Today we are rolling out a new feature on the nytheatre.com website. It's called--simply--THE NYTHEATRE REVIEW PAGE, and it's a portal to the latest reviews on the site. You will find it here:
http://www.nytheatre.com/nytheatre/reviewspage.php
This new page contains brief summaries of the dozen newest reviews on nytheatre.com, with links to each full review. There are also a few special features: a page-top photo gallery of some recently reviewed shows; a sidebar display of the most popular reviews on nytheatre.com (updated every day!), and a teaser for the current nytheatre.com Pick of the Week.
I hope you'll take a look and let me know how you like this new feature!
Monday, November 24, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 2008
nytheatre.com Welcomes 3 New Reviewers
This month, nytheatre.com adds three new reviewers to our ever-expanding team of volunteer contributors. Heather J. Violanti has just written a really lovely review of Shogun Macbeth that you can read right now. Joe Pindelski's first piece offers great commentary on Wide Eyed Productions' revival of Racine's Phedre. Our third newbie, Nicole Bouras-Ney, will make her nytheatre.com debut next week with a review of My Vaudeville Man!
You can learn about these new folks and all their colleagues on our reviewers' page.
And while I'm talking about our amazing staff, I need to give a special shout-out to Michael Mraz, who began working with us this past summer. He has just finished reviewing all three chapters of the Angel Eaters Trilogy by Johnna Adams. Beautiful work, and much appreciated by the folks at Flux Ensemble Theatre, our readers, and yours truly.
You can learn about these new folks and all their colleagues on our reviewers' page.
And while I'm talking about our amazing staff, I need to give a special shout-out to Michael Mraz, who began working with us this past summer. He has just finished reviewing all three chapters of the Angel Eaters Trilogy by Johnna Adams. Beautiful work, and much appreciated by the folks at Flux Ensemble Theatre, our readers, and yours truly.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Who is the nytheatre i?
nytheatremike has tagged me on a meme running through the blogosphere. He says, "The point is to list seven strange things about oneself." I will keep my list as theatrical as possible, in accordance with the stated mission of this blog!
1. I starred as Snoopy in my elementary school's holiday pageant when I was in 6th grade. I wore a pair of blue flannel pajamas that we tried to bleach white, and didn't wear the gigantic cumbersome papier-mache Snoopy head that had been made for me by the art class. My big number was "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" (yes, the coke commercial song). This was my last stage appearance until...
2. I starred on Broadway with David Shiner and Bill Irwin at the Ambassador Theatre. Yes, I know my world is indie theater, but the fact is that my New York City stage debut was in Fool Moon. Maybe "starred" is too strong a word, however. Actually, I appeared as the projectionist in the silent movie skit that was Shiner's big centerpiece in Act II. The most fun I have ever had in a Broadway theatre.
3. I have Rudy Vallee's autograph. I'm not really much of an autograph hound, but I do have a small, choice collection from my childhood. My family used to go to Shady Grove Music Fair, a summer stock tent theatre in Gaithersburg, Maryland (long since departed), and my sister and I used to get the stars of the shows we saw to sign our programs. Mr. Vallee was appearing as J.B. Biggley in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (Robert Morse was also in the show, but he didn't sign autographs). Vallee was, in my memory, exactly the same offstage as on. I also have autographs from Jayne Mansfield and Martha Raye. I must be quite old.
4. Eartha Kitt thinks I'm handsome. Well, she did, in 1968; she told me so when I was getting her autograph after seeing her in Peg, a musical version of Peg o' My Heart (see #3). My sister and I went to see Miss Kitt in a cabaret show some years later and my sister wangled her way backstage. We reminded Miss Kitt of our previous acquaintance and she very graciously said she remembered. (Not sure if she still thought I was handsome, however.)
5. I have a couple of plays in my trunk that--who knows--may someday see the light of day. But don't count on it. The last original play I wrote was when I was a senior in high school. It was called "1789," and it told the story of the Constitutional Convention--ripped off (as the Spamalot people might say) from a famous musical about the Declaration of Independence. I also have some MAD Magazine-style musical parodies of Candide and A Streetcar Named Desire from the same period that I thought were pretty funny.
6. I produced, wrote, and starred in two awards shows in the 1990s. This was in my Marriott period. The folks in charge of Corporate Finance at Company HQ found out that I had a slight theatrical bent (my day job was running our company's disbursement systems), and they let me put on their annual awards shindig. I had a five-figure budget that would make every off-off-Broadway company salivate and access to the company's video production department, including a director/cameraman assigned to me for the project. There's a video of me doing the second show...in a tux, no less. Letterman and Carson were worried about me for a while there.
And finally...
7. I once tried out for Jeopardy. I know that's a strange TV thing rather than a strange theatre thing, but I thought it was worth mentioning. I passed the exam, but I flunked the live audition -- the scouts said I wasn't lively enough to be a good contestant on television. Never did get to meet Alex Trebeck...
Michael, thanks for tagging me, this was fun. I guess I'm supposed to keep this meme alive by tagging some more people, so I hereby tag all the folks at No. 11 Productions.
1. I starred as Snoopy in my elementary school's holiday pageant when I was in 6th grade. I wore a pair of blue flannel pajamas that we tried to bleach white, and didn't wear the gigantic cumbersome papier-mache Snoopy head that had been made for me by the art class. My big number was "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" (yes, the coke commercial song). This was my last stage appearance until...
2. I starred on Broadway with David Shiner and Bill Irwin at the Ambassador Theatre. Yes, I know my world is indie theater, but the fact is that my New York City stage debut was in Fool Moon. Maybe "starred" is too strong a word, however. Actually, I appeared as the projectionist in the silent movie skit that was Shiner's big centerpiece in Act II. The most fun I have ever had in a Broadway theatre.
3. I have Rudy Vallee's autograph. I'm not really much of an autograph hound, but I do have a small, choice collection from my childhood. My family used to go to Shady Grove Music Fair, a summer stock tent theatre in Gaithersburg, Maryland (long since departed), and my sister and I used to get the stars of the shows we saw to sign our programs. Mr. Vallee was appearing as J.B. Biggley in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (Robert Morse was also in the show, but he didn't sign autographs). Vallee was, in my memory, exactly the same offstage as on. I also have autographs from Jayne Mansfield and Martha Raye. I must be quite old.
4. Eartha Kitt thinks I'm handsome. Well, she did, in 1968; she told me so when I was getting her autograph after seeing her in Peg, a musical version of Peg o' My Heart (see #3). My sister and I went to see Miss Kitt in a cabaret show some years later and my sister wangled her way backstage. We reminded Miss Kitt of our previous acquaintance and she very graciously said she remembered. (Not sure if she still thought I was handsome, however.)
5. I have a couple of plays in my trunk that--who knows--may someday see the light of day. But don't count on it. The last original play I wrote was when I was a senior in high school. It was called "1789," and it told the story of the Constitutional Convention--ripped off (as the Spamalot people might say) from a famous musical about the Declaration of Independence. I also have some MAD Magazine-style musical parodies of Candide and A Streetcar Named Desire from the same period that I thought were pretty funny.
6. I produced, wrote, and starred in two awards shows in the 1990s. This was in my Marriott period. The folks in charge of Corporate Finance at Company HQ found out that I had a slight theatrical bent (my day job was running our company's disbursement systems), and they let me put on their annual awards shindig. I had a five-figure budget that would make every off-off-Broadway company salivate and access to the company's video production department, including a director/cameraman assigned to me for the project. There's a video of me doing the second show...in a tux, no less. Letterman and Carson were worried about me for a while there.
And finally...
7. I once tried out for Jeopardy. I know that's a strange TV thing rather than a strange theatre thing, but I thought it was worth mentioning. I passed the exam, but I flunked the live audition -- the scouts said I wasn't lively enough to be a good contestant on television. Never did get to meet Alex Trebeck...
Michael, thanks for tagging me, this was fun. I guess I'm supposed to keep this meme alive by tagging some more people, so I hereby tag all the folks at No. 11 Productions.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Looking Ahead to 2009
I've become pretty much obsessed with the election; I'm trying to be proactive and use that obsession to think clearly about what will happen after the election. Specifically, what kind of job am I going to have here at nytheatre.com in 2009? What is the New York theatre scene going to look like?
There will be changes, and the most significant catalyst for those changes will not be the election--it will be the economy. The commercial sector of theatre is already taking hits: several long-running Broadway shows have closed or posted closing notices, and I suspect others will join them in the near future. More ominously, several of the new shows announced for this Broadway season failed to materialize due to funding shortfalls. And I'm hearing about fewer new projects aiming for Broadway.
Tourism is likely to become a less lucrative industry in New York City in the near-term. The high-end local market may be in danger of drying up as well, what with upcoming Wall Street layoffs predicted to be in the hundreds of thousands. There are simply going to be fewer dollars available for EVERYTHING, and luxuries like Broadway shows are going to be cut out of people's personal budgets as a result.
Similarly, because entertainment and service industries (and financial industries!) provide daytime employment to many of the folks who make theatre at every level in New York City--and those jobs may become more scarce--there's a risk that we are going to lose artists to other locations. We are all--the Culture Wars notwithstanding--inextricably interconnected.
All that said, the theatre isn't going to croak this time around, any more than it did during the Great Depression. There's a real opportunity for savvy producers to promote commercial theatre so that it's again affordable for mainstream audiences; and there's a real opportunity for smart indie theater producers to offer their lower-priced shows as a viable alternative to mainstream audiences in search of excellent, interesting, provocative entertainment. Readers of nytheatre.com and indietheater.org already know that there's lots of wonderful theatre in NYC that costs $20 instead of $120. Awareness of that information needs to spread, because there's going to be an increasing market for good theatre at a reasonable price.
The new economic realities mean that if NEA still exists in 2010 and 2011 (for example) there will be less money available to grantees; government funding is certain to be smaller across the board in the next few years. What will we fund? I am hopeful that funders and nonprofit theatres alike will place their focus on development of local American artists (as opposed to importing successful productions from established companies, either from overseas or elsewhere in the USA). The indie theater sector in New York is the largest concentration of theatre talent in this country, and the work they create continues a long tradition of standards-setting and ground-breaking that goes back to the 1920s. Indie theater is one of America's most important cultural laboratories. We must not lose sight of that when funding becomes scarce, as it will.
Turning back to the election, now: in eight days, we will (hopefully) know who the next president of the United States is going to be. What will that choice mean to the kind of work that American playwrights create in 2009?
It is my hope that a new direction in this country's government will lead to a new direction in our theatre--new inclusiveness, more attention to diversity, and a greater willingness to hear many new voices different from our own. Exploration of forms and genres that challenge the status quo--development, for example, of an American physical theatre aesthetic that rivals the kind of work being created in Europe and Asia, so that instead of booking a martial arts comedy from Korea, an off-Broadway theatre could plausibly book a home-grown Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company production instead.
It is my hope that a renewed emphasis on innovation will find application in the theatre, so that the many new enabling technologies won't just be available to well-funded groups but to the full spectrum of indie theater companies who have ideas about how to use them to make their art more accessible, more meaningful, and more exciting.
No matter who wins the White House, the Culture Wars in this country are not going to disappear, and we need to think about what that means for theatre. It is my hope that a renewal of vigor in this country will be felt in our theatres, where serious and intellectually rigorous work that challenges audience's assumptions about a variety of social and political issues will once again take root and blossom. Artists may be hard-pressed to keep on fighting the good fight if Obama loses this election. But they must!
I want to conclude with a final point about the media. A fundamental shift in how people acquire information about their world has been occuring during the past decade, thanks to the Internet and all the new forms it has engendered. The economic situation is going to affect this in further, important ways: some mainstream outlets will cease to exist; others will cut back their coverage of theatre, an art form they view as marginalized. We need to ensure that responsible and articulate forums thrive, to provide support for theatre, at all levels. That's certainly one of the main things I think about as I ponder--as I mentioned at the beginning of this post--what my job is going to look like in 2009.
There will be changes, and the most significant catalyst for those changes will not be the election--it will be the economy. The commercial sector of theatre is already taking hits: several long-running Broadway shows have closed or posted closing notices, and I suspect others will join them in the near future. More ominously, several of the new shows announced for this Broadway season failed to materialize due to funding shortfalls. And I'm hearing about fewer new projects aiming for Broadway.
Tourism is likely to become a less lucrative industry in New York City in the near-term. The high-end local market may be in danger of drying up as well, what with upcoming Wall Street layoffs predicted to be in the hundreds of thousands. There are simply going to be fewer dollars available for EVERYTHING, and luxuries like Broadway shows are going to be cut out of people's personal budgets as a result.
Similarly, because entertainment and service industries (and financial industries!) provide daytime employment to many of the folks who make theatre at every level in New York City--and those jobs may become more scarce--there's a risk that we are going to lose artists to other locations. We are all--the Culture Wars notwithstanding--inextricably interconnected.
All that said, the theatre isn't going to croak this time around, any more than it did during the Great Depression. There's a real opportunity for savvy producers to promote commercial theatre so that it's again affordable for mainstream audiences; and there's a real opportunity for smart indie theater producers to offer their lower-priced shows as a viable alternative to mainstream audiences in search of excellent, interesting, provocative entertainment. Readers of nytheatre.com and indietheater.org already know that there's lots of wonderful theatre in NYC that costs $20 instead of $120. Awareness of that information needs to spread, because there's going to be an increasing market for good theatre at a reasonable price.
The new economic realities mean that if NEA still exists in 2010 and 2011 (for example) there will be less money available to grantees; government funding is certain to be smaller across the board in the next few years. What will we fund? I am hopeful that funders and nonprofit theatres alike will place their focus on development of local American artists (as opposed to importing successful productions from established companies, either from overseas or elsewhere in the USA). The indie theater sector in New York is the largest concentration of theatre talent in this country, and the work they create continues a long tradition of standards-setting and ground-breaking that goes back to the 1920s. Indie theater is one of America's most important cultural laboratories. We must not lose sight of that when funding becomes scarce, as it will.
Turning back to the election, now: in eight days, we will (hopefully) know who the next president of the United States is going to be. What will that choice mean to the kind of work that American playwrights create in 2009?
It is my hope that a new direction in this country's government will lead to a new direction in our theatre--new inclusiveness, more attention to diversity, and a greater willingness to hear many new voices different from our own. Exploration of forms and genres that challenge the status quo--development, for example, of an American physical theatre aesthetic that rivals the kind of work being created in Europe and Asia, so that instead of booking a martial arts comedy from Korea, an off-Broadway theatre could plausibly book a home-grown Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company production instead.
It is my hope that a renewed emphasis on innovation will find application in the theatre, so that the many new enabling technologies won't just be available to well-funded groups but to the full spectrum of indie theater companies who have ideas about how to use them to make their art more accessible, more meaningful, and more exciting.
No matter who wins the White House, the Culture Wars in this country are not going to disappear, and we need to think about what that means for theatre. It is my hope that a renewal of vigor in this country will be felt in our theatres, where serious and intellectually rigorous work that challenges audience's assumptions about a variety of social and political issues will once again take root and blossom. Artists may be hard-pressed to keep on fighting the good fight if Obama loses this election. But they must!
I want to conclude with a final point about the media. A fundamental shift in how people acquire information about their world has been occuring during the past decade, thanks to the Internet and all the new forms it has engendered. The economic situation is going to affect this in further, important ways: some mainstream outlets will cease to exist; others will cut back their coverage of theatre, an art form they view as marginalized. We need to ensure that responsible and articulate forums thrive, to provide support for theatre, at all levels. That's certainly one of the main things I think about as I ponder--as I mentioned at the beginning of this post--what my job is going to look like in 2009.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
The Glass Ceiling in American Theatre
There's an article in today's New York Times about the upcoming meeting between a group of women playwrights and heads of major nonprofit NYC theatres, the purpose of which is to raise awareness about the glass ceiling that America's female playwrights are experiencing.
This is also the subject of a two-part podcast that NYTE just produced. There's info about the podcasts here and here; and you can download and listen to part 1 and part 2. You should listen to these--the nine panelists offer a great deal of insight into this situation and even point toward some possible actions to help resolve this long-standing issue.
The nine women we invited to talk about the topic are:
This is also the subject of a two-part podcast that NYTE just produced. There's info about the podcasts here and here; and you can download and listen to part 1 and part 2. You should listen to these--the nine panelists offer a great deal of insight into this situation and even point toward some possible actions to help resolve this long-standing issue.
The nine women we invited to talk about the topic are:
- Playwright/reviewer Jo Ann Rosen, who moderates the discussion
- Playwright/director/performer/educator Lenora Champagne
- Playwright/actor/creator Maggie Cino
- Playwright/educator Andrea Lepcio
- Playwright/director/producer Bryn Manion
- Producer/dramaturg/reviewer Loren Noveck
- Director Cat Parker
- Playwright Crystal Skillman
- Playwright/actor Janet Zarecor
Here are some of the issues that surfaced during their hour+ discussion:
- Women may not be produced as often as men because they have different negotiating styles and may not have learned the same kinds of negotiating skills
- There seems to be a perception that women produce/write about "women's issues" and also that there's a stigma to producing/creating this kind of material
- There's disagreement among our panel about whether women artists are adequately supportive of one another
- There's a sense that prejudice against women is deeply engrained and systemic
The discussion concluded with overriding consensus that everyone (women and men) needs to maintain awareness of and focus on this issue, and that the place to begin doing that is "at home" -- i.e., in making choices about the theatre each of us sees, supports, and participates in.
Please listen to the podcasts because this problem is real and shameful.
I'd like to suggest an underlying cause that I've not read anything about anywhere thus far: the fact that almost none of the leading theatre critics in NYC (America) are women. For example, when Time Out-New York did a poll/feature in 2006 about the 15 most influential theater critics in NYC, only one of those 15 was a woman--that woman, Linda Winer (of Newsday), along with Elysa Gardner of USA Today are the only female lead theater critics for major print publications that I can think of. (Someone please correct me if I am wrong.) There are other women who regularly review theatre in NYC, such as Alexis Soloski, Helen Shaw, and Anita Gates, but none of them is the "first-string" critic for her paper/magazine.
nytheatre.com has 40 women reviewers on staff right now, compared to 57 men reviewers.
Would it make a difference, regarding the glass ceiling, if there were more women reviewing more theatre out there?
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Out to Lunch with the American Badass
Last night was great: I attended the kickoff of No. 11's Productions' Plays and Playwrights reading series at Under St. Marks. What a terrific night!
The centerpiece of the evening was a staged reading of Joseph Langham's edgy satire Out to Lunch. Julie Congress directed a fine cast that included Mitchell Conway, Ryan Emmons, Samantha Hooper-Hamersly, Adam Lerman, Sarah Stephens, Zachary Fithian, and Joel Bovev. Kudos to all for bringing Langham's hilarious play to life.
After the reading, I got to moderate a talkback with Joseph, which was a true pleasure. I haven't seen this play since its premiere at the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival, and unfortunately I haven't seen Joseph that many times since then either (because he spent several years touring the country doing Shakespeare). Joseph talked to the audience about his inspiration for this play--working as a waiter at a restaurant in Texas, in particular. He also noted that a university in Frostburg, Maryland produced Out to Lunch after it was published, and how interesting it had been for him to see a production that he was not personally involved with.
Joseph told me that he's written a 36-character Western (in verse) -- so all you quixotic producers out there, here's your chance to premiere the next Langham classic.
We ended the evening by introducing one of the playwrights who will be featured in the next volume of the Plays and Playwrights series (that would be Plays and Playwrights 2009, due out next February). The playwright is Chris Harcum, and his play is called American Badass, or 12 Characters in Search of a National Identity. Chris is a very talented solo artist (he premiered American Badass at FRIGID New York last February); he's also a contributor to nytheatre.com.
Plays and Playwrights 2004 alumnus Tom X. Chao (Cats Can See the Devil) was also in the house. So I had three playwrights in the room with me, which always makes me happy.
Speaking of Plays and Playwrights 2009, by the way, lucky folks in Williamstown, Massachusetts will have a chance to see another of the plays that will be included in that volume: Tim Collins's excellent solo play A Fire as Bright as Heaven is part of the Dialogue One Theatre Festival on November 22 at the Centre for Theatre and Dance at Williams College. All the info is here. Just before Tim's show is a performance of John Clancy & Matt Oberg's The Event (hear a podcast about that show) --so this sounds like a terrific afternoon of amazing theatre (and it proves that those folks at Williams College have excellent taste).
No. 11's next reading events will be on November 17th at The Chocolate Factory in Long Island City -- Margie Stokley's Elephant from Plays and Playwrights 2005; followed the very next night by a reading of Daniel Reitz's Fall Forward from Plays and Playwrights 2008 at Metropolitan Playhouse. Can't wait! (Here's No. 11 Productions' website.)
The centerpiece of the evening was a staged reading of Joseph Langham's edgy satire Out to Lunch. Julie Congress directed a fine cast that included Mitchell Conway, Ryan Emmons, Samantha Hooper-Hamersly, Adam Lerman, Sarah Stephens, Zachary Fithian, and Joel Bovev. Kudos to all for bringing Langham's hilarious play to life.
After the reading, I got to moderate a talkback with Joseph, which was a true pleasure. I haven't seen this play since its premiere at the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival, and unfortunately I haven't seen Joseph that many times since then either (because he spent several years touring the country doing Shakespeare). Joseph talked to the audience about his inspiration for this play--working as a waiter at a restaurant in Texas, in particular. He also noted that a university in Frostburg, Maryland produced Out to Lunch after it was published, and how interesting it had been for him to see a production that he was not personally involved with.
Joseph told me that he's written a 36-character Western (in verse) -- so all you quixotic producers out there, here's your chance to premiere the next Langham classic.
We ended the evening by introducing one of the playwrights who will be featured in the next volume of the Plays and Playwrights series (that would be Plays and Playwrights 2009, due out next February). The playwright is Chris Harcum, and his play is called American Badass, or 12 Characters in Search of a National Identity. Chris is a very talented solo artist (he premiered American Badass at FRIGID New York last February); he's also a contributor to nytheatre.com.
Plays and Playwrights 2004 alumnus Tom X. Chao (Cats Can See the Devil) was also in the house. So I had three playwrights in the room with me, which always makes me happy.
Speaking of Plays and Playwrights 2009, by the way, lucky folks in Williamstown, Massachusetts will have a chance to see another of the plays that will be included in that volume: Tim Collins's excellent solo play A Fire as Bright as Heaven is part of the Dialogue One Theatre Festival on November 22 at the Centre for Theatre and Dance at Williams College. All the info is here. Just before Tim's show is a performance of John Clancy & Matt Oberg's The Event (hear a podcast about that show) --so this sounds like a terrific afternoon of amazing theatre (and it proves that those folks at Williams College have excellent taste).
No. 11's next reading events will be on November 17th at The Chocolate Factory in Long Island City -- Margie Stokley's Elephant from Plays and Playwrights 2005; followed the very next night by a reading of Daniel Reitz's Fall Forward from Plays and Playwrights 2008 at Metropolitan Playhouse. Can't wait! (Here's No. 11 Productions' website.)
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Plays and Playwrights Anthologies -- Big Sale!
I want to make sure that readers of the nytheatre i know about the big sale that NYTE is running on the Plays and Playwrights anthologies from now through the end of January.
It's part of our Plays and Playwrights Mega Celebration which I told you about last week.
Each month between now and January, NYTE is offering two of our anthologies on sale at half price. This is a super opportunity for you to fill in the volumes that are missing from your personal library...and also to give some great inexpensive gifts to theatre lovers this holiday season.
The volumes on sale in October are Plays and Playwrights 2003 ($7.50) and Plays and Playwrights 2005 ($8.00).
Let me tell you a little about Plays and Playwrights 2003 today. I'll write about the 2005 volume in a future post.
Plays and Playwrights 2003 contains the FringeNYC hits Out to Lunch by Joe Langham (which is being read by No. 11 Productions on Monday, October 20 at Under St. Marks) and Last Call, the first full-length by the award-winning dramatist Kelly McAllister. It also includes the amazing and prophetic dark tragedy The Ninth Circle by Ed Musto; Ato Essandoh's insightful and witty look at interracial romance, Black Thang; Nat Colley's sequel to The Merchant of Venice (called The Doctor of Rome); one of the very first-ever 9/11 plays, Pumpkins for Smallpox by Catherine Gillet; and Leon Chase's remarkable family drama The Last Carburetor. Also in PP03: the one-act version of Andrea Lepcio's comedy about two sisters coping with breast cancer and death (yes, it really is a comedy!), Looking for the Pony -- a full-length version of this play is coming to Vital Theatre Company later this season. And Maggie Cino's extraordinarily wise one-woman physical theatre piece, Ascending Bodily. And Marc Morales's pop culture extravaganza Galaxy Video. And one of the most frequently performed plays from any of our books, Joe Godfrey's glorious take on Dickens, A Queer Carol.
All of these plays deserve to be as popular as A Queer Carol has become. Check out Plays and Playwrights 2003 asap. At $7.50 a copy (that's about 65 cents per play!!) it's a huge bargain.
Take advantage of the sale, and by the way, here's another reason to buy your copy of Plays and Playwrights 2003 now: it is actually about to go out of print. We have just 2 cartons of books left in inventory. Once they're gone... the only place you'll be able to find Plays and Playwrights 2003 will be in a used bookstore, or on eBay.
One last thing--you may be wondering why we're offering such deep discounts on our books right now. NYTE Small Press is part of The New York Theatre Experience, Inc., which as you may know is a nonprofit corporation whose mission is to use new and traditional media to support the work of theatre artists. Our small press is not about making money--it's about getting the works of talented but possibly unheralded playwrights into the hands of people who will read them, perform them, and produce them. We want people who care about American drama to be able to afford to own these plays.
Click here to visit shop.nyte.org, where the books are on sale.
It's part of our Plays and Playwrights Mega Celebration which I told you about last week.
Each month between now and January, NYTE is offering two of our anthologies on sale at half price. This is a super opportunity for you to fill in the volumes that are missing from your personal library...and also to give some great inexpensive gifts to theatre lovers this holiday season.
The volumes on sale in October are Plays and Playwrights 2003 ($7.50) and Plays and Playwrights 2005 ($8.00).
Let me tell you a little about Plays and Playwrights 2003 today. I'll write about the 2005 volume in a future post.
Plays and Playwrights 2003 contains the FringeNYC hits Out to Lunch by Joe Langham (which is being read by No. 11 Productions on Monday, October 20 at Under St. Marks) and Last Call, the first full-length by the award-winning dramatist Kelly McAllister. It also includes the amazing and prophetic dark tragedy The Ninth Circle by Ed Musto; Ato Essandoh's insightful and witty look at interracial romance, Black Thang; Nat Colley's sequel to The Merchant of Venice (called The Doctor of Rome); one of the very first-ever 9/11 plays, Pumpkins for Smallpox by Catherine Gillet; and Leon Chase's remarkable family drama The Last Carburetor. Also in PP03: the one-act version of Andrea Lepcio's comedy about two sisters coping with breast cancer and death (yes, it really is a comedy!), Looking for the Pony -- a full-length version of this play is coming to Vital Theatre Company later this season. And Maggie Cino's extraordinarily wise one-woman physical theatre piece, Ascending Bodily. And Marc Morales's pop culture extravaganza Galaxy Video. And one of the most frequently performed plays from any of our books, Joe Godfrey's glorious take on Dickens, A Queer Carol.
All of these plays deserve to be as popular as A Queer Carol has become. Check out Plays and Playwrights 2003 asap. At $7.50 a copy (that's about 65 cents per play!!) it's a huge bargain.
Take advantage of the sale, and by the way, here's another reason to buy your copy of Plays and Playwrights 2003 now: it is actually about to go out of print. We have just 2 cartons of books left in inventory. Once they're gone... the only place you'll be able to find Plays and Playwrights 2003 will be in a used bookstore, or on eBay.
One last thing--you may be wondering why we're offering such deep discounts on our books right now. NYTE Small Press is part of The New York Theatre Experience, Inc., which as you may know is a nonprofit corporation whose mission is to use new and traditional media to support the work of theatre artists. Our small press is not about making money--it's about getting the works of talented but possibly unheralded playwrights into the hands of people who will read them, perform them, and produce them. We want people who care about American drama to be able to afford to own these plays.
Click here to visit shop.nyte.org, where the books are on sale.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
