CLOCKHOUSE seeks submissions in poetry, drama, fiction and nonfiction for its 2019 issue Clockhouse is an eclectic conversation about the work-in-progress of life–a soul arousal, a testing ground, a new community, a call for change. Clockhouse seeks submissions in poetry, drama, fiction and nonfiction for its 2019 issue. We are interested in diverse voices and… Continue reading CLOCKHOUSE: Call for Volume Seven Submissions
Tag: playwriting
Why This Blog Is Late
I just started rehearsals for a ten-day workshop a relatively new play of mine: BORN IN EAST BERLIN. The workshop is at TheatreWorks in Palo Alto. I decided to blog the first day.
MFAW Faculty Member Rogelio Martinez’s Play “Born in East Berlin”
MFAW-VT faculty member Rogelio Martinez’s play, BORN IN EAST BERLIN, will be workshopped this coming summer at Theaterworks in Palo Alto. The play has also just been translated into Romanian. About the Play: In 1988 Bruce Springsteen played a legendary concert in East Germany and 300,000 people showed up. In Born in East Berlin, Martinez explores a great… Continue reading MFAW Faculty Member Rogelio Martinez’s Play “Born in East Berlin”
Graduating MFAW Student Ian August Wins the Garry Marshall Theatre’s New Works Festival Prize!!
MFAW-VT Student–but just days away from turning into an alum–Ian August’s play INTERVIEWESE, is a winner of the Garry Marshall Theatre’s New Works Festival and will be getting a public reading on May 30th, directed by Carolyn Hennesy (General Hospital, Cougar Town). Ian will be going to L.A. for this one, so if any Goddard folks are in Los… Continue reading Graduating MFAW Student Ian August Wins the Garry Marshall Theatre’s New Works Festival Prize!!
Deborah Brevoort is Going to Kenya
MFAW-VT faculty member Deborah Brevoort has been invited to serve as a mentor to the Rainmaker musical theatre initiative in Kenya, a new program that is being led by Kenyan pop composer Eric Wainaina. The first workshop will be held in June in Naro Moru, Kenya. She will be joined by American composer Fred Carl… Continue reading Deborah Brevoort is Going to Kenya
Notes from the Future by Deborah Brevoort
Get out your pens! Head for the future by writing big!
News from MFAW-WA Student Lydia Valentine
MFAW-WA student Lydia Valentine is the Assistant Director for a production of Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris. She is also the dramaturg for a staged reading that is pairing The Art of Remembering by Adina L. Ruskin and Mountain Language by Harold Pinter. Family, immigration, memory, and language are shared themes in both plays that seek to confront the past while also raising… Continue reading News from MFAW-WA Student Lydia Valentine
Embracing the Personal
“It all just feels so… personal.”
N is a new student of mine, one who has worked in the theater industry for years, but never written a play before. He called me before our first week of class, and I could tell he was feeling intimidated by the process of playwriting. We discussed some exercises he could do and some of his favorite plays and playwrights, and I think I assuaged the majority of his concerns. His one lingering reservation:
“It’s just so personal.”
Repetition Exercise
REPETITION EXERCISE
I was at a Springsteen concert recently. One of his most famous songs — Hungry Heart — usually leads to him falling back onto the audience.
Notes on Invisible Structure
Aristotle’s Poetics. Horace’s Ars Poetica. Freytag’s diagram. Syd Field’s paradigm. Frank Daniel’s sequence approach. For more than two millennia dramatic theorists have sought to trace, map and/or illustrate the shape and technical elements of a story told in dramatic form. Exposition, rising action, climax, dénouement and resolution are the elements of what I’ll call visible… Continue reading Notes on Invisible Structure
Borderlands
I’ve got a lot to gain by leaving my own borders every now and then. So maybe it’s time for me to read something other than plays. Time to step out of my zone and experience different things for a while. As I’m putting together my summer reading list, I’m going to select some good novels, some collections of short stories and yes, some poetry. And for Diana, a memoir or two.
Kirsten Childs: Underneath It All
Goddard MFAW faculty Deborah Brevoort gave her Fall 2016 advising group the extraordinary opportunity to connect with the prolific writer, Kirsten Childs. Her credentials span various works, but we had the pleasure of examining her musical, The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin. This is a funny and poignant story about a little black girl named Viveca Stanton and her journey of self-discovery.