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Lost Season Finds a Home in Canada

Or, should I say, “almost finds a home.” I am sad to report that this production fell victim to the coronavirus pandemic, becoming one of the many, many cancellations that occurred in theatre worldwide. I’m grateful to my director, Catherine Hume, and cast for all their time and preparation (Debra Grosman as Toni, Selene Lopez Reyes as Chloe, and Jasmine Huang as The Butterfly). I wish I could have seen you perform!

Alumnae Theatre in Toronto!

It was a busy spring. It was so busy that I never spent enough time in Falmouth to plant our vegetable garden. Aargh! But I learned a couple of things as a result. First, I learned that fennel, if left to go to seed (as I’d allowed it to do the previous summer), spreads prolifically. When we got down for an overnight Memorial Day weekend, I found myself gazing out on a sea of lacy, young fennel plants blanketing the spot in the yard where my garden used to be.

There was no time to weed that day, so the fennel kept growing, and by July some of it was three or four feet tall. While other weeds had joined this “garden party,” it was still mostly fennel. Sigh. I tried to make the best of it, trimming some soft fennel tops now and then for the salad, but mostly I just grumbled.

Then, our good friends the Fletchers came for a weekend. They commiserated with me about the lost garden season (having a teenage son who is about the same age as our daughter, they understand the pace and complexity of life right now). Then, as we gazed out on the fennel forest, we saw the butterfly. It was mostly black, with some striking white and blue spots along its wing edges. There was also a dramatic orange spot with a black center at the base of each wing; they looked like crazy, cartoon eyes. The butterfly was very drawn to the fennel.

Stephanie snapped some photos (you can see one of them below) and began to do some research, which led to the second thing this experience taught me. As we sipped wine in the back yard that evening, she showed us her pictures and announced that it was a female Eastern Black Swallowtail (the females have blue spots, males yellow), and that fennel is one of the few plants upon which this butterfly lays its eggs.

How cool, right? The vegetable garden had become a butterfly garden. How cool.

Still, at some point weeds are weeds. Early the next morning I yanked them. When everyone else awoke to find the fennel gone, there was a mild insurrection. It was good-humored, but there was real passion underneath it. I could sense that. Hmm, I thought. Might there be a short play in this?

I wrote Lost Season a few days later. It’s a poignant play (if I do say so myself) about a grieving grandmother and granddaughter who begin to find a way through their grief with the help of a butterfly, honest communication, and a treasured family recipe that inherits a new secret ingredient. After a well-received cold read at Playwrights Platform early this fall, I began submitting the play, and Alumnae Theatre in Toronto said yes. Their annual New Ideas Festival, which takes place in March 2020, will be my first opportunity to see Lost Season on its feet. I’ll spend a few days with them developing and revising the play before the weekend performance.

I guess things happen for a reason. But if you think I’m planting fennel in the spring, think again. That stuff spreads like crazy.

You can read, recommend, and request rights to produce Lost Season and my other plays at New Play Exchange.

The Eastern Black Swallowtail and the fennel forest that inspired Lost Season.
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Holy and Unruly, New World Theatre, and the Collaborative World of Playmaking

I love the collaborative nature of theatre. As a writer, I hole for some period of time and write a script. Then, I hand it off to a whole team of creative people and something magic happens: They interpret the words and create a world. There are always surprises in that world, always things I didn’t know were there. Not all of them are good surprises, which is why we call the process “development,” but often the surprises are delightful or profound.

One small example of this from New World Theatre‘s workshop production of Holy and Unruly was the chess board. There’s a scene where one of my stage directions calls for two characters to be playing chess. Since our workshop production couldn’t incorporate a lot of set changes, Director Eric Schildge made a chess board part of the standard set, anticipating that small moment. Then I watched him and his actors begin to make use of that chess board in really interesting ways. What began as an after thought (something for my non-speaking characters Dudley and The Unborn to do in that moment) became an integral symbol of the political maneuvering at the core of Holy and Unruly.

I had a lot of 2019 highs, but New World Theatre’s performance of Holy and Unruly at the Hatbox Theatre was among the highest. So much effort goes into a full length play–so many hours, so many choices, so much rewriting–that to reach the collaborative point in the process and have talented people start to bring the world of the play to life is beyond thrilling. It’s a little like watching your child grow from ultra-sound image, to baby, to toddler, to kid, to teen, to young adult. Then you send them (the kid and the play) out in the world to fend for themselves. It’s terrifying but also thrilling, because you know the village raised them well.

I wrote separate posts about other collaborators in the Holy and Unruly village, especially AboutFACE Ireland in Dublin and The Depot for New Play Readings in Connecticut. However, New World Theatre’s workshop production was special for me because it marks the moment when I knew I had a play. The script still needed work, especially in what was then the second act. However, I knew the work was worth doing. The care and energy that the team brought to the performance, and the reaction it got from that night’s audience, gave me the energy and resolve I needed to keep rewriting.

So, thank you Donald Tongue (producer), Eric Schildge (director), Toby Paul (stage manager), Laura Hoglund (Queen Elizabeth), Mary Fraser (Grace O’Malley), Jim Gocha (Burghley), Ashlee Bliss (Lady Scott, The Unborn, MacNally), Erik Shaffer (Essex), Mitch Fortier (Conroy and Bingham), and Paul Smith (Dudley) for adding your names to the ever-growing list of collaborators. You are helping turn Holy and Unruly from an idea (inspired by an NPR interview with Laura Sook Duncombe, author of the book Pirate Women) into a play. It wouldn’t have happened without you.

Pictured above: The cast of New World Theatre’s “Putting It Together” workshop production of Holy and Unruly during their final walk through prior to the evening performance.

You can read, recommend, or request rights to produce Holy and Unruly and my other plays at New Play Exchange.

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Holy and Unruly at The Depot for New Play Readings

It was a thrill to hear the latest draft of Holy and Unruly read on September 22 at The Depot for New Play Readings in Hampton, Connecticut. Anne Flammang and her group of actors and theatre enthusiasts are delightful people, and they brought so much insight to the reading and discussion of my script. I had a couple of aha moments over the course of the evening and left with ideas for another rewrite, which I have since executed. I think it’s a better play thanks to The Depot.

It was especially nice to have fellow playwright John Minigan in attendance. I am so grateful that John took the time to drive down from Massachusetts. If you don’t know his work, you should check it out, especially his play Queen of Sad Mischance. It’s getting a lot of buzz, and he’s one of my favorite Boston-area writers.

You can read, recommend, or request rights to produce Holy and Unruly and my other plays on New Play Exchange.

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Black Santa x4 in 2019

Boston, Albuquerque, Lansing, and Orlando. Black Santa was my little play that could this year.

I wrote the play because I wanted to explore a disconnect that seems to exist between the reported experience of blacks in America and the outlook of whites, many of whom define racism in ways that conveniently allow them to exempt themselves: flying the confederate flag, for example, or using the n-word. “What ignorance,” we say when we hear of such things. “Thank God I don’t see color.” Enter Jan and John from Black Santa.

The truth is, we all see color, and we’re all biased. “Seems like Disney has a princess for everyone these days,” John says, in the opening moments of my ten-minute play. We’ve all been steeped in a culture that privileges whiteness and marginalizes people of color, especially people perceived as black. Because we can’t admit our own biases and privilege, even to ourselves–because we are so defensive and fearful of being branded racist–we avoid the issue altogether, or we grow defensive or dismissive. We ask people of color to explain how our actions were biased and hurtful and, in doing so, we invalidate and re-victimize them; we prop up the systems that perpetuate racism and racial bias. We do this.

Make no mistake, overt and dramatic examples of hate and bias continue to occur, and they are indefensible. However, it’s far more common for racial bias to manifest in subtle ways: the white man who moves his wallet to his front pocket when a group of black teenagers boards the subway he is riding; the white woman who “notices” a black person driving an expensive car in a nice neighborhood and assumes the worst; the white man who “compliments” a black teen’s hair in a way that leaves the teen feeling different and singled out. The white colleague who can’t seem to wrap his head around the idea of a black Santa Claus, and his white co-worker who is so concerned with maintaining her own position of authority as Social Committee Chair that she simultaneously approves and invalidates the idea.

Black Santa attempts to explore the pernicious nature racism. It imagines what happens when a company’s Social Committee, dominated by well-meaning whites, is faced with a request that requires them to examine their white privilege. I was thrilled that the play had two full productions in 2019: Playwrights’ Platform’s 47th Annual Festival of New Plays (Boston, MA) and the Renegade Theatre Festival (Lansing, MI). It also had two staged readings: Fusion Theatre Company’s “Second Seven” (Albuquerque, NM) and The Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s New Play Development Workshop (Orlando, FL).

I did not get to see the Lansing and Albuquerque performances, but I was honored to have such a talented group perform the play in Boston: Joshua Wolf Coleman, director; Arthur Williams III (Marvin), Bibiana Jaramillo (Sue), Kathleen Monteleone (Jan), and Jon Shulman (John). Here they in their final rehearsal before the performances at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre:

At ATHE’s national conference in Orlando, I got to spend four days developing with this amazing team: Ben Lambert, director; Guillermo Aviles-Rodriguez, dramaturg; Jennifer Ivey, scenographer; Harry Waters, Jr. (Marvin), Natasha Yannacanedo (Sue), Julienne Greer (Jan), and George Nelson (John). It culminated with a terrific and well-received reading. I came away with a better script and an even deeper appreciation for the collaborative nature of theatre.

You can read, recommend, and request rights to produce Black Santa and my other plays at New Play Exchange.

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Holy and Unruly Named Finalist for ANPF

I was thrilled to have Holy and Unruly named one of 16 finalists (out of about 400 total submissions) for the 2019 Ashland New Plays Festival in Ashland, Oregon. My parents were regulars back in the day at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, so that made the recognition doubly meaningful.

Holy and Unruly did not make the final four, so the play was not performed at the festival in October. But what an honor to be named a finalist and make the list, below (which does not include the four winners: Michael Gotch for Starter Pistol; David Johnston, for Pelicans; Tira Palmquist for The Way North; and Joshua Rebell for The Night Climber).

As you can see, I submitted an earlier draft under a slightly different title. The play has continued to develop, and I’m hopeful it will find its way into production in 2020!

You can read, recommend or request rights to produce Holy and Unruly and my other plays at New Play Exchange.

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Holy and Unruly goes to Ireland!

Paul Nugent’s email in late-summer 2018 is one of the more memorable I have received. He wanted to know if AboutFACE Ireland, the company he and his wife Anna founded, could perform Holy and Unruly as part of their 2018 NEWvember Festival in Dublin. This was the first time anyone had wanted to do anything with Holy and Unruly, a full length play about the 1593 meeting between England’s Queen Elizabeth and Irish Pirate Grace O’Malley. I wanted to respond “Um, duh!” Instead, I presented myself as adult(ish) and replied something like “Are you kidding? Yes!”

I’m thrilled when anyone wants to do any of my plays: ten-minute script, one-minute script, it really doesn’t matter; my response is generally, “Yippee! Bring it on.” But the feeling is a little different when it’s a full-length script. So much time and effort goes into a full length. For me, it’s generally a three-to-six-month slog to a first draft, followed by a six-month forced march of rewrites, and then (maybe… maybe) I feel confident enough to start sending it to development opportunities like NEWvember. Then the chorus of “no thank you” notes start rolling in. Or, the crickets chirp and I hear nothing at all. My shoulders start to sag, my confidence begins to flag, and I start to dread opening my email inbox. And then Paul Nugent writes and says he wants to do it, and suddenly the world is technicolor once again. It’s different when someone wants one of your full lengths.

But this wasn’t just any acceptance note. This was a “yes” from a festival in Dublin. My little play about Irish Pirate Grace O’Malley was going to get its first official staging in, of all places, Dublin. Holy $hi+! The only place more appropriate than Dublin (which, alas was a haven for English sympathizers back in Grace’s day) would be Galway, which was nearer her base of operations, and which she relished plundered on a regular basis. Or maybe, Clare Island, the island guarding the entrance to Clew Bay, where she spent her childhood. But is there even a theater on Clare Island? But I digress; to have this play staged in Dublin was more than I ever could have hoped for when I began working on it in April 2017.

So, in November 2018, I flew to Dublin and had one of the most thrilling nights of my life watching Kathleen Warner Yeates, Fiana Toibin, Ian Blackmore, Tad Morari, Michelle Audrey, Patrick William de Montfort, Maureen O’Connell, Shane Connolly, Ciaran McGlynn, David Ryan, and Yvonne Ussher read Holy and Unruly, with direction by Paul Nugent and dramaturgy by Krystal Sweedman.

How is it possible that I didn’t take any pictures of the performance? Fortunately, AboutFace posted a big album of photos from the festival, which includes several of the H&U reading. I do have these two, though:

That’s the New Theatre on the left, in Dublin’s Temple Bar neighborhood. On that right, is me with fellow playwright Matthew Cole Kelly, whose amazing play The Gods of the Ozarks, ran just before mine, and Dramaturg Krystal Sweedman, who helped to shape my reading and made some really helpful and insightful observations about my play. And just because I can’t help embarrassing myself, here’s a little introduction to the reading, recorded by me, that AboutFACE posted on Facebook. Finally, a couple shots of Dublin.

You can read and inquire about producing Holy and Unruly on New Play Exchange. Or, if you’re not a member of NPX, you can contact me for information.

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Pretending at TWO’s 2018 Summer Shorts Festival

I love Owensboro, Kentucky. Tucked along the south bank of the Ohio River, it’s about equidistant from Nashville, Louisville and Cincinnati. It’s one of the cultural hubs of Western Kentucky, with a vibe that reminds me a lot of the town where I grew up, Bellingham, Washington. But if you really want to know why it has a special place in my heart , keep reading.

It was a real honor to have my play, Pretending, appear in the Theatre Workshop of Owensboro’s 2018 Summer Shorts Festival. In fact, that July 21 performance of Pretending at the Trinity Center in Owensboro, pictured below, was the very first time one of my plays was ever fully produced. That’s a moment I won’t forget.

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Pretending at New York Theatre Festival

Here’s a fun fact: My short play, Pretending, went up at The Hudson Guild Theatre in July 2018, the very same space where Tennessee Williams premiered A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur back in January 1979. It was a terrific three-day run (mine; I’m sure Tennessee Williams’ play ran for far longer) at the New York Theatre Festival.

Holly Wright did a wonderful job directing this play about an aspiring writer whose fear of failure undermines far more than his productivity as a writer. Michael Anderson was fantastic as Bob, our frustrated (and frustrating) hero. Julia Enos Woods was so powerful as Susan, Bob’s wife. Susan has had it with Bob, but Julia did a wonderful job of finding the love beneath Susan’s deep dissatisfaction. Justine Musselman stole the show as Alexa and Siri, Bob’s AI enablers. Larry Saperstein‘s lighting design captured the mood of the play. Here’s a video of one performance.

The feedback I sometimes get on Pretending is: “not enough happens, dramatically.” For me, that’s always been the point. Pretending is about a life that’s stuck in neutral, a prospect that becomes more and more terrifying as one ages (as I age). You get one, brief shot at life. It’s easy to let it all slip by, until one day you look back and say: “What have I done?” That day of reckoning is coming for Bob. He begins this play in denial about this fact; by the end, he’s resigned to its inevitability. That psychological transition from denial to resignation interested me more than the moment when Bob decides he wasted his life.

It was great to have so many friends and family see this show. Here are a few shots from the dinner Laura, Emma and I hosted after the Saturday night performance: