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The words we use
Life magazine’s coverage of the Watts riots in 1965 has a lesson for the Treyvon ...
The Writerly Life
It means waking at 2 AM because you’re trembling with a thought you dreamed. Taping three-foot long sheets of newsprint over the walls of your study (even across the door) so you can keep track of a narrative. Scouting a cafe with superior air conditioning for those 100-degree plus summer mornings (mornings!) when you just […]
“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 […]