My 10-minute play, “The Liquidation of the Cohn Estate,” has been selected as one of the fifty plays by local playwrights to be produced in this year’s Boston Theater Marathon, on May 17. It’s the first play of mine to be produced and I’m a little staggered to think that I’ll get to see actors on a stage speaking words that I have written, especially in a line-up that includes plays by Robert Brustein, Alan Brody, Melinda Lopez, and Israel Horovitz, among others. Get your tickets and get there early for good seats on the big day, because it’s always crowded, or as they say around these parts, wicked crowded.
Posts
6 comments:
THAYuh-tuh! LITTrah-chuh's trollopy half-sister in the upper bunk making interesting noises at night! Godspeed, good Caldwell, and break a leg: Ionesco will be hovering on your cigsmoke in the wings...
Ah yes, “treading the boards” and “Thespia” and so forth, to say nothing of “holding, as it were, a mirror up to Nature” (who runs screaming back into the green room).
This play probably owes a little more to the newly-minted ghost of Pinter than to Ionesco, but maybe the production itself will break down into absurd chaos and show the latter to be its master after all. Or else the presiding spirit will be Neil Simon (artistically dead his whole career even if, for all I know, he might still be biologically alive) because the thing turns out to be much more banal than I think.
Why so bitter, gentlemen? They often have delicious snacks in the green room. Last time I was in one they were serving:
Smashed pumpkin soup with crème fraiche (chilled)
Matzoh souffle with horseradish zest
Arugula salad in a tart, but surprisingly refreshing, balsamic vinaigrette
And for dessert—Sour grape compote over Angel Food cake
If I have one complaint it was the wine. But we do the best we can on a budget.
Break a leg, young maestro Caldwell.
P.S. You are both cordially invited to NY to see the Third Mind show at the Guggenhiem. It would, I am certain, elevate the discourse.
That's quite a spread! The last green room I was in had athletic equipment stored in it. This was in high school, of course...
The players scourge, or, actors tragædie, divided into two parts.
Wherein it is largely evidenced, by divers arguments, by the concurring authorities and resolutions of sundry texts of Scripture, That popular stage-playes are sinfull, heathenish, lewde, ungodly spectacles, and most pernicious corruptions; condemned in all ages, as intolerable mischiefes to churches, to republickes, to the manners, mindes, and soules of men.
And that the profession of play-poets, of stage-players; together with the penning, acting, and frequenting of stage-playes, are unlawfull, infamous and misbeseeming Christians.
All pretences to the contrary are here likewise fully answered; and the unlawfulnes of acting, of beholding academicall enterludes, briefly discussed; besides sundry other particulars concerning dancing, dicing, health-drinking, &c. of which the table will informe you.--William Prynne, from the prologue to his Histrio-Mastix, 1632
ZEAL-OF-THE-LAND BUSY: . . . my main argument against you is that you are an abomination; for the male among you putteth on the apparel of the female, and the female of the male.
PUPPET DIONYSUS: It is your old stale argument against the players, but it will not hold against the puppets, for we have neither male nor female amongst us. And that thou may’st see, if thou wilt, like a malicious purblind zeal as thou art!
The PUPPET takes up his garment.
ZEAL-OF-THE-LAND BUSY: I am confuted, the cause hath failed me.
Ben Jonson, Bartholmew Fair.
Acted in the Year 1614, by the Lady Elizabeth’s Servants.
Post a Comment