NT Live and TheatreWorks present Skylight on Nov 15-16

As you know, I've been pushing TheatreWorks a lot lately because I believe that we need to support them as much as they've been supporting us. I've heard back from some of you and it seems that cost is the main factor preventing you from seeing more shows.

I get it. Theatre isn't always cheap. And when it is cheap, it isn't always good.

Which is why I'm happy to promote this weekend's NT Live event through TheatreWorks. NT Live is this amazing program that broadcasts videotaped recordings of recent (read: this season's) productions from London's National Theatre.

It's the best of both worlds. The National Theatre is the official state-sponsored theatre of the UK and it's truly one of the great theatre companies in the world. But because it's a broadcast, the price is cheap: just $15 a pop.

I've been to several of these and I have yet to see a bad production. The plays often feature big name actors, and the camerawork is top-notch, giving you a better-than-front-row-seat view of the show.

This weekend, TheatreWorks will present the latest addition to the series: David Hare's Skylight, a romantic drama featuring Carey Mulligan and Bill Nighy. For the full scoop, click here.

The broadcast is at Centennial Hall on the UCCS campus. Times are 7pm on Saturday, November 15 and 3pm on Sunday, November 16. And no, you don't need to buy tickets ahead of time. There will be plenty of room.

If you're serious about being a playwright, there's no better, cheaper way to know what kind of plays theatre companies are doing today.

Stormy weather

Well, we only had seven people show up for a meeting last night, the second lowest number since our second meeting three years ago. But then people had a good excuse. The first winter storm of the season hit late in the afternoon, plunging the temperatures into the mid-teens and turning the roads into skating rinks. Still, we soldiered on, and the die-hards who did show up were able to get through six plays.

We started with Chuck Cabell's 10-minute comedy, A Priest, A Rabbi and a Horse... I missed most of this because I was tied up in traffic, but everyone seemed to love the humor.

Next up was the beginning of Sue Bachman's family drama, Having Faith, with Sue again finding inspirations in the travails of her childhood. In it, a young woman tries to help an old woman banished to her dark, drafty apartment by her adult daughter. Everyone enjoyed the dramatic tension but wondered whether the daughter was too unlikable.

After that, we read the beginning of Tim Phillip's religion drama, Christian Death. It's about a fundamentalist pastor forced to confront his past when his wife and former followers turn on him. It's a great concept, but people thought Tim should up the stakes, making the pastor a child molester or something instead of just a distant, judgmental clergyman. I also thought the pastor shouldn't be so passive when his accusers first confront him.

Next we read the first scene of my drama Final Edition. This was a script that I started years ago as my eulogy for the newspaper industry, but subsequently abandoned. People liked the punchy dialogue, although people thought that the interplay between the editor and the crusty crime beat reporter should have been more smart assy.

We followed that with the start of Jess' Weaver's drama, which for now remains titleless. Jess intends to submit it to next year's Rough Writer's contest at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, which is asking for plays related to Georgia O'Keeffe. Jess has never liked O'Keeffe's flower paintings so she decided to write a harrowing tale of kidnapping and drugs inspired by the artist's paintings of skulls and desolate desert landscapes instead. The audience loved the tension and theatricality of the piece (at one point, an hallucination of a giant jackalope makes an appearance) and we all look forward to seeing the rest of the play.

We wrapped up, appropriately enough, with the finale of Chuck Cabell's full-length comedy Diabolus Ex Machina. People loved the irony of the ending, in which the fictional playboy character accepts the novelist's original vision of him as a kindly Alpine woodsman (a la Heidi's grandfather) only to have Heidi rebel against her role. I thought, however, that it wasn't a strong choice to have the characters spend the entire play inside the computer. They should come to life outside the computer so that they can mess up the novelist's life in a visual way.

Our next meeting is Monday, December 8. See you all then!

Fine Arts Center announces new Rough Writers Contest

Two years ago, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center launched a new playwriting contest which promised a full production to one full-length play and one short play. And although the contest attracted submissions from all over the country, it was won by two Drama Lab members: Marisa Hebert and Sue Bachman.

Well, the contest is back with a new theme and new rules. Here's the scoop:

CALLING ALL PLAYWRIGHTS!

The theme for this year's FAC Rough Writers New Play Festival has just been announced. As part of the FAC's "Year of Georgia O'Keeffe", this year's submissions should be related to the life and/or work of O'Keeffe. The plays may utilize Georgia O'Keeffe as a character, use her art as a springboard for the story, or, in a larger sense, explore the lives and art of groundbreaking women.

Submissions for this year's festival are due March 1. The submissions may be full-length, one-act or 10-minute plays or musicals. Submissions must be in a state of development and not have a history of productions. The Rough Writers New Play Festival will be held between June 4 and 14, 2015.

Please send cover letter and copy of formatted script (along with demo CD for musicals) to:

Nathan Halvorson

Associate Director of Performing Arts

c/o The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center

30 W. Dale St.

Colorado Springs, CO 80903

or via email to:

nhalvorson@csfineartscenter.org.

Good luck!

Drama Lab on Stage

Drama Labbers are busy busy busy this month. Here's a list of local productions featuring your fellow members as writers, directors or actors:

Hamlet / Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

This weekend is your last chance to catch these two plays in repertory. Both productions feature Karann Goettsch, Buck Buchanan and, in his acting debut, Tim Phillips. Hamlet is Friday, R&G is Saturday. Black Box Theatre. www.blackboxdrama.com.

Dracula

Features Jess Weaver as Mina. This opened last weekend and runs Thursdays to Sundays though Nov 2. Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. www.csfineartscenter.org.

Our Shorts are Showing 2

A HUGE Drama Lab effort. Includes short plays written by Sue Bachman, Charlie Ammen, Jess Weaver and me. Directors include Sallie Walker and Tracy Hunziker. Actors include Karann Goettsch, Barbara Summerville, Ashley Crockett, Sue Bachman, Grant Swenson and Roy Kieffer. Wed, Oct 22 through Sat, Oct 25. Black Box Theatre. www.blackboxdrama.com.

Million Dollar Meatballs

The world premiere of my latest farce. Thu, Oct 23 through Sat, Oct 25. Discovery Canyon High School. dcctheatre.org.

Oh, and be sure to listen to the KCME Culture Zone on 88.7 FM at 5pm on Sunday, Oct 19 and 7pm on Monday, Oct 20 to hear director Amy Keating, two student actors and myself discuss Million Dollar Meatballs.

Finally, I'd like to send out a big congratulations to the multi-talented Sue Bachman, who has just won the PPAC Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actress for her role as Linda Loman in TheatreWorks' production of Death of a Salesman. Great job, Sue!

The write stuff

Last night, we had an unusually subdued meeting, largely due to one of our smaller turnouts in recent months (15 attendees) and, I suspect, getting used to our new meeting room. All of the other classrooms were in use, so we ended up taking Room 165 at the back of the building. The layout of the room was longer and skinnier than we're used to, making it a little harder to hear from the back, but it was set apart from the rest of the rooms so it was pretty quiet. I'll check with Drew to see if we can get that room reserved for us from now on.

We got through eight plays, which we would not have been able to do without the new critique forms that I created with input from the writers. It worked pretty well, I think, but I'm sure we'll make tweaks as we get more practice with it.

Not that we did away with all discusssion. We had about 5 minutes to discuss each play, but with eight plays even that added up to a big chunk of time, and we didn't get done until 9:45. If we start getting even more scripts, we may have to do away with the discussion entirely.

We opened with a 10-minute play from Grant Swenson titled Distant Memory, which cenetred around a group of nursing home residents. The audience found it moving, especially the way one of the characters pretended to be a child in order to help another regain her youthful memories.

Next up was a rewrite of Sallie Walker's short play, John & Marsha. Here we eavesdrop on a guy attempting to pick up a girl in a bar, represented by a pair of actors portraying their outer, polished selves and a pair of actors representation their inner, snarky selves. People found it inventive and fun. Buck and Karann did a great job with the

After that we read the end of Tim Phillips' Prohibition-era romantic drama Notes from the Heart. Everyone liked the upbeat ending as Paul and Abigail head off into the sunset together but thought there should be some sort of twist at the climax.

We then read a rewrite of the end of Sue's one-act drama Best Friends Forever. Here Sue took last month's comments to heart, changing it so that the two elderly friends never do recognize each other. Several people took issue with this, thinking that the characters should perhaps fashion a new friendship at the end, recognizing something in the other that subconsciously reminds them of their long-ago youth.

We followed that with two new scenes from my museum farce, I Want My Mummy. People thought it was funny but said it was hard to follow the plot threads when a play this long is broken up over several meetings.

Next we read some new pages from Chuck Cabell's full-length comedy Diabolus Ex Machina. Everyone liked the flamboyant personality of the author character's fictional alter ego Sebastian. Some of the monologues came across as a little long, however.

After that we read a rewrite of Sallie's short play Three Men and a Cross, an ironic, almost snide, reenactment of Jesus' last moments on the cross. Everyone agreed this was a great concept, and felt that the commentary by the cyncial their was particularly well-done.

We finished up with Tim Phillips's short comedy Night Time with Baby Bear, about a child's beloved teddy bear fighting off a terrible monster under the bed. This one was a lot of fun, and everyone enjoyed Buck's comic, child-like portrayal of the bear.

Our next meeting is Monday, November 10 at 7pm. See you all then!

An innovative Ludlow, 1914 opens at TheatreWorks

In tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre, TheatreWorks and Denver's LIDA Project have created Ludlow, 1914, a piece of experimental theatre that opened on Thursday, Sept 11 and runs through Sunday, Sept 28.

I saw it last night, and while I can't say it was a success -- I left the theatre knowing not much more about the tragedy than I did going in  -- the storytelling style is very innovative, and I recommend that the play be seen by any writer interested in exploring the latest theatrical techniques in their own plays.

To buy tickets, visit the TheatreWorks box office page.

The Great Divide

Last night was one of those good news/bad news nights. The good news: we managed to get through a record number of plays: ten, to be exact. The bad news: we had to split the group into two rooms to do it.

I thought it would be worth an experiment, and I'm glad that we did it. But in our end-of-the-evening talkback, the response was loud and clear: nearly everyone hated it. With a total of 20 people attending, we ended up with only 10 people were in each room and most felt that this alone significantly lowered the energy level. Some also complained that they had to miss out on half the plays while the small-cast group felt like second-class citizens being shuttled to a smallish conference room for the readings.

I hear you. As we continue to grow, we've got to figure out a way to handle the burgeoning number of scripts. But clearly, this isn't it.

Surprisingly, several people said they'd prefer to go to twice-monthly meetings, if needed. Unfortunately, this would pose a huge time commitment from everyone and I think there's good change attendance would drop, putting us right back in the same low-energy boat again. But I'm always willing to try new things, and it might work just fine, especially if we move the second meeting to an off-night like Tuesday, allowing people who can't make our regular night to attend.

But the best idea, I think, came from Jess Weaver, who is fresh off a reading at our neighbor to the north, Denver's Rough Draught Playwrights. Jess said they do some things poorly (for one thing, they cut off your reading at 10 minutes, no matter how long your play is), but there's at least one thing they do very well: feedback. Instead of giving the audience as much time as they want to discuss a particular play, each person is given a handy dandy little notecard to write their comments on.

So we're going to try that next. I doubt it'll allow us to double our throughput like the other options would. Most of our time is taken up by the readings themselves, and I refuse to cut the page counts. But it should allow us to get through more than the 6 or 7 plays we've been doing lately.

Another challenge of the evening was the fact that one of the UCCS classes was using our room until 7:30pm (between the late start this caused and our extended post-reading discussion, the meeting didn't end until about 10:15!). I'll see if we can get that room at 7pm next month. If not, there are at least three other classrooms we can use.

Anyway, on to the meeting. As I said, we read ten plays in two rooms, with the groups divided by cast size.

Our regular classroom (Room 109) held the large-cast plays. We opened with some new pages from August Mergelman's The Tragedy of Dracula. Next up was Sue Bachman's short comedy, BFF's Forever? After that , we read a couple of scenes from Tim Phillips' Prohibition-era romance Notes from the Heart. We followed that with the latest pages from my museum farce I Want My Mummy. And we closed with a couple of scenes from Jess Weaver's sex comedy Just a Game.

The conference room next door was where we read the small-cast plays, in a session that was capably led by Grant Swenson. There we started with some more pages from Chuck Cabell's fantasy comedy Diabolus Ex Machina. That was followed by Grant's short play Career Move. Next up was Barbara Summerville's one-pager Radiation! And we ended with the first two plays that Sallie Walker has ever brought us, Three Men and a Cross and John and Marsha.

We were also thrilled to welcome two new actors to the fold, Stephanie Schlis and Char Rozina. They both did a fine job and I hope they come back.

Our next meeting is Monday, October 13. And I promise we'll be one big happy family again. See you all then!