Results tagged “panel discussions” from Inkblog!

Fearless reader!  I can’t wait to finally reveal to you the details of The Inkwell’s next big adventure… 

 

THE SECOND INKUBATOR FESTIVAL!

 

So let me catch you up a bit.  The Inkwell team has been reading and reading and reading and reading… scripts that is.  We sent out a call for submissions in March and received 428 PLAYS!  Over the past several months, we read every single one of them and chose 24 wild and wonderful plays to explore as part of our Inkubator Festival, which launches this coming Monday (Labor Day) and ends October 17th.

 

As a writer myself, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the imagination and courage of all the writers that submitted plays.  Please keep writing and keep in touch with us!

 

So now, we are about to launch the latest and greatest Inkubator Festival, which will feature 24 plays and playwrights, a forum to discuss the needs for local writers, two fascinating panels exploring the role of the actor in new play development and the challenges that women writers face in the DC area.  We’ll also host a class on the mysterious art of dramaturgy… and end the festival with an Inkubator production of The F Word by Melissa Blackall.

 

Gosh, there’s so much to tell you about.  But let’s start with our kick-off event.

 

Leave that Labor Day barbecue early and join us at The Kennedy Center for a day of new plays and talk of new plays.  We are taking over that venerable institution’s North Atrium as part of the annual Page to Stage Festival.  Here are all the details you should need...

 

THE INKWELL'S KICK OFF

of the SECOND INKUBATOR FESTIVAL

Monday, September 7th

at The Kennedy Center's North Atrium

 

Come join us for any and all of the following events:

 

A SHOWCASE OF PLAYS WITH A POLITICAL BENT at 2:00 p.m.

 The Inkwell presents excerpts from a suite of thought-provoking plays that explore topics of the day... from global warming to terrorism, from the ethics of scientific experimentation to the explosive confrontations between people of different classes and culture.

Here’s what you’ll be seeing and hearing:

 

Island of Outcasts by Fangar Gael

Directed by Jessica Burgess

featuring Danielle Drakes, Fatima Quander, Felipe Cabezas, Gregory Burgess, Lindsay Haynes, and Michael Grew

On the mythical island of Dolphina in the middle of the Caribbean — amidst the storms brought on by a warming planet — two marine biologists hatch a plan to save humanity.

Empire of the Trees by Adam Kraar

Directed by Chris Neibling

featuring Cindy Martin, Frank Mancino, Jamie Jager, and Valerie Fenton

In 1963 — the last year of America's Camelot — a young wife reaches out to a poor bookseller and thief in search of her own perfect kingdom among the ancient trees of New Dehli.

i put the fear of mexico in 'em by Matthew Paul Olmos

directed by Jessica Burgess

featuring Adam Segallar, Ashley DeMain, Betsy Rosen, Jon Reynolds, and Rachel Beauregard

A chance encounter in the back alleys of Tijuana bring three couples together across borders of wealth, opportunity, and love... while setting in motion a confrontation that will tear their worlds apart.

Monkey Adored by Henry Murray

directed by Chris Niebling

featuring Cindy Martin, Valerie Fenton, Frank Mancino, Jamie Jager, and Steve Beall

It's a dangerous world for animals.  That’s what Sonny the monkey, Brown Spot the dog, Madeleine the cat, and other species find time and time again as they search for love and purpose in the underdog fight against the pernicious, bewildering ways of man.

 

A PANEL DISCUSSION: THE ACTOR AND THE NEW PLAY at 5:00 p.m.

How do you built the most fruitful partnership you can between actors and playwrights?

 

The Inkwell brings together actors, playwrights, and dramaturgs to investigate the inspirations and the impediments that actors encounter while working on a new play — and that playwrights encounter working with actors — in hopes of defining some best practices for the actor/playwright collaboration.

 

Our impressive panel of experts include:  awarding-winning actors Naomi Jacobsen and John Lescault, dramaturg and Artistic Director of Maryland's Active Cultures Mary Resing, playwright and dramaturg Jacqueline E. Lawton, and Jason Loewith, the Executive Director of the National New Play Network.

 

A STAGED READING OF MELISSA BLACKALL'S THE F WORD at 7:30 p.m.

Directed by Jessica Lefkow

featuring Alice Gibson, Jason B. McIntosh, Jessica Lynn Rodriguez, Prairie Griffith, Thierry Barston, and Patrick Magill

We’re so proud to present the latest iteration of Melissa’s biting play about America's obsession with the dirtiest word in the English language… FAT.  She’s been working with us for 18 months now, and we think you’ll be excited to join the journey of her characters Belly, Toothpick, Stout, Voluptuous, Lean, Huge, and Blimp as they search for their perfect size and shape — physically, psychically, and spiritually.  (You can learn more about the development process for this play in previous Inkblog entries, like this one.)

 

AND MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR THE INKUBATOR PRODUCTION OF THE F WORD, OCTOBER 13th THROUGH OCTOBER 17th, at H Street Playhouse.

 

More to come about the festival, readers… and soon!

“The most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life.” — An excerpt from Samuel Pepys' Diary about a production of William Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream performed in 1662

"Too much talk, too academic, too haughty, too unsure of itself, whether it was funny or sad. . . ." — comments in rejection letters about Margaret Edson's play Wit

My apologies for the silence, dear blog readers.  I have very much wanted to tell you all about what's happening with The Inkwell.  It seems we're now knee-deep in a rich and heated discussion about new play development… what's working and not working here in America.

I need to take about back more than a month, when The Inkwell hosted its third and final panel discussion at the Source Theatre Festival.  On July 6th (again, my apologies for the great delay in reporting), we asked Arena Stage's David Dower, Literary Manager for Wooly Mammoth Theatre Elissa Goetchius, The Washington City Paper Theatre Critic Trey Graham, and Source Theatre Festival Producer Jeremy Skidmore to talk about their views about new work in Washington.  The discussion quickly broadened to the way new plays are created, developed, and produced in America… and the search for the perfect model.

David Dower knows a lot about how theaters across America are approaching new plays and emerging playwrights.  He's one of the founding members of Z Space Studio in San Francisco, an incubator for all sorts of new theater work, as well as director and producer. (It's fun to read about his collaboration with monologuer Jeremy Kornbluth, author and performer of Haiku Tunnel…scroll down to "Benjamin Franklin: Unplugged.")  As an Artistic Associate for Arena Stage focused on new play development, he's traveled the country, talking with literary managers and artistic directors.  He thinks that the problem of "development hell" (where playwrights find their work constantly work-shopped and never produced) is old news.  There are millions of dollars flowing into play development efforts, he says.  The problem is that resources aren't aligned across the country.  So a playwright may be invited into a rigorous play development process, see their work produced once, and then it's over.  The problem right now is creating momentum behind a play so that it gets a second, third, and fourth production.  And that the playwright still has time to fine tune the piece along the way.

David has written a lot about a "distributed development" model on Arena Stage's New Play Blog, discussing how theaters are now starting to work together to bring a play along through a series of productions.  He also talks about his experience participating on our panel!

Elissa Geotchius discussed how Wooly Mammoth — which is entirely focused on producing work that hasn't been seen before in Washington, DC — engages with playwrights.  To put it simply, she gets around the country and sees a lot of plays.  She also keeps a "stalking list" of playwrights that she feels fit with Wooly Mammoth's aesthetic.  Wooly Mammoth is committed to working with playwrights to see their work produced (they won't develop a piece that they won't produce, she said), although she freely admits that the Wooly Mammoth team struggles to figure out how to increase interactions with playwrights in the development process.

Trey Graham wondered out loud about the sustainability of play labs (he cited the famous Eugene O'Neill Center in Connecticut in particular) and how you can fairly compensate playwrights.  If the only real income that comes from royalties, how to split the pie fairly, especially if more than one play lab or theater is involved in the development a play.  For the most part, the playwright is the one short shrifted in royalty arrangements, because everyone takes a cut.  By the time a play is produced commercially (a rare occurrence), the playwright receives no more than 30 percent of royalties.

And what is the role of the critic in the process? Trey believes he's supposed to clarify for the theatre-going audience the choices made by a director and playwright in a production of a new play, not in the writing of the play itself.  He'll leave that task to the dramaturges.

Jeremy Skidmore heaped praise upon the way playwrights are support in Canada (Jeremy is an admitted and ardent fan of the Canucks).  First, the government provides relatively more generous funding to theater than in America, allowing Canadian theaters to take more risk.  Second, every play that is produced is published, so plays are easily distributed across the country.  Third, there's a model for shared theater space for small companies, reducing one of the major expenses of any theatre group and creating a hub for sharing new works.

Asked the question about the state of new work in Washington specifically, all agreed that a basic infrastructure for DC playwrights is missing.  There's no center for practice and there's no advocate for local writers.

(Hmmmm…. I wonder who can fill that role?)

So this is just the start of the conversation.  Since the panel, Theatre Critic Nelson Pressley has written a rather provocative article in The Washington Post, positing the claim that new play development processes merely coddle the playwright.

"Does the American theater treat its playwrights like babies? You might think so, considering the elaborate midwifing infrastructure that has been erected around play development in recent years."

So starts the article, which goes on to quote The Inkwell's Artistic Director Jessi Burgess with a defense of incubation processes.

Well, we at The Inkwell are not leaving the last word to Mr. Pressley.  Instead, we've invited him to join playwright Callie Kimball, Round House Theatre Artistic Director Blake Robison, and Theater J Artistic Director and playwright Ari Roth for a lively discussion about his article at The Kennedy Center's Page-to-Stage Festival.

So please join us on September 1st at 6:00 p.m. in Rehearsal Room One for another lively panel discussion, Playwrights: Pampered? Patronized? Pushed Aside?

And check out the other activities we've got planned as The Inkwell celebrates its first birthday at Page-to-Stage.

We here at The Inkwell view collaboration as part of the DNA of theater.  But what happens when you throw some unruly dancers, choreographers, painters, sculptors, musicians, and photographers into the mix?

Something spontaneous and uniquely its own.  Something special.

That's what we found out last Sunday in speaking with a two pairs of artists devoted to creating works that cross boundaries between theater, dance, music, and art. They spoke about their approach to interdisciplinary collaboration at our second in a series of panel discussions associated with the Source Festival (going on now through July 13th).

Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili are the founders of Synetic Theater and have created numerous award-winning performance pieces built from adaptations of literary classics, telling familiar and timeless stories through dance, film, and theater.  Our illustrious artistic director Jessi Burgess and I (your faithful blogger Anne) saw the last performance of Synetic's most recent creation, Carmen.  To depict the life, love, and death of the irresistible gypsy, the Synetic team confined the play within a metal cage.  Throughout the performance, the actors twirled, jumped, fought, and danced around the cage, perhaps speaking 100 to 200 words in total.  I've never seen anything so physically demanding on actors and dancers.  They were literally flipping over scaffolding and dropping to the stage.  I can find no other word to describe the performance but spectacular, in the sense that the imagery and movement always surprised, delighted, and astounded me.

(The photograph above is from Carmen.)

Paata is a trained actor, mime, and filmmaker.  Irina is a ballet dancer, mime, and choreographer.  Together they have developed a method of training actors in movement where gesture, dance, and acrobatics are the primary means of creating dramatic tension and forwarding the story.  And they've created a unique aesthetic for dramatic storytelling.

The collaborative process that Synetic Theater employs is intense and time-consuming.  Each piece takes three months to create, far longer than the usual four to six weeks most theater companies devote to a production.  For the first month, actors participate in a training camp on movement led by both Paata and Irina.  Throughout the second month, actors, Irina, and Paata play, improvising movement and dance as they learn the script.  In the final month, Paata takes the lead in shaping the piece and ruthless editing.  As Paata explained, his training as a filmmaker takes over.  Scenes are shortened to their core essence, so that just as audiences get a feel for the dramatic tension, the play jumps to the next scene. (To get a sense of their pieces, check out the trailers of Carmen and their most popular piece, an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.)

How do two people stay married for 18 years (as Paata and Irina have done) and collaborate so closely each and every day?  Are there knock-down, dragged-out fights?  Of course, admits Irina.  But it's a fight about ideas in order to explore a shared vision.  The struggle and confusion are inherent to the collaboration.  And both feed off the "magnetic energy" of working with a range of different collaborators, from designers to musicians to actors.

Then how do you bring artists from different disciplines together to create something entirely new?  Paata and Irina have formed a core team in which they work.  Colin Hovde and Roy Gross — co-founders of Artists' Bloc and the second pair of collaborators participating in the panel — are creating a space for all sorts of interdisciplinary madness.

The sole purpose of Artists' Bloc is to find ways to encourage artists of every genre — painters, photographers, dancers, writers, actors, musicians, sculptors — to initiate collaboration and develop new work.  For the Source Festival, Colin and Roy curated seven new pieces made from all sorts of pairings of artists — a photographer with a playwright, a dancer with a filmmaker, an improv troup with a dance team, to name a few.

So what the heck did these folks create?  Is it theater? Is it visual art?  Is it film?  Is it dance?  None of the above, say Colin and Roy.  They have in fact thought long and hard about what interdisciplinary work is and have come up with the following definition:  the blending of media and perspectives from different artists from different disciplines that forms something entirely new, something that, if one artist or media or perspective is taken away, falls apart.

In addition to their work on the festival, Artists' Bloc runs the "12x6" series, six performances each year of 12-minute pieces created by collaborating artists.  Pieces are first viewed by fellow artists for feedback.  Then a number of selected for public performances.  The company also hosts The Lounge, a casual get-together of artists to discuss collaboration, hopefully sparking new projects.

One of the overriding messages of the panel discussion is that these interdisciplinary collaborations take time, much more time than is usually alloted for rehearsing a play.  It takes time to find the rhythm of the collaboration, to build trust among collaborators, and to hash out various aspects of a piece.  And all agreed that a successful interdisciplinary collaboration take more than two artists, especially when disagreements occur.  A third collaborator can diffuse tension, move the project away from a conflict that bogs it down, or simple create a majority voting block.

So are you ready to dive into an interdisciplinary collaboration?  Clear your calendar, open your mind, and join the Artists' Bloc.  Who knows what you'll create!

And don't miss The Inkwell's third and final panel discussion, New Works in Washington, this coming Sunday at 5:00 p.m. at the Source Theatre.  Trey Graham of the Washington City Paper, David Dower from Arena Stage, and Wooly Mammoth's Elissa Goetschius will talk about the virtues and challenges of creating new plays here in the nation's capital.  For more information, go to The Inkwell's calendar of events.

We at The Inkwell just couldn't get enough of ten-minute plays this weekend.

First, we held a class on how to write a kick-ass ten-minute play with the incomparable Gary Garrison.  Then on Sunday night, we hosted a panel with three experts on the form.  And we got an earful on the ten-minute play, from its origins to the benefits of the ten-minute play festival to the topics that seem to be on the minds of playwrights across America.

Gary stuck around to spread his wisdom and opinions.  In addition, award-winning playwright Marco Ramirez (also literary manager of Miami's City Theatre, which produces nothing but short plays) and Source Festival Producer Jeremy Skidmore chimed in on the discussion.

From left to right, Jeremy Skidmore, Marco Ramirez, and Gary Garrison discuss the merits and problems with the ten-minute play at the newly renovated Source Theater.
Where did the ten-minute play come from?  The origins of the form trace back to John Jory, who served as the producing director of the Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival of new plays.  In the 1980s, he introduced a festival of ten-minute plays to complement the longer works performed as part of the festival.  Today there are hundreds of ten-minute play festivals across the country.  And they generally sell out.

So why is the ten-minute play so wildly popular?  For a theater producer, a festival of ten-minute plays provides the opportunity to showcase the work of dozens of playwrights at very little cost.  For Jeremy in particular, the showcase of ten-minute plays that he is producing as part of the Source Festival allowed him to match area artistic directors with a bevy of talented non-equity actors who they might not ever meet otherwise.  For the theatre-goer, such a festival provides a chance to hear many diverse voices, see many different forms, and meditate on a wide variety of themes and issues.

The problem?  As Gary stated so emphatically in his class, very few playwrights actually write true ten-minute plays; most festivals are full of sketches and character scenes.  Another issue:  the form is very seductive for the playwright, since it's the easiest way to get your work seen and heard.  So what happens to the full-length play?  Gary worries about this.  Marco — who won the prestigious Heideman Prize for best ten-minute play awarded by the Actors Theatre of Louisville — admitted that he feels most comfortable with the form and isn't sure he's ready to write a longer play.

Here are some other random facts, thoughts, and observations offered by the panelists:

• There are more than 400 different festivals and/or venues showcasing ten-minute plays, representing explosive growth over a short period of time.  When Gary Garrison wrote the first edition of his book on ten-minute plays (Perfect 10) eight years ago, he listed 30 festivals.

• The producers of the Source Festival received 910 plays to consider for its showcase of 25 ten-minute plays.

• Some of the major themes of ten-minutes plays that Marco, Gary, and Jeremy have read include various perspectives on Aghanistan and Iraq, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the difficulties creating and sustaining intimacy in our time and age.

• Topics and situations that panelists were totally sick of reading and seeing:  coming out plays and conversations set in coffee houses.

• Marco Ramirez is always waiting for King Kong or Godzilla to enter that coffee shop in a play.

All agreed that the form provides everyone — theatre artists and audience alike — a chance to see a snapshot of American culture through the eyes of the playwright... and all in ten minutes.

If you're here in the Nation's capital, check out the collection of ten-minute plays produced as part of the Source Festival.  I (this is Anne, by the way) saw the first night's showing and there's some interesting work from some very talented actors, directors, and writers.  A collective favorite — the monologue about a soldier and his epic battle with a horse in Afghanistan.

Hello all -

It's the ghost of Anne returning to tell you about the latest goings on at The Inkwell.  While we all needed a bit of a rest after the January Inkubator festivities, Inkwellians soon revived and we have been busy scheming and planning.  And now our latest plot is coming to fruition!

Over the next three weeks, we are teaming up with the folks of the Source Festival to offer a series of panels that explore various aspects of playmaking.  And we've brought some rather distinguished theatre artists from out of town to join us in the discussion.

Here's the lowdown (you can also take a look at our calendar for more details, including more detailed biographies of each of the panelists:

Award-winning teacher and theatre artist Gary Garrison and Heideman Award winning playwright Marco Ramirez head up the first of three panel discussions hosted by The Inkwell as part of the Source Festival (June 23rd-July 6th) at the newly renovated Source Theatre.  This first panel, Ten-Minute Plays in American Theatre (held on June 22nd at 8:00 p.m.), focuses on one of the most innovative and popular forms of theatre in America Today.  Jeremy Skidmore, the producer of the Source Festival, is the third panelist.

Garrison, Ramirez, and Skidmore bring a wealth of experience, knowledge, and insights into the discussion of this important theatrical form.  Gary Garrison is renowned teacher, playwright, and author who serves as the Executive Director for Creative Affairs of the Dramatists Guild of America and the Artistic Director and Division Head of Playwriting for the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at the Tisch School of the Arts.  Miami-based playwright Marco Ramirez won the prestigious Heideman Award for this short play I am not Batman from the Actors Theatre of Louisville and is the literary manager for the City Theatre that produces the Summer Shorts American Short Play Festival.  Jeremy Skidmore is the producer of the Source Festival, a Helen Hayes nominated director, and the former artistic director of DC's Theatre Alliance.

In addition to participating in this first panel, Gary Garrison will teach a weekend playwriting master class, How to Write a Kick-Ass Ten-Minute Play (June 21st and 22nd at Flashpoint, culminating in a viewing of ten-minute plays at the Source Theatre on June 23rd).  Sorry, folks, the class is sold out!

The second panel, Collaboration in New Work (held on June 29th at 5 p.m.), features Synetic Theater's dynamic and award-winning collaborating team Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili.  The third and final panel, New Works in Washington (held on July 6th at 5:00 p.m.), features David Dower, Associate Artistic Director at Arena Stage and head of its new Cradle program, as well as noted Washington City Paper theatre critic, Trey Graham, exploring the role that the Nation's Capital plays in the emergence of a new generation of playwrights.

Our illustrious Artistic Director, Jessica Burgess, will moderate each of the panels.

Designed to complement the programming of the Source Festival, each of The Inkwell's panel discussion focuses on a different aspect of playmaking that relates to the festival's showcases of ten-minute plays, interdisciplinary projects, and one-act plays.

So please come out and join us for the conversation.  And if you can't, please check back here as various Inkwellians (and maybe a few special guests) share with you all the juicy details.