Please enjoy my 2nd Rep Radio interview. This one happened on 1/7/12 at midnight on the stage of Plays & Players, and it’s the aforementioned live ouija board session in lieu of a traditional interview, in hopes that interviewer Kristen Scatton and I could contact one of Plays & Players’ 3 resident ghosts, and we did with help from my frequent Philly ghost pal Mala.  Sadly the recording contains no voices from the dead, aka, electronic voice phenomena.  Why does it always work so well on Ghost Hunters?

My 10-week spring semester course for adults, Playwriting I: The Fundamentals at NYU School of Continuing & Professional Studies begins on Wednesday 2/8. This noncredit, ungraded lecture and playwriting workshop covers the exact same dramatic writing and theatre history content I teach to matriculated undergrad students in my similar 3-credit, full semester courses at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and now also at Drexel University Westphal College of Media Arts & Design in Philadelphia, only it’s much more affordable. You will write a lot, you will learn a lot, you will have fun. Learn more and enroll.

See you there.

A hoodoo man and a searcher: Damien Wallace (left) and Kash Goins, who meet at a boardinghouse. (DREW HOOD / Throwing Light Photography)

‘Joe Turner’s Come and Gone’: A tale of searching, tinged with mysticism

Joe Turner – brother of Pete Turner, a late-19th-century governor of Tennessee – arbitrarily seized black men off the streets and forced them into slave farm labor for periods of seven years. Herald Loomis (the excellent Kash Goins), the mysterious, half-destroyed visionary figure at the center of Joe Turner, has spent three years since being freed walking with his young daughter Zonia (Lauryn Jones), searching for the wife who vanished while he was captive. They arrive at a Pittsburgh boardinghouse – the perfect locale to represent the comings and goings of the Northern Migration – run by the practical Seth Holly (James Tolbert) and his comforting wife, Bertha (Cherie Jazmyn).

 The other residents are a hoodoo man named Bynam (the thrilling Damien Wallace), who can bind people with a song and spell; Jeremy, a hotshot country bumpkin (Jamal Douglas); Mattie, a sweet, often-betrayed woman (Candace Thomas); and Molly, beautiful and dangerous (Mle Chester). There is a boy (Brett Gray) next door, who befriends Zonia, and a traveling peddler (Bob Weick), the “people finder” who is the grandson of slave traders.
Their lives briefly intersect – as they would in a week-to-week boardinghouse – mingling romance and business and desperation and pain and storytelling. The play powerfully suggests significance far beyond the plot: In the vision Herald Loomis sees of bones walking on the water and of people “shaking hands and saying goodbye to each other and walking every whichaway down the road,” Wilson give us the Middle Passage, to slavery, to the diaspora, to freedom.

The play lays down a solid layer of mundane detail – lots of biscuit-eating and coffee-drinking and dishwashing – allowing the extraordinary to stand out, especially the terrific Juba scene: wild, African-derived dancing after Sunday night’s fried-chicken dinner. The interesting set designed by Lance Kniskern is, suitably, half realistic, half suggestive, allowing the mysticism to mingle with the commonplace.

Get your tickets here.

Producer Lindsay Doran proving what all playwrights know: Hollywood is full of self-aggrandizing idiots.

No shit, dingus.  Pardon my French, but in Carrie Rickey’s 1/15/12 New York Times article “Perfectly Happy, Even Without Happy Endings,” Hollywood once again shows its complete ignorance of its own origins.  Still a rebellious teenager, the US film industry would rather pretend theatre doesn’t exist and that Hollywood sprang forth from itself, rather than admit that it actually inherited plenty of brains and good looks from its nerdy parents.

Louis B. Mayer once supposedly said, “Theatre is a flea up an elephant’s ass,” the elephant of course being Hollywood. More accurately — and what I tell my screenwriting students every semester — is that theatre is a 3000-year-long dog and motion pictures are a hundred-year-long hair on that dog’s tail; that maybe one day film will evolve to the point that it bears no resemblance to theatre but that day is still a long way off, and that budding filmmakers and screenwriters would do well to spend a little of their time in school studying  theatre.  Unfortunately film schools around the country, including the esteemed institution where I teach and of which I’m a graduate, seem intent on doing everything they can to shield their students from the power of live performance, ignoring theatre as inferior, obsolete, old-fashioned, insisting that the only legitimate form of narrative storytelling is film, all the while stealing from theatre on a regular basis.

In Rickey’s article we meet the latest example of a smug Hollywood cannibal: highly successful Hollywood producer Lindsay Doran, who discusses all the time, energy and resources she spent trying to figure out what makes the  great Hollywood films so memorable and emotionally potent.  She analyzed a lot of movies, consulted with market researchers  and pop psychologists and concluded that, gasp, positive movies do not necessarily have happy endings (Casablanca, To Kill a Mockingbird, Titanic, et al). Indeed, the most powerful films of all time, she concludes, mingle accomplishment with great loss. In other words, “the accomplishment the audience values most is resilience.”

So far, so good, except that all of this has been stolen from theatre (Casablanca in fact was based  on an unproduced stage play called Everybody Comes to Rick’s) and it’s embarrassing that Ms. Doran doesn’t even realize it.  She’s now running around Hollywood getting paid to give  self-help seminars to  producers as though she’s solved a great mystery; as though no one had thought of any of this before her; as though the poignant plots and character arcs of these great movies happened by accident.  It’s bad enough that so many in the film industry still prefer to think the 3-act plot structure was invented by Hollywood during the 1940s studio era rather than being lifted directly from opera and traceable all the way back to ancient Greece.  Now we’ve got Doran,  casting herself as a great thinker and voice in the wilderness, realizing in her Hollywood vacuum that the best narratives are those in which people don’t necessarily get what they want but learn to survive anyway.  Shocking.  She could have saved herself a lot of time and energy by asking the nearest playwright.

Friederich Nietzsche

A playwright might have advised her to simply spend an afternoon reading The Birth of Tragedy by Friederich Nietzsche (coincidentally mentioned in the same NYT issue in Alexander Star’s review of Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen’s book American Nietzsche, A History of an Icon and His Ideas) and Three Uses of the Knife by David Mamet, or skipping both books and going straight to the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita or the writings of the Buddha.

David Mamet

You see, Ms. Doran, the primary purpose of drama has always been to show unhappy people going through suffering to try and stop their unhappiness, experiencing complete and utter despair along the way, and learning that they’ll never be happy (even if they do accomplish their main goal in the plot) but that life is worth living anyway.  Why? Because like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, total happiness is impossible to achieve.  Hollywood stole its narrow definition of “happiness” from 19th century stage melodramas which said all anyone needed to be happy was a good spouse, a good job, and entry into the middle class.  In other words, achieving the American Dream will make one happy.  As you have discovered through your own convoluted and costly means, movies (and plays) that endorse this belief are fun but forgettable.

The memorable and positive protagonist is one who comes out the other end of her or his desperate journey loving life and wanting to go on anyway despite confronting loss, regret and learning that they’ll never get everything they want. This is called gaining wisdom.  As I hinted at above, this unfortunate fact of human existence is also summed up by every major religion: to live is to suffer.

Any good playwright can tell you that audiences tend to feel healed and redeemed by watching someone else go through this tough journey to wisdom because it makes viewers vicariously wiser and prepares them for their own journeys.  This powerful approach to narrative storytelling is nearly universal in Western culture going back to ancient Greece.  Next time you’re stumped by a great cinematic question please start by ignoring Hollywood market researchers and your favorite pop psychologists, and asking the nearest playwright.  You’ll likely get your answers there.

“So where does Ms. Doran go from here?” Rickey’s article asks you in its conclusion. Hopefully to see a few plays.

By the way, Ms. Doran,  I can show you some killer spec screenplays that I promise you’re going to love.  Seriously. Have your people call my people.

[images via nytimes.com]

Moliere sez be there.

You might recall from previous postings that Philadelphia’s historic  Plays & Players theatre turns 100 this year.  In addition to the season of plays we’re producing celebrating that fact (for example Joe Turner’s Come and Gone opens this week and it’s set in 1911 the same year Plays & Players opened), we’re also doing a series of readings of plays that were performed by Plays & Players 100 years ago.  Up first is a rehearsed reading of Moliere’s hilarious 1672 comedy The Learned Ladies, directed by nationally recognized local comedy star Jennifer Childs. It’s Monday night 1/23 at 7pm.  Tickets are $25 and go to support Plays & Players.  Check out this Facebook page to get the full scoop:

http://www.facebook.com/events/342261689136970/?ref=ts

Frederica Sagor Maas, Silent-Era Scriptwriter, Dies at 111

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Published: January 14, 2012, NEW YORK TIMES

“She told of Hollywood moguls chasing naked would-be starlets, the women shrieking with laughter. She recounted how Joan Crawford, new to the movies, relied on her to pick clothes. Almost obsessively, she complained about how many of her story ideas and scripts were stolen and credited to others.

“Frederica Sagor Maas told all — and maybe more — in interviews and in her memoirs, which she published in 1999 at the age of 99. Before dying on Jan. 5 in La Mesa, Calif., at 111, Mrs. Maas was one of the last living links to cinema’s silent era. She wrote dozens of stories, adaptations and scripts, sat with Greta Garbo at the famed long table in MGM’s commissary, and adapted to sound in the movies, and then to color.

“Perhaps most satisfying, Mrs. Maas outlived pretty much anybody who might have disagreed with her version of things. “I can get my payback now,” she said in an” CONT’D AT NYTIMES.COM>>

Excited to report that August Wilson’s masterful Joe Turner’s Come and Gone opens on the mainstage of Plays & Players this Thursday, January 19th. The play is set in 1911, the same year Plays & Players was founded, which is part of the reason for its inclusion in our 100th anniversary season.  It’s also included because it’s a smart and powerful play, and because it’s part of our mission statement to bring greater diversity to Philadelphia’s theatre scene.

Wilson took the title from the old blues song Joe Turner, my favorite version of which is the one by Mississippi John Hurt:

The song is about Joe Turney, aka Joe Turner, a real-life kidnapper of blacks during the Jim Crow South after the Civil War.  I quote liberally from usprisonculture.com:  “In the late 19th century, a man named Joe Turney became well-known in the South. He was the brother of Pete Turney who was the governor of Tennessee. Joe Turney had the responsibility of taking black prisoners from Memphis to the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville. It is said that Joe would make a habit of distributing some of the prisoners to convict farms along the Mississippi River, where employers paid commissions to obtain laborers.

“According to Leon F. Litwack in his terrific book Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow:  ‘Most of the prisoners had been rounded up for minor infractions, often when police raided a craps game set up by an informer; after a perfunctory court appearance, the blacks were removed, usually the same day, and turned over to Turney. He was reputed to have handcuffed eighty prisoners to forty links of chain. When a man turned up missing that night in the community, the word quickly spread, ‘They tell me Joe Turner’s come and gone.’ Family members were left to mourn the missing (p.270).

“Joe Turney was the embodiment of the convict leasing system. ”

Set in a boarding house in Pittsburgh’s predominantly black Hill district during the Great Migration, this is a play about the search for identity, family and home after centuries of slavery.  It is at times heartbreaking, hilarious, musical and entertaining. In 1911 as emancipated slaves move north in search of employment and a chance to start over, Seth and Bertha Holly’s boarding house offers a new place to call home. Their routines are shaken when an angry and lost man arrives looking for his wife whom he hasn’t seen for years after he was captured and put in a chain gang by Joe Turner.  They are all forced to confront their own demons and come together to help the lost stranger find his way.

Don’t miss it. Get your tickets here.

Plays & Players Presents:
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson
Directed by Daniel Student
Starring Kash Goins, Damien Wallace, James Tolbert, Cherie Jazmyn, Jamal Douglas, Candace Thomas, Mlé Chester, Bob Weick, Lauryn Jones, Brett Gray, and Erin Stewart

Can’t wait to see Vincent D’Onofrio‘s directorial debut, the horror musical DON’T GO IN THE WOODS with screenplay by my good friend Joe Vinciguerra and music by the one and only Sam Bisbee. ABC news clip here.

[images via facebook and zimbo.com]

Virginia Dare; the first English child born in the New World.

On Tuesday 1/24/12 @ 4:00pm as part of my PDC@Plays&Players residency in Philly we’ll be presenting a rehearsed reading of my unproduced play Virginia Dare.  There’ll be a Q&A afterward and I’d dearly love your feedback on this work in development.

VIRGINIA DARE is a multidisciplinary, multicultural play; a 21st century Southern Gothic drama gone global.  Set in a not-too-difficult-to-imagine near future in which the US has boots on the ground not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but Pakistan and even India, the play is a high stakes tale. An Appalachian brother and sister plot patricide against a backdrop of perpetual war and cosmic collisions.  With a touch of magic realism and a

The Hindu mother goddess Durga rides into battle.

spike of Eastern religion, the plot focuses on two irreparably damaged working class siblings who are struggling to deal with memories of their violent childhood, a forgotten murder, an impending murder looming on the horizon, and even a trip to the afterlife.  Startling images and verbal sparring send them both hurtling toward a dark decision.

WHAT: Reading of Virginia Dare  featuring Pardon My Invasion actors Emily Gibson and Joe O’Brien, directed by Daniel Student

Eternally volatile and disputed Kashmir.

WHEN:  Tuesday 1/24, 4pm-6pm.

WHERE: Plays & Players, 3rd floor Skinner Studio; 1714 Delancey Place (in Center City), Philadelphia, PA.

[images via todayontoday.com, wisdomlaughterhealing.com and dismalworld.com]

Scratch Night

Thu., Jan. 12, 7 p.m., free, with Jeffrey Stanley and Justin Jain, Live Arts Studio, 919 N. Fifth St., 215-413-9006, livearts-fringe.org.

by A.D. Amorosi

Before Nick Stuccio buys a zoo, I mean, a restaubar/performance space on Delaware Ave., he and the Fringe peeps will take advantage of that Live Arts Brewery spot in Northern Liberties for several socially interactive programs between artists and audiences. Best case-in-point is the monthly Scratch Night, a salon environment funded by John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Knight Arts Challenge, where cross-genre performers and directors make new works based heavily on improvisation.  First up are Jeffrey Stanley and Justin Jain CONT’D AT citypaper.net>>