A night of laughs

We had a great meeting last night with some of the funniest comedies ever read by our group.

We had 17 attendees, including one new actor, Tim's friend John Elwick. Two writers also sat it on the meeting, and promise to come back again with their own stuff next time. These included John Pansini and a recent transplant from Alabama, Jess Weaver.

Sadly, the great Phil Ginsburg was unable to make it, but for a very good reason. He was in rehearsal for Star Bar's production of A Streetcar Named Desire, which opens May 24. I guess we'll let it slide this time. For reservations, email the theatre company at tickets@starbarplayers.org or visit their EventBrite page.

We opened with Sue's rewrite of her original fairy tale, The Great Fire Serpent Tulikaarme. The story is a lot tighter and funnier now, and everyone loved Ashley Crockett's over-the-top portrayal of the crotchety old dragon.

Next we read a guest script with an intriguing backstory. Sue's nephew is in prison in Wisconsin, and he has a friend there named Sean White who's writing a play titled The Meaning of Life, and wants to know if he's on the right track. The work was quite raw, focusing on a physically abusive father and his relationship with his teenage son, but everyone agrees it shows a lot of promise. We recommended that the Sean keep going with it.

After that, we read the newest scene from my cocktail party farce, Butterfly Effect. It didn't get as many laughs as previous scenes, but I was happy with the flow as my protagonist is now taking more control in combating the chain of events threatening to ruin his carefully planned party. There was some disagreement over whether its 90-minute single-act format would work for audiences.

We followed that with the latest scenes from Charlie Ammen's redneck comedy, Beyond a Shadow. His characters are both charming and hilarious, playing against type in the way they genuinely love each other despite their economic challenges. Roy Kieffer and Mary Sprunger-Froese had some wonderful chemistry together. The section ended with the stunning revelation that Roy's character may be the schoolhouse stalker the whole town has been talking about.

Last up was Tim Phillips, who took a break from The Decibelles to bring us his submission to last year's FourPlay contest at the MAT, Kill Disco. The contest required each play to include a waffle iron or coconut and have a theme of "survival of the fittest". Tim's play was a hoot, featuring three dumb punkers out to steal a disco ball. Our newest actor John Elwick proved his comedy chops as one of the punkers.

This was our last meeting at the old MAT location. Next month, we'll be meeting at their new location at 1626 S. Tejon, right across from the Blue Star Restaurant (and, more importantly, Bristol Brewing). The space will be under construction for much of the summer, but Jim and Birgitta promise they'll find room for us. I can't wait to check it out.

And I thanks to Sue and Mary for bringing some delicious homemade cookies.

Drama Lab writers win Rough Writers Play Festival

Yesterday, the Fine Arts Center announced the winners of their first-ever Rough Writers Play Festival, and I take great pride in pointing out that both winners are members of the Drama Lab.

Marisa Hebert's biting family drama Pieces of Him was named the full-length winner and Sue Bachman's tender comedy Disposing of Grandma was the short-play winner. Both works will get a full production at the FAC next year. Read all about it on the FAC blog.

Congratulations, Marisa and Sue! I can't wait to see your works on stage.

Going punk

We had a great meeting last night with 18 attendees, including 1 new actor. Our newbie is Teri McClintock, who runs a children's theatre company in Woodland Park and is looking to get more involved with the local acting community. Teri currently appears in the Six Women Play Festival, which is running at the MAT through April 28. And don't forget to read my review of the show in tomorrow's Indy.

We had a special treat this week as Tim Phillips opened the meeting with some classic punk tunes courtesy of his laptop. In previous readings of his girl band drama The Decibelles, some of the actors said that they didn't know what the music was supposed to sound like, and we were all brought up to speed as the lilting strains of the Ramones, Blondie and the Runaways filled the cozy confines of the theater.

We then launched into the next part of his script, a particularly dramatic scene in which the troubled Natasha pulls a gun on Edie. Tim has been reading a lot of biographies of the punk pioneers and much of the script is based on real-life incidents from their lives.

After that, we read Sue Bachman's delightful short folktale The Great Fire Serpent Tulikaarme, inspired by the imaginative walks she would take with her grandson in the Ivywild neighborhood. Her tale showed a lot of imagination of its own, and more than one person suggested it could be padded out to make a long one-act for youth audiences.

Next up was Phil Ginsburg's play, St. Clair of Corona. This short comedy centered on a cleaning woman who impulsively picks up the phone at a crisis center after the therapists have disappeared. It had some great lines, and seeing how the cleaning woman was able to help everyone was a lot of fun.

We followed that with the first scene of Charlie Ammen's comedy Beyond a Shadow. He originally wrote it with Donna Vessey as a screenplay and is now converting it to a stage play scene-by-scene. Everyone fell in love with the characters, a couple of trailer-dwelling rednecks who, despite their poverty, truly love and support each other.

And we finished up with the next part of my full-length farce Butterfly Effect. In this installment, the titular phenomenon was just beginning to wreak havoc as the snobbish Pembertons tear away from the party only to smash into a tree after Henry is distracted by a wayward canape. I don't know where it's going from here, but I'm having a lot of fun writing it.

Be sure to catch the readings of Sue Bachman's and Marisa Hebert's plays at the Rough Writers play festival this weekend and next. For the complete schedule, visit the FAC web site.

Also Buck Buchanan will be appearing in Forestgate Community Theatre's production of Fiddler on the Roof the next two weekends. He says it's selling out fast, so get your tickets soon.

By the way, Nancy and I lost our critic in our upcoming production of Kill the Critic!, so if you knows anyone who would like to take the title role in a world premiere comedy, send him our way. We promise we won't abuse him too badly.

The Ashley Crockett "Women of Vintage" Playwriting Contest

We all know that meaty roles for older women can be hard to find. Well, Ashley Crockett wants to do something about it. At Monday's Drama Lab meeting, this veteran actress of countless local productions announced that she's launching her own playwriting contest.

Plays can be any length, but the role must provide challenging, meaningful roles for older women--the more, the better. Ashley wants roles that go right to the edge, that are new and different and not at all predictable.

Two classic roles that represent what Ashley is looking for are Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire.

The winner will get their Drama Lab dues paid for one year (a $25 value). The deadline is August 31.

If you're interested in submitting something, bring a hardcopy to one of our Drama Lab meetings. Or email it to me and I'll see that Ashley gets it.

Good luck!

Bachman and Summerville are back!

Drama Lab members Sue Bachman and Barbara Summerville will be performing Woman 6.Oh Rebooted!, an evening of one-woman shows, on April 5-7 at First United Methodist Church, 420  N. Nevada.

These are original works based on characters they've been developing for years. I'm sure you'll love their funny and emotionally moving stories.

Please come out and support these two talented actresses/writers!

Marching on

I don't how much longer we can keep outdoing ourselves, but we certainly did it again last night. It was just a fabulous, fabulous meeting, with hilarity and heartache and every emotion in between.

Although it ran close to three hours, no one wanted to leave when it was finally over and several of us hung around for quite a while to chatter on about the amazing plays and performances we'd just witnessed.

We had a total of five plays and eighteen attendees, with three new actors joining our happy clan. Welcome aboard, Ashley, Marisa and Hannah! We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future.

This also means we now have eighteen dues-paying members--six more than I originally aimed for when we started collecting dues last September. All of the money raised through dues goes to the Millibo Art Theatre so we can take satisfaction in knowing that we're helping to support their wonderful work as well.

I'll be teaching a class on playwriting at this year's Pikes Peak Writers Conference (April 18-21). I plan to promote our group there, so prepare for a new influx of writers in May, That is, if I don't scare them away from playwriting in the first place.

One nice surprise last night was that we had a special guest. Charlie Ammen brought his sister, Sharon Ammen, who happens to be head of the theatre department at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College in Indiana. Her insightful, constructive comments were a highlight of the evening, and she even asked some of the playwrights to send her their scripts, saying that she might be able to get them to "people".

Can we take up a collection to fly her out here every month?

We started with Phil Ginsburg's short comedy, People on the Page. This is a very clever piece in which a struggling playwright's plot and dialogue became personified and battled with each other and the characters over which direction the play should go. Lots of fresh, original humor here.

We followed that with the next part of Tim Phillips' 80's girl band drama, The Decibelles. These scenes uncovered new conflicts in the now middle-aged women's lives and Tim ended the section with an original song that was quite touching in its honesty.

After that we read Sue Bachman's hilarious Fantasy Reunion, a short comedy about three women going back to their high school reunion to pick up guys. Here, Sue once again showed her flair for creating unique, well-drawn characters.

Next up was Katherine Gee Perrone's Selkie, a full-length musical based on the Scottish folktale of the Seal Wife. We didn't quite get to the end, which is a tragedy as this was Katherine's last meeting with us, but I know we all enjoyed the lyricism and the beautiful heartache contained within the scenes we did read.

We'll miss Katherine, but we wish her well and are confident she'll find a new playwriting group soon. After all, she was told Seattle has as many playwrights as coffee beans.

We finished up the evening with the next section of my cocktail party farce, Butterfly Effect. I'd reworked some of the action (I traded Roddy's gangster costumer for a Nazi costume) and I was really pleased with the results. People responded really well to the humor and I'm confident now that the play is headed in the right direction.

One reminder: next month's meeting is pushed back a week because of the rehearsals for the Six Women Playwriting Festival. We'll meet on Monday, April 15, same MAT time, same MAT channel.

See you then!

Where are the guys?

It was a long meeting last night--almost three hours--but you wouldn't have known it from the energy and enthusiasm that was evident as we wrapped up our meeting. Okay, maybe people couldn't wait to get home, but I like to think everyone was still riding high on the excellent writing.

Seriously, all of the veteran writers have really stepped it up lately. And I know everyone was impressed with the two short plays that our newest writer Sue Bachman brought.

The only problem? Not enough guy actors! Buck Buchanan was the only one there, and with most of our plays requiring 2 or 3 males, we had to pull in some reluctant writers to read, including Phil Ginsburg, Jeff Schmoyer and myself.

So while we're open to all actors regardless of age, gender, experience level, etc., I'd really like to encourage any male actors out there to join our merry band. I can guarantee you'll get lots of opportunities to perform.

We started the night with a few scenes from Phil Ginsburg's full-length Women of the Book. The monologues by Rahab, Mary Magdalene and two other women from the Bible were well-drawn.

Next up were the latest pages from Tim Phillips' girl band drama The Decibelles. It was fun to get our first look at the girls' teenage selves.

After that we read the first of two short plays by Sue Bachman, Window of the Soul. This one was about an optometrist who's approached by a mysterious patient. The twist ending was quite clever and I'm sure it surprised everyone.

Next up came the end of David Overbey's internet drama 00:00. This play covers a lot of ground in its tale of a digital media professor who gets involved with a prostitute, especially in its discussion of the internet and how it has permanently changed the nature of relationships. I encouraged him to expand this 40-minute piece into a full-length play.

That was followed by the first part of my new full-length comedy, Butterfly Effect. The feedback was very useful in helping me delineate the personalities of the uptight protagonist and the boorish co-worker who threatens to ruin his meticulously planned cocktail party.

We finished up with Sue's second play, Fasten Your Seatbelts, a heartwarming comedy about an old married Jewish couple on a place who believe they're going to crash.

And I'd like to give a big welcome to our newest actors, Hannah Rockey and Tracy Hunziker.

More on the move. Jim Jackson told me that the MAT will be out of the Pecan Street building on June 1. That means our June 10 meeting will be our first at the new location in the former Ivywild Community Church, 1626 S. Tejon St. Jim cautioned that there will be quite a bit of construction for a while so we may need to get creative with our readings for the first couple months.

The good news is that the new venue is right across from the street from Bristol Brewing. So you know what that means.

That's right. A monthly post-meeting meeting to drink beer and talk theatre.

I can't wait.