It’s almost September?! Wow. Time flies when you’re reading plays.
The Inkwell team (including me, Anne, your ever intreprid, if sometimes tardy, blogger) has been reading all right. Reading and reading and reading. We received more than 320 plays in the middle of March, when so many brave playwrights heard our call (our second call for submissions, that is) and put their work into our hands.
We know it’s frustrating for playwrights to experience months of radio silence. Well, let me explain a little bit more about our process, which includes more than 50 people, a thorough review of plays (sometimes over and over again), and a lot of discussion among our readers and The Inkwell leadership team.
First off, I can't emphasize this enough — we take all submissions very seriously. We know it takes courage and tears to write a play... let alone let others take a look at it.
That’s why we assembled a team of more than 50 readers, each of whom we train to review your plays with an open heart. We also gave them very specific criteria by which to review these plays from many different angles.
Our Managing Director and play submissions master Lindsay Haynes explains how we look at these plays in her blog entry from a couple of months ago.
We then asked them to read every play. EVERY PLAY. And that’s what we did.
But wait. There’s more.
We sifted through the reviews of all 320 plays and selected about 100 plays to read a little more closely. And not just by one more person. We had each of these plays read by at least two more reviewers.
But wait. There’s more.
We then selected about 35 to review again. These are the plays that our readers themselves found to be inventive, to play with language in a way they hadn’t seen before, to portray characters that grabbed them, that experimented with theatricality and spectacle.
And we read them again. Each of these plays was reviewed by at least three people…. In the end, these 35 plays were read by at least four people.
We then brought our readers together for a series of discussions about this group of plays… to talk about why they loved them, to examine the playwright’s approach to collaboration, to explore the ways in which The Inkwell might help the playwright.
And that takes us up to August…and to The Inkwell's first showcase event!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Without further adieu, I’m happy to tell you more about our first showcase reading of 2010 featuring plays and playwrights chosen from The Inkwell's 2010 open call for submissions.
We’ve chosen four raw, wild, provocative, magical, and deeply funny plays from four talented local writers. And we will be presenting a showcase reading of each (meaning a 20-minute excerpt from each play) at The Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage Festival on September 6th at 7:00 p.m. in the South Atrium Foyer.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We’re terribly excited about this showcase.
First, we’re thrilled to provide local writers a chance to collaborate with us and to have their work seen at The Kennedy Center. For those of you who are out of town, The Page to Stage Festival is a big event, bringing 40 theater companies from all over the area to the building for a day of exploring new plays. It also attracts hundreds and hundreds of people from all over the city who are excited to see plays in progress.
We’re also excited to gather a group of more than 40 artists to work on these plays with us — four writers, four directors, four dramaturges, two supervising dramaturges, and 20 or so actors.
Finally, we’re really excited about the plays! We’ve got myth and magic, a funny and disturbing exploration of eugenics, a ballad about a graffiti artist/folk hero, and a musing on astrophysics as it relates to grief. Here’s a short synopsis for each play… to whet your appetite for some bite-sized morsels of some seriously rich and delicious work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MADDY LEE: A SOUTHERN TRAGEDY by Stephen Spotswood - Maddy Lee's a bootlegger's daughter and voodoo sorceress who knows all the dark, knotted secrets of the bayou. But when she falls for Jason, the son of the richest man in town, she gives up everything to be with him. And in that moment of sacrifice, Maddy unleashes a terrible spell.
DARWIN'S COUSIN by Christin Siems - Layne is given everything she thought she ever wanted after in-vitro fertilization. But with that wish fulfilled comes a horrible choice...to choose among five unborn babies...to decide who is weak, who is strong, who will be happy, who will be miserable...to choose who will survive.
WE FIGHT WE DIE by Timothy Guillot - The infamous Q is a rebel vandal artist leaving a beautiful, terrific trail of graffiti art wherever he goes. When he’s caught for the 23rd time tagging where he shouldn’t, tthe mayor offers him a deal that could give him freedom or steal that which is most precious to him.
BLUE STRAGGLER by Rebecca Bossen - As an astrophysicist, Lisa can neatly order her world around numbers, equations, and all the different theories of the universe. But there’s no equation in the universe that can explain why the person she most loves has been taken away. Or is there?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We hope you can join us at The Kennedy Center on Labor Day. If not, learn more about the showcase here at the blog (hopefully with a few words from the playwrights and dramaturgs and directors).
And please stay tuned as we announce more showcases and readings to come. It's going to be a busy Fall!
The Inkwell team (including me, Anne, your ever intreprid, if sometimes tardy, blogger) has been reading all right. Reading and reading and reading. We received more than 320 plays in the middle of March, when so many brave playwrights heard our call (our second call for submissions, that is) and put their work into our hands.
We know it’s frustrating for playwrights to experience months of radio silence. Well, let me explain a little bit more about our process, which includes more than 50 people, a thorough review of plays (sometimes over and over again), and a lot of discussion among our readers and The Inkwell leadership team.
First off, I can't emphasize this enough — we take all submissions very seriously. We know it takes courage and tears to write a play... let alone let others take a look at it.
That’s why we assembled a team of more than 50 readers, each of whom we train to review your plays with an open heart. We also gave them very specific criteria by which to review these plays from many different angles.
Our Managing Director and play submissions master Lindsay Haynes explains how we look at these plays in her blog entry from a couple of months ago.
We then asked them to read every play. EVERY PLAY. And that’s what we did.
But wait. There’s more.
We sifted through the reviews of all 320 plays and selected about 100 plays to read a little more closely. And not just by one more person. We had each of these plays read by at least two more reviewers.
But wait. There’s more.
We then selected about 35 to review again. These are the plays that our readers themselves found to be inventive, to play with language in a way they hadn’t seen before, to portray characters that grabbed them, that experimented with theatricality and spectacle.
And we read them again. Each of these plays was reviewed by at least three people…. In the end, these 35 plays were read by at least four people.
We then brought our readers together for a series of discussions about this group of plays… to talk about why they loved them, to examine the playwright’s approach to collaboration, to explore the ways in which The Inkwell might help the playwright.
And that takes us up to August…and to The Inkwell's first showcase event!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Without further adieu, I’m happy to tell you more about our first showcase reading of 2010 featuring plays and playwrights chosen from The Inkwell's 2010 open call for submissions.
We’ve chosen four raw, wild, provocative, magical, and deeply funny plays from four talented local writers. And we will be presenting a showcase reading of each (meaning a 20-minute excerpt from each play) at The Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage Festival on September 6th at 7:00 p.m. in the South Atrium Foyer.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We’re terribly excited about this showcase.
First, we’re thrilled to provide local writers a chance to collaborate with us and to have their work seen at The Kennedy Center. For those of you who are out of town, The Page to Stage Festival is a big event, bringing 40 theater companies from all over the area to the building for a day of exploring new plays. It also attracts hundreds and hundreds of people from all over the city who are excited to see plays in progress.
We’re also excited to gather a group of more than 40 artists to work on these plays with us — four writers, four directors, four dramaturges, two supervising dramaturges, and 20 or so actors.
Finally, we’re really excited about the plays! We’ve got myth and magic, a funny and disturbing exploration of eugenics, a ballad about a graffiti artist/folk hero, and a musing on astrophysics as it relates to grief. Here’s a short synopsis for each play… to whet your appetite for some bite-sized morsels of some seriously rich and delicious work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MADDY LEE: A SOUTHERN TRAGEDY by Stephen Spotswood - Maddy Lee's a bootlegger's daughter and voodoo sorceress who knows all the dark, knotted secrets of the bayou. But when she falls for Jason, the son of the richest man in town, she gives up everything to be with him. And in that moment of sacrifice, Maddy unleashes a terrible spell.
DARWIN'S COUSIN by Christin Siems - Layne is given everything she thought she ever wanted after in-vitro fertilization. But with that wish fulfilled comes a horrible choice...to choose among five unborn babies...to decide who is weak, who is strong, who will be happy, who will be miserable...to choose who will survive.
WE FIGHT WE DIE by Timothy Guillot - The infamous Q is a rebel vandal artist leaving a beautiful, terrific trail of graffiti art wherever he goes. When he’s caught for the 23rd time tagging where he shouldn’t, tthe mayor offers him a deal that could give him freedom or steal that which is most precious to him.
BLUE STRAGGLER by Rebecca Bossen - As an astrophysicist, Lisa can neatly order her world around numbers, equations, and all the different theories of the universe. But there’s no equation in the universe that can explain why the person she most loves has been taken away. Or is there?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We hope you can join us at The Kennedy Center on Labor Day. If not, learn more about the showcase here at the blog (hopefully with a few words from the playwrights and dramaturgs and directors).
And please stay tuned as we announce more showcases and readings to come. It's going to be a busy Fall!
