EXTRA CRITICUM

"Make Them Sit Forward!"

Hi, all!  Busy here in Burbank, and with the madness of the holidays I've been out of the soup for a bit.  (Oh, and I should also say: Happy New Year! - if a little belatedly.)

I'm taking an online playwriting workshop via Gotham.  The week's discussion is about how to make theater viable in a TV, film, and internet age.  I've been thinking a LOT about the "what the heck are we doing this for?" question, so I thought I'd post some of my thinking on that topic.

One of my classmates told a story about how her daughter, on a Peace Corps assignment in West Africa, saw children use sticks, tires and scraps as dolls, since they had no actual toys.

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!

Writing: The Fast and the Furious (Part I)

I was planning to write about political theater and the theater of politics… but I have a mild case of election fatigue so I think I’ll save that post for Inauguration Day.  Instead, I’ll stick to the topic I planned: “Writing: The Fast and the Furious.”  (By which I mean to make playwriting sound cooler than a Vin Diesel movie.  Which it IS, people.  Come on!)

Ed: An Introduction

“Greetings and Salutations!”  (Whose quote is that, anyway?  Some character used to say that – but who?  If you remember, please drop me an e-mail. Oh, nertz – I digress, already… let’s just start over.)

‘Howdy!’ from Burbank, California.  I’m writing this from my kitchen table, where I can see the mountains from my window.   Halloween’s gone and November’s here, and even in California there’s a palpable cooling in the air.

So… Southern CA.  Yeah.  I often ask myself: what the heck am I doing here?  What is a nice New York playwright like me doing in a place like this?