EXTRA CRITICUM

Deadline at Noon. Let me repost what I said last year.

I have to admit I found it heartbreaking having to refuse what amounted to an avalanche of last-minute requests for special exceptions to our strict Noon deadline. 

First, I feel it important to explain our rationale for refusing to accept post-deadline submissions.

 

read the full post:

Submission Deadlines When Life is Lived Online

Sounds like listening: The Hear Me Out Monologues pursuit of Audience

It's been a year and a half since that day in March when suddenly we understood (or almost did) that audiences could not gather under one roof without putting our lives at risk. I remember getting some angry emails after I posted this piece [Social Distancing and the Power of Audience, March 11, 2020] on Medium suggesting that it was not a matter of if but when Broadway was going to have to shut down.

They announced a 30-day shuttering the next day.

At the time it seemed inconceivable to me that we might somehow find a way to re-create audience online.

And then that summer I mounted the first Hear Me Out New American Monologue Competition and on Labor Day we celebrated 12 finalists with live presentations of their monologues and an impromptu awards ceremony at which new work was celebrated. Although with an audience of 300 unmuting everyone would have been impossible, we did carve out a small audience "on stage" comprised of about 25 of us -- writers, actors and competition judges. And this little audience within an audience enjoyed the show unmuted with earbuds or headphones and cameras mostly on.

It was magic.

And so I got a little obsessed.

Purchase one of 30 "We Are Audience" (Seen & Heard) Tickets to Hear Me Out 2021

How'd they do it? 2020 Finalist Winners and the 'Me & My Masks' Prompt: Jeff Dunne

Over the next few days several of last year's Finalist Winners will share their process of getting from the festival prompt to a monologue they felt excited to submit to Hear Me Out Monologue Competition.

Today, we hear from:

Jeff Dunne, author of "A Change in Nature" (2020 Hear Me Out Finalist Winner)

When seeing the prompt of “Me & My Masks”, I was immediately reminded of a monologue that I’d written a while back called A Change In Nature. The piece centers on a raccoon as the archetype for a masked bandit of selfish, but not ill-intending, nature. It plays with the realities of how we often give in to our base urges despite recognizing that they often lead to poor choices, and how we then later justify those behaviors – to ourselves (by painting them as needs) and to others (often by trying to shift the blame away from ourselves).

How'd they do it? 2020 Finalist Winners and the 'Me & My Masks' Prompt: Michael Wells-Oakes

Over the next few days several of last year's Finalist Winners will share their process of getting from the festival prompt to a monologue they felt excited to submit to Hear Me Out Monologue Competition.

Today, we hear from:

Michael Wells-Oakes, author of "You Labor" (winner of the 2020 Silver Ear)

I wrote my monologue, “You Labor,” in answer to a question ignited by an article I’d read in The New York Times.  Pennsylvania voters, mostly male voters, working class men, supported Trump in his election and continued to support him in his presidency.   These were people I was related to, loved, went to school with, attended church, grew up with.  We had arrived such different political and life views. How?  I wanted to understand.  These were people I still loved, still knew.  I wanted to write a monologue from their viewpoint.  As closely I could, to understand and articulate what I learned and felt. 

How'd they do it? 2020 Finalist Winners and the 'Me & My Masks' Prompt: Lucy Avery Brooke and Fran Handman

Over the next few days several of last year's Finalist Winners will share their process of getting from the festival prompt to a monologue they felt excited to submit to Hear Me Out Monologue Competition.

Today, we hear from: Lucy Avery Brooke & Fran Handman

Fran Handman, author of "The Sticking Point" (winner of the 2020 August van der Becq Special Prize for Daring)

I don't think, in writing The Sticking Point, that I set out to show that Angie used the mask of the jokester to keep herself from seeing the bleakness of her existence. It was only when I read the theme of the Me & My Masks Monologue Competition that I realized that that was who Angie was and that was what she was unconsciously doing. Her mask kept her on an even, impassive keel, protected from panic, until the final moment when she realized that she was disappearing.

How'd they do it? 2020 Finalist Winners and the 'Me & My Masks' Prompt: Lizzie D. Combs

Over the next few days several of last year's Finalist Winners will share their process of getting from the festival prompt to a monologue they felt excited to submit to Hear Me Out Monologue Competition.

Today, we hear from:

Lizzie D. Combs, author of "Film Studies 101" (winner of the 2020 Bronze Ear)

I’d originally written an entirely different monologue in response to the “Me & My Masks” prompt. It’s about a bereaved, elderly woman looking back on her life, grappling with the death of her husband under the guise of discussing a lost dog (her “mask”). Close to the festival due date, I read the monologue to my husband. He liked it but challenged the subject matter. I’m decades younger than my character, and I’ve never suffered the kind of loss she’s working through in the piece. It’s a solid monologue I’m proud of, but it isn’t me. I decided to write something new.

How'd they do it? 2020 Finalist Winners and the 'Me & My Masks' Prompt: Janet Kenney

Over the next few days several of last year's Finalist Winners will share their process of getting from the festival prompt to a monologue they felt excited to submit to Hear Me Out Monologue Competition.

Today, we hear from:

Janet Kenney,  author  of  "What  I Wear Outside"  (2020  Hear  Me  Out  Finalist  Winner)When I first heard the prompt, I thought: I’m doomed. I really wanted to enter the contest because a) there was significant cash involved and, b) I’m studying with Mr. Tec at the moment and I wanted him to have a good turnout from among his students. But I had that “I’m doomed” thought because every little thought shows on my face. Always has. When I was a junior in high school, our history teacher, Miss DePietro, exhorted, begged us to ask questions if we were confused. “Except Janet,” she said. “If Janet’s confused she looks like she’s going to cry.” A friendly laugh from my classmates, a flush and a laugh from me. During my years of acting on the stage, I only had to think a thing to have my strong, fine-tuned body respond. A mask? I wish. So I did some scribbling in my notebook and, after I pushed through several vague ideas, I finally came to admit that I did have a mask: my dog, Grace, who’s snoring gently by my side as I write this.

How'd they do it? 2020 Finalist Winners and the 'Me & My Masks' Prompt: Patrick Mulcahey

Over the next few days several of last year's Finalist Winners will share their process of getting from the festival prompt to a monologue they felt excited to submit to Hear Me Out Monologue Competition.

Today, we hear from:

Patrick Mulcahey, author of "A Good Turn" (winner of the 2020 Golden Ear)

After I quit my job in November of 2019, I wanted to begin writing for stage performance again, after a hiatus of decades. My connections to theaters and theater professionals had lapsed, so I had to start over, find a new way in. A friend had turned me on to the NYCPlaywrights mailing list, where I saw contests posted. Those looked like a possible portal for a writer without contacts or referrals or an agent, so I proceeded to submit nine plays, each written to the sponsoring theaters' rules and specifications.

How'd they do it? 2020 Finalist Winners and the 'Me & My Masks' Prompt: Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro

Over the next few days several of last year's Finalist Winners will share their process of getting from the festival prompt to a monologue they felt excited to submit to Hear Me Out Monologue Competition.

Today, we hear from:

Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro author of "Torched" (2020 Hear Me Out Finalist Winner)

When I first saw your call for submissions, I instantly was inspired to revise “Torched,” which had been in a reading by the Asian American Theater Artists of Boston as part of my evening of five monologues, “Amazingly Annoying Women.” The theme of masks is critical to a play about a multicultural dean who at first seems to be delivering a run-of- the-mill speech commemorating the performance artist Kathleen Change, who died by self-immolation. By the end of her speech we realize the dean has come with “props,” a can of gasoline and a match. She removes her dean’s mask and becomes Kathleen, the tortured political activist who torched herself on the same spot 23 years before.

How'd they do it? 2020 Finalist Winners and the 'Me & My Masks' Prompt: Lillian Ann Slugocki

Over the next few days several of last year's Finalist Winners will share their process of getting from the festival prompt to a monologue they felt excited to submit to Hear Me Out Monologue Competition.

Today, we hear from:

Lillian Ann Slugocki author of “Angelica on the Balcony” (2020 Hear Me Out Finalist Winner)
I wrote most of “Angelica on the Balcony” at a hotel, Extended Stay America, in late July-- next to a highway and a Dunkin Donuts. I had a small studio with a kitchenette, and all the doors opened the wrong way. I had an editing job, remote. I sat at a strange little desk and did my work. At 4:00 p.m., I closed the plastic blackout curtains, made a cup of coffee, and wrote. I saw her outside, with the backdrop of a gray sky. It’s cold-- masks are clipped to the railing on her balcony.

For those who have struggled with Zoom audio. Here are some helpful hints.

To those of you who've ever entered a Zoom meeting and wondered why some of us can be heard better than others, here at long last is Rolando Teco's answer to the question:

What actually makes a microphone think?

 

 

Dad would have been 102 today.

So my sister reminded me that our Dad would have been 102 today. 

Wow. And I still can't quite believe he's gone. I still dream about him all the time. Here in his honor is a blog post from 2011. Thanks, Dad, for showing me the way in so many ways.

Leon Tec says: Follow Your Heart