It’s official. My play, We Happy Animals, was selected for the 36th Annual Samuel French OOB Play Festival! I’m particularly excited about bringing this play to the audience of the festival because it always gets such interesting reactions.

It’s also great because this is the second year in a row one of my plays was selected. Last year, A Map of Our Country, was one of the final fhirteen selections.

Check out the other plays and playwrights here.

Check out my interview with the Samuel French folks here.

If you’re in NYC July 19-24th, come check out the festival!!!

There is no argument to Smart’s comments about working hard, that’s obvious, and he even makes quite a passionate articulation about the amount of work that goes into crafting a play:

Writing a play, revising it, really working on it, staying open to the good and bad criticism, really reworking it, getting it out there, seeing it through to production, dealing with poor casting, weathering pans or rave reviews, reworking it, getting it done again, reworking it, repeat for the next script, repeat— all this is an act of love. It has to be. In the end, our approach to our own work is the only thing we can control—and I believe that you have to love the doing.

But his assessments about talent and quality of work being the reasons grants, fellowships, and productions are awarded are so infuriating to me as a  poor, queer playwright wearing the label of “emerging”, I almost have to laugh to be sure the article is real.

Smart’s opinions are so blatantly the product of privilege, they’re flowing from the citadel of straight, white men like condescending laughter. I have the same reaction to his opinions I have to members of the radical Tea Party. You mean people actually feel this way?

Regardless of his thinly veiled attempt to avoid peer shrapnel by using “we” to somehow incorporate himself into the “failed emerging playwright” he’s assaulting in his condescension and really has no understanding (or apparently desire to try) in the difficulties of being a minority playwright – whether that be racially, sexually, or other- in today’s theatrical climate.

Smart says (quite reductively) that emerging playwrights need to be more talented to get produced. And who’s judging the talent? Straight. White. Linear. Men.

I think it’s appropriate Smart at one point, addresses “Mr. Artistic Director”. With the current state of American theatre, Mr. Artistic Director, like Smart himself, is probably a straight, white, male with a penchant for linear, Aristotelian structure. With this demographic making up the majority of deciding bodies for fellowships, awards, and production seasons it’s no wonder Mat Smart doesn’t see a broken system.

To that end, here’s a monologue I wrote today. I don’t know the genesis of this piece really, just that I was thinking of Demeter/Persphone. I mean, c’mon, everyone thinks of them on a daily basis, right? This is called

The Daughter of Zeus and Styx

DEMETER stands among piles of broken china. She’s barefoot and tall with hair like your mothers. If you don’t have a mother, close your eyes. Her hair looks like that.

She wears a red poppy behind her ear.

DEMETER:

I prefer to eat with my hands.
Especially when I’ve cooked steak- hold the vegetables. They get stuck in my teeth.
Gripping the meat I’m about to eat,
causing the remaining blood that hasn’t been
evaporated out
or
cooked in
to rise up and fall over my fingers like aged Merlot, it reminds me that, yes,
certainty does exist in the world.
In that moment, I am certain that I stand (for I always stand when I eat) at my dinner table gripping a piece of meat.
Then, I take the flank into my mouth, down my throat, passing through acid and tubes until it lands, gracefully. Here.

She pats her stomach as if telling us she’s pregnant. A piece of china, bone white, falls and lands in the pile at her feet.

“Hush little baby, don’t say a word. Momma’s gonna-”
How are we expected to be good parents?

Another piece of china, bone white, falls and lands in the pile at her feet.

I prefer to write letters in ink from India. The permanence ensures me that my words will never be washed away or erased.
Imagine if it had rained during delivery or the letter were to be misplaced?
What happens then?
Indian ink commits the words, the contents, to time, to the ages and that’s what I prefer.

I’m starting to show. My dresses, so lovely before,  considerate of my geography, pull tight here and there…they move against me, unlike before. I can’t escape it.

He came into the kitchen that day, when he had found out, and stood over me as I sat on my chair, at the table,
the same table at which
I eat my flank of steak
and I washing the china when he looked down and breathed a sour breath onto me.
He would have looked beautiful
sexy even
if I didn’t know that in one bite,
like my flank of steak,
he could be devoured.

A bead of sweet sweat leaped from his forehead and landed here, on my tongue, as he told me:

“You’re going to have that baby.
It will be a girl.
And we will name her Kore.”

I dropped the china, a shard bounced back as if out of revenge and sliced my palm. The red beaded up and for a moment, I thought I was eating with my hands. You know, the steak.
Instead I stood up, ran my slice under some warm water and closed me eyes, laughing to myself.
How are we expected to be good parents?
Especially when we couple with those whom we hate?
A  night of him inside of me and we’re responsible for the life of a child. But in a way, responsible for all children. Kore will be pulled from me, like a pineapple pulled through a garden hose, and will meet your daughter on the beach and your son in a store and your child and yours among the flowers, and will hit them and kiss them, buy them birthday presents, teach them to weave, steal their jewlery and offer a blowjob behind the shed and I’m somehow responsible?

Another piece of china, bone white, falls and lands among the piles at her feet.

I left my letter on the bed and I took Kore with me. She was inside me still, almost ready to be born, and I went to a doctor, a great one, and I told him quite simply, that I needed not to be a mother. I delivered her three days later. Into his arms. He was surprisingly unsweaty, and didn’t smell sour, and instead smiled at me and kissed my forehead upon delivery. He gave me painkillers, you know, for the pain nd sent me on my way.
Without Kore.
But with, now, for the first time, a clear head, unclouded by china, or Indian Ink or steak.

Through a lucky(?) time/place happening, I had the chance to catch Kevin Smith’s new horror(?) film, Red State, at Radio City Music Hall on Saturday night. After the movie, Kevin Smith led a talk-back about the film with the very talented cast, including Melissa Leo and John Goodman. I learned a few things:

1. Kevin Smith loves to hear himself talk. More than he should. With such a talented cast and such an unspectacular (we’ll get to that in a second) film, I was anxiously waiting some words to be spoken that would help me better understand the film, but no. I just heard Kevin Smith talk. For a long time. While his fanboys in the audience sucked his cock. Over and and over again.

2. Kevin Smith has a very different view of a horror film than I.

3. Red State is over-written, unfocused, and sensationalistic.

I was super interested in the movie because of the way it’s being publicized: a horror film about a radical sect of religious crazies (think Fred Phelps and the Westboro clan) kidnapping teenagers. That’s 1/4 of it. Please, do NOT assume, as I perhaps stupidly did, that this movie was going to offer any sort of intelligent insight – satirical or otherwise- about religious fanatsicim or homophobia. It doesn’t. Instead, you’re offered a torture-porn fest that starts off SUPER promising and descends into a cheap thriller without anything interesting.

Q: When does the representation of violence (especially towards minority groups like homosexuals) perpetuate the problem rather than act as a step towards awareness? A: When you’re representing it in the way Kevin Smith does in his new movie. It’s especially unfortunate that the movies comes at a time like it does, with the tragic string of recent teenage suicides.

Don’t kill a gagged and bound gay person (did I mention he’s tied to a cross?) on screen for me to watch the horrible, bloody details of (and in this movie, it’s a HORRIFYING scene) in an attempt to show how awful and terrible the crime is and then try to have me laughing thirty seconds later or more importantly, construct the later 3/4 of your movie in tones, images, and plots totally unrelated to said horrifying death.

Oh, and don’t forget one of the most ridiculously long and tedious monologues ever recorded on film. Oh, there’s also a RIDICOLOUS turn involving large trumpet blasts, a la’ War of the Worlds. No, seriously. But don’t get excited. It’s nowhere near as exciting. Kevin Smith, you were out of your league with this one. Go ride roller coasters you’re tall enough to get on.

And please don’t mistake my passion about this as bitchiness. I wrote a short play called We Happy Animals that makes jokes about having to go down on the barrel in order for a suicide to work properly. But what’s important to consider with this type of “controversial” subject-matter is tone and execution, and I can’t help but declare that Kevin Smith has failed on both accounts.

In other, more important and sadder news, this guy’s extinct. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the Eastern Cougar to be extinct, confirming a belief among wildlife biologists that native populations were wiped out by man a century ago.

Also, Shirley Pehlps-Roper has a Twitter. Is that allowed in the bible?

Whales and Souls had it’s reading at Incubator Arts Project with the terraNOVA Collective’s Groundbreakers Reading Series, starring the amazing and wonderful Jackie Chung and directed by the super rad Tom Wojtunik. The rehearsal process prior to the public read was TOUGH and called for a lot of hard work/revisions/cutting/adding and I was very proud of the draft that emerged. More info to follow about what’s next for Whales and Souls. I may have some exciting news…mwahahahahaha.

In other news, my play The Dog(run) Diaries is recieving both a staged reading at the Wordsmyth Theatre Company in Houston, TX in April and is also a semi-finalist in this year’s New Play Project with Pandora Productions out of Louisville, KY. Both theatres seem to be great companies so it’ll be exciting to share this play with new audiences, as well as to further revise the play a bit. I’m still not 100% happy with where it’s at, so woo! Exciting opportunities!

At any rate, here’s the goddess Neko Case sing the Sparks’ original. Enjoy!

For those of you playing @ home, here are the lyrics:

When she’s on her best behaviour
Dont be tempted by her favours
Never turn your back on mother earth
Towns are hurled from A to B
By hands that looked so smooth to me
Never turn your back on mother earth
Grasp at straws that dont want grasping
Gaze at clouds that come down crashing
Never turn your back on mother earth
Three days and two nights away from my friends
Amen to anything that brings a quick return to my friends
To my friends
Never turn your back on mother earth
I’ll admit I was unfaithful
But from now I’ll be more faithful
Never turn your back on mother
Never turn your back on mother
Never turn your back on mother earth

Join us February 9-12 at the Incubator Arts Project (131 East 10th Street at 2nd Avenue), for the second tier in the Groundbreakers Playwrights Group, a five month long program in which playwrights work on a specific script with intent to create a completed draft. Through its three-tired process of table reads, staged readings and main stage productions terraNOVA Collective has cultivated some of the best emerging playwrights in New York City.

SIDNEY AND LAURA
Written by Halley Feiffer
Directed by Adam Greenfield
February 9 @ 8pm
Newlywed Laura has a lovely new husband and a lovely new home – her only problem is that pesky mysterious thumping coming from the other room, and the rock that her husband Sidney insists on carrying around at all times. Halley Feiffer’s absurdist comedy curiously uncovers how lies, loss and love combine creating a recipe for redemption, forgiveness and baked seashells.

DEATH FOR SYDNEY BLACK
Written by Leah Nanako Winkler
Directed by Mallory Catlett
February 10 @ 8pm
Mean Girls with bite. Heathers with fangs. Death for Sydney Black follows Nancy, the frumpy new girl at Northeast Valley High as she maneuvers her way through an absurdist deconstruction of a familiar movie genre.  Props fall from the sky and original songs on ukulele frame this wacky world, but a truth about the way girls – and ultimately women – treat each other rises from the extreme imagination of Leah Nanako Winkler. This all female ensemble of five portray girls with ambition, girls aimlessly searching, girls with pom poms, girls with lipstick, and the boys who love them.

WHALES AND SOULS
Written by Andrew Kramer
Directed by Tom Wojtunik
February 11 @ 8pm
A Creature emerges from the lake in a small, rural town to warn the villagers of an impending doom. This one-woman fable delves into the way we relate to the environment and the choices we make to free ourselves from the shackles that bind us to the place called “home”.

A PEOPLE
Written by Lauren Feldman
Directed by Jessi D. Hill
February 12 @ 8pm
A magical, lyrical journey into heritage, tradition, religion and humanity. Through vignettes, music and monologues, Lauren Feldman holds up a mirror to 4000 years of Jewish history, reminding us that we’re all descendents from somewhere, and we choose to embrace our lineage, deny it, or wrestle with it. Hilarious and terrifyingly honest, A People gathers a tight ensemble of ten performers, taking on a mass of old and new world personalities to create snippets of life the way we see it, the way we want it to be, and the way it is.

Are you being bugged? Is someone bugging you? Fed up with bugs? Or, are you just BUGGIN’ OUT? On Monday, December 6 the 2010 Groundbreakers take on this tiny but complex word and deconstruct it for a night of buggy plays. Featuring 10-minute plays by the freshest and flyest playwrights around, Halley Feiffer, Lauren Feldman, Andrew Kramer, Nick Mwaluko, and Leah Nanako Winkler. Directed by Carlos Armesto, Shelly Butler, Shay Gines, Jessi D. Hill, and Tom Wojtunik.

BUG OUT! will be on Monday, December 6 at HERE Arts Center (145 Sixth Ave, enter on Dominick Street, one block south of Spring). Doors are at 7:30pm; show starts at 8pm. Tickets are $10 and will be available for purchase at the door. All Proceeds Support the Groundbreakers Playwrights Reading Series in February 2011.

Come check it out! These are some AWESOME playwrights, yo! And my play, We Happy Animals, will be performed!

I use direct address. A lot. And I love it. As a play goer and play creator, I know when the story calls for it.

Yes, I do also acknowledge, the playwright’s desire to talk to audiences via a literal standing and speaking out, can be a way to “cleverly” disguise otherwise difficult challenges in writing…but, I would simply like to say that discussing the “4th Wall” as if it’s a given conceit of the theatre that has always existed (which isn’t, in fact true) or is somehow necessary for storytelling to be effective, makes me cringe. And point the finger to Western-centric narrative constructs that some people feel need to be the precedent for all storytelling. False.

The play is called The Dog(run) Diaries, by Andrew Kramer. It’s a four-person show about the relationship between a teenage boy and an older man, and it’s fantastic. It’s well-written, the characters are REAL, it’s funny and touching, and I believe it will have a life beyond the two performances we’re being given by the Prospect Theatre Company, as part of their Dark Nights Series. The entire team on this project is smart and talented! If you’re in NYC, we play at 3pm on Saturday, October 23, and 8pm on Sunday the 24th, at the Hudson Guild Theatre, 441 W. 26th Street.

Pretty awesome, right?

Here’s the plug link, duh.