We have a cast for the 3/3 reading of Under The Gods’ Golden Cleats! And that’s good, because the reading is Monday!

Here are the actor all-stars we have in the line-up:

Under The Gods’ Golden Cleats by Rachel Bublitz

Directed by Claire Rice

Stage Directions read by Karen Offereins

Achilles read by Dan Kurtz

Patroclus read by Neil Higgins

Agamemnon read by Ben Knoll

Odysseus read by Adam Reese

Diomedes/Hector read by Matt Gunnison

Paris/Menelaus read by Nicky Weinbach

Briseis read by Jaime Lee Currier

Polyxena/Iphagenia read by Alysha English

Athena/Fortune Teller/Cheerleader #1 read by Yasmine Love

Aphrodite/Artemis/Cheerleader #2 read by Allison Page

Thetis/Cheerleader #3 read by Michelle Talgarow

And here’s the rest of the info in case you forgot!

Monday February 3rd

Doors open at 6:45pm, reading beings promptly at 7:00pm *PLEASE arrive as close to 6:45 as possible!

Tides Theatre, 533 Sutter St, San Francisco, CA

FREE and open to the public!

RSVP here: https://www.facebook.com/events/265759466916913/?notif_t=plan_user_joined

Busy, busy week ahead for me. Rehearsal tonight for Under The Gods’ Golden Cleats (reading coing up Monday 3/3, details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/265759466916913/?notif_t=plan_user_joined), rewrote the last two scenes to The Red House Monster (spoiler alert: crazy things happen!), set up a meeting with a possible director for The Red House Monster reading in November (fingers crossed!), wrote a new scene for my not-yet-titled Pegasus play, and picked up a book of interviews put together by StoryCorps, if you haven’t heard of them check it out, that I plan on using for my “adapting from non-fiction exercise” due next week. Exciting, fun, and busy! So, so busy.

Check back tomorrow, I’ll be announcing the cast for the March 3rd Under The Gods’ Golden Cleats reading, and you don’t want to miss that.

Holy cow! In one week my epic full-length play that mashes together the Trojan War with Texas high school football will come back to the stage! Tomorrow night we have rehearsal, and today I’ll be busy reading through the newest draft, printing that draft, and then picking up snacks for all the awesome artists working so hard to bring this reading to life. Then I get to finish my homework (yay!). Luckily I have some backup today, my wonderful mother-in-law is visiting and so my large and scary work-load is actually obtainable! Hooray for Katy!

Well, got to jump back into it so I can get it all done!

Weeeeeeeee!

Have you heard the great news? Under The Gods’ Golden Cleats is coming back to the stage! Through the Dramatist Guild’s San Francisco Footlight Reading Series, you have another chance to see the greatest football tournament of all time; Greeks vs. Trojans.

Here are all the things you need to know:

UNDER THE GODS’ GOLDEN CLEATS by Rachel Bublitz

Directed by Claire Rice

Cast TBA (stay tuned!)

“UNDER THE GODS’ GOLDEN CLEATS mashes up Achilles’ story in the Trojan War with the football culture of modern day Texas, creating a brand new world where cheerleaders are property, and the Gods preside over the games. Achilles, a young football legend, is the number one ranked player in the country. When the Trojans kidnap their precious bovine mascot, Helen, Achilles chooses to die young and glorious rather than grow old and lose his talents.”

Monday March 3rd

Doors open at 6:45pm, reading beings promptly at 7:00pm *PLEASE arrive as close to 6:45 as possible!

Tides Theatre, 533 Sutter St, San Francisco, CA

FREE and open to the public!

RSVP here: https://www.facebook.com/events/265759466916913/?notif_t=plan_user_joined

If you missed the reading presented last November with the San Francisco Olympians Festival you will not want to lose another chance to see this show! And if you were one of the lucky ones last time, come back and see how the script has changed!

There will be tasty snacks and tasty drinks, so don’t be shy! Come on out to the Tides Theatre on March 3rd and catch Under The Gods’ Golden Cleats!

Happy Monday! Now that I have a solid draft of The Red House Monster, my one-act play based on the Greek monster Geryon (commissioned by the San Francisco Olympians Festival), I have updated my blurb about it! Curious? You should be! Read all about it here: http://www.sfolympians.com/?page_id=1842, my monster page on the SF Olympians’ website, you’ll also get more background on Geryon and my bio (yay!).

But, if you’re lazy, and can’t be bothered with links here’s the new description:

“Rachel Bublitz’s one-act play, The Red House Monster, chronicles the story of Hannah Gold, a young lady living on an island off the coast of Massachusetts in the late 1800s, and the night that changed her life. Filled with small town lore, haunted houses, spirits, monsters, pistols, pie, and mysteries, it is a play that will keep you guessing just what is in the Red House, and who, in fact, you should be afraid of.”

Exciting, isn’t it? And strange? It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever written I think, and I’m itching to get a table read of it so that I can find out if it even makes sense. Another fun aspect of this play is that it’s only 45 pages long right now! Last year I had anxiety all year that the beast of Under The Gods’ Golden Cleats would go over the 2 hour time limit (it had started off at 145 pages!). It’s nice to have wiggle room to grow the script, if need be.

The reading of The Red House Monster is coming up on November 15th, to the Exit Theatre. I share the stage with Veronica Tjioe who is writing all about the Minotaur! Read all about her play here: http://www.sfolympians.com/?page_id=1844, and get ready for November, because monsters are coming and you do not want to miss them.

The following plays/playwrights have been selected for the February 17 Monday Night PlayGround MATH NIGHT:

The Broken Tooth Comb by William Bivins, directed by Ken Sonkin

When You Talk About This by Patricia Cotter, directed by Ginny Reed

Dangerous Factors by Ruben Grijalva, directed by Adam Sussman

Magic Zhang Ball by Melissa Keith, directed by Jim Kleinmann

Colorado by Katie May, directed by Molly Noble

The Primes of Our Lives by Kirk Shimano, directed by Rebecca Ennals

I hope you will join me for the performance of these brand new plays on Monday! 8pm at Berkeley Rep! See you there!

I had a friend growing up that was fantastic at painting and drawing, her name was Liz Jackson, and she seemed to effortlessly produce art constantly. We went to an art fair one weekend in middle school, and when we came across easels set up for anyone to use, we ran over immediately to take advantage. I wanted to paint a forrest at night, complete with a full moon overhead. I started, but no matter what I painted it looked nothing like what I thought it should. After trying for a good ten minutes and seeing how much more successful my friend’s painting was, I tore my painting off the easel, and dumped it into the garbage in a huff. I was so jealous. I was so mad. It’s wasn’t fair! How come she was so much better than me? Why are some people good at everything? This feeling came up more than this one occasion, and not just for painting. I’ve been jealous of musician friends, and sculpting friends, friends good at field hockey, friends who could speak more than one language, and the list goes on and on. The point is that there are a lot of things out there in this world that I would love to be good at, but I’m not, and that disappoints me. It disappointed me until I realized why I wasn’t good at these things…

So, sure, some people are probably good at the things I listed above partially because they had some talent for it, but do you want to know how they got better at those things? They practiced. They practiced over and over and over, and then, because they could, they practiced some more. That’s the secret, that’s the key. I wasn’t good at painting because I took all of ten minutes and expected a masterpiece. Do I like painting? No, not so much, not enough to like you know, practice, or anything. I love writing, and I never have really sat down and tried to be good at it. For me, I write because I have an idea I want to share, and it’s the most exciting way I know how to share it. I write because I love it, and can’t help myself. I write because so hard that I have to set timers so that I don’t forget to pick my children up from school, because otherwise my children would sit all day waiting for me at school! I write because I love it, and that’s why my good friend Liz paints. She loves painting.

I share this with you, because I think it’s important when we look at people who are exceptional at things and realize that this is not divine given ability, but rather someone who didn’t want to do anything else. And that it’s okay to make art because you love it, instead of trying to make art because it’s good. In fact, since it’s never going to be good for everybody, this is really the only real reason to do it in the first place.

I might be preaching to the choir on this one, but I was thinking about my crappy painting today, as I do more often than you’d think, and remembering that you have to want something more than greatness to succeed. You have to love it. Because then, when you’re spending your time doing something you love, you’ve already succeeded. It’s great having people come see my plays, it’s a fantastic feeling, but is it better than a whole day spent writing? Maybe not.

I’m nearly done with my first teaching adventure. After this week, there will be a week off and then I’ll have one remaining week with my students before their play is due. I’ll admit, I was scared stiff my first day, but I feel like I’ve finally hitting my stride and really loving this whole experience. This week we’ve been workshopping their plays, and by far this has been where I have felt the most helpful. We’ve been raising stakes, making relationships more clear, and finding endings, which happens to be the most difficult part of the task for the majority of them (hey, me too!). I’ve been trying to show them that the clearer the relationships are the the audience, the clearer it is what is a stake within the play, and I’ve already been blown away by improvements they’ve made just with a small bit of tinkering. For ending plays, I ask them what the characters want, and then I tell them end the play when they either definitely get or definitely don’t get what they want, and then they’re like, “Oh, that’s it?” Never stops amazing me how complicated we make simple things. I absolutely feel like I overcomplicate endings, and so it’s been helpful for me to hear myself say that advice over and over. And it also seems to really be helping the kids too, which is pretty much the point, so hooray!

There are some really exciting scripts that they’re, it’s going to be hard to walk away when my six weeks are up. But, it will also be nice to sleep in past 6am.

How was your weekend? And if you’re wondering why I’m asking you about your weekend on a Tuesday instead of a Monday, it’s because I teach Tuesday – Friday, so today is a Monday for me. So, sorry to interrupt, how was it? Oh, good. Mine was swell. I rested and wrote. Last week was a bit of a crazy week for me (I had evening tasks nearly every night of the week!), and so it was nice to curl up with my kiddos and watch some Olympics. I couldn’t only do that though, and that’s because it was a PlayGround writing weekend!

Yes! On Thursday evening I headed up to MSRI (MSRI stands for: Mathematical Sciences Research Institute) and heard a lot of interesting information about prime numbers, number theory, and a mathematician named Yitang Zhang, who bridged the prime number gap. Don’t have any idea what I’m talking about? Fantastic, you’re the perfect person to come out next Monday (February 17th) for PlayGround’s 11th Annual Math Night! RSVP here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1388459164752108/?ref=5. And get tickets here: http://playground-sf.org/monday/! It’s an evening of freshly written plays, preformed for the first time in front of an audience and they all are written off of the math theme: A PASSION FOR PRIMES.

I won’t lie, this topic had me more than a little stumped. I came up with a brilliant plan of attack to start with, and quickly realized that I’d bitten off more than I could chew. I regrouped and wrote a pretty terrible futuristic sci-fi play (with aliens!), became frustrated, wrote another play that was totally off-topic (it’s a play I’ve been wanting to write for a while now and I thought that maybe I had to get it out before I could take another, hopefully more serious, crack at the Math Topic), and finally wrote the play I ended up submitting this morning. I am proud at how well my play came together, and one of the great things about writing a new play each month is that even if it doesn’t get selected, I have a new play that I can submit all over town! Hooray!

My play is called The Happiness Gap, and in the end it did all the things I wanted it to do. Will it make it in for the reading? Only time will tell! Check back on Friday to see if I made the cut!

I’m entering week three of my second semester at SFSU! This semester I’m taking three classes and they are: Playcrafting and Dramaturgy, MFA Playwriting Workshop, and Fringe. Fringe is a mostly student driven force that produces plays by students at SFSU. This coming May my play Much Ado About Mathletes will be produced, and once the dates have been decided I will shout it from the roof tops. I’m excited that this play was selected, it is a one-act comedy that takes place at a High School, and it may be one of my only plays without copious amounts of swearing. So be sure and keep an eye out for that.

The workshop I’ve signed up so far has been very informative, we’re looking at theatricality and what makes a script essentially theatrical. This week we’re either writing a brand new scene with a theatrical entrance in it, or rewriting a scene to include a theatrical entrance in it. I’ve reworked the opening scene of The Red House Monster, my play inspired by the Monster Geryon, and I’m very excited about the changes. This whole script is very different from anything that I’ve ever written and I always find it fun to push into those uncharted territories and see what’s hiding there.

And lastly, by far my most demanding class (and maybe most fun, because it is so demanding) is my Playcrafting and Dramaturgy class. Last week, for our first assignment we were to read by Hamlet and Buried Child, select one, cut it down to 100 minutes, and then write a paper about our choices. I selected to cut Hamlet, and got most of my cuts by deleting Ophelia from the play. This week we’re reading Lysistrata, A Doll’s House, and Uncle Vanya. After reading all three we select one and find two additional translations of the script to read. We then write a paper about which translation is best and then try our hand at translating and translate the first few pages using the three different scripts as our guide. And every week is like that, read a lot, work a lot, learn a lot. Eventually we’ll developing our own piece of theater for our final project, and I’m very excited about the possibilities!

More later, I’ve got to get back to my homework.