That’s right folks! You’ve been waiting for months and weeks, and now we’re finally down to just days! Two days until the staged reading of THE FANTASY CLUB!

Tomorrow we have our first rehearsal! I am so excited to be working with so many talented artists. I hope that you can make it out, and tell everyone you know that produces theatre to be there too!

Here are the details, in case you’ve forgotten:

The Playwright’s Center of San Francisco Presents:

THE FANTASY CLUB

by Rachel Bublitz Directed by Tracy Held Potter Staged Reading

When: June 4th, 7:30 pm Where: The Off-Market Theatre, 2nd Floor 965 Mission between 5th & 6th Streets How Much: $10 non-members, PCSF members free

Who says men own the monopoly on sex fantasies? Pull the sheets off of one stay-at-home-mom’s dirty little secret with The Fantasy Club. You’ll never look at housewives the same again.

Cast:

Frances……………….Siobhan Marie Doherty

Max……………………Tony Cirimele

Samantha……………Carlye Pollack

Jacob………………….Galen Murphy-Hoffman*

Stage Directions……Vahishta Vafadari

*Actors Equity Association Member

*$10-20 SL; members free

RSVP here on Facebook.

I was with my kids at a family’s house down the street. It’s one of those perfect situations where we moved in close by and their little girl is my daughter’s age and their little boy is my son’s age and everyone gets along. I really like the mom, she’s super laid back. We were chatting, and she asked me what I had been up to lately. “Well,” I said deeply regretting that she had asked, “A play that I wrote is getting a staged reading this Monday so I’ve been doing prep work for that.” I knew what was coming next. What always comes next….

“You’re a writer? How cool. What’s your play about?”

That’s it. That’s the question I hate to answer. And I don’t hate this question when asked at scene nights, or talking among friends, but when other parents ask me… Especially when our children are playing within ear shot. I used to go for it, “Oh, it’s a play about a sexually charged mom who is thinking of having an affair.” Turns out this answer doesn’t lead to more play dates. And when I spoke with a friend of mine about it, she thought I was insane for ever telling anyone the truth, or the whole truth that is.

I’ve learned to kinda flub my answer. Today I said, “It’s about a mom, and what that can be like for some mom’s.”

“I guess you have to write what you know,” she answered back.

“Yes, I guess you have to,” I agreed.

Now, I realize that she’ll probably never see or read my play so it doesn’t matter what I say, but I wish I could have told her the truth. Because that’s what my play is about. A woman’s sexuality, and how it’s so often ignored or shoved away that is at times has no other venues to release itself. The world demands so much duplicity in women. Be sexual, but not too sexual. Be assertive, but remember who really wears the pants. When I write my bio for the program, I always feel the need to mention that I’m a mom. Now that I have kids, it’s the first thing that I am. It’s interesting that my husband’s bio (he gives lectures on internet things) never mentions his children or wife. Why do I feel the need to?

I’m not blaming anyone for this. I just think it’s time we acknowledge it and figure out how to fix it.

And I also think that you should come out on June 4th for the staged reading of THE FANTASY CLUB. Find out if it’s as scandalous as it sounds!

PlayGround posted their submission guidelines today for their writers pool. I’m not going to lie to you, I want to be in the writers pool. I want it bad. For those of you who aren’t sure what PlayGround is, I’ll break it down for you. PlayGround has playwrights submit to be in their writers pool, they select the top 36 to form their pool. Then, throughout their season they send prompts out to the writers, and the writers write. There are six nights, you must submit to five of them if you’re in the pool, and the best of these plays are given staged readings throughout the year. At the end of their season they do the Best of PlayGround and produce the best short plays written that year. It would be an amazing way for me to expand the folks that I know, and for new people to see my work.

So now I need to pick which play I’ll be submitting. I don’t have a ton of ten minute plays, right now I have eight. It’s hard to pick one when you want something so much, how can you tell which one is best? Good thing I have until August 31st!

Heard or read my work? Let me know which one you like the best!

The Playwright’s Center of San Francisco is accepting 10 minute plays and 5 minute monologues for Repro Rights, a staged reading of plays on, “reproductive rights and bodily autonomy issues” (from PCSF’s website). Here are the details:

We receive a ton of plays to critique in a short time, so please, we beg you, follow our submission requirements. We have good reasons for all of them, we promise. Deviation causes delays, frustration, and insanity! We reserve the right to disqualify submissions that do not follow all requirements.

For this benefit only, you do not need to be a member of the Playwrights Center of San Francisco.

Entrant: Must be a resident of the nine San Francisco Bay Area counties to submit.

No Entry Fee, but you do need to fill out and submit an Entry Form.

Length: Plays and monologues may not be longer than 10 minutes. If the piece is longer than ten minutes, playwrights will be expected to edit for length in order to be included in the program. As a rule of thumb, plays should be maximum ten pages and monologues five pages or fewer. We recommend you read it aloud and time it before sending.

Submission: Plays must be submitted digitally to PCSFSubmitAPlay@gmail.com. No hard copies accepted – One (1) Microsoft Word file or PDF file; Limit: 1 script per playwright; please send us your best.

Blind Submission: Your name and contact info should appear nowhere on the script itself. A title page is fine, but no contact info! We get that from the entry form.

Type Size: 12 pt Times New Roman or 12 pt Courier.

Format: Standard Stage Format. Final Draft format is acceptable only if sent as a PDF file. Blind submission – please do not have your name anywhere on the submitted script.

Theme: The play’s theme should center on reproductive rights and bodily autonomy issues. Here are some ideas (you are not limited to these): birth control, abortion, rape, consent, ultrasound procedures, pregnancy, birth, carrying a baby to term, deciding whether to terminate a pregnancy, in vitro fertilization, forced or voluntary sterilization, vasectomy, etc.

Type: Drama, comedy. Musicals will be considered, but we don’t know if we can produce them, and you may be asked to help (especially if you have a band).

Characters: The play should be written for a maximum of five actors. Monologues are okay.

Production Requirements: Set, props and costume requirements should be minimal, something easily assembled by a producing group. Lighting should also be easily accomplished – general full stage lighting preferred but blackouts could be accomplished.

Submission Deadline: 11:59 p.m. PDT, June 30, 2012.

Up to ten pieces will be selected by a panel of volunteer readers. Because this is a benefit, we will not be paying the playwright but you will receive a comp ticket to one of the readings. Selected Plays will be announced August 1, 2012.

NOTE: Failure to adhere to any of these guidelines may result in your script being rejected, so please read and follow them carefully!

Get to writing! And good luck!

The folks over at Wily West who brought Sheherezade XII to life are seeking scripts for Spooky Cabaret, a staged reading of short plays in October.

Here are the details:

SPOOKY CABARET

DEADLINE: July 31st, 2012

*submissions@wilywestproductions.com

*We are currently looking for one act plays that feature stories about ghosts, hauntings, and the supernatural for our Spooky Cabaret staged reading series. *

*The Spooky Cabaret will run for 4 days at Stage Werx Theatre in October.

GUIDELINES

Playwrights must live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Each playwright may submit TWO scripts.

Each script must be no more than 15 pages long.

All submissions must be electronic in MS Word (.doc), Rich Text Format (.rtf), or Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format only.

Plays that have received a production of any kind (Equity or non-Equity), musicals, children’s shows, and any unsolicited longer than 15 pages are not accepted.

Each manuscript must be typed and be in standard script format.

Title page must include name, address and phone number. Please Include an e-mail address if possible.

Good luck!

We are days away from the staged reading of “The Fantasy Club!” It’s happening this coming Monday, June 4th at 7:30 at the Off Market Theatre in San Francisco. You can visit THE FANTASY CLUB Facebook event for all of the details. Make sure and RSVP!

Now that I’m done with my rewrites, I get to spend the day wrestling with my printer, hoping it will obey me and print off 7 copies of my 93 page script! Trees, I apologize, I wish that there was an easier way. I’m about to go to Cartridge World in Oakland and get my printer more juice, and then it’s print, print, print, hole punch x 100, and hope my toddler doesn’t decide to wander through and destroy everything. Wish me luck!

10 months ago I’d never written a play. I wrote a lot of poetry (very bad poetry), some dark short stories, and countless entries in many a journals starting at the age of eleven. But never plays. In addition to writing in middle school and high school, I did a lot of acting and directing. Yep, I was a total drama nerd. In college, I kept it up and was convinced upon graduation I would enter the theatre world and take it for my very own. Then I got knocked up. When my daughter was born, my whole life changed. I had always planned on working, but since I didn’t have any leads, and childcare was more expensive than I was likely to make, I made the choice to stay at home. We had another baby, my son.

This past summer, I had a big moment where I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. My kids were getting older, moving out of baby-hood and they were starting to need me less. I started reading, I started working out, really I was waking up. But, even though I was making all of these positive steps, there was this looming question over my head raining on my days. What was I going to do with my life? Should we have more kids? Maybe I should really do this mother thing and just have a ton of babies. Be the best mom in the world with an army of seven or eight kids. Why not, right? Luckily, my husband recommended I take some time and really think about if I wanted more kids or not. My husband is smart that way.

I knew that what I wanted was to work in theatre, but I had no idea how to jump back in. I hadn’t acted in years, and I was sure that I didn’t have the time to go in rehearse for hours late at night. And I didn’t think it was likely that someone would just let me direct a show for them with only 5 year old references. So there I was, I was stuck.

Then a ridiculous idea came to me… I’ll write a play. So I jumped right in, and wrote my little heart out. After 200 pages or so, I realized that it was going to be much, much harder than I had ever imagined. What was my play missing? It was really bad. I read some of my favorites again, to see if they would give me any clues, but I got nothing.

That’s when I went to Barnes and Noble. I found The Playwright’s Guidebook by Stuart Spencer. I highly recommend it. It breaks down the basic components of dramatic structure; action, conflict, and the event. He also covers character development and his thoughts on the creative process. There are exercises throughout and recommended reading (plays and other theatre books). He also goes through some general advise and insights about writing from the impulse. If you’re curious about these things, pick it up. I found it incredibly helpful, and although I’ve already read it, I find myself re-reading chapters every now and then.

What’s your favorite book about writing plays? I’d love to have more reference books!

I got Jose Rivera’s 36 Assumptions About Playwrighting in my playwrightbinge daily email this morning. The person posting it had found it on this blog: All Bleeding Stops Eventually.

I think it is an excellent list to aspire to. Also seriously curious if Jose Rivera still teaches playwrighting classes… I imagine that would be an incredible experience.

For those of you who don’t know, Jose Rivera is a Puerto Rican playwright. His works include; “Cloud Tectonics”, “Marisol”, “References to Salvidor Dali Make Me Hot”, and “et al”.

Without further adieu, Jose Rivera’s 36 Assumptions About Playwrighting:

“Over the years, I’ve had the good fortune to teach writing in a number of schools from second-grade to graduate school. I usually just wing it. But lately, I’ve decided to think about the assumptions I’ve been working under and to write them down. The following is an unscientific, gut-level survey of the assumptions I have about writing plays, in no particular order of importance.

1. Good playwriting is a collaboration between your many selves. The more multiple your personalities, the further, wider, deeper you will be able to go.
2. Theatre is closer to poetry and music than it is to the novel.
3. There’s no time limit to writing plays. Think of playwriting as a life-long apprenticeship. Imagine you may have your best ideas on your deathbed.
4. Write plays in order to organize despair and chaos. To live vicariously. To play God. To project an idealized version of the world. To destroy things you hate in the world and in yourself. To remember and to forget. To lie to yourself. To play. To dance with language. To beautify the landscape. To fight loneliness. To inspire others. To imitate your heroes. To bring back the past and raise the dead. To achieve transcendence of yourself. To fight the powers that be. To sound alarms. To provoke conversation. To engage in the conversation started by great writers in the past. To further evolve the artform. To lose yourself in your fictive world. To make money.
5. Write because you want to show something. To show that the world is shit. To show how fleeting love and happiness are. To show the inner workings of your ego. To show that democracy is in danger. To show how interconnected we are. (Each “to show” is active and must be personal, deeply held, true to you.)
6. Each line of dialogue is like a piece of DNA; potentially containing the entire play and its thesis; potentially telling us the beginning, middle, and end of the play.
7. Be prepared to risk your entire reputation every time you write, otherwise it’s not worth your audience’s time.
8. Embrace your writer’s block. It’s nature’s way of saving trees and your reputation. Listen to it and try to understand its source. Often, writer’s block happens to you because somewhere in your work you’ve lied to yourself and your subconscious won’t let you go any further until you’ve gone back, erased the lie, stated the truth and started over.
9. Language is a form of entertainment. Beautiful language can be like beautiful music: it can amuse, inspire, mystify, enlighten.
10. Rhythm is key. Use as many sounds and cadences as possible. Think of dialogue as a form of percussive music. You can vary the speed of the language, the number of beats per line, volume, density. You can use silences, fragments, elongated sentences, interruptions, overlapping conversation, physical activity, monologues, nonsense, non-sequiturs, foreign languages.
11. Vary your tone as much as possible. Juxtapose high seriousness with raunchy language with lyrical beauty with violence with dark comedy with awe with eroticism.
12. Action doesn’t have to be overt. It can be the steady deepening of the dramatic situation or your character’s steady emotional movements from one emotional/psychological condition to another: ignorance to enlightenment, weakness to strength, illness to wholeness.
13. Invest something truly personal in each of your characters, even if it’s something of your worst self.
14. If realism is as artificial as any genre, strive to create your own realism. If theatre is a handicraft in which you make one of a kind pieces, then you’re in complete control of your fictive universe. What are its physical laws? What’s gravity like? What does time do? What are the rules of cause and effect? How do your characters behave in this altered universe?
15. Write from your organs. Write from your eyes, your heart, your liver, your ass — write from your brain last of all.
16. Write from all of your senses. Be prepared to design on the page: tell yourself exactly what you see, feel, hear, touch and taste in this world. Never leave design to chance, that includes the design of the cast.
17. Find your tribe. Educate your collaborators. Stick to your people and be faithful to them. Seek aesthetic and emotional compatibility with those your work with. Understand your director’s world view because it will color his/her approach to your work.
18. Strive to be your own genre. Great plays represent the genres created around the author’s voice. A Checkhov genre. A Caryl Churchill genre.
19. Strive to create roles that actors you respect will kill to perform.
20. Form follows function. Strive to reflect the content of the play in the form of the play.
21. Use the literalization of metaphor to discuss the inner emotional state of your characters.
22. Don’t be afraid to attempt great themes: death, war, sexuality, identity, fate, God, existence, politics, love.
23. Theatre is the explanation of life to the living. Try to tease apart the conflicting noises of living, and make some kind of pattern and order. It’s not so much and explanation of life as much as it is a recipe for understanding, a blueprint for navigation, a confidante with some answers, enough to guide you and encourage you, but not to dictate to you.
24. Push emotional extremes. Don’t be a puritan. Be sexy. Be violent. Be irrational. Be sloppy. Be frightening. Be loud. Be stupid. Be colorful.
25. Ideas may be deeply embedded in the interactions and reactions of your character; they may be in the music and poetry of your form. You have thoughts and you generate ideas constantly. A play ought to embody those thoughts and those thoughts can serve as a unifying energy in your play.
26. A play must be organized. This is another word for structure. You organize a meal, your closet, your time — why not your play?
27. Strive to be mysterious, not confusing.
28. Think of information in a play like an IV drip — dispense just enough to keep the body alive, but not too much too soon.
29. Think of writing as a constant battle against the natural inertia of language.
30. Write in layers. Have as many things happening in a play in any one moment as possible.
31. Faulkner said the greatest drama is the heart in conflict with itself.
32. Keep your chops up with constant questioning of your own work. React against your work. Be hypercritical. Do in the next work what you aimed for but failed to do in the last one.
33. Listen only to those people who have a vested interest in your future.
34. Character is the embodiment of obsession. A character must be stupendously hungry. There is no rest for those characters until they’ve satisfied their needs.
35. In all your plays be sure to write at least one impossible thing. And don’t let your director talk you out of it.
36. A writer cannot live without an authentic voice — the place where you are the most honest, most lyrical, most complete, most creative and new. That’s what you’re striving to find. But the authentic voice doesn’t know how to write, any more than gasoline knows how to drive. But driving is impossible without fuel and writing is impossible without the heat and strength of your authentic voice. Learning to write well is the stuff of workshops. Learning good habits and practicing hard. But finding your authentic voice as a writer is your business, your journey — a private, lonely, inexact, painful, slow and frustrating voyage. Teachers and mentors can only bring you closer to that voice. With luck and time, you’ll get there on your own.”

Three day weekend! Actually, for a stay at home mom, three day weekends typically equal more work, but I get to sleep in slightly. A bit of a wash really.

Anyway, this weekend I’ll be in the thick of my rewrite for “The Fantasy Club,” submitting some short plays to festivals, and working on The 31 Plays in 31 Days Project. I need to get the website information written, and make clear what we are offering to playwrights and what we expect in return. What else? Oh yes! Going to closing night of Sheherezade XII! Excited to share the show with my in-laws who will join me this evening.

What are your plans? Seeing any shows?

Had two wonderful conversations this morning concerning the 31 Plays in 31 Days Project! We’ll be launching the website in June, probably close to the beginning (hopefully the 1st). You’ll be able to sign up for the challenge of writing 31 Plays in 31 Days, find out what and why we’re doing it, and see other ways you can help us out. Right now we need people who’d like to help get this project off the ground and running. Our goal is to make this an international project!

Interested? Curious? Want to help? Email me questions, or if you’d like to volunteer. At this moment we’re three people strong, and could use some extra bodies and minds!

Email me at Rnbublitz@gmail.com. Thanks!