TONIGHT!
TONIGHT is the night!
Tonight my ten minute play Mom’s Ham will be performed at Berkeley Rep for PlayGround’s (Twisted) HOLIDAY EXTRAVAGANZA!
I love my play and I’m very excited that it was picked and I get to share it with everyone! Which means you should come on out to Berkeley tonight for the 8p show! Can you make it out? I sure hope you can! There will be a pre-show talk starting at 7:10pm also, so show up early and here more about the work from the writers!
See you tonight!
I am so, SO, SO excited! My play Mom’s Ham was selected for PlayGround’s (Twisted) Holiday Extravaganza! I can’t wait to see my work preformed at Berkeley Rep, and I do hope that you’ll join me!
The show starts at 8pm, and is this Monday, December 16th, and the address at Berkeley Rep is 2025 Addison Street in Berkeley.
BUY TICKETS NOW! And do that here: http://playground-sf.org/boxoffice/#mondaynightplayground.
I hope that I see you there!
Tonight, I will partake in the last class of my first semester as an MFA student at SFSU! Yesterday I turned in Clever Princess, my one-act children’s play, as well as a poem I wrote for my final assignment in Craft of Translation. Tonight I’ll turn in Rosie, Bloody Rosie and have my final Directed Writing meeting and say, “So long school, see you next year!” I’m excited. I’m planning a day devoted to crafting and pointless TV next week to celebrate. It will be fantastic.
And here’s my final poem I wrote for Craft of Translation, in case you were wondering…
Translated by Rachel Bublitz
Into the room
Long and narrow like a hallway
Came young Enoch’s friends
Smoked cigarettes
Talked of art
Feverishly
Enoch wanted to talk
But didn’t know how
He stopped inviting
This blue-eyed man-child
Began to invent
People, sprits,
For conversation
A woman, sword in hand
A white-bearded old man
A young girl
Two dozen shadow people
And Enoch was happy
Enoch was too happy
She got to coming in
A musician
She knocked
The door opened
They sat
She was too big
He wanted to kiss
To touch
Her hands were strong
Her face was good
She looked at Enoch
All the time
Enoch told her about his
People
He couldn’t keep quite
One night
Enoch became mad
Maybe she had understood
All the time
Her eyes
Smash
Vile words
Screamed
Stamped
Curses
Smash
Out she went
Never to return
They followed her
She took his people away
Alone
All alone
It was warm and friendly
The room
Long and narrow like a hallway
But now
Now Enoch was all alone
Translated from the a short story called “Loneliness” from the book WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson. I’m reading this collection for research on Geryon, and this story blew me away. I might have to translate the story into a play one of these days. If you haven’t read it, I completely recommend picking up the book!
Here it is:
http://www.amazon.com/Winesburg-Ohio-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486282694
Keep writing, stay warm, was my mantra this past weekend. Oh was it chilly. I’m from San Diego, where it’s 72 degrees 90% of the time, so 30-40 degree temps are a bit too frosty for me. So, to fight the cold, I wrote! And wore sweaters.
I wrote two brand new ten minute plays for PlayGround’s Holiday Extravaganza (the prompt was HOLIDAY RECIPE, remember?). I could only submit one, but I was glad to have written two scripts. In the four days I feel like I got them in great shape, and I’ll be ready for next year’s Christmas plays submissions with two brand new plays to submit! It was hard in the end deciding which to send in, but after two of the folks I had reading the scripts admitted that one of them brought tears to their eyes I went with that one. I figure that when you can do that in a ten minute play, something good is happening. So fingers crossed! The two plays I wrote are called: Mom’s Ham and Welcome To The Family, and I sent in Mom’s Ham. The plays will be announced on Friday, and the show is Monday the 16th at 8pm at Berkeley Rep. Get your tickets here: http://www.playground-sf.org/boxoffice/
In other writing accomplishments, I finished a poem that I translated from a short story that I read (my last project for my Craft of Translation class), finished a new draft of You Will Survive Me, and have started editing Rosie, Bloody Rosie for it’s new draft. Everything is due this week because it’s the last week of school. What will I do next week? After I get my Christmas crafts done, I’m very excited to jump into two new projects! I’ll be working on Geryon (a 60 minute one-act commissioned by the San Francisco Olympians Festival for next year) and a play inspired by Pegasus, another proposal I sent in that I love too much to let go. Woo! I’m hoping to have drafts of these before my Spring semester starts up at the end of January. So as you can see, I’ll be using my mantra the whole winter long!
Stay warm friends!
This Friday, December 13th, come to The Exit Theatre on Eddy street for San Francisco Theater Pub’s Open Mic Night/Lemonade Fund Fundraiser! The show starts at 8pm, and there is a suggested donation from $10-$20, although you should feel free to throw more money in!
I’m working with local actor Melissa Keith, she’ll be preforming a monologue written by Audrey and me! That’s right, Audrey work will be shown on the stage again! So, if you missed Audrey Scare People Play and have hated yourself ever since, have no fear! You can see her new work This Is How I Lost My Money on Friday! There are also a ton of other great performers involved, and I’m confident that it will be a great night of fun!
I hope you make it out!
The topic is here! PlayGround’s Holiday Extravaganza topic is………
My husband suggested I make a play pie… Oh that I could, because my pies are delicious.
Anyway, if you’re interested in writing along with the topic too, remember there’s a ten page max, and the deadline is Tuesday at 2pm!
Also, you should get on buying your tickets for the 16th! Here’s the link: http://www.playground-sf.org/boxoffice/
That’s at Berkeley Rep, December 16th at 8pm. We will find out a week from now which plays have been selected!
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a play to write!
As the year comes to an end, I want to look not only at my submissions (did that yesterday, and p.s. I have 6 more submissions bringing my total up to 187, only 13 more to reach 200!) but also at what I’ve written. With starting my MFA, completing 31 Plays in 31 Days, and writing Under The Gods’ Golden Cleats, commissioned by the San Francisco Olympians Festival, 2013 has been a pretty major writing year for me.
Here are all the plays that I wrote and where they’re at in the process (I’m not developing further all my plays I wrote for 31 Plays in 31 Days, so they aren’t all listed here):
My full-length plays that smashes together the legend of Achilles with modern Texas football culture. I’ve gone through many drafts throughout the year, the most recent I completed about a week or so after the reading on November 9th! Right now I’m sending it out for further development opportunities and/or production opportunities.
This started as a one-act and after a developmental reading it became clear that more was needed. I’m finishing up the first draft (right now, actually) of the full-length version. It’s a play about mother-daughter relationships, and the different forms abuse can come in. This play was to be my first non-comedy, and it’s still for sure not a comedy, but it might be the most difficult play I’ve written, so for this play I’m letting things happen slower than I do for most.
Another first for me is my horror play Rosie, Bloody Rosie! This is pretty fun to write, and I’m realizing that the difference between horror and comedy is very slight, and it takes a lot of attention to detail to keep it on the scary track. I’m currently on my third draft, and will be turning it in for my short play workshop in less than a week! After I get notes from my teacher (and rewriting based on those notes), I’m going to look for some public readings of it, and see how it feels done in front of an audience.
The firsts just keep coming! This play is a first for me because I wrote it with High School students in mind. It’s a 25 minute comedy about an all-girl mathletes team, and it stays PG the whole time! And for those of you who have seen or read any of my work, you know how much I usually don’t do this. Another fun element of this script is that there are direct addresses to the audience from each character written in a sonnet format, so I got to practice some poetry in this piece as well.
Clever Catherine is a play I wrote for children! It’s 30 minutes long, and based off an old folk tale. I wrote this for my craft of translation class, and it was a lot of fun to write. I have two kids, and I’m kinda sick of seeing movie after movie about beautiful princesses. This play, has a smart Queen (Catherine), who is by far the most clever in the kingdom, and at the same time is strong and funny. I really want to do a reading of this with my daughter and son listening in to see if they like it. It’s also fun to work on a script that they can watch, because most of the time I have to keep them pretty far away from the stuff I write.
A fifteen minute play written for All Terrain Theater’s SF Fringe show BABIES, THE ULTIMATE BIRTH CONTROL.
Another fifteen minute play, this one was written during the 31 Plays in 31 Days challenge.
This odd little fifteen minute play was written as an experiment. While working on Mixtapes, I wanted to see if I could write a play with misheard song lyrics.
The first play I wrote as a member of the PlayGround SF’s writer’s pool.
This was a fun little experiment, I wrote a play around one of my favorite short stories. I’m still seeking permission to use the story, if I get permission I will certainly seek out production opportunities for this.
My ten-minute musical play I wrote for PlayGround’s musical theater night.
Another play written for BABIES, THE ULTIMATE BIRTH CONTROL, this play is going on to have a production next month on the other side of the country!
I wrote this for my ten-minute play workshop class, and I’m still tweaking the play here and there. I’m hoping to have it it tip-top shape for some serious submitting next year.
This play I wrote for last year’s SF Theater Pub’s Pint Sized Plays, it wasn’t selected, but this was the play that got me into the PlayGround writer’s pool this year, so it’s just fine in my book.
The original play written for SJ Real’s Joplin’s Mixtapes, it’s about 3 minutes. I wrote this for the 31 Plays in 31 Days challenge as well.
My second play written for Mixtapes, based on my favorite Tom Waits song.
A one-minute total creeper play. I’ve sent this out to a few one-minute festivals, so fingers crossed!
A monologue written during August for 31 Plays in 31 Days.
A one-minute play taking the life of a marriage in reverse.
An odd five-minute play written for 31 Plays in 31 Days, with some hilarious gender switching.
A four or five minute play I wrote for Mixtapes.
There are more plays that I’m not too interested in developing further, and so they aren’t listed here, and I’ve started taking a few stabs for next year’s SF Olympians Play based on Geryon, and there will also be a new play after this weekend (this weekend is a PlayGround writing weekend!).
Being in the MFA program, I’m definitely having to push myself to write new stuff, I hope next year I have a ton of firsts all over again! MFA all the way!
I inch closer and closer to my goal of 100 rejection letters during 2013, but I fear that I will not reach it by December 31st! This goal was 100% stolen from the inspirational/fabulous/phenomenally talented and intelligent Megan Cohen! You should check out her website so that you can start stealing from her as well: http://plays.megancohen.com/.
Right now I have a total 181 submissions with 85 rejections (15 to go!), 13 acceptances, and 83 I am still waiting to find out about, for a total of 181 submissions this year! Looking at that number, I’m thinking of challenging myself a bit in the last few weeks of the year and trying to get another 19 plays submitted to bring my total up to 200! Wish me luck!
I think getting 15 more rejection letters before the end of the year is a bit of a stretch sadly, more often than not you don’t hear anything ever. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying.
I’m thinking that next year I need to set some seriously high submission goals in order to hit the 100 rejection letters I’m hoping for, I’ll start getting the stamps ready now I think.
In other exciting news, I’m excited to also announce that Oy Oy Oy, Merry Christmas, a ten minute holiday play, is being produced in Woodland Hills with The Charles Stewart Howard Playhouse for their second installment of Hard Candy Christmas!
The show is at: Harter Hall, (21338 Dumetz Road Woodland Hills, CA 91367).
The shows are on Saturday, December 7th at 7pm, Sunday, December 8th at 6pm, and Saturday December 14th at 7pm.
If you’re in the LA area, I hope that you can make it out to the show!
Buy your tickets here: http://www.goldstar.com/events/woodland-hills-ca/hard-candy-christmas
Or here: http://hcc2.brownpapertickets.com/
Back from a fabulous vacation, where maybe a little less writing and reading happened, but a whole lot of family time happened, so all is well with the world.
And I come back with fun announcements! My short play Baby Shower Games, which was first produced by All Terrain Theater for our SF Fringe show BABIES: THE ULTIMATE BIRTH CONTROL, is moving on to a production in Maynard Massachusetts! Baby Shower Games will join the line-up for Acme Theater Productions‘ New Works Winter Festival 2014! The dates are January 10, 11, 17, 18, 2014, with all shows at 8pm.
I will announce more information as the date gets closer! If you’re in the area, be sure to check out the festival!