Continue reading "WHY then HOW" »
https://rolandtec.medium.com/i-wrote-a-show-to-capture-this-moment-53cdd0d955fa
originally posted to Medium.
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My new play A Nagging Feeling Best Not Ignored (which I'm currently performing on Wednesday nights) grew out of the January 6th insurrection. My last film, We Pedal Uphill was my very personal attempt to make sense of the climate of fear which seemed to take root in this country in the months and years immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks. The first play of mine that was produced in New York, Bodily Function, grew out of an offhand remark made by a midlevel corporate executive about workplace morale and bathroom breaks. The comment was delivered casually, almost cynically over a brunch with friends in Boston. Maybe the fact that the man who made the comment was not a friend of mine but rather a friend of friends, kept me from asking a pointed follow-up question. And so for weeks afterward I was haunted by the values behind his remarks. And eventually found my way to a play about a woman who has reached the pinnacle of success in her career yet somehow finds herself not quite feeling what she always imagined she would.
For whatever reason, there usually is some kind of thorn or confounding riddle at the center of the scripts I write. I'm drawn to the details of how human beings cope. We are uniquely creative and optimistic animals most of the time and how we manage to overcome, work around or stumble through life's towering obstacles is, I think, where the most vivid storytelling lies.
So it shouldn't have surprised me to find that my latest play, A Nagging Feeling Best Not Ignored has left some audience members feeling a kind of emotional whiplash. The piece is a kind of attempt to capture something of the tenuous relationship to truth and reality we find ourselves swimming in these days. And so the man at the center of the piece is, to put it mildly, an unreliable narrator.
It's difficult to know what to believe as he leads us from one assertion to the next, not much of it able to be held by the same single reality of one person's life.
It turns out that after an hour of very dark laughter, distortions of the facts of our reality and the tension of an audience holding one man's future in their hands through their vote at the end of the show, people need a few min. to process what they've just been through.
And you told us as much in the feedback offered online after the first three performances.
Post-Show Process Conversations Led by Leading Thinkers in the Fields of Psychology, Government, the Arts, Sociology, History and the Law.
This week's sold out.
But we've just added a bunch of additional dates to the schedule so if you weren't sure you were going to get in to see this unique live solo Zoom show, visit the website today and you may be in luck. The schedule has been expanded to include Wednesday nights from now through September 7th.
The following videos feature just some of the raves that have been pouring in from audience members at our first few performances.
Continue reading "A NAGGING FEELING EXTENDED THROUGH SEPTEMBER 7, 2022" »
In March of 2020 mankind was thrust into a new paradigm. With virtually every aspect of life squeezed, stretched and stuffed into shapes that many found virtually unrecognizable, the essence of what it means to be human was called into question. And change was all but inevitable.
Change can be painful, frightening, frustrating and uncomfortable. And so for the better part of two years everyone has to some degree found him or herself wrestling with uncertainty and a gnawing question regarding all our life choices pre-CoVid_19.
Opening 2 min. of the February 7th reading to an invited audience.
This has left us at once hungry for human connection (as the oxygen of life) and wary of it. We have found ourselves surprised by our own behavior. How many friends have expressed the same confusion regarding an acute loneliness and yearning for human connection coupled with an inexplicable paralysis when it comes to returning phone calls, emails and text messages. How odd it has been to observe oneself letting 2, 3, or more days sail by while phone messages or emails went unreturned even as we wished for nothing more than the back and forth of a chat with a friend.
Zoom is the perfect architecture for this moment.
Continue reading "Why my next play had to be a solo show performed on Zoom." »
Here's what Patrick had to say about the 2021 Festival Theme: Borders.
For at least twenty years I’ve been carrying around a character and a story I didn’t know how to tell. A close friend who’s a physician told me about a patient of his (anonymous, of course) whose life ended in tragedy, and tragically alone, because her children refused to believe the illness she complained of was anything but a cover for alcoholism. Since then I entertained the vague notion I’d write something about her someday — which became the day Roland announced the theme of the next Hear Me Out Monologue contest would be “Borders.”
Watch Mulcahey's winning monologue as performed by Alley Mills at the 2021 Hear Me Out Labor Day Festival & Awards Ceremony.
As we enter Year 3 of the early 21st century pandemic, it's understandable why we might all long for nothing more than a life outside... outside the walls of Zoom.
The last couple years were dominated by stories of loss -- loss of income, loss of job security, loss of essential routines, loss of friendships, confidence and, of course, the worst loss of all: loss of life.
But scattered here and there, tucked behind and alongside the wreckage lie some unexpected gifts.
Continue reading "Don't Throw Our Baby Out with the Bathwater (or: Why We Still Need Zoom)" »
For too many years I held onto a childish myth about show business that cost me dearly.
The myth goes something like this:
The truth is: there never has been, nor ever will be a show, book, movie, song, or other cultural commodity that soared to popular success without the tender loving care and devotion of its original author. The fact of the matter is there never will be another living soul as fiercely loyal and devoted and confident of your original work than you. And the sooner you get comfortable with this fact of life, the easier life as an artist will be.
You see, we can waste an awful lot of time and energy waiting and hoping and wishing and praying for someone (anyone!) to show up one day displaying the same absolute confidence in the importance, the beauty and the power of your work that you do.
Once you stop holding your breath with your ear to the wind waiting for a sign, the sooner you'll be able to see and hear the genuine and more objective enthusiasm for the work that many among your team come by honestly.
For this reason alone, you should resist the temptation to convince yourself to sit out the necessary and time consuming process of figuring out a path to bigger and more passionate audiences for each particular work.
In a world in which social norms, political systems, economic laws and the natural environment are all facing existential challenges, the language we use to describe the world around us takes on new urgency. In order to change a thing, we first need to name it. In order to care for something or someone it matters that we name it. If we want to understand something that confuses or frightens us, first we must name it.
Since human beings created language, the labels we assign to things, people, places, activities, relationships, complex issues, etc. etc. have influenced our view of them. There are things we carry with us throughout life that feel so important, so powerful, that sometimes we dare not name them for fear that naming them might invite them to consume us. And yet, oftentimes the act of finally naming something we’ve been living with results in a newfound freedom. And, yes, we also name people, pets, places, projects and creations.
And sadly, these days, our choices regarding how we identify certain things can even threaten to tear apart our most treasured relationships.
Your 2022 Hear Me Out entry must in some way refer to some naming and its impact on the characters you’re revealing. As always we hope you will find your own way into our festival theme and we do not require the use of any specific words, language or stylistic choices.
We only ask that your character grapples with our festival theme in some way.
And remember: your monologue must introduce us to a character who is talking to another person (or group of people). Short stories and essays will be disqualified.
Click here to get started. Early Bird Deadline June 15, 2022 at Noon.
So... what do you all think? How does this make you feel? Would you buy a ticket to this thing?
Here's what Kate had to say about the 2021 Festival Theme: Borders.
The Hear Me Out invitation to think dramatically and expansively about "borders" was one of my favorite things: a call to write. I used the prompt the way I use most rules: as something to subvert.
What comes to mind easily when we hear the word 'border'? You bet that's the very thing I'm going to avoid. There are borders we cross, border-crossing as an identity or a formative experience. I found my mind wandering to those borders that call to us, that we don't cross.
I submitted a piece about an elderly woman who is assumed to be harmless, and even vulnerable, who then turns out to be the potentially dangerous transgressor. Her decision not to transgress - to preserve a border - ends up being the definitive action of my short monologue play. The ultimate action is one of restraint, that forgoes gratification in the name of love.
To the writers who submit to the upcoming Hear Me Out competition, may the prompt inspire and unleash you. And if it doesn't, throw it away and see what comes of it.
Watch Cortesi's winning monologue as performed by Marnie Andrews at the 2021 Hear Me Out Labor Day Festival & Awards Ceremony.
In 1922, an unknown composer who supported his family by working as an insurance man, did something audacious. He self-published a collection of songs he'd been writing over several years and proceeded to mail out complimentary copies to practically everyone of some importance he could think of. His name was Charles Ives and today, thanks to the efforts of another composer of a younger generation who championed his work, he is widely regarded as one of American music's greatest composers.
It would be easy to take this little anecdote as evidence that all we need in order to succeed is perseverance and a touch of audacity but the sobering truth is that of the hundreds of copies of Mr. Ives' 114 Songs that he sent out, most sat on desks and languished unopened for years, if not decades. Had it not been for the passion of the young composer Henry Cowell who made it his personal mission to get the establishment to recognize the great leaps of imagination made by the older man, we might never have heard much of this groundbreaking music.
Those of us who write for the stage do so in an environment in which the discovery of something wonderful and new is well on its way to becoming nothing short of miraculous. With virtually no meaningful governmental support of our theaters, there is no place really to which a playwright can send his or her script and be assured of a thoughtful read.
The sad truth is when you send your full-length play or screenplay to the literary department of a target theatre or the development department of an independent film production company the odds are stacked against you.
Continue reading "If a script lands in a forest with no one to read it, can it make a noise?" »
I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the first day of fourth grade. I came home very excited by the innovative way in which my teacher, Ms. Danielson, had organized her classroom. In one back corner she'd placed a round oak table, low to the ground with about 5 chairs placed around it. To the casual observer it may have looked like a breakfast nook for 9-year-olds.
This, she explained, was The Writing Corner.
Our teacher explained that at any time during any day of the entire year if any of us wanted to we would be welcome to leave whatever project or discussion was occupying the class at that moment and instead take a seat at the writing table and just write. That option would be available to us for the entire year and it would never be questioned.
Implicit in the arrangement was an understanding that writing no matter what it was we were working on, would always be an excellent use of one's time, so much so that it should be protected with a special status.
I thought this was just the coolest thing ever. And I was especially excited to share it with my Mom, the writer, as soon as I got home.
It was probably no more than a week or two after that when I found myself hard at work on my first writing assignment for my beloved Ms. Danielson. If Ms. Danielson had positioned herself in my view as a champion of writing and writers, I certainly wanted the first piece I turned in to be excellent.
Continue reading "My first editor was my toughest. (and we always remember the toughest)" »
Some of you may recall reading about the couple of Halloweens I spent teaching Ear Training and Music Theory to a wonderful music-loving community of folksingers and songwriters gathered by my pal Cosy Sheridan in the Utah desert. I learned so much about Music, something I thought I understood in every which way, by attempting to teach certain principles of how its put together to students who did not know how to read music notation. There really is something eye-opening about diving into a language without the usual visual markers we're used to referring to.
Anyway, anyone who has attended one of the Hear Me Out Monologues Labor Day Festival and Awards Ceremony will recognize the name Cosy Sheridan because it is she and her husband Charlie Koch who have provided our incredibly moving musical interludes in between the presentation of Finalist monologues. I consider Cosy to be one of the finest lyricists of our time. There is an economy to her songwriting that surpasses any other I can think of. When you enter into a Cosy Sheridan lyric the words will creep up on you as she chooses carefully to collect the seemingly simplest possibly prosaic words and phrases to spin her tale. And then just when you're lulled into thinking that everything there is to see has already been seen she somehow shifts our focus and the whole world is alight with something unexpected.
In a nod to CoVid and the disappointing need to put Moab Folk Camp on hiatus these last two years, Cosy is offering a songwriting retreat called Desert Song. It'll run from Tuesday May 31st through Friday June 3rd in the gorgeous setting of Moab.
Continue reading "A Unique Opportunity to Study Songwriting with One of the Best" »
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