Town Hall Meeting for Dramatists

On July 14, 2008, The Dramatists Guild of America, which is based in New York City, held a town hall meeting in a hidden away rehearsal room in the Kennedy Center. The Guild under the auspices of Gary Garrison, Executive Director of Creative Affairs for the Guild, and the Guild’s DC area representative Callie Kimball organized and presented a panel discussion by area theater artistic directors in an effort to foster relationships between local playwrights and theaters. When this active member (the Guild has three levels of membership: Active—those who “have been produced on a First-Class/Broadway, Off-Broadway, or mainstage of a regional theatre (LORT) contract,” Associate—those yet unproduced authors of theatrical works, and Student) and a half dozen others finally found the location, the panel discussion was well underway and the room was packed with what turned out to be participants of a workshop that Garrison (author of The New, Improved Playwright's Survival Guide) was leading at the Kennedy Center.

The Artistic Directors included: Randy Baker of Rorschach Theatre, Christopher Henley of Washington Shakespeare Company, Jessica Burgess of Inkwell, Keith Bridges of Charter Theatre, and Deborah Randall of Venus Theatre. Also on the panel was dramaturg Richard Washer of Charter Theatre. Most of these theaters have produced work by some local playwrights. Nonetheless, Garrison cautioned audience members that this was not the time to approach these directors with an unproduced play. Adding a bit of levity after the panel had disbanded and the workshoppers had left the room to about 25 Guild members, Garrison said, “you can’t marry a theater, but you can have an affair.”

Garrison went on to say that personal contact is everything in finding a theater for your play. In fact one of the panel members—Keith Bridges of Charter Theatre— said that his theater does a temperature check with potential playwrights by first giving them a reading and then gauging how well this author will support the goals and needs of his theater company. For this theater company, working with locals means a better production because the playwright is able, without financial burden, to be on location when the play goes into development.

Among the people this playwright met or knew at this event included Frankie Little Hardin, Al Lefcowitz, Patricia Montley, Juanita Rockwell, Emily Solomon,
and Paula Stone. Frankie Little Hardin is the artistic director of 4Oth Street Stage of Norfolk, VA, that welcomes new plays. She created a buzz of excitement after the meeting convened. Juanita Rockwell also created a stir when she spoke about The Network of Ensemble Theaters (NET), a national coalition of theater groups driven by artists.

Garrison said that the Guild is working toward a national conference in the next couple of years. Although this playwright is a librettist and part of a minority group within the Guild, the networking opportunities offered by the Dramatist Guild are tremendously important and a big wow to have them extended beyond New York.

Showing the Exquisite Corpse

The peripatetic poet of The Steiny Road to Operadom collaborated recently with poets JoAnne Growney and Christopher Conlon to create an Exquisite Corpse triptych of three stand-alone poems for an art show entitled “Le Cadavre Esquis.” Read the poems at the end of this post.

The exhibit runs from July 12 to August 9. Be sure to check on hours of operation.The organizers of the show John Landis, Mark Behme, Neil Joffe welcomed a large crowd. Mark Behme provided the idea for this show and it is his rope sculpture seen above that announces the show in the front window of Gateway's Heliport Gallery
.

Gateway's Heliport Gallery

8001 Kennett Street 

Silver Spring, Maryland 20910


[DC’s subway Red Line to Silver Spring Station]

For more information: 
call Gateway's Heliport Gallery 

at (301) 562-1400

What is interesting about this show is that the visual artists were asked to create three separate pieces involving head, torso, and legs. The odd thing is that the poets in their planning meeting over the Internet divvied up the assignment in the exact same way, not knowing the instructions to the visual artists. (The other choice was to create a back-and-forth poem in the traditional form of the exquisite corpse and there were some poems done by groups of people for this show in this manner.)

The show opened July 12 with each set of works by a particular artist lined up from head to toes. On July 26, the gallery will have a new opening to show a recombined set of works such that the art and our poems will be mixed with other work not by the same artists.

Here are the names of some of the artists in the show:
Karren Alenier . Mark Behme . Bobbi Clay . Christopher Conlon

Warren Craghead III . Patrick Finley . Fred Folsom . Gail Gorlitzz

JoAnne Growney . Stephen Hanks . Elyse Harrison . Neil Joffe
John Landis
Emery Lewis . Donna M. McCullough . Emily Piccirillo
Shelley Sarrin
 . Rima Schulkind . Ed Thomas . Joyce Zipperer
Birdie Zoltan . Student Artists
Voices from Eastern Village
Voices from Silver Spring Drop-In Center

HEAD

Aloft in space, suspended in someone’s
hands, he hears: Kiss Uncle goodbye, son.
But the old man is different now—his face
hardened, as if brought into focus
for the first time. His skin like plaster.
(They did a wonderful job, someone murmurs.
Just exquisite.) Strange: no odor of whiskey
or cigarettes now, nothing but roses, dust.

Thirty years later he’ll tell them
about Uncle, their private games that were
never fun, the old tongue slimy in his mouth.
I hate you, Uncle. He shuts his eyes,
lips touching the corpse’s cheek. And I love you,
anyway. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

by Christopher Conlon
Copyright © 2008 by Christopher Conlon




.......................................TORSO

.......................................Held in a padded box—
.......................................never proudly reaching
a muscled right arm up or shaping gestures with with a graceful left arm out—
.......................................and never more a laughingstock.
..............................................○ .....................○
.......................................In spite of coffin confinement,
.......................................rhymes flow from my felt-tip pen;
.......................................words from the other side :
.......................................surds — again and again !

.......................................From lower worlds I testify :
.......................................The memoirist cannot but lie.
.......................................Only the crust can hold the pie.
.......................................With a boring man, a woman’s dry.
.......................................You can’t be a corpse unless you die.
.......................................Then, to be exquisite, there’s a prerequisite:
.......................................never one-sided — you must be divided!
.......................................Hang on! Bye-bye.

by JoAnne Growney
Copyright © 2008 by JoAnne Growney



EXTREMITIES

Exquisite the shoes,
feet, legs of royalty—
Louis Quatorze in heels
versus the unnamed
empress, princess,
concubine with three inch
stumps, many toes missing,
pushed into baby doll
bootees of silk.
.......................At three, four,
five, six, feet broken and bound
to produce tiny hooves,
lotus hooks, later a swaying
gait if the woman could walk
on painful, rotting stubs.
.......................................The
fold between heel and ball
of the altered paw—site
of the husband’s
penetration.
.....................Hello, was the Sun
King hobbled so? Oh, no!
His platforms made him His High-
ness, not a come-fuck-me
piece of infected
property confined
to the master’s
dark house, not
a jaded
corpse
some
how
alive.

by Karren L. Alenier
Copyright © 2008 by Karren L. Alenier

Art in order of its appearance starting at the top and descending:
“Knotty Boy” by Mark Behme Copyright © 2008 by Mark Behme
“Jug Head,” “Pot Belly” and “Clay Feet” by Shelley Sarrin
Copyright © 2008 by Shelley Sarrin
“Standing Woman from La Chaise” by Patrick Finley
Copyright © 2008 by Patrick Finley
“Body, Mind, and Sole” by Bobbi Clay Copyright © 2008 by Bobbi Clay
“Yo-Yo Ma” by Steve Hanks Copyright © 2008 by Steve Hanks

Madam Mayo: VidLit Monday

BOOK TRAILERS. Read what Madam Mayo has to say about: VidLit in her Monday July 7 2008 blog post.

Paris in the Springtime or One Opera Begets Another

Part of the strategy for promoting a book involves the next big project. The idea is to keep putting your name and your work into public consciousness. The next new project primes the pump and keeps the old project afloat.

In the case of what follows The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas, the next big project is an opera. The subject of this opera concerns the writers Jane and Paul Bowles. Those who know the work of these two American ex-pats who lived in Tangier, Morocco, for a significant portion of their lives most likely consider them writers’ writers or possibly cult figures. They had an unusual marriage—both pursued same sex extra-curricular lovers. Paul Bowles who is best known for his novel The Sheltering Sky had a walk-on part in Bernardo Bertolucci’s film by the same name that was based on Bowles’ bleak magnum opus. Paul, a protégé of Aaron Copland, was also a composer who, for example, wrote incidental music for a number of plays by Tennessee Williams. Jane Bowles is best known for her novel Two Serious Ladies and her play In the Summer House that was produced on Broadway in the 1950s.

What drew me to them as subject matter for an opera was this—Paul Bowles was told by Gertrude Stein to go to Morocco (as a young man, he sought her out when he ran away to Paris) and during the summer of 1982, I traveled to Tangier for a writing program with which Paul was involved. Paul helped me with some of the poems that became part of my opera libretto Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On. It seemed logical to me to pick a subject for my next opera, which in some way would point back to my first.

In February with the help of a composer friend Stefan Weisman, I made the acquaintance of John Supko, who for five years before Paul Bowles died in 1999 was corresponding with Bowles and sending the elderly composer his (Supko’s) original musical compositions for critique. Once I showed Supko part of my work-in-progress libretto, he was immediately interested and enough so to initiate writing a grant to fund work on the project. Therefore, I decided that before the grant awards are announced, that it would make sense for me to meet this composer. To do this required going to Paris where Supko is studying Erik Satie, the subject of his doctoral dissertation at Princeton University.

Our first face-to-face meeting took place on the Ile St. Louis along the Seine at Café Le Lutetia where John suggested the French aperitif typically sipped in the hot summer months called pastis.



Although I had never tried that drink which is made from star anise (licorice flavor), the night before at a birthday party for poet Margo Berdeshevsky, one of the French writers in attendance preferred pastis to champagne. I thought if someone could turn down that wonderfully delicious champagne (and I only like champagne if it is the best), that I should give the pastis a try. John ordered and then when it arrived, he warned that that the alcohol content was quite high, so he poured in some water, as is the custom. It was quite refreshing and it was beyond me to know if the drink altered my perception of things, but there I was in Paris under clear skies and along the placid Seine drinking the drink that replaced absinthe which was banned in 1915.

After the drinks and the talk about Bowles, ideas for the opera, backgrounds, the do-you-know-so-and-so, we headed to Auberge de Jarente, a Basque restaurant where we were also meeting my husband Jim Rich. Over deliciously prepared and reasonably priced dishes like frog legs, quail, and cassoulet, we covered new ground. Nothing like changing venues and the participant mix to channel new conversation and perspectives. Later, in my stay John, Margo, and I went to a concert together.

I spent a week in Paris which included Margo Berdeshevsky’s birthday party at Cafe Louis Philippe (66 Quai de L'Hotel de Ville) where I met Marilyn Hacker, Sandra Gilbert and other poets and writers, a reading at Shakespeare & Company, visits to six art museums (the Rodin, Musée de L’Orangerie, Picasso, Musée d'Orsay, Louvre, Musée du Luxembourg, and Centre Pompidou), two concerts (an early music event featuring music from Francois I to Henry IV and experimental classical music Le Noir de L'Étoile by Gérard Grisey) and Euro-free window-shopping tours. Did I talk about The Steiny Road book? You betcha and I even handed out some of my bookmarks!

Here is the gallery of photos depicting some of my activities in Paris.

NYC Drama Book Shop now selling The Steiny Road to Operadom

As of May 9, 2008, New York City’s Drama Book Shop is selling The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas.

Contact information:

The Drama Book Shop, Inc.

250 W. 40th St.

New York, NY 10018

Tel: (212) 944-0595

Fax: (212) 730-8739
info@dramabookshop.com

The sale of the book is in conjunction with a performance by singers of Encompass New Opera Theatre and a reading/book signing of The Steiny Road. Arias from Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On will be performed. This event will happen Sunday, October 19, 2008 at 3 pm in the Arthur Seelen Theatre located on the lower level of The Drama Book Shop.

Mark your calendars now. Also you might want to check out the Drama Book Shop's blog to see what else they do.

What was especially exciting about this meeting between

Nancy Rhodes, Allen Hubby, and me on one very rainy day in New York City is that Nancy and Allen discovered they both share a deep interest in quantum mechanics. Allen has been study the subject since he was in high school. Nancy is developing an opera with composer John David Earnest called The Theory of Everything. OK, whatever leverage it takes for this event to move into place, be it quantum physics or string theory. I started working on this event in late January!



To celebrate, I met poet Susan Brennan at Bryant Park Grill for dinner and afterward she showed me the Jo Davidson sculpture of Gertrude Stein which I never realized was in this square! I took this unexpected visitation as a sign from Gertrude herself!