News and Updates

One of the joys of living in New York City is uncovering all the countless, interwoven communities that make up the beautiful, complicated whole. For instance, having a kid in public school means I'm part of that community, and this year I'm lucky enough to be inivted to share at the annual "Writers' Night" fundraiser. This is real honor because this event features some truly spectacular writers - novelists, poets, librettists - and also highlights the creative work of some teachers whose talents overflow well beyond school hours. I plan on sharing something brand new, and hopefully I can even rope in a professional actor I know to help me read it. Tickets are free, food and drink are not. Donations accepted. WHEN: Wednesday, April 26, 2023 at 6:30 PM (ET) WHERE: Prohibition (in the backroom Speakeasy) on Columbus Ave at 85th St.

Truth be told, I’m in-between planets right now. The planet that I’m currently living on is full of simple, sturdy things that fit my soul. I live in a world of furniture, regular paychecks, planning for vacation, making a meal, trying to schedule date night with my wife, and occasionally seeing a Mets game with my son. This planet also includes theatre – seeing plays, bitching about plays, wearing a mask to see plays, seeing friends’ work – and it includes considerable landmass devoted to the Kingdom of Playwriting, with districts for my writers’ group, my laptop computer, my mentors and teachers, my rivals and friends, procrastination, hopes and dreams, minor breakthroughs, and major resistance. This planet is home. It is everything I can see in my ordinary consciousness. I suspect that it has everything I need to live a full and satisfying life. But there’s this other planet. This other planet is much harder to describe because I don't

I was talking with a colleague about one of my small-cast plays and I was trying to describe how productions were so "successful" (from an audience-interaction standpoint) while at the same time being tremendously difficult to justify economically. For my two-person drama TOGETHER WE ARE MAKING A POEM IN HONOR OF LIFE , a husband and wife navigate a support group for greiving parents in the aftermath of a school shooting. In multiple productions, the play has been staged in a "site specific" way - asking audience members to enter a small room, often in a church basement or other public space. Everyone sits in a cirlce of metal folding chairs reminiscent of contemporary support groups, and the actors enter the space and sit in the chairs alongside the audience. This staging allows for an intimacy and frankness that can be very compelling. It can also be uncomfortable for an audience to give and receive eye contact - both from actors, and from other audience members....

This week I hit a career milestone being featured on Adam Szymkowicz's Blog "I Interview Playwrights" . It's a select few - and I'm honored to be included in the list.

Why is it so terrifying for me to submit a play? As a playwright I do a pretty good job of keeping up with submission calendars, web sites, etc., but when it comes time to actually pushing the "Submit" button (or "Send" or dropping something in the mail...) I procrastinate like nobody's business. I always thinks that one more read of that draft will make that little bit of difference. And spending that extra few hours will take the play I've been working on for years to the next level of apogee. I agonize over cover letters and letters of inquiry and statements of purpose and the like. (It is a particular level of Hell that playwrights must synopsize their life and / or work into one page or less.) And I'll print things out countless times if I find a typo or run on sentence. And then worry all night that I didn't find them all.

This week I head down to D.C. (by train) for the Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive. This event features some true celebrities of the playwriting world, and I'm thrilled to be (humbly) facilitating some of the work sharing sessions. I'm excited to be able to participate this year, and I'm looking forward to enjoying the fellowship of such a unique and talented brood.

I was honored to present some new pages this weekend at an event recognizing the late Milan Stitt for his contribution as a playwright, teacher and mentor. It was a small gathering at the Dramatists Guild of former students representing CMU and a few guests, and we chose to share work-in-progress in the spirit of continuous learning and growth. I offered a piece of my Treasure hunting play. I was glad to hear those Milan phrases again - write big plays, ending problems are page one problems, what is this play about , writing is the scab we use to cover wounds of the soul - and I was reminded to always sharpen all my pencils, and then write with a pen.

So my mother is visiting us this weekend, and this will be her very first time in New York City, ever. Hooray. We were talking about what she’d like to do, and she said, “Oh you know, see the sites, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, etc.” and of course we said would you like to see a show? And she goes, “Hmm, not really.” “Hmm. Not really.” The universal question of artists is "What will my mother think?" A little demographics: my mother is in her late 60’s, born in Canada, trained as a nurse and became a missionary in Southeast Asia, fervently religious, never owned a new car, raised 3 boys while writing books (about missionaries) and sweating it out in the American South for the past 35 years. Why doesn’t she want to see a show? Of course she’s seen my shows, but that’s not the same thing. For her there is too much to overcome.

“ A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event - an action involving human beings - is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon it. ” - Thornton Wilder

This evening I stopped by the annual Dramatists Guild Fellows Showcase held at Playwrights Horizons on 42nd Street. I was supporting my fellow CMU writers Edgar Mendoza and Chris Dimond and Michael Kooman , and in the process I saw about twelve other CMU alums. It was great to see the school representing so strongly, and supporting each others work. And the readings were vibrant and engaging. Notably the very funny DG Fellows Katie Baldwin-Eng and Larry Pontius. Cheers to Ms. Lepcio and the team at the Guild for putting on such a top notch event. (And thanks for the snacks afterwards.)

So there's this annual playwriting ritual called "applying for membership with New Dramatists", and it's always hopeful and heartbreaking. Kind of like suit pants for dogs. Every year we put on our Sunday Best and submit our two finest plays (two copies each, three-hole punched and bound, but not permanently bound - i.e. published versions or Kinkos spiral binding). And we write our Personal Statements outlining why we think we deserve this accolade. I always secretly hope that my statement will be The Best Single Page I've Ever Written, and it will instantly alert the selection committee to my genius. But, I mean, of course, they already know that from the plays, so... This year I thought I'd mix it up a bit. I wrote the personal statement that I always wanted to write, but of course could never really send.

I'm so pleased to have the chance to be a returning artist in residence at the lovely and gracious Studios of Key West this summer. TSKW provides access to the inside world of this fascinating island, and the cottage we're staying in offers artists and writers the perfect place to reflect and cool off, all under the shade of a graceful mango tree. I'm here developing a new play about the Treasure Hunting industry - a staple of Key West life for hundreds of years - and I've been conducting research, interviews and gathering experiences. All this will feed into the eventual formation of a work around salvage and recovery, which I hope to develop further this fall. Stay tuned.

“ When we were young, we were told that poetry is about voice, about finding a voice and speaking with this voice, but the older I get I think it's not about voice, it's about listening and the art of listening, listening with attention. I don't just mean with the ear; bringing the quality of attention to the world. ” - The Irish poet Kathleen Jamie (with whom I share a birthday) From The Writer's Almanac

“ You need courage to follow the formless path, until the true form of the work emerges. ” - Peter Brook

Now that school is finally done (for a few months, at least) I can focus on some other projects that have been simmering away in the back of my mind. One of these, a yet-to-be-titled psychological thriller, will have some further development in Florida during July and August (more details to follow). All I can say is it's good to write things that excite you.

holotype: (n) the original specimen which is used to describe a new species I was visiting my dinosaurs at the Carnegie Museum last week, and I ran across this great word. The museum has the original skeletons that defined the species Diplodocus carnageii , as well as the infamous Tyrannosaurus Rex . Their particular T-Rex was discovered in 1902 by Barnum Brown in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana, and it toured the country, ending up at the Carnegie in the 1950's. Fossil hunting was a messy, wild-west business back in the day, full of shady dealers, each spinning out their own argument for why this skeleton was better than another. By chance (and perhaps more human intervention than we care to admit), a new species was created on those dry Montana plans. We forget that man names the animals. That "species" is just one more concept slapped on to the world in order to make sense of it. We love to label and taxonomize; and sometimes we come up with descriptions like ...

I figured I should report on grad school here at Carnegie Mellon . It's great. It's tough. But it's great. I'm taking a full course load, which doesn't leave as much time for writing as one might desire (actually, it's the "free" time that gets used up.) But my classmates are phenomenal, always challenging me to do better, and our professor, Milan Stitt, is a wealth of wisdom. The best in the business. Without getting too sappy about it, I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity to be here, and I look forward to seeing how I turn out.

I got a chance recently to spend some time at my parent's mountain house in western North Carolina. It was 8 degrees outside with snow on the ground, and ice on the trees, but inside I had a nice warm fire, and my laptop and ergonomic keyboard. I got to spit out a first draft of a new play that's been bugging me about family drama, American Literature, and nudism. First drafts are always fun, heartbreaking, because the ideas are now in black and white (not watery gray matter), and you're forced to see them for what they are - the first step in a long process of revise, read aloud, lather, rinse, repeat.

So for Christmas I got a copy of the 1942 classic The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri. It's written in this great modernist style, proposing answers for our questions about how to write using a dialectical method. Brilliant. I resonate with his point that conflict should grow naturally out of the characters, as if they could do nothing else under the given circumstances, because this clearly aligns with the method of acting most artists use. I struggle however with his idea of "premise" because it seems old-fashioned; like he wants every play to prove a point. X does Y. Ambition breeds disaster. Let me tell you a story that proves it. Being in the post-modern soup, it's much more fun to jump (carrot to potato) from one observation to another, stringing them along on an arc of actions that is then interpreted as story. Mr. Egri would have something to say to me, I'm sure, but I thoroughly enjoyed the lesson.