useful among many that were not: Despite its garish cover, Rosemary Ellen Guiley’s Encyclopaedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters (Visionary Living, 2005) has a beautiful six-page bibliography and is written in matter-of-fact […]
Durang/Durang by Christopher Durang–seriously
If you live in the Triangle you really ought to know the actress PJ Maske.
Playing with history
At the Taft Museum I came across a Claude Lorrain oil (on loan from the Wadsworth Athaneum) ostensibly about St. George and the dragon. But history, here, is a vehicle for landscape: the dragon ain’t no thang. Which got me to thinking about all the feedback I’m getting about how my play The Whistler could […]
Joshua Hemings redux
Life’s exigencies have occasioned the replacement of Reggie Willis in the role of Joshua Hemings with the exquisite Tony Darnell Davis, who has taught theater (including improv) at the University of Cincinnati and elsewhere, has been an actor, director, producer and writer for decades, as well as President of the Cincinnati Black Theatre Company. He […]