EXTRA CRITICUM

How'd They Do It? 2021 Hear Me Out Winning Writers Share Their Secrets: Patrick Mulcahey

Over the next few weeks 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 Ecce Mom (winner of the Silver Ear for long form monologues)

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.” 

 

Why did that bring the character into focus for me? I’m not sure I can explain it even to my own satisfaction. Yes, “Borders” as a theme had some political currency at the time, but I wasn’t thinking politically. In my own life I’ve always had an awareness of the boundaries we draw between each other, even — or especially — in our closest, most intimate, most enduring relationships. And when we make a conscious decision to breach those boundaries, those borders, we do so because we want to accomplish something: revelation, persuasion, a provocation to a response which may or may not be the response we want. What else is drama is made of?

 

I struggled with the writing at first. In the real-life story told to me, the woman didn’t conceal her illness from her grown children: they just didn’t believe her. I had no room for them and no way to explain their skepticism; maybe the reason I never could write it in another form was the prospect of creating a character group with no function but to be wrong.

 

So I invented another boundary, a full and fully concealed intimacy in which the character’s diagnosis was understood and appropriate measures taken. Which became another loss, another secret to tell, another border to cross. 

Watch Mulcahey's winning monologue as performed by Alley Mills at the 2021 Hear Me Out Labor Day Festival & Awards Ceremony. 

How'd They Do It? 2021 Hear Me Out Winning Writers Share Their Secrets: Kate Cortesi

Over the next few weeks 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:

Kate Cortesi, author of I Love Parties (winner of the Golden Ear for long form monologues and the Most Memorable Character Award)

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. 

This play has legs: THE INTERVIEW by Faye Sholiton turns 25.

In 1997 a modestly titled little play by Faye Sholiton was a winner of Dayton Future Fest. If you just heard the title, THE INTERVIEW, it's possible you'd make the mistake of expecting a simple narrowly focused piece about an interview. But Faye Sholiton's play is full of surprises and runs deep and wide. It reminds me a bit of another Holocaust play, Ida Fink's brilliant one-act, also modestly titled, THE TABLE. Both plays will creep up on you and will not let go. That may explain why today, some 25 years later, THE INTERVIEW continues to be produced all over the map. 

On the occasion of the latest production, at Sarasota Jewish Theatre, I wanted to celebrate the accomplishment of this play by putting a few questions to the author. Sholiton was kind enough to take time out of her busy schedule to speak to some of the elements of THE INTERVIEW that caught my eye.

My not-so-hidden agenda here is that this quarter century success for this play might remind all the writers reading this of two important truths:

1. The play that we care most deeply about will usually be the one that outlives us 
   and...
2. There are plays being produced all the time that are not playing in Broadway houses and those plays can have long lives making a lasting impact on thousands of theatre lovers all the same. 

brief synopsis:

Fifty years after her liberation from the Nazi death camps, Bracha Weissman still suffers the  aftermath of her old trauma. When she allows Ann Meshenberg, the child of other survivors, into her suburban Cleveland home to take testimony for an archival video project, Bracha reviews the legacy she has left her own daughter. THE INTERVIEW is a story about mothers, daughters and memory – about forgiving and being forgiven.

The Interview took top honors in three national new play contests and won a coveted Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence grant. It is featured in Gene A. Plunka's book Holocaust Theater: Dramatizing Survivor Trauma and Its Effects on the Second Generation (Routledge, London) 2019. The play has been performed more than three dozen times around the U.S. since its premiere at the 1997 FutureFest in Dayton, Ohio.

Questions for the author:

Tec
You wrote this play in the 1990s? And it's been produced dozens of times in theatres of different shapes and sizes. Now, for the first time we are entering a world which pretty soon won't have any Holocaust survivors left. How do you feel that fact changes the way the play is understood?

A Must-View Interview with Victoria LaBalme on Write Out Front

I met Micheline Auger when she was putting together a fun and kind of audacious experiment: placing a desk and lamp and chair in the window of The Drama Bookshop to be a weeklong installation which she called Write Out Front. Installed in the window in 2 hour time slots playwrights were invited to just do our thing... allowing our playwriting to be projected above our heads for all passersby to stop and read if they liked.

Micheline is one of those artists who can't or won't stop asking probing questions, challenging our assumptions about how things are supposed to go. Everything she touches seems to call upon us to ask ourselves why we do and how we do what we do. The result is there's often a lot of interesting and inspiring stuff swirling around her. And lately the form this takes online is her delightfully positive interviews with super smart and generous writers on her website.

This one I just stumbled upon really hit me at just the right moment. I needed to hear Victoria Labalme's clear-eyed reassuring message. And the questions Micheline tosses at her friend are pretty wonderful. Take a look.

 

 

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.

Gimme Some Truth: Conversation with Essayist Randon Billings Noble

I met essayist Randon Billings Noble at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. As I remember it, all of our conversations were either about music (she studied classical violin and plays piano) or "nonfiction." That's how it is at residencies, and man, am I missing that now. Anyway, back in June 2013 Randon posted this as a Facebook status:

The Alchemy of Directing

Of all the arts and crafts associated with the theatre biz the one I find most confounding is directing. One reason is that the director’s practical work is largely invisible, occurring in private rehearsal spaces with the actors and other creative team members before public performances begin. Another reason is that it seems there are as many approaches to directing as there are directors.

Last week for me a curtain was pulled back, casting some light on this alchemist-like profession. The occasion was a one-hour interview with Bart Sher at the Dramatists Guild in New York. (Interview was recorded and posted on the Internet.)

Patrick Daniels Talks Charlie-Victor-Romeo

In between navigating the terrifying landscape that is Charlie Victor Romeo, actor Patrick Daniels was kind enough to field a few of our questions. Fasten your seatbelts, folks. It's FAA regulations, after all.

Q:
The Charlie Victor Romeo road has been a long and winding one. How much time was there between your first production and this current one running at 3LD and how has that changed your perception of the project and/or your performance? Also, you’ve toured the show in the intervening years. Has the show morphed with each new venue?