EXTRA CRITICUM

How Much is Too Much? - Take the Dramatists Guild Poll

Recently, there's been a good deal of discussion swirling around the theatre community about what percentage of future royalties first producers have a right to demand from the lucky playwrights whose work they mount.

Craig Lucas (Longtime Companion, Reckless, Prelude to a Kiss) recently caused a bit of a stir when he abruptly withdrew his new play Prayer for my Enemy from Roundabout in favor of the smaller Playwrights Horizons because he was shocked to learn that Roundabout expected him to fork over 40% of all future earnings to the non-profit. 40% is a standard figure extracted in most Broadway contracts, but for a non-profit to demand it seemed to further blur the line between the worlds of "for-" and "non-." [See NYTimes article for more on this]

The Dramatists Guild has posted a simple poll on their homepage. It takes 2 seconds to vote. Click here.

How the Grinch Stole from the original story and became a banal musical

I would not see it with a fox, I would not watch it in a box, I would not pay to see it here, I would not pay to see it there.  I do not like the Grinch Musical, it's a grand rip off and full of bull!

"That’s a very difficult question. If I keep going, I’ll get angry with God.”

Opened the email this morning to find a link to this interview with Eugene Ionesco! The master of the absurd reveals that he wanted to be a chestnut seller at age 3, and at 3-1/2 not just any doctor, but his family doctor, complete with beard.

Mais oui!

Enjoy. (And thanks to TH for forwarding).

Our Christmas Eve

We were having an evening-long conversation last night, as I finished wrapping the gifts for the kids.

It had been a quiet, nice day: our office gave us early dismissal, and all morning I actually Got Some Work Done, and emailed back and forth with colleagues in our Indy office about maps and pagecounts and things like that. I had a nice long talk with a dear friend. I had a steak.

Eartha Kitt, Joe McAllister and Club Cabaret: R.I.P.

Eartha Kitt died the other day. She was an icon but she was also unusually down-to-earth, never forgetting her roots or her hard-scrabble teenage years. Her New York Times obit is a must-read for those who, like me, only knew the flashier sexier high-gloss side of this performer.

Reading of her death brought me back to another time and place, to a time when I had just finished working on a show in a small but very popular venue in Boston called Club Cabaret, in which I had the pleasure of seeing Eartha Kitt perform to an audience of fewer than 100.

Smiling Through Calder in Paris

One of the first searches I ever did on YouTube was "Calder Circus." I had seen one of the films documenting a performance at the Whitney Museum in the 80s, but not since. Then, the film was a revelation: Here was a grizzled man who looked like a retired construction foreman in his well-worn work shoes, jeans, button down shirt, basically playing with toys. Art was work and serious, Alexander "Sandy" Calder's presence said, but it could also be fun and light-hearted. Art didn't have to be dark and depressing and make you want to slit your wrists. Art could make you smile.  He also went to college in Hoboken, NJ, which adjoined Union City, NJ, the city I spent the first 12 years of my life in. This told me an artist could spend some formative time in NJ.

So it's no surprise then that the highlight for me of Alexander Calder: The Paris Years 1926-1933 at the Whitney Museum was seeing the stuff of Calder's Circus again, the film, the figures and sets, the photographs (many taken by Andre Kertesz), the five suitcases that contained all that wire, wood, cloth, string, cork, tubes and  god know what else. (Imagine him explaining the contents of those valises to a customs agent now?)

Harold Pinter: R.I.P.

A mentor I never actually met died yesterday. His name was Harold Pinter. This man's work has been a towering influence over my own for decades ever since as a precocious 15-year-old, I directed and starred in a production of Old Times, along with my good pal Elyse Singer. I don't think any single member of our audacious cast and crew was older than 16. Of course we had no idea what we were doing, but there sure was a thrill in immersing ourselves fully in a new kind of language, a new landscape of character, emotion and the often misunderstood "Pinter Pause."

Since that first foray so many years ago, I've felt a close connection to this master playwright in spite of the fact that we never met.

Street Theatre: Subway Hope: The Other Side of the Tracks

The other afternoon I left Tekserve, the Apple specialist, with two 1TB hard drives  and a rack to contain all these metal boxes full of zeros and ones piling up around my work area. I walked through the dusk and snow flurries and descended the steps into the subway station, just making the uptown 1 train. The train was crowded but not packed and I manage to find a seat. Across from me sat a woman with a Tekserve bag and a new laptop in a box. She was probably close to 60 and dressed like an elder stateswoman hipster: hat with ear flaps, puffy navy North Face jacket, maroon corduroy bell bottoms. She looked at my  bags and laughed. "Your wallet's a little lighter too, huh? What did you get?"

If I Could Get Rid Of One Word…

Seldom do I hate words.  I use most of them.  The dirty ones.  The polysyllabic ones.  Even the dirty polysyllabic ones.  So, really, I’m free and easy lover of words.  But, there’s one word that I’m beginning to hate.  In print.  In conversation.  In grants.

 

Emerging.  I hate that word.  Emerging.  How it pools in my mouth and falls out.  The mental images thrust into my mind’s eye.  AND—I especially hate it when emerging (ugh) comes attached with another word…a word that I love:  artist.  Emerging Artist.

 

Mr. Mom in West Palm, Part IV - Further Thoughts on Being an Appendage

Yesterday I was pushing the stroller down Lake Avenue, the main drag here in Lake Worth, Florida, when a voice cried out, “Henry!”

I look up. It is two members of Blair’s cast.

Pause…pause…

“…and John!”

Moments later I’m in Starbucks with the boy, and I hear (can you guess?) -“Henry!” It’s another member of Blair’s cast.

And the Works of Art in My Life (with nods to Licata & Truffaut)

I was really jazzed by David's post on the films that have had significant impact on his life and so decided to take him up on his invitation to chime in with my own. And I encourage the rest of you to post your own. What's not to love?

I, however, being someone who is pathologically obsessed with my escape from rigid categories as they might define me, have chosen to open my list up a bit to include all works of the performing arts.

Filmmaker Roundtable on PBS - Part 2

The good folks at Channel 13/WNET have uploaded Part 2 of the roundtable discussion. In this segment host Jonathan Betzler asks filmmakers Guy Shahar, Eddie Sheih,  Bo Mehrad, and me about our films' origins. It's interesting to hear the different ways inspiration struck us.

You can watch it below:

Writing: The Fast and the Furious (Part II)

Omigosh.  How did so much time go by since I last posted???

Well, it’s not like I haven’t been busy.  Aside from a particularly hectic time at work, there have been a lot of things going on.  For example…

• I headed back to NYC for my very first book  signing!  My play Women Behind the Bush was published alongside the wonderful work of my colleagues from En Avant Playwrights (including my dear friend and Extra Criticum contributor, Kathleen Warnock).  To celebrate, we had a big book party at Barnes and Noble at Lincoln Square, and there was a reading of an excerpt of the play with members of the original production.  (It was always a dream of mine to sign books at that particular B&N, since we live just blocks away from the store in NYC).  It was a whirlwind!  An absolute blast!  And now, United Stages’ book “The Best of En Avant Playwrights” is on shelves at the Drama Book Shop in NYC; it will soon be available on barnesandnoble.com.

• My play, Twisted Love, was performed in Fullerton, CA, in a lovely and very smart production directed by Tira Palmquist.

• But the big news is: I finished the NOVEL!

And the Films in My Life

I'm re-reading Truffaut's The Films in My Life and it has made me wonder, what are the films that have made an impression in my life? I'm not talking about "favorite" or "best," those would be something else. No, these are films that changed the way I thought or saw in some way. Some of them are great, some of them aren't so great.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, just the first several that came to mind. I'd be interested in knowing what you think of this list, and I welcome everyone to comment with lists of their own, and not just of film, but of plays, performances, books, musical compositions, paintings, or any combination of those. It's a blog, after all. 

what I'm awful at . . .

I've always been really bad at self-promotion, which may account for why I'm not further along in my writing career than I'd like to be. So, no, you won't find me kissing ass, schmoozing, oozing, leaking or licking anything that doesn't lick back. Put me in a room full of artistic directors or producers, and I'm going to be talking to the lone alcoholic psychotherapist that's been on a drinking binge for two weeks and hates parties. Call me crazy (and many do).